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Chapter Text

The sky above Hogwarts burned red.

Smoke coiled from the broken towers, smearing the stars and turning the clouds into hues of fire. Ash fell like snow, dusting Hermione's sweat-soaked curls. The grounds were strewn with bodies — students, Aurors, Death Eaters — sprawled together in grotesque stillness. Even the air seemed stunned, heavy with grief.

Hermione stumbled through it, half-blind, Bellatrix’s deranged laughter still clawing at her ears. Her robes were torn, stiff with mud and someone else’s blood. Somewhere behind her, someone screamed, high and raw, before being cut off by a flash of green.

She tripped over a hand.

Ron’s hand.

He’d fallen near the courtyard steps, wand still raised, jaw clenched in that same reckless defiance that had always made her furious and fond in equal measure. His body looked small, absurdly small, against the blackened grass.
She dropped beside him, her knees sinking into the damp earth. "Ron," she rasped, brushing a lock of soot-streaked hair from his freckled forehead. "Please—"

Her voice caught. His skin was already cold.

A few yards away, Harry lay where the final Killing Curse had thrown him, limbs twisted, his glasses shattered beside a cracked wand. His eyes were half-open, fixed on the ruined sky. For one insane heartbeat, she waited for him to sit up, to grin that stupid grin and say, Got you, didn’t I?

He didn’t.

Voldemort had made sure of that.

From the castle came the low, drunken chant of Death Eaters.

"Where’s the Mudblood?" Greyback’s voice echoed from the crumbling corridor.

Hermione’s hand clenched around her wand, adrenaline spiking through her veins. Her throat ached with smoke, and she could taste blood on her teeth. She should stay. She should die beside them.

"Oi! You!" A Death Eater shouted as a curse hissed past her ear, close enough to singe the hair against her cheek. Reflex overrode grief. She ran.

She ran until the screams thinned to echoes, until the light of the fires was only a dull glow behind the trees. She didn’t register the curses thrown her way; she simply ran with everything she had.

The Forbidden Forest swallowed her whole.

Branches tore at her cloak. Roots caught her boots. Magic lit the canopy in sick flashes of red and green. She zigzagged through the trees, casting Bombarda and Expelliarmus haphazardly over her shoulder. Eventually, the spells stopped.

When she finally stumbled into a clearing, she collapsed to her knees, lungs heaving. The night pressed close, damp and cold, thick with the metallic stench of ash and blood.

Her shaking fingers found the chain around her throat. It was warm.

She dragged it into the moonlight: a small, blackened hourglass turning faintly on its own. She remembered the chaos of Bellatrix’s vault, the Gemino Curse, the glitter of treasure, her hand closing around the strange, humming weight without knowing why.

Now she knew.

The sand inside shimmered like powdered bone. She could almost hear it whisper: Change it.

Hermione’s breath came ragged. "No," she said to the dark. "I can’t—" Her voice cracked. "I can’t just—"

But she could. She had to. She had nothing left to lose.

Ron’s hand in the mud. Harry’s eyes fixed on the sky. The flash of green that had burned everything away.

"No," she ground out through clenched teeth. "I do not accept this."

The air pulsed, bending faintly around her, magic tasting metallic on her tongue.

She wound the chain around her fingers once, then again, tighter, until it cut into her skin. "If I can just kill the snake," she whispered, half to herself, half to the ghosts still watching. "Then maybe—"

The forest shuddered. Wind tore through the trees. The hourglass flared blood-red as she twisted it once. Twice. Three times.

The world snapped like a thread, and the smoke-filled night bled into nothing.

Chapter Text

Draco stared up, desperately attempting to reconcile the Hogwarts that stood before him with the one he had known intimately.

He had spent the last 8 years after the final battle wandering through the castle's desecrated halls. The school had become a shell of the mighty institution it once was.

Now, standing at the gates in late summer sunlight, Draco thought this Hogwarts looked smug. Even the turrets seemed to preen.

The gates groaned open at Dippet’s touch. The hinges didn’t shriek, didn’t bleed rust. A fat woodpigeon fluttered out of a nearby tree. Draco resisted the urge to vomit at the pure optimism of it all.

"Marvelous day for it, eh?" Headmaster Armando Dippet beamed at him like a friendly moon. His spectacles had slid halfway down his nose, magnifying his eyes into orbs that resembled those of a goldfish. "Nothing like starting a new term in fine weather!"

"Quite," Draco said.

If Dippet heard the dryness, he gave no sign. The man radiated earnest confusion—a walking cardigan with a few too many loose threads, Draco thought.

"Professor Slughorn speaks very highly of you, my boy! Said you were a genius with a cauldron, and even better with people!"

That last part was almost funny. Draco had written the testimonial himself, through Slughorn’s hand. Imperius tended to encourage an excessive use of flattery.

He followed the headmaster up the sloping lawn, boots sinking into soft grass. The air smelled too clean, too full of light and floral sweetness. It pressed against his skin like a foreign climate. Hogwarts wasn’t supposed to breathe.

Inside, the Entrance Hall struck him like a punch.

Everything shined.

The marble floor, uncracked and free from the familiar layers of dust, caught the light like a mirror.

Gone were the collapsed staircases, blackened portraits, ceilings that wept soot whenever the wind changed. Instead, sunbeams poured through tall, unbroken windows, scattering across house banners so new they seemed to hum. The vaulted ceiling stretched impossibly high, pristine stone ribs arching like cathedral bones.

He stopped for half a heartbeat, dizzy with displacement.

This was Hogwarts before the dust, before the battle spells and barricades made of desks. Before he’d watched it burn. He'd almost forgotten what it looked like.

"Magnificent, isn’t it?" Dippet said proudly. "I like to think of the castle as a living thing. One must tend to her properly—fresh enchantments, annual polishing charms. The secret is to keep her cheerful!"

"Is that so?" Draco let his eyes trace the gleaming staircases. "I suppose that explains the shine."

"Exactly! A little maintenance goes a long way. Prevention over cure, as my old professor used to say."

How revolutionary, Draco thought. Imagine trying that philosophy on people.

They started up the marble staircase, Dippet narrating like a tour guide possessed. "Charms corridor to the right, Potions down below in the dungeons, mind the third step—it’s been creaky since 1712!"

Draco’s mouth twitched. "Perhaps time for some of your trusty charms, Headmaster."

Dippet smacked him hard on the shoulder, and Draco had to grasp the railing to keep from falling. The bumbling fool hardly noticed.

"Ho ho, quite right, dear boy! I’ll make a note."

The staircases swung obligingly into place, none of the moaning protests he remembered. Portraits whispered among themselves as he passed. He caught phrases: handsome young man, new professor, looks Slytherin, pity.

Draco nearly chuckled to himself. Slytherin was significantly nicer than anything he had been called in the last eight years.

On the second-floor landing, a movement of color made him look up.

A tall wizard was descending on the opposite side of the staircase—plum robes, auburn hair, eyes like cut glass, half-moon spectacles sat low on the bridge of his nose.

Dumbledore.

Younger, sharper, not yet burdened by war or prophecy. He moved with easy grace, no limp, no weariness in his shoulders. There was something disconcerting about seeing potential instead of aftermath.

Draco’s pulse stuttered once.

They passed each other at the midpoint of the stairs. Dumbledore inclined his head in polite greeting, gaze curious but untroubled. Draco dipped his in return, keeping his expression blank.

For an instant, the air between them felt charged—recognition without memory, a ghost brushing its own reflection. Then Dumbledore continued downward, humming under his breath.

Draco exhaled slowly and followed Dippet upward, jaw tight.

"Marvelous fellow, Dumbledore," Dippet said cheerfully. "Brilliant mind, though quite eccentric. You’ll like him! A touch too forward-thinking for my taste, but one must tolerate genius, eh?"

"I make it a habit," Draco drawled.

At last they stopped before the stone gargoyle guarding the Headmaster’s office.

"Licorice wands!" Dippet announced, delighted with himself.

The gargoyle sprang aside with alarming enthusiasm. Draco resisted the urge to hex it.

The spiral staircase lifted them upward, smooth and silent. Draco clenched his hands at his sides, shoving away the memories of ascending these steps in darker times.

The office beyond was aggressively orderly. The smell of lemon polish clung to everything: shelves, desks, even the plush carpet. Sunlight made the brass fixtures glitter. No clutter, no phoenix, no mysteries. Just bureaucracy with good lighting.

Dippet gestured grandly to a chair. "Sit, sit! Let’s make this official."

Draco obeyed, posture immaculate. He withdrew a neat folio from his satchel and set it on the desk—parchments bearing forged seals, carefully aged signatures, and a work history so dull it nearly bored him to death writing it.

He sat, rolling his wand between his fingers, hoping the forgery he and Theo created was convincing. The last thing he needed was Dippet to realise he was a fraud.

Dippet opened the folder, flipped through perhaps three pages, and closed it again with the satisfaction of a man who’d done a full day’s work.

"Splendid! I always say: trust the references, not the paperwork."

He couldn't be serious.

The headmaster folded his hands, smiling benevolently. "Professor Slughorn’s endorsement is worth its weight in Galleons. A fine choice to succeed him, Professor—ah—Granger, wasn’t it?"

"Yes," he said evenly. "That’s right."

"Splendid! Professor Granger. Has a scholarly ring, don’t you think? Very dependable. You know, you’ll get on famously with our Defence professor. Brightest magic user I’ve ever met—and that’s saying something, considering she's a witch!"

"A witch?" Draco resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "I daresay that is rather modern of you, Headmaster."

"Yes, yes, Hogwarts is terribly progressive these days. Professor Wormwood wants to modernize everything. All this nonsense about critical thinking and ethics. But what can one do? She gets results."

"I look forward to meeting her," Draco lied.

"Excellent!" Dippet clapped his hands together, nearly dislodging his spectacles. "I’ll have her stop by—she’s always popping in anyway, terribly dedicated girl. You’ll like her, Professor Granger, I’m sure of it!"

Draco’s teeth ached from politeness.

He adjusted the cuff of his robe, felt the faint hum of the glamour charm against his skin. He had made sure the Dark Mark was invisible, even though it was covered by his sleeve. He could never be too careful.

"Now then, a few words about staff luncheons. Very important tradition, you know. Vital for morale. I do insist upon attendance at least twice a week—unless of course you’re brewing something volatile, in which case you’re encouraged to bring it along for show and tell! Builds character."

He leaned forward confidentially. "We gather in the smaller hall off the Great Dining Chamber—no students, thank heavens—though occasionally Professor Beery insists on bringing one of his plants, which never ends well. You’ll know it by the screaming. Do try not to sit near him on Tuesdays."

Draco blinked. "Noted."

"Yes, yes. We keep a rotating menu—though when I say ‘rotating,’ I mean the same stew, simply in different cauldrons. Excellent for digestion. Professor Blott claims it sharpens the mind. Of course, he also believes in numerological table settings, so we take that with a pinch of salt. Literally, in his case."

Before he could decide how long to endure Dippet’s monologue on staff luncheons, a sharp knock rattled the door.

"Ah!" Dippet said, delighted. "How fortuitous. Come in, Professor Wormwood!"

The door flew open and slammed into a curio case along the wall. The glass rattled and a few portraits groaned at the loud disturbance.

"Sorry, sorry." A frazzled voice sounded from the doorway.

A swirl of papers, quills, and steam preceded the woman who stormed in—her arms full of stacks on parchment, a hovering teapot bobbing anxiously in her wake.

"Headmaster, if we’re keeping the 1923 Ministry syllabus again I’ll need a waiver from the Department of Magical Education because the counter-hex section is criminally outdated and I refuse to be responsible for another crop of second-years who can’t tell a jinx from a miscast charm. Oh!"

She stopped short when she noticed him.

Draco blinked.

The first thing he registered was her fragile composure: crisp robes, dark straightened hair pulled into a low bun at the nape of her neck, an air of brisk efficiency that clung like static, all seemingly held together by a taught thread, threatening to snap at any moment. The second was her eyes. Too sharp, too frenzied. Familiar in a way that made something painful twist behind his ribs.

"Ah, Professor Wormwood!" Dippet announced, beaming. "Do come in, Matilda. Allow me to introduce our new Potions Master, Professor Granger."

The teapot clattered as it plummeted halfway to the floor, sloshing tea over its rim.

"Granger?" she repeated, eyes wide. Bundles of parchment fell from her arms as she struggled to levitate the teapot towards Dippet's desk.

Draco, remembering himself, plastered a perfectly civil smile on his face and moved to help her collect the fallen papers. "Yes. Common as galleons in a vault, I’m told."

She blinked once, hard, and reached down to pick up the final bit of parchment. "Can't say it's one I'm familiar with."

They stood, regarding each other in a strained, inquisitive silence. Draco tucked his hands into his pocket and cleared his throat.

"Splendid!" Dippet, ever the enthusiast and oblivious to the electrical current of uncertainty crackling between them, clapped them both on the back. "Two of our finest minds under one roof! Why, I dare say you’ll have the students rewriting the textbooks by Christmas!"

If they survive the semester, Draco thought.

"Too right Headmaster," he said, too loud, his tone the picture of pleasant neutrality.

Matilda studied him with a look he had only ever witnessed from one witch. That same furrow of the brow and subtle pursing of the lips. That familiar gleam of an unspoken challenge behind her eyes. The irony of his chosen alias now struck him as rather hilarious. Or unfortunate.

He hadn’t meant to pick that name, not really—just the first thing that had come to mind when Dippet asked for documentation. It had been a joke, the sort of dark, private humor that kept him sane through the last eight years. Now, watching her suspicious gaze, it didn’t feel funny at all.

Professor Wormwood composed herself quickly. "Welcome to Hogwarts, Professor... Granger." She said the name slowly, her amber gaze studying his intently.

"Felix, please, Professor Wormwood."

"Matilda." She appraised him. "You're Slughorn’s replacement, yes?"

"Indeed," Draco replied. "Though I promise not to keep a trophy cabinet of my students’ accomplishments."

Her brows lifted, and he realised his mistake. There was no way for him to know this about Slughorn. Merlin knew if that was even something he had started doing yet.

She tilted her head at him. "A pity. I’d hoped for a bribe or two. It’s how we build camaraderie here."

"I’m more of a merit-based system sort," Draco said smoothly. "Though I’m open to persuasion."

Dippet chuckled, seemingly delighted that his staff were getting along so famously. "Wonderful! That’s the spirit! Now, Professor Wormwood, you were saying something about the syllabus?"

Professor Wormwood turned her focus back to the Headmaster, her voice shifting gears instantly from sharp wit to righteous exasperation. "Yes, Headmaster, as I was saying—the Ministry-approved text is thirty years behind modern defensive theory. If we continue using it, we’re not teaching proper self-defence techniques. My students might as well be performing a history reenactment."

"Ah, well," Dippet flustered, "the Board does like its traditions. Old spells, dependable spells—"

"They’re also ineffective," she interrupted. "Half of them rely on duelling stances they modified in 1896."

Draco, lounging slightly in his chair, watched the exchange with the sort of detached amusement usually reserved for opera or dueling tournaments. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen anyone talk to authority like that and live.

Dippet blinked helplessly. "Yes, well, perhaps a few minor revisions—"

"A full overhaul would be more advisable." She grit through her teeth.

Draco cleared his throat softly, drawing their attention. "If it helps, Headmaster, I’ve always found incompetence to be the bedrock of educational tradition."

Dippet brightened. "Exactly! You see, Wormwood? Professor Granger understands institutional continuity!"

Matilda turned her gaze on him—slowly, carefully, the way one might turn to face an unexpected predator. Her eyes narrowed. "Does he?"

Draco met her look evenly. "Absolutely. Tradition does so hate being improved upon."

"Fascinating philosophy for a Potions Master," she said, her tone polite but laced with barely suppressed irritation.

He smiled thinly and shrugged.

There was a pause, heavy and sharp-edged. Dippet didn’t feel it, of course. He beamed at both of them like a proud parent. "I can see you two will get on splendidly!"

Draco thought about denying it but resisted; he didn’t want to waste his wit on a man who wouldn’t appreciate it.

Professor Wormwood was already re-gathering her papers, her wand flicking in small irritated gestures that set the teapot right and stacked the parchment into perfect order. She moved like someone who had no patience for wasted motion.

She’d changed everything about her—hair darker, nose narrower, lips thinner—but her voice carried that distinctive clipped rhythm he remembered from six years of sharing classrooms..

It was her. There was no question.

He sat back, watching her argue policy with Dippet, and felt a laugh trying to claw its way up his throat. Of course, this was where she’d ended up. While he’d been crawling through ruins and struggling not to drown in darkness, she’d apparently decided the best way to fix history was to join academia.

Trust Granger to be consistent.

At last, Dippet gave in with a helpless wave of his hand. "Yes, yes, fine, Wormwood, make your revisions. You always do anyway. Just submit them in triplicate this time!"

"Of course, Headmaster," she said sweetly, already halfway out the door.

The teapot wobbled after her.

When the door closed behind her, silence filled the office like a draft.

Draco exhaled through his nose, long and slow.

"Brilliant woman," Dippet sighed fondly. "Very bright. I do so admire passion in a teacher, don’t you?"

"Among other vices," Draco said.

"Ha! Yes, yes." Dippet stood, dusting his hands. "Well then, Professor Granger, I’ll leave you to settle in. You’ll find your quarters adjacent to the Potions classroom. Excellent natural ventilation, or so Slughorn claimed. Can’t ever be negligent about fumes!"

"Wouldn’t dream of it," Draco said, rising.

Dippet escorted him to the door with all the solemnity of a man handing over keys to an empire. "Welcome to Hogwarts, my boy. We expect great things."

Draco smiled politely. "I hope to exceed expectations, Headmaster."

Dippet chuckled. "And so you will, dear boy! My gut is never wrong about faculty!"

Draco stepped into the corridor, the door closing behind him with a soft click. The sound echoed down the stone hallway, bright and hollow.

He leaned against the wall, his thumb and index finger pinching the bridge of his nose. The castle felt enormous, alive, arrogant in its perfection. And somewhere within it, Hermione Granger—now Matilda Wormwood—was rewriting the entire DADA curriculum.

He let out a dry breath of laughter. "Of course," he muttered. "Bloody typical."

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Hermione stood before the wall, hands clasped behind her back as though she were surveying a crime scene rather than her own bedroom. The was buried beneath parchment — layers upon layers of notes, articles, sketches, and string-tied connections that criss-crossed in a maddening web of ink and logic.

Anyone else setting foot in this room would think she’d gone entirely mental. Absolutely off her rocker. The kind of woman who might start muttering about government conspiracies and see prophecies in her tea leaves. A psychological intervention waiting to happen.

 But to Hermione, the chaos was a language only she could read. Every frantic scribble, every arrow connecting two seemingly unrelated events, every bit of string looping between dates and names and half-legible Arithmancy sequences — it all meant something. She could trace the threads of cause and consequence, as if fate itself had left breadcrumbs just for her.

She knew how it looked. The wall had long since crossed from "eccentric academic project" to "obsessive and unhinged." But it was the only thing that made sense anymore. This was her purpose — her proof that she could still fix it.

There were events — fixed points in time, immovable, immaculately cruel — that Hermione had realised years ago could not be altered. They were essential. Pillars holding up the fragile architecture of history.

And so, she’d spent the last three years buried in her work, armed with nothing but her own memories and a frankly terrifying amount of complex Arithmancy, mapping every permutation of possibility she could conjure. Which threads could she cut? Which had to stay knotted, no matter how much it hurt?

The wall behind her was both a masterpiece and a madness — equations layered over timelines, circles drawn so heavily the parchment tore through, variables rewritten again and again until the ink bled.

The key, she’d told herself a thousand times, was precision. Change just enough to make a difference. To stop the worst of it. To save Harry and Ron — not erase them.

But the closer she got, the more she felt the universe trembling beneath her fingertips. Every line she drew, every calculation she adjusted, carried the unbearable weight of consequence. One wrong move and the future she was trying to protect could shatter entirely — and it would be her doing.

Her plan was no longer theoretical. It was becoming real. And that was the most terrifying part of all.

Tomorrow, everything would change.

The fragile calm of her borrowed life — Professor Matilda Wormwood, respectable half-blood and mild-mannered Defence professor — would shatter the moment Tom Riddle set foot in the castle. She could no longer pretend that this was simply a strange new posting in a gentler time. No more hiding behind lesson plans and pleasantries. No more ignoring the future that still screamed behind her eyelids.

Every decision from here on had to matter. Every word, every breath, every fleeting choice had to tilt the scales towards something better.

Her chest tightened, heartbeat climbing into a frantic rhythm she couldn’t quite slow. Merlin, how she wished Harry and Ron were here — her anchors, her compass, the steady hands that once pulled her back from the brink of obsession. Without them she felt lopsided, unmoored, as if the entire weight of the timeline had balanced itself squarely on her shoulders.

She twisted the thin gold band on her finger, pacing the room in restless circles. Make some tea, she told herself. Yes, tea. Something normal. Keep busy. Don’t overthink this.

A hopeless command. Overthinking wasn’t a flaw anymore; it was a reflex. A vocation. Possibly even an art form. And tonight, her mind refused to rest.

Because one unexpected complication had entered her equation and thrown every calculation into chaos.

Malfoy.

He was the one thing she hadn’t planned for — couldn’t have planned for. His arrival had split through her careful, terrifyingly delicate framework like a fissure through glass. She didn’t understand it, his supposed mission, this suicidal obsession with killing his future master. Something in him had shifted, hardened, become dangerous in a way that made her stomach knot.

When she first realised it was him — that the new Potions Master parading under her surname was Malfoy — she’d felt the strangest flicker of relief. Foolish, in hindsight. He was a ghost from home, a remnant of a world she’d lost. And familiarity, however bitter, could feel like safety when one was stranded decades from it.

But this wasn’t the boy she remembered. Not really.

She didn’t know what he’d done since the war, what choices had carved those sharp new edges into him, what atrocities might stain his hands. Gone was the petulant, whining schoolboy who hid behind lineage and smirked his way through cowardice. This version was colder. Controlled. Calculated. And that terrified her more than she cared to admit.

He was a variable she couldn’t predict — and in this time, unpredictability could be catastrophic.

Whatever his reasons for being here, she had to treat him as a threat.

No matter how cordial he’d seemed at the luncheon, how smoothly he’d played at being the reformed colleague, she hadn’t missed the edge in his gaze. The restraint. The way every word sounded like it had been measured against a darker thought he didn’t speak.

She could not afford to underestimate him. Not again.

A familiar, melodic cry pierced the quiet, pulling Hermione sharply from the spiral of her thoughts.

She froze, the kettle halfway to the flame, and turned towards the window. Beyond the glass, the evening sky unfurled in shades of soft periwinkle and rose, the fading light gilding the turrets of the castle in gold. The air shimmered faintly with the remnants of daylight — that strange, suspended stillness that came just before dusk fully surrendered to night.

Then she saw him.

A streak of flame against the dimming blue, wings spread wide enough to eclipse the sinking sun. The phoenix descended, each beat of its wings scattering embers through the air like falling stars. Crimson and gold plumage rippled with every movement, refracting the light in a thousand directions — a living constellation made of fire and grace.

 Fawkes.

Even after all these years, the sight still took her breath away. The phoenix circled once above the edge of the Forbidden Forest, singing a low, haunting note that resonated through her bones. There was something profoundly reassuring in that sound — a reminder of hope, of rebirth, of the few constants that time itself couldn’t erase.

A smile tugged at her lips despite the weight pressing down on her chest. If Fawkes was flying this way, that could only mean one thing. Dumbledore was ready to speak with her.

Heart suddenly alight with nervous energy, Hermione snatched her wand from where it rested on the corner of her desk. She barely remembered to extinguish the flame beneath the kettle before rushing out the door, her robes swishing around her ankles as she took the familiar path towards the Head of Gryffindor’s chambers.

When she reached the tall wooden door, Hermione rapped her knuckles three times against its surface. A soft click answered her, and a calm, melodic voice drifted through from the other side.

"Come in."

She eased the door open and stepped inside. The familiar warmth of the room wrapped around her like a blanket — the scent of melted beeswax and bergamot mingled with polished cedar and a faint trace of something sweetly citrus, as though even the air itself had a fondness for lemon drops.

It was a room that defied chaos by sheer force of personality. Every inch was filled with something curious — telescopes and trinkets, peculiar brass instruments humming softly to themselves, books stacked in precarious towers beside teetering shelves and glass cabinets that gleamed with age and magic. Somehow, amidst all that clutter, there was order. Harmony in the disarray.

At the centre of it all sat Dumbledore. He was bent over a large, worn sheet of parchment, the edges yellowed and dusted with what looked to be a healthy coating of dirt. When she approached, he looked up, sliding his half-moon spectacles from the end of his crooked nose and offering her a smile so kind it almost undid her composure.

"Hello, Albus," she greeted, the name still feeling strange on her tongue — too familiar, too intimate for the man she’d once revered as a legend.

"Ah, Matilda," he said, his voice lilting with quiet amusement. "Thank you for coming. I do hope I’ve not pulled you away from anything urgent?"

"Not at all," Hermione replied quickly. "I was just finishing some preparations before the students arrive tomorrow."

Dumbledore leaned back in his chair, hands folding over his robes. His eyes, that peculiar blend of blue and starlight, twinkled with their usual mix of wisdom and mischief.

"Ah, yes. The day before the term begins — a time of industrious panic for professors and unbridled excitement for students." His smile deepened. "But between you and me, I’ve always believed a touch of unpreparedness keeps things... interesting. We never quite know what this year’s crop may yield, and isn’t that half the fun?"

Hermione couldn’t help but return his smile, though her heart still thrummed uneasily beneath her calm exterior.

"I’m afraid I’ve always found I have a certain difficulty with feeling unprepared," Hermione admitted, offering a sheepish smile. She was well aware of her flaws, and an unyielding need to control every conceivable variable was, regrettably, one of her defining ones. One of many.

Dumbledore’s eyes crinkled at the corners. "And yet," he said softly, "the best way to overcome difficulty is through practice. Wouldn’t you say?"

"I—yes, Albus. I would."

"Good." His smile warmed, that familiar blend of amusement and gravity that only he could pull off. "Now then, as to why I’ve summoned you here."

He straightened, the light from the hearth flickering over his half-moon spectacles. "You are aware, Miss Wormwood, that I prefer to maintain cordial relationships with all creatures who call Hogwarts home — even those considered undesirable by those who fail to understand them?"

"Of course," Hermione replied quickly, inclining her head. "It’s something I believe every witch and wizard should strive to do."

"Yes," Dumbledore mused, eyes glinting, "I rather thought we shared that particular philosophy. But—" he waved a hand lightly, "this is somewhat beside the point."

He leaned down, opening one of the deep wooden drawers built into his desk — a space that Hermione suspected might defy normal spatial logic. A soft clatter of glass and the dull thud of falling books issued from within.

"A week ago," he continued conversationally, "I had the pleasure of meeting with the chief of the local centaur herd in the Forbidden Forest. A very decent fellow, if somewhat prone to poetry at inopportune moments." A faint twinkle lit his gaze. "While discussing how I might help them access better resources, he mentioned discovering something rather unusual half-buried in a grove a few weeks past. The chief, being most prudent, held on to the item until we could determine its nature."

He paused, still rummaging.

Hermione’s pulse quickened despite herself.

"The moment I examined it," he said, "I suspected it might have belonged to one of our more... unique professors." Another clank, a muffled curse — and then, softly: "Ah. There we are."

When he straightened again, he was holding it.

Hermione’s world stopped.

He set the object gently atop the desk, as though it were something sacred. The soft candlelight shimmered off the faintly worn fabric, pink beads glinting like old memories.

"Upon closer inspection," Dumbledore said, watching her closely now, "I realised there was likely only one person to whom this could belong." He placed a hand beside it, not touching — merely framing the moment. "I take it you’ve been missing something of great importance since your arrival, Matilda?"

Hermione couldn’t breathe.

The little beaded bag, her bag.  The one that had held her entire life during the war, the one she’d slept beside, clutched in fear, guarded with every protective charm she knew — was sitting on Dumbledore’s desk. She had searched for it for weeks after the cursed Time-Turner deposited her in 1934, and when it never appeared, she’d mourned it like a lost friend.

And now here it was. Whole. Real. Impossible. Her fingers twitched uselessly at her sides. "How—" her voice broke before she could stop it. "Where did they—"

Dumbledore only smiled faintly, the corners of his eyes softening in that way that made her feel simultaneously comforted and utterly exposed.

"There is quite an impressive Undetectable Extension Charm on this bag," Dumbledore remarked, turning the small pink pouch over in his hands with genuine admiration. "Only a very skilled witch or wizard could have performed it so seamlessly. I do hope you’ll take care not to lose it again." He held it towards her.

Hermione could only nod, her throat tight, as she grasped the pouch in shaking fingers.

The familiar ache of memory welled in her chest, thick and hot. She had poured so much of herself into that bag, every bit of hope that she could keep what little they had safe. Tears burned at the corners of her eyes, but she blinked them away before they could fall as she set the bag on her lap. Dumbledore sat there quietly, his expression kind but measured.

"Now this," he said at last, gesturing towards the old parchment he had been studying when she entered, "is quite another remarkable bit of spellwork."

Hermione followed his gaze — and froze.

"The map," she wispered, her voice barely audible. She leaned closer, unable to help herself, and reached out to brush the edge of the parchment with trembling fingers.

The Marauder’s Map. Her heart stuttered. It was impossible — how was it here?

Her stomach dropped. It had been in the bag. She had sworn Harry had it on him in the end. Had he put it in there, somehow knowing she would need it? Oh, Harry. Her heart clenched.

Dumbledore was watching her reaction with gentle curiosity. "Fascinating, isn’t it?" he said softly. "A piece of enchantment far beyond anything I’ve seen of its kind. Layers upon layers of concealment, and the charm work —" he smiled, eyes alight with genuine wonder, "— brilliantly done. And yet, curiously... it seems to have quite the talent for generating insults for those who try to read it."

Hermione swallowed hard, pulse roaring in her ears. Of course he’d looked into it. Dumbledore would never encounter something so extraordinary without investigating. And now, because of her, the map existed before its time — an anachronism laid bare under his gaze.

She tried to sound casual, but her voice came out strained. "It’s... it’s rather ingenious."

"Indeed," Dumbledore murmured. His tone was mild, but there was a glint in his eyes that made her uneasy — as though he could see the truth forming in her mind. "And it seems to respond only to certain forms of magical intent. Quite selective, this bit of parchment. One might even say... loyal."

Hermione forced a thin smile, trying to breathe evenly. The implications were dizzying. With the map back in her possession, she could track everyone. Tom Riddle. Malfoy. She could know where they were, whom they met with, what secrets the castle tried to keep. It was a dangerous tool — but one she needed.

Before she could speak, Dumbledore’s voice broke softly through her thoughts. "I must confess," he said, "I did not return the bag immediately upon finding it."

Her eyes flicked up to his. "You didn’t?"

"No," he admitted, a faint, almost sheepish smile tugging at his mouth as his fingers absently combed through his auburn beard. "I fear I kept it for a few days. An old habit — curiosity does so love to overstay its welcome. You see, there was something inside that caught my attention."

He turned from the desk and crossed to a side door leading into his private quarters. The soft shuffle of his robes faded for a moment, and Hermione sat perfectly still, heart hammering in her chest. When he returned, he was holding something draped over his arm — a shimmer of pale, silver fabric that rippled like water.

Her breath hitched.

The Invisibility Cloak.

"I found this folded neatly within the bag," Dumbledore said, setting it carefully on the desk beside the map. "A rare artefact — ancient, powerful, and unmistakably singular in its magic. It... spoke to me, in a manner of speaking. I recognised its craftsmanship almost immediately."

Hermione’s voice barely rose above a whisper. "You... you’ve seen it before?"

His expression was wistful, eyes glinting behind the half-moon spectacles. "Not seen," he corrected softly, "but heard of. There are whispers, old tales of three objects said to be unmatched in their craft — impossible things, even by our standards. Most dismiss them as myth, of course."

He studied the shimmering fabric, his voice low, thoughtful. "But I have always found that myths have a way of hiding truths too inconvenient to be recorded. And this," he said, brushing his fingers along the silvery folds, "feels rather like one of them."

He let out a quiet hum, neither confirming nor denying his suspicions, before glancing back up at her. "It is said one of the three could conceal a person so completely that even Death could not find them. A charming bit of folklore, wouldn’t you agree?"

The corner of his mouth lifted — that same blend of mirth and melancholy she knew all too well. "But whether legend or reality, one must tread carefully with such things. The pursuit of mastery over death tends to reveal more about the seeker than the secret."

He looked down at it for a long moment, his expression thoughtful, almost melancholy. "I will admit, Miss Wormwood, I was sorely tempted to keep it. Not out of greed, you understand — but from the scholar’s most persistent failing: curiosity. One can justify a great many things in the name of understanding."

He paused, running his fingers lightly along the fabric’s edge, as if weighing the choice again even now. "But knowledge obtained at the cost of conscience rarely brings satisfaction. I have learned, time and again, that what is not freely given should not be taken — no matter how noble one believes the reason to be. So..."

He lifted his gaze to meet hers, and his smile returned, faint and fond. "Here it is. Right where it belongs."

He pushed the Cloak gently towards her. "Take care of it, Miss Wormwood. I suspect it still has many important uses ahead of it — though perhaps not the ones you imagine."

Hermione reached out, fingers trembling as she gathered the silvery fabric into her hands. It felt both impossibly light and heavy with meaning, like touching a memory she’d buried too deep.

"Thank you," she murmured, and for a brief, dangerous moment, she wished she could tell him the entire truth.

Dumbledore regarded her for a long, quiet moment. The firelight flickered against his spectacles, catching the faintest twinkle of amusement — or perhaps forewarning — in his gaze.

"You know," he said at last, folding his hands over the desk, "I have a rather distinct feeling that this year will bring... changes." His voice was gentle, but threaded with a note of gravity that made Hermione’s skin prickle. "Some great, some small, and some of them entirely beyond our control."

He leaned back, studying her with that piercing kindness that always seemed to see too much. "You may find, Miss Wormwood, that even the most meticulous plans tend to unravel in the face of what is meant to be. And try as we might, we cannot prepare for everything."

Hermione’s fingers tightened around the beaded bag in her lap. "No," she murmured. "I — I suppose we can’t."

Dumbledore’s gaze softened. "Still," he continued, gesturing to the bag, the map and the Cloak, "perhaps returning these small fragments of familiarity will aid you in your more... mysterious endeavours."

She drew in a breath, considering. "Albus, there’s—" she began, the need to warn him bubbling up from her throat. "There’s something about T—"

But Dumbledore lifted a hand, cutting her off with the smallest shake of his head. His expression was kind, but firm. "Best to remember, Miss Wormwood, that you need only tell me what I need to know." His eyes twinkled again, though the warmth in them carried an edge of warning. "And as experience has taught me, that is usually very little indeed."

Hermione fell silent, the words withering on her tongue.

"Ah!" Dumbledore clapped his hands lightly, as though some errant thought had just returned to him. "I almost forgot — Armando asked that I pass along a letter."

 He reached for a neat stack of correspondence at the edge of his desk and selected one envelope, the seal marked with the official Hogwarts crest. He handed it to her with a small smile.

"From Headmaster Dippet," he said. "He was quite insistent."

Hermione broke the seal and unfolded the parchment. The familiar looping scrawl was cheerful and cluttered, the sentences running into one another as though the writer had thought them all equally important.

Dear Professor Wormwood,

Good evening! I did mean to mention this earlier today, but between the luncheon and that rather spirited debate about sentient forks (most enlightening, I must say!), it quite slipped my mind.

As you know, we have a rather unusual student joining us as a third year this term — young Tom Riddle. A curious case indeed! Albus assures me that the boy possesses a rare natural aptitude for the craft. Quite remarkable, really.

Given the unique circumstance of Mr. Riddle’s late arrival, I should like each member of staff to provide him with a bit of individual guidance over the coming months. Two private sessions per week should do nicely — nothing too demanding, of course! Just enough to help him acclimate and fill in any educational gaps.

I trust your patience and skill in Defence will serve the boy well. You’ve always had such a steady hand with challenging pupils, and I daresay you’ll find him an intriguing one. Do let me know if you require any additional materials for your lessons, though I must warn you the budget is, as ever, stretched to the limit (the Herbology greenhouses seem to have eaten it again).

My thanks for your continued dedication, Professor Wormwood. I’ve no doubt you’ll help Mr Riddle feel quite at home.

Warm regards,

Armando Dippet

Headmaster, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Hermione folded the letter slowly, her pulse pounding in her ears. It was almost too convenient. Too perfect an opportunity.

Dumbledore was watching her again — quiet, thoughtful, a glint of understanding behind his calm expression. "Well," he said softly, "it seems fate is very eager to make your acquaintance with young Mr. Riddle."

She forced a steady breath. "Yes," she said. "It would seem so." She busied herself with folding up the Marauder’s Map and Invisibility Cloak and tucking them into her bag.

 "Then I wish you luck," Dumbledore replied, his tone light but his eyes far too knowing. "And perhaps... a touch of patience. You may need both."

Hermione stood, clutching the letter and the beaded bag to her chest. As she turned to leave, Dumbledore’s voice followed her — quiet, almost lost beneath the crackle of the fire.

"Do remember, Matilda," he said, "preparation is a fine thing, but intuition often proves the better guide."

She paused at the door, glancing back at him. He was already bent over his desk again, quill in hand, as though the entire conversation had been nothing more than a passing distraction. But the faintest smile lingered on his lips.

And somehow, Hermione knew, he understood far more than he’d ever say.

* * *

Draco had never cared much for ceremony.

All the pomp, the polished silver, the candlelit grandeur of the Great Hall — it was all so... Hogwarts. A place that still clung to its pretensions of innocence, as though centuries of dark wizards hadn’t been raised beneath its star-dappled ceiling.

He lounged — or rather, appeared to lounge — in his chair at the High Table, fingers drumming idly against the stem of his goblet. The faintest trace of a smirk tugged at his mouth. Anyone looking would see a man perfectly at ease, detached, almost bored. Which, of course, was the point.

In reality, every nerve in his body hummed with anticipation.

The hall was already alive with the restless noise of returning students — laughter, gossip, the scrape of cutlery. Only the front rows remained empty, waiting for the fresh crop of wide-eyed first-years. Among them, him. Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Beside him, Granger — Matilda Wormwood, he continued to remind himself — sat stiffly, her posture far too precise, her expression far too focused on her goblet to be anything but a mask. She looked nervous. Anxious, even. He knew the feeling — recognised it, if he was being honest. The thought made something unpleasant stir in his chest, so he dismissed it at once.

As if his thoughts had summoned her, her gaze flicked narrowing, quick as ever, assessing him with that same brand of righteous suspicion she’d perfected back at school. Some things, it seemed, truly transcended time.

Her stare lingered for a fraction too long on his wand, which jutted from the inner pocket of his robes. Subtle, he thought dryly.

He rolled his eyes and shifted back in his chair, fingers drumming lazily against the armrest to disguise the tightness in his chest. Her distrust shouldn’t have bothered him — it was predictable, even deserved — but somehow it still grated.

As if he didn’t have an ounce of tact left to his name.

Did she really think he was so spectacularly foolish as to pull out his wand and Avada a thirteen-year-old in front of the entire bloody faculty?

He nearly laughed aloud at the thought. Please.

He might have lost everything, but he hadn’t lost his discipline. Reckless? Perhaps. Suicidal? Possibly, when the price was right. But idiotic? Never. There were far cleaner methods than brandishing a wand in front of a hall full of children — methods that left no witnesses and no noise. He would choose one of those. Calmly. Deliberately.

Still, the way she kept glancing at him — as though she could sense the violence simmering beneath his calm — almost made him want to prove her right. Just for the satisfaction.

He shifted in his seat, straightening his cuffs, the silver of his rings catching the candlelight. Every inch of him was polished, calculated — even his breathing precise. A Malfoy knew how to play a part, even when sitting at the edge of madness.

He tested the walls of his mind, the old Occlumency barriers rising like stone. Habit. Reflex. Protection.

He’d built them young — under his mother’s worried gaze, under Snape’s sharp instruction — but it was during the war that they’d hardened into something else. Necessary armour. The Dark Lord had prized obedience, but he’d feasted on weakness, on thoughts left undefended.

Draco had learned quickly that survival meant silence — of the tongue, of the mind, of the self. Every flicker of doubt, every trace of fear had to be scrubbed clean before they could reach him.

Even now, years and lifetimes away, the instinct remained. When emotion pressed too close, when memory clawed at the edges, he rebuilt the walls brick by brick, until nothing could slip through.

Until he felt almost nothing at all.

His gaze flicked again to Granger. She was twisting the ring on her finger—her tell. Merlin, she was transparent. All that intellect, all that composure, and yet she couldn’t disguise the tightness in her shoulders, the way her eyes darted just a moment too long before fixing on nothing. For all her poise, she was no better than he was—one wrong look from giving herself away.

The thought almost made him smile. How comforting, really, that even she could crack.

It shouldn’t have mattered. None of it should have mattered. But something about her nervous energy bled into the air between them, sharpening it — like the moment before a duel, when both sides have raised their wands but neither has moved yet.

The hall was too quiet. The candles burned too steadily. Even the air felt tight with expectation.

And then —

The great oak doors at the far end of the hall swung open with a heavy groan, the sound echoing through the vaulted chamber.

And suddenly, the air changed.

It was subtle at first — a hush rippling through the students, the collective turn of heads as the first-years filed in — but Draco felt it like a blow to the chest. The warmth bled out of the room. The candlelight seemed colder, sharper.

Then he saw him.

Tom Riddle was taller than the rest. Too tall. A head above the other children, who shuffled nervously under the weight of so many eyes. He didn’t shuffle. He glided. Each step measured, silent, deliberate — as if he owned the floor beneath him. The other children looked around in wide-eyed wonder at the enchanted ceiling. Riddle did not. His cunning gaze swept the room instead, clinical, calculating. Assessing.

Draco’s fingers clenched around the stem of his goblet until his knuckles whitened.

Keep it together, Draco.

Even at thirteen years old, there was nothing of boyhood left in Tom’s face. Too still. Too composed. The faint, polite smile he offered the professors wasn’t shy or nervous — it was performed, a gesture of courtesy stripped of sincerity. A mimicry of humanity.

Draco had expected—Merlin, he didn’t know what he’d expected. A child. A boy. Someone unformed, who might still be swayed. But looking at him now, at the chilling self-possession in every calculated movement, Draco realised there had never been a version of Tom Riddle that wasn’t already halfway to becoming the Dark Lord.

This was him. This was what evil looked like.

Riddle’s eyes swept the staff table — a brief, deliberate survey that slid past Dippet and caught, for the smallest moment, on her. Granger. Draco saw her shoulders stiffen, heard the faint hitch of her breath.

And then that gaze found him.

His Occlumency shattered like glass, years of discipline dissolving beneath that familiar, impossible stare.

For one irrational heartbeat, he expected recognition — as if the boy’s power transcended time itself, as if Voldemort’s gaze could pierce centuries and strip away his glamour like parchment in flame.

The room flickered. For a breath, it wasn’t the Great Hall at all — it was the Manor, the smell of blood and smoke thick in the air. He saw again that wax-white face rising out of the dark, the red eyes narrowing, the silken voice curling around his name like a noose. “Come closer, Draco.”

The phantom sound scraped across his nerves. His throat constricted, every muscle remembering what it meant to kneel.

He blinked, and the vision dissolved. Candlelight. Students. Applause. Still, the echo lingered — that awful certainty that even stripped of years and titles, Riddle would always know him.

And yet, as those dark eyes lingered, Draco wasn’t entirely certain he believed that.

Riddle’s expression didn’t change. He didn’t need to sneer or smirk; the power of it was in the absence. The calm certainty. The quiet promise.

Draco felt his magic surge — not the thrilling spark of a duel, but the wrong kind of rush, cold and sour, like a hand closing around his throat. He dug his nails into his palm until it hurt — a small reminder not to act. Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t let Granger be right.

He sucked in a breath, jaw tight.

Granger, from her seat beside him, shifted uneasily. She could feel it too — the wrongness that entered with the boy.

Draco tore his gaze away, muscles rigid, reminding himself—forcefully—where he was.
A hall full of people. Professors. Students. Witnesses.
He wasn’t in a battlefield or a burning manor; this wasn’t the moment for blood. Not yet. No matter how tempting.

Still, his pulse refused to slow. The urge to act—the old, violent instinct—burned just beneath his skin, coiling like a serpent that had been waiting years for this moment.

He swallowed it down.

Draco watched as Riddle turned to the boy beside him. In an instant, the cold, assessing stillness melted into an easy smile, his posture softening, every movement rehearsed to perfection. The boy laughed — young, unsuspecting — and Draco’s stomach clenched. He knew that performance. He’d seen that same counterfeit warmth charm men twice his age into obedience. It was the first step, always. The lure before the leash.

His mouth went dry.

He’s already dangerous.

No one else seemed to notice.

Draco’s gaze flicked sharply across the hall, but the rest of the staff were all smiling benignly, chatting quietly amongst themselves, watching the first-years file in with that infuriating brand of Hogwarts optimism. Even Dippet looked positively delighted, beaming down at the children as though he were personally handing them the future on a silver platter.

Not one of them felt it — the shift, the cold, the hollow tug in the air that had lodged itself under Draco’s ribs.

How could they not feel it?

He looked again. Riddle stood at the back of the group, posture perfect, eyes gleaming with a sharp awareness that no child should possess. The candlelight didn’t seem to touch him; it simply bent, dimmed, as though wary of intruding.

Draco’s pulse thudded hard in his throat. He couldn’t hear the chatter anymore, couldn’t hear Dippet’s genial welcome or the scrape of benches. Everything was muffled, distant, as though the boy at the centre of it all had drawn the air out of the room and kept it for himself.

And no one else even blinked.

The madness of it pressed in on him — the weight of knowing he was surrounded by people who didn’t see what stood right in front of them. This is how it happens, he thought bitterly. This is how monsters rise — one charming smile at a time, while the rest of the world claps.

He tried to summon his Occlumency, to drag the walls back into place, but the old calm refused to come. His mind was too loud, too exposed. Panic pressed against the cracks, flooding through before he could stop it.

His hand was trembling. He didn’t notice until he felt it — the tremor, the cold, the breath locked somewhere between his ribs. The world had narrowed to a pulse and a memory when something broke through.

Warm. Steady.

He startled as Granger’s hand brushed over his, her fingers pressing down — light, sure, human. Not long enough to draw attention, yet long enough for the tremor to stop dead. His body went rigid. It had been years since anyone had touched him without force or harmful intent. The warmth shot through him too fast, too bright, jarring in its gentleness.

He blinked, as if surfacing from somewhere far away, and pulled his hand back as though the contact burned. Her eyes found his, stern, deliberate.

Breathe, they said.

He did — sharply, the sound leaving him like the hiss of a blade sliding back into its sheath. The tension bled from his shoulders, just enough for him to unclench his jaw.

For a moment, he simply sat there, aware of the faint tingling in his hand where her fingers had been. It lingered — stubborn, impossible — like a brand made of warmth instead of fire. He flexed his fingers once beneath the table, as though he could shake it off, but the sensation only deepened, crawling up his arm to his throat.

Ridiculous.

He straightened his cuffs again, instead, forcing his attention back to the room. The world was reassembling itself: light, sound, movement seeping back in.

Standing in front of the group of first years, Dumbledore was speaking, his voice carrying effortlessly through the hall — calm, melodic, measured. "Now then," he continued, "let us welcome our newest witches and wizards to Hogwarts. When I call your name, please step forward and I will place the Sorting Hat upon your head."

The ancient hat twitched on its stool, and the ceremony began.

Names were called. Applause rippled through the hall as nervous children stumbled forward and scurried off to their new tables, beaming or trembling or both.

"Smythe, Beatrice."

"Hufflepuff!"

"Fawley, Margaret."

"Ravenclaw!"

Draco barely heard them. His gaze kept flicking back to Riddle, who stood unmoving, expression serene, like he’d already decided where he belonged.

When "Riddle, Tom" was finally called, the boy stepped forward with that same unnerving precision. He didn’t glance around like the others; he walked as though he’d been here before. The hat sat on his head longer than Draco expected before its rip near the brim opened and declared, loud and sure:

"Slytherin!"

The table to Draco’s left erupted in cheers and whistles. Riddle didn’t smile — just inclined his head slightly, as though acknowledging what he already knew. He crossed the hall and slipped into the Slytherin table, taking a seat beside a pale-haired second-year who looked far too familiar.

Draco’s stomach flipped.

Abraxas.

His grandfather.

Of course. How could he have forgotten? He’d prepared for the ancient slang, the fashions, the mannerisms of the time — but not this. Not his own bloodline staring back at him, alive and oblivious.

Abraxas Malfoy sat poised, chin tilted at the perfect angle, the signature Malfoy smirk already carved into his face as he leaned toward the new boy. Riddle’s lips curved in response — not warmth, but recognition. Selection.
Draco’s pulse spiked. The sight of that face — his own name, his own blood — made something inside him seize. He resisted the urge to look away, to check the glamour, to make sure. It was fine. It had to be fine.

He kept his breathing steady, hauled the walls back up, and set his face in its usual mask of cool indifference.

As the Sorting wore on — as more names were called, more houses cheered, and more grinning children joined the tables — Draco barely registered a thing. He was still staring at that dark-haired boy in the sea of green and silver, sitting beside the ghost of his own bloodline.

When the final student was placed and Dippet rose for his welcome speech, Draco wasn’t listening.

The only thing he could hear was the echo of his own pulse.

He’s here.

And from this moment on, nothing — not time, not disguise, not even fate itself — would stop what was coming.

Chapter Text

Hermione adjusted the essays on her desk for the third time, though they were already perfectly aligned. The parchment rasped softly beneath her fingertips — a small, nervous habit she couldn’t seem to shake. The third-years trickled into the classroom in noisy clusters, chattering like sparrows as they claimed their seats.

She watched them from behind the neat barricade of books and lesson plans, pretending to mark something while her eyes tracked the subtle social choreography unfolding before her. The Gryffindor boys swaggered in first, loud and broad-shouldered, followed closely by the Slytherin girls who affected indifference but angled their chairs toward them all the same. There were giggles, sharp whispers, the unmistakable theatrics of adolescence.

Hermione bit back a smile. Merlin, she did not miss those days. Hormones, pride, and a complete lack of perspective; every generation convinced it was inventing chaos for the first time.

Still, there was a restless energy in the air she couldn’t ignore. The first few days of term had gone far more smoothly than she’d dared to hope. Her lecture — "What Defines the Dark Arts: Intention vs. Action" — had provoked genuine debate, even in students who usually spent her classes doodling in the margins of their notes. Some had parroted the textbook, others had argued morality was relative, but none had managed to unsettle her.

Today, however, she was expecting a challenge.

Her gaze kept flicking toward the door despite herself. She’d told herself she was simply curious. Curious how one particular student would respond to a discussion on the moral weight of magic. But curiosity was only half of it. The truth was, Tom Riddle intrigued her.

She’d known the rumours of his time at Hogwarts, of course. Charming, intelligent, self-contained. The sort of brilliance that drew attention whether he wanted it or not. But when she’d met his eyes during Sorting, even across the hall, she’d seen something else, an alertness that bordered on predatory. A boy already cataloguing the world for its weaknesses.

The last group filtered in. Chairs scraped. Quills were brought out.

And then, Tom Riddle stepped through the doorway.

The noise dimmed, almost imperceptibly. He didn’t command the room with volume or bravado, but rather with the absence of both. His presence drew the air tighter, the way a flame does before it catches. He was immaculate, pristine — hair perfectly combed, tie straight, expression mild.

"Good morning, Professor Wormwood," he said, smooth and measured, with the faintest trace of a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

The other students murmured their greetings in a half-hearted chorus.

Hermione inclined her head, keeping her tone steady. "Good morning, Mr. Riddle."

Then, lifting her voice to the rest of the room, she added, "Good morning, students."

He took his seat near the middle of the room, not too close to the front, nor near the back. The seat of someone who wanted to be seen without appearing to seek it. As he laid out his quill and parchment with methodical care, she caught the flicker of calculation behind his calm.

He was already assessing her, she realized. Weighing her voice, her confidence, the tiny cracks in her composure.

Hermione drew in a slow breath and rose from her chair, forcing her shoulders to square. Well then. First move.

"Welcome to third year Defence Against the Dark Arts," Hermione said, her voice crisp and unwavering, though her palm felt slick against the polished wood of her desk.

With a flick of her wand, the chalk rose from its tray and began scratching across the board in neat, precise lines:

What Defines the Dark Arts — Intention vs. Action.

She turned back to the class just in time to catch a few students suppressing groans. "Normally," she went on, "we would begin by reviewing your summer reading—"

A low rumble of protest rolled through the room.

"—but," she continued smoothly, raising a brow, "I thought a discussion might be… more impactful."

A few hopeful heads lifted. A discussion meant less note-taking, fewer spells to practice. She would let them enjoy that illusion for another minute.

"I do hope," she added lightly, "that you’ll still remember to come prepared next week to discuss your summer essays on Practical Defensive Magic and Its Uses Against the Dark Arts."

The groans grew louder. Somewhere in the back, a dark-haired Slytherin boy snickered.

Hermione’s gaze snapped to him. "Do you think you can manage that, Mr. Avery?"

The laughter vanished. "Yes, Professor Wormwood."

"Good," she said, her tone cool as she turned back to the board. "Now, as for today’s lesson…"

With another flick of her wand, a second line of chalk appeared:

‘The Unforgivable Curses’ — Who Decides What Cannot Be Forgiven?

There was a collective intake of breath. A few students exchanged uneasy glances.

"Let’s start with this," Hermione said, pacing slowly before the desks. "The Ministry of Magic designates three curses as unforgivable, the Killing Curse, Imperius Curse, and Cruciatus Curse. But tell me, does that make every other curse forgivable?"

Silence.

She let it stretch, a thin, deliberate pause that pressed down on the class.

"Or perhaps," she continued, "it simply means the Ministry found those three too difficult to regulate. Too efficient to excuse."

A wide-eyed Gryffindor girl raised her hand tentatively. "But Professor, those curses were used in wars, by Dark wizards. That’s why they’re illegal."

Hermione turned toward her. "Illegal, yes. But moral? Tell me, Miss McKinnon, is it moral to kill with a Blasting Curse if it isn’t named ‘unforgivable’? Is it moral to bend someone’s will if you call it persuasion instead of Imperius?"

The girl hesitated. "That’s different—"

"Is it?" Hermione asked softly. "If the outcome is the same?"

Her tone wasn’t accusing. Just weary. The kind of question one only asks after seeing too many lines blurred beyond repair.

A boy in green robes raised his hand lazily — Mulciber, predictably. "My father says the Ministry labels things unforgivable because they’re afraid of them. Not because they’re wrong."

Hermione arched a brow. "A surprisingly insightful observation. I might even agree."

That startled a few of them. She smiled faintly. "Power frightens institutions that cannot control it. And yet… it’s not the spell itself that determines morality, is it? It’s the purpose behind it, the precision. The restraint."

A murmur rippled through the classroom.

She continued, her voice measured and cool. "Magic has no conscience. It obeys whoever wields it. The Killing Curse is efficient, yes, but it’s also… honest. It does what it’s meant to do. There are dozens of other spells far crueller, crafted to maim or linger. The Ministry calls those ‘acceptable.’ It’s a convenient hypocrisy — to condemn what’s too visible to control, while excusing the cruelties that hide behind respectable names."

That made a few students shift in their seats. Even the Slytherins looked uncertain, as though she had broken some unspoken rule of how professors were meant to speak.

And then—

Tom Riddle spoke.

"Then would you say, Professor," he asked, voice smooth, precise, "that the Ministry’s laws are meaningless?"

He didn’t say it with arrogance. His tone was polite, curious. Though his eyes gleamed with something sharper than curiosity.

Hermione regarded him. "Not meaningless," she said after a pause. "Necessary. But necessity isn’t the same as truth. Laws must exist to keep the public safe. Morality must exist to keep the powerful restrained. They don’t always overlap."

He tilted his head slightly, the faintest smile touching his lips. "So, the only real sin, then, is losing control."

"Precisely," Hermione replied before she could stop herself.

There was a flicker of something in his eyes, interest, perhaps. Or amusement.

For the briefest moment, she held his gaze and forced her expression to remain neutral, scholarly, detached. But inside, her thoughts were racing. Not with fear, exactly, but with the careful calculation of someone walking a tightrope she’d built herself.

Good, she told herself. Let him think you agree. Let him think you understand.

This was the purpose of the lesson, after all. To see how far she could push him. To draw out that careful mind and measure what lived behind those polite, glassy eyes.

If he wanted a duel of minds, she would give him one. Words were weapons too, and she’d learned long ago they could cut deeper than spells.

She clasped her hands behind her back, pretending she hadn’t just confirmed something she should’ve condemned. If he believes I share his logic, he’ll show me more of it.

"Control," she continued, reclaiming the floor before he could press further, "is the mark of a true witch or wizard. Emotion clouds it. Righteousness corrodes it. And power, without discipline, becomes rot."

A hush had fallen over the room. Even Avery looked alert. Hermione drew her wand idly through the air, and the chalk shifted again, sketching a single phrase across the board:

Magic is neither good nor evil — only obedient.

"Your task," she said finally, her voice cool and final, "is to write one page on what you believe truly defines the Dark Arts. Not the Ministry’s answer. Not your parents’. Yours."

As the students bent over their parchment, Hermione let her eyes flicker once more to Tom Riddle.

He wasn’t writing. He was still watching her, quill idle, eyes unreadable. Calm, poised, utterly self-assured.

It wasn’t defiance she saw there. It was recognition.

By the end of the hour, the classroom smelled faintly of ink and cooling candle wax — that particular end-of-lesson scent she’d already come to associate with Hogwarts. The chatter had long since softened into the shuffling of parchment and the scrape of chairs.

One by one, her students filed past her desk to hand in their essays, the stack growing into an uneven tower of effort and excuses. Hermione nodded at each of them, offering brisk but genuine acknowledgments. "Thank you, Miss Abbott." "Well done, Mr. Avery." "Enjoy your afternoon."

When the door closed behind the last cluster of third-years, the room fell into silence. Dust motes drifted lazily through the shafts of early afternoon light. The air still thrummed faintly from the charged discussion they’d had. The kind that lingered long after the lesson had ended.

And then she realized she wasn’t alone.

Tom Riddle stood beside his desk, parchment clasped neatly in hand, posture straight, expression polite.

Hermione’s pulse quickened despite herself.

"Mr. Riddle," she said, her tone even, measured. "I do hope you’ve been settling in well here at Hogwarts."

He approached her desk with the deliberate grace of someone who had already rehearsed how to enter a room, how to be seen in it.

"Quite well, thank you, Professor Wormwood," he said. His voice was smooth, warm enough to be pleasant, but without a trace of genuine feeling. Each word landed in perfect rhythm, as though sculpted rather than spoken.

It was charming, on the surface. Disarmingly so. But there was something unnerving about the precision of it, the way he wielded courtesy like a practiced incantation. Not mimicry, exactly… more like observation. A creature learning the shape of humanity.

She inclined her head, adopting her own mask of composure. "Good. I imagine Professor Dippet has already informed you that you’ll be receiving further instruction outside of class hours?"

He nodded once. "He mentioned it, yes. I’m very grateful for the opportunity."

There it was again. That careful phrasing, that polished gratitude.

Hermione folded her hands neatly on the desk, adopting her most composed smile. "Good. In that case, Mr. Riddle, may I see the schedule you’ve been given so far for your other tutoring sessions? I’d like to ensure we don’t overlap with any existing commitments."

He reached into his satchel. His movements were unhurried, deliberate.

"Of course, Professor."

He produced a single folded sheet and offered it to her, the gesture courtly, almost archaic. Their fingers didn’t touch, yet something in the air seemed to flinch. A faint, electric wrongness raised the fine hairs along her arms.

Hermione glanced down at the page. The writing was tidy. The precision of it felt… familiar. She forced herself to read it evenly, eyes tracing the neatly inked columns, her mind already working several steps ahead. If Malfoy has him alone twice a week, that’s two opportunities.

She set the paper down on her desk, making a mental note.

"Excellent. I can offer you two sessions a week. Tuesdays from seven to nine in the evening, and Fridays from four to six."

Tom’s expression didn’t change, though his eyes flickered — brief interest, perhaps, or calculation. "That will be perfectly suitable, Professor. I look forward to our lessons."

She met his eyes directly. "I look forward to them as well. I suspect there’s much we can learn from each other."

The statement hung between them, perfectly cordial, yet edged with something sharper.

His expression didn’t waver. "I imagine there is, Professor."

For a heartbeat too long, he didn’t move.

Then, with that same deliberate composure, he inclined his head. "Until Friday, then."

He picked up the parchment from her desk, turned, and walked out, steps echoing against the stone floor.

When the door shut behind him, Hermione slowly released the breath that had frozen in her lungs.

The classroom felt colder than it had a moment ago, though the faint scent of ink and candle wax still lingered. She stared at the essay stack, his resting neatly on top, the handwriting elegant, refined.

Her eyes skimmed the first line.

If control is the measure of goodness, then perhaps the truly virtuous are simply those who never falter in their purpose.

Hermione exhaled slowly and set the paper aside. She leaned back in her chair, staring at the ink stains on her hands.

She couldn’t deny it, she agreed with him, at least in part. Control was a measure of goodness; purpose mattered. But there was one essential thing his idea lacked — empathy. Without it, conviction curdled into cruelty, and purpose became justification for whatever damage one dared call necessary.

Now, staring at the precise loops of his handwriting, she wasn’t sure which frightened her more: the thought that he would one day act on those words… or that, in some small, unspoken way, she already understood why he believed them.

***

Hermione checked the clock for what had to be the twelfth time in the last ten minutes. Honestly, she thought irritably, did time always move this slowly when trying to make sure someone wasn't about to do something monumentally stupid?

On the map before her, the tiny dot labelled Draco Malfoy was still pacing in circles inside his private quarters. His lesson with Tom Riddle began in twenty minutes. Twenty minutes, and he was still sulking in his rooms like a brooding adolescent with a vendetta. Which, to be fair, wasn’t entirely inaccurate.

Hermione pulled the Invisibility Cloak tighter around herself, adjusting where it snagged against the stiff embroidery of her teaching robes. Thank Merlin she hadn’t grown an inch since fifteen; Ron could never manage the hem, and Harry always let his boots stick out. Honestly, amateurs. At least she could manage concealment properly, which was important, since careful observation was clearly the only reliable safeguard against Malfoy’s chronic inability to make sound decisions.

She huffed under her breath. Honestly, how hard could it be to refrain from assassinating a student for one term?

She was standing outside the Potions classroom, every nerve thrumming with frustration, when Malfoy’s dot finally began moving toward the corridor. "About time," she muttered, and drew her wand, whispering the silencing charm over her shoes before following.

Malfoy appeared a few seconds later, pale as ever, his expression drawn and sharp. His hands were steady, but his jaw was set in that telltale way that said he was seconds from either hexing something or throwing up.

She slipped after him, her steps utterly soundless. The heavy door creaked open under his wand, and she darted through behind him, flattening herself into the far corner of the dungeon classroom. The air was cool and damp, smelling faintly of asphodel and metal — unmistakably his domain.

Malfoy set down his satchel on the front desk and exhaled through his nose, the gesture tight, controlled. But she saw it. The tremor in his fingers, the way his shoulders rose just a bit too high.

He’d been like this all week. Frayed. Unsteady in that infuriatingly composed way of his — every cuff straight, every word clipped, but the tension bleeding through all the same. Ever since the Sorting Ceremony, something in him had splintered.

She’d noticed it the moment the new students began entering the Great Hall. The change was subtle at first, the faint whitening of Malfoy’s knuckles where his hand gripped the goblet, the way his shoulders locked into a soldier’s stillness. But when the boy walked through the doors — tall, calm, impossibly self-possessed — she’d seen the colour drain from Malfoy’s face. It was the look of someone remembering a nightmare he’d once convinced himself was over.

Hermione had felt it too, that strange shift in the air when Riddle entered. But Malfoy’s reaction had been visceral. His breathing had changed. His magic, usually so tightly reined, prickled against the edges of her awareness. Cold and raw, like a live wire humming just beneath the skin.

He’d stared at the boy as if transfixed. As if that dark-haired child might at any moment transform into the monster he’d once served. For a heartbeat, she’d been certain he’d forgotten where he was, that he’d stand and do something spectacularly reckless and irreparable right there at the High Table.

She’d reached out before she’d even thought about it. Just a touch. A hand on his, meant only to anchor him. She hadn’t expected him to flinch like he’d been burned.

And still, it had worked. The tremor had stopped.

Now, watching him from her corner beneath the cloak, she thought back to that moment, how the old composure had slammed back into place like a door closing. Whatever she’d seen in him that night — panic, fear, grief — it had been buried deep again by morning.

Something had truly shaken him, she knew that much. Something about Riddle had reached through the years and clawed straight at whatever he’d spent a lifetime trying to lock away.

She almost — almost — felt sorry for him.

But mostly, she needed him to stay rational, grounded. They couldn’t afford cracks.

She shifted her weight, eyes narrowing as she watched him steady himself. The clock on the far wall ticked down to one minute before the lesson, and suddenly his entire demeanour changed. The tension drained from his posture; the haunted flicker in his eyes dulled to something calm, detached, almost mechanical.

The transformation was unnerving to watch.

By the time the door opened, Malfoy looked every inch the cool, composed Potions Master once more.

"Good afternoon, Professor," came Riddle’s smooth voice from the doorway.

Malfoy inclined his head with clipped efficiency. "Riddle. Punctual. Let’s get started."

He gestured for the boy to take the front bench. "We’ll be reviewing basic brewing techniques today — temperature control, measurement precision, ingredient sequence. Nothing advanced until I’m sure you can follow instructions properly."

"Yes, sir," Riddle said, his tone mild, deferential.

Malfoy gave a short nod, then added briskly, "You’ll want to take notes. Accuracy matters more in potions than in any other branch of magic."

Riddle opened his satchel and began sifting through it, neat movements, no wasted gestures. After a few seconds, his brows drew together faintly. "I’m terribly sorry, Professor, but it seems I’ve forgotten my quill."

Hermione’s eyes narrowed beneath the cloak. Forgotten?

Malfoy’s expression didn’t flicker. "That’s all right," he said smoothly. "I believe I have a spare somewhere."

He reached into his drawer and produced a black quill — elegant, gleaming, the feather unnaturally dark even in the low light. He held it out between two fingers, his voice calm, casual. "You may use this for today."

Riddle accepted it with polite gratitude, his fingers brushing the shaft of the quill like someone testing the edge of a blade.

"Thank you, Professor."

"Don’t lose it," Malfoy replied, his tone flat. "It’s a favourite."

Hermione frowned from her corner. There was something about the exchange — the stillness of it, the deliberate phrasing — that made the back of her neck prickle. Whatever Malfoy was planning, this was the beginning of it.

She waited for something to happen.

Riddle bent neatly over his parchment, his quill gliding across the page in perfect rhythm, the soft scratching filling the silence. He wrote with unhurried precision, pausing only to glance up at the simmering cauldron before returning to his notes. His expression was all diligence and discipline, the very image of a model pupil.

Malfoy, for his part, moved through the lesson with cold efficiency. His voice measured and detached. If he was nervous, it didn’t show. The earlier tension she’d sensed in him had vanished, replaced by the clipped rhythm of routine.

"Clockwise three times," he instructed, leaning over the cauldron. "Then counterclockwise once. Slowly, Riddle. If you stir too fast, you’ll disturb the base and ruin the consistency."

Riddle obeyed, his movements exact.

"Good," Malfoy murmured. "You’ll know it’s correct when the steam turns green. If it stays clear, you’ve overheated the salamander scales."

He passed behind the boy, sleeves rolled to the elbow, pale forearms dusted with faint smudges of ash and silver residue. The light from the sconces caught against the smooth skin there, bare and unmarked. No Dark Mark. It was hidden, of course, tucked beneath the glamour he wore. The glamour Hermione was still getting used to.

It was odd, looking at him like this. At Draco Malfoy disguised as someone almost ordinary. His hair, usually pale as moonlight, was now a muted ash brown that caught the light in softer tones. The sharp angles of his face had been dulled, the aristocratic lines blurred just enough to make him forgettable. Only his eyes remained unchanged. That glacial silver that no spell could disguise, clear and cutting as ever.

She couldn’t help wondering how he managed to keep it in place for so long. Glamours of that strength required constant maintenance, constant focus. If his composure wavered, even for a second—

She frowned. Maybe a ring or watch anchored it? She looked over his fingers and wrists. Nothing.

Malfoy bent to inspect the cauldron, the steam curling toward his face. "Better. You’re not hopeless after all," he said dryly, and straightened, brushing a fleck of ash from his intricate robes.

Riddle gave the smallest hint of a smile, polite, practised — the kind that might have charmed any other professor. "I do try, sir."

"Try harder," Malfoy replied, turning away. "Talent doesn’t excuse carelessness."

He crossed to the shelf at the far wall, wand flicking toward a jar of powdered valerian root. It floated smoothly to the table, landing beside the cauldron with a muted clink. "A half-scoop. No more. Valerian is temperamental; it turns volatile if handled without patience."

Riddle measured the powder with near-scientific precision and poured it in. The mixture hissed, steam curling upward in a slow, deliberate swirl of green.

Hermione found herself grudgingly impressed. Malfoy’s instructions were concise, exacting, and — dare she admit it — effective. He didn’t hover or posture; he simply guided, correcting Riddle’s technique with minimal interference. The mark of someone who understood potioncraft not just as a magical science, but as instinct.

So, he hadn’t been lying, she thought. He really is good at this.

An hour passed, the soft sound of bubbling and the occasional scrape of a ladle filling the silence between them. When the brew reached the perfect opacity, Malfoy waved his wand, extinguishing the flame beneath the cauldron.

"That’s enough for today," he said, voice flat but not unkind. "Bottle a sample and label it. I’ll review it before our next lesson."

Riddle did as he was told, stoppering the small glass vial with care. He turned back toward Malfoy, posture polite, tone perfectly respectful. "Thank you for the lesson, Professor Granger. I appreciate your time." Riddle held the quill out to Malfoy, offering to return it.

Malfoy’s expression didn’t shift. "Keep it," he said curtly. "And do try not to lose this one. I don’t lend my belongings twice."

Odd.

Riddle inclined his head. "Of course, sir." His smile was meant to be disarming, but it landed wrong.

"Dismissed," Malfoy said shortly.

Riddle gathered his things, bowed his head in that eerily graceful way of his, and left the classroom.

Hermione waited a beat before slipping silently after him. The dungeon corridor was empty, the air cool and still. She watched as his figure neared the corner, his footsteps echoing softly down the stone hall.

Just before he turned down the other corridor, she lifted her wand beneath the cloak and whispered, "Accio quill."

It shot from the mouth of Riddle’s satchel like an arrow, landing neatly in her palm.

The feather was sleek and black, the sheen of it catching faintly in the torchlight. Perfectly ordinary at first glance. But as her fingers brushed the shaft, a chill pricked her skin. Something sharp. Faint. Wrong.

She narrowed her eyes and murmured a detection charm under her breath. A faint shimmer flickered across the quill’s surface, dark, oily, gone as quickly as it appeared.

Dark magic, she realized, her pulse quickening. Barely detectable, but there. A trace, thin as smoke, almost nothing. Almost.

Hermione frowned, tightening her grip on the feather.

"Subtle," she muttered, disbelief scraping at the word.

Her eyes flicked toward the closed classroom door, where Malfoy was likely still tidying his workstation, probably feeling smug, convinced his plan had worked.

Her pulse surged — slow, hot, furious.

"Unbelievable," she hissed under her breath as she shoved the quill into the pocket of her robes.

She ripped off the cloak, spun on her heel, and stormed back down the corridor. The echo of her unsilenced footsteps broke the dungeon’s stillness, sharp and fast. The door to the Potions classroom loomed ahead, and before reason could intervene, she flung it open.

Malfoy jerked upright behind his desk, startled mid-motion as he packed away a set of scales. "What the—"

"Are you really this daft?" Hermione snapped, the words striking like a spell. "A cursed quill, Malfoy? Really? That’s your brilliant plan?"

He stared, pale and furious and utterly uncomprehending. "How did you—" His eyes narrowed, voice rising. "Are you spying on me?"

"Well, it’s not like I can trust you!" she shot back, slamming the door behind her with a reverberating thud.

Malfoy stepped out from behind the desk, incredulous. "Merlin’s sake, Granger—"

"Don’t you Granger me," she cut in, advancing a step. Her hand darted into her robes and came out clutching the quill, the feather gleaming black and cold under the torchlight. "What does this do, Malfoy? I can feel the dark magic pulsing off it. You’re lucky he didn’t notice."

He had the audacity to look at her as if she were the one being unreasonable.

His gaze fell to the quill, then lifted back to her. He rolled his eyes, tone going cold. "It’s a containment spell. Controlled exposure. Nothing immediately lethal."

"Nothing—?" Hermione’s voice rose, incredulous. "It’s a life-draining curse?" she threw the quill on the desk, desperate to break contact with it. "Of course it is. I can feel the siphoning charm humming through it!" She jabbed a finger toward it, trembling with restrained fury. "Do you even understand what that would do to him? It wouldn’t just weaken him — it would feed on him. Slowly. It would make him sick, lethargic, paranoid —"

"Yes," he said with exasperation. "That’s the point."

She froze. "The—what?"

He took a step closer, his expression carved from ice. "You wanted subtle. I’m being subtle. No spells. No poison. No witnesses. Just… entropy. Let it bleed him dry before he ever learns to call himself Lord anything."

She was nearly shaking with fury. "I didn't want subtle. I wanted you not to kill him." The words came out through clenched teeth. "You’re not saving anyone with this, Malfoy," she gestured to the feather. "You’re sabotaging everything."

Malfoy’s composure cracked. "What happens if we don’t stop him?" he shot back. "You want to talk about consequences? Fine. Tell me, Granger, how many people will he kill if we sit on our hands? Because you think maybe he can be—"

Hermione laughed — short, sharp, incredulous. "Oh, for Merlin’s sake, is that what you think I’m doing? Trying to redeem him?" Her laugh deepened into something dangerously close to hysterical amusement. "That’s adorable."

Malfoy blinked, thrown off balance. "Isn’t that exactly what all this moralizing is about?"

"Moralizing?" she repeated, almost gleeful in her disbelief. "You genuinely think I care about morality in a situation like this?" She took a step forward, eyes flashing. "I care about causality, Malfoy! About the laws of time! You start meddling like this, and the world you’re so desperate to save might never exist to begin with."

Malfoy gave a humourless laugh, shaking his head. "Of course. Your sacred timeline. How convenient." His tone dripped with disdain. "You’ll say anything to justify standing still, won’t you? Anything to keep your hands clean while someone else does what has to be done."

Hermione’s voice turned cold. "If by ‘standing still’ you mean being rational, then yes. Someone around here has to be."

"Rational?" he repeated, stepping closer, silver eyes flashing. "You call this rational? Watching him worm his way through Hogwarts, pretending you can control the damage with a few lectures and moral speeches? You’re not saving the future, Granger. You’re hiding from it."

The words hung between them, vibrating with heat.

"I swear to Merlin," she continued, voice low and shaking with restraint, "you are the only person I’ve ever met who could make attempted murder sound noble."

Malfoy’s eyes blazed. "And you’re the only person I’ve ever met who could make cowardice sound like strategy."

Her jaw tightened. "Cowardice? No. What I’m doing is keeping you alive, and him contained. It’s not fear, it’s foresight — you should try it sometime."

They were both breathing hard now, too close, too angry, the air thick with that old, dangerous familiarity. The one that made her want to throttle him.

Hermione slammed her hand down on the desk, leaning forward. "If you ever use dark magic like this again — on him, or anyone — I will stop you."

His jaw tightened. "Well, you can certainly try."

The word dripped with disdain, but there was a glint behind it — a spark that wasn’t quite anger.

Hermione gave a short, humourless laugh, shaking her head. "Oh, I’ll do more than try."

Malfoy’s mouth curved — not a smile, but the faint ghost of one, sharp as a blade. "We’ll see."

The silence that followed was hot and brittle, neither willing to move first.

Hermione finally straightened, snatching the cursed quill from the desk and tucking it into her robes. "Game on, Malfoy."

He exhaled, low and sharp, a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. "It already was, Granger."

Chapter Text

He still hadn’t figured it out.
How she’d known.
There’d been no trace of magic, no whisper of a leak, no reason in Merlin’s name for Granger to have appeared that evening. Yet she had, and he simply couldn’t account for it.

Draco added a measured pinch of powdered liquorice root, watching it dissolve in a slow spiral before lowering the flame with a flick of his wand. The potion shifted from amethyst to a calm, translucent blue. Around the room, his fifth-years leaned forward as one — silent but fascinated. Even the dim-witted ones knew better than to speak when he was working.

“The liquorice root stabilises the reaction,” he said, voice calm, clipped, and carrying easily through the dungeon classroom. “Too little, and your brew will split when the flame is lowered. Too much, and it will turn syrupy — which is only useful if you’d enjoy scrubbing molten sludge out of your cauldron for the next week.”

A few students scribbled frantic notes; one of the Hufflepuffs murmured a reverent “Yes, sir.” Draco ignored them. He was used to obedience now. A quiet, orderly class was his domain of precise control. It was almost enough to forget that outside these walls, control eluded him entirely.

He kept thinking about the quill, the delicate feather he'd brought from the Manor, a siphoning curse threaded through every vein of its spine. Efficient. Elegant. It would have drained the boy’s strength, day by day, until there was nothing left but a shell. Quiet. Painless. Necessary.

But then Granger had been there, storming in with that infuriating righteousness, the quill clutched in her fist like she meant to file a complaint directly with fate. He could still hear her voice, incredulous and seething: Are you really this daft?

The memory made his jaw tighten. Months of planning, undone in an instant.

Perfectly calculated. Thoroughly deniable. Entirely ruined.

He scraped his thumb against the edge of the worktable, eyes flicking over the rows of mesmerised students. Somewhere in the castle, she was probably congratulating herself for saving a life that didn’t deserve saving.

And he still hadn’t worked out how.

He added the final measure of ground moonstone, watching as the potion settled into a flawless, pearlescent shimmer. Around the room, the students followed suit — some clumsy, some careful, all under his scrutiny.

Most managed something passable.

He stopped beside a Ravenclaw’s cauldron near the front, inspecting the potion’s sheen. “Adequate,” he said, which from him was high praise. “At least someone in this room is capable of following instructions.”

“Ensure your bottles corked and labelled,” he continued, tone even, unhurried.

The bell rang, shrill and officious, cutting through the damp air of the dungeon.

 “Fourteen inches on the properties and practical applications of restorative draughts, due next week. I’ll know if you copy from the text, and I’ll be cruel about it.”

A collective groan rippled through the class, followed by the scrape of stools and the soft clink of glassware.

Draco glanced at the clock mounted above the stores. Half past three. That gave him half an hour. Thirty uninterrupted minutes to finalise what might be, with any luck, a more successful attempt.

Riddle’s private lesson began at four.

The door swung shut behind the last student, their chatter fading up the staircase. Draco exhaled slowly, rolling the tension from his shoulders.

Riddle was still alive. Granger was still insufferable. And he—he was still teaching fifth-years about the proper use of liquorice root like any of this was normal.

He was supposed to be done by now. His mission, his purpose, completed, finished, over. Instead, he was trapped in 1938, babysitting future mediocrities and pretending to be respectable.

He glanced at the rosemary on his desk, its leaves seemingly twitching in the torchlight like they were laughing at him. “You didn’t, by any chance, tell her, did you?” he muttered. “Rustle your little leaves and betray me to the resident moral compass?”

The plant, predictably, remained silent — guilty-looking, if such a thing were possible for greenery.

Draco narrowed his eyes. “I checked you for enchantments, you know. Twice. You’re perfectly ordinary.” He exhaled through his nose. “Which is, frankly, disappointing. At least then I’d know how she managed it.”

His gaze flicked back to the clock. Twenty-eight minutes.

The irritation sharpened into focus. He had something to do with his hands, at least. He crossed to the supply shelves, pulling ingredients with efficient precision: crushed fireseeds, powdered brimstone, a dash of oil of bay. The makings of an unfortunate accident.

If his calculations were right, the cauldron would go up precisely two and a half minutes after he ‘mistakenly’ substituted powdered silver for salt — a tragic misstep in the art of pedagogy. Long enough for him to be safely distant, looking suitably alarmed. Neat. Quick. Deniable.

Draco set the cauldron on the spare workbench and lit the flame beneath it, jaw tight, pulse steady. He’d finish this, and maybe, finally, he could just rest.

By five to four, the stage was set — cauldron primed, timing rehearsed, accident waiting politely for its cue. He only needed the final ingredient to make it all look convincingly unintentional.

He crossed the room and plucked his wand from the desk, the rosemary catching the corner of his eye as he left. “Do try not to cause trouble while I’m gone,” he muttered, shutting the door behind him.

The corridor was cool and still, its stones damp with the faint scent of sulphur and brine. His footsteps echoed, steady and deliberate, until something, some shift in the air, made the hair on his neck rise.

Draco stopped. Listened.

The corridor stretched ahead, silent, torchlight flickering in the wrought iron brackets. Nothing moved. No sound but the faint hiss of the flames and the steady beat of his own pulse.

Ridiculous. Paranoia, nothing more. He was wound tight enough as it was, knowing Riddle would be arriving soon—his quiet civility, his practiced charm that never quite managed to hide the rot underneath.

Draco retrieved the vial of powdered silver from the locked cupboard, snapping the latch shut harder than necessary. This plan would work. It had to. It was fast, controlled, contained. There’d be no time for Granger to swoop in afterward, no body to examine, no moment for her to know.

By the time she heard about it, Riddle would already be dead.

He re-entered the classroom, placing the silver neatly beside the cauldron. For a fleeting second, he allowed himself the smallest breath of satisfaction.

Then the door creaked open behind him.

“Professor Granger,” came the smooth, cultured drawl.

Draco didn’t need to turn to know the expression on the boy’s face — all polish and poison. He hauled up his occlumency walls before facing him, every line of his posture deliberate.

“Riddle,” he said curtly. “You know what to do. Why are you standing in the doorway? Were you expecting a formal invitation?”

The boy’s mouth curved faintly. It made Draco’s teeth itch.

“No, sir,” Riddle said, stepping forward at last, his gait slow and precise. He stopped beside the workbench, eyes flicking briefly toward the cauldron already heating over the flame.

“We’re working on a refined solution of draught of flame protection,” Draco said, turning to the shelves behind him. “You’ll find the crushed fireseeds and brimstone to your left. Add them in that order, gently.”

“Yes, sir.”

The boy moved with quiet confidence, his every motion careful, reverent — like he was performing a ritual. Draco watched for a moment, jaw tight, heart pounding in his chest.

When the mixture began to simmer, Draco set a clean phial on the table. “Once the colour turns pale gold, add the powdered silver. I’m going to fetch another ingredient from the storeroom.”

Riddle looked up, the faintest spark of curiosity in his eyes. “Would you prefer I wait—”

“No,” Draco cut in, sharp and cold. “I’ll be right back. Do you think you can manage even a few minutes on your own?”

The boy’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Of course, sir.”

Draco held his gaze for a beat longer than necessary, then turned on his heel, the echo of his footsteps swallowed by the dungeon’s low hum.

He had roughly two minutes and thirty seconds from the addition of silver to detonation — enough to be seen by another member of staff, far enough from the blast to feign concern rather than guilt. He could already imagine it: the sharp crack, the rush of air, the perfect, final silence.

He gave a polite nod to Professor Beery, who hurried past clutching a particularly irate Chinese Chomping Cabbage that seemed deeply offended by the concept of containment.

“Evening, Professor Granger!” Beery called breathlessly, nearly losing hold of the plant as it snapped at his sleeve.

Draco stepped neatly out of range of a flying leaf. “Your produce seems displeased,” he drawled.

“Just a bit temperamental this time of year!” Beery wheezed, wrestling it toward the greenhouse corridor.

“I can relate,” Draco muttered, straightening his cuffs as Beery continued down the hall.

Two minutes passed.
Then three.
The corridor remained quiet.

A muscle twitched in his jaw. He checked his pocket watch. By four minutes, something cold began to pool low in his stomach. By five, he feared he may vomit.

He was already moving.

His steps echoed too loudly as he crossed the dungeon corridor, every flicker of torchlight sharp against the stone. This wasn’t possible. He’d accounted for everything. The timing, the mixture, the temperature. There was no room for error — and yet—

He threw open the classroom door and readied himself to cast a quick Protego. He froze.

The room was pristine.
The cauldron sat serenely on its flame.
And beside it — impossibly, infuriatingly — stood Granger.

Her sleeves rolled up, wand in hand, chatting quietly with Riddle as though she had been there all along.

“Ah, Professor,” she greeted without missing a beat, her voice maddeningly composed. “Perfect timing. I was hoping to catch you.”

For a second, his brain refused to translate the words into sense. He blinked once. Twice. The cauldron gave a cheerful pop, a single, innocent bubble breaking the surface. The sound was obscene in its normality.

He managed, somehow, to arrange his mouth into a polite smile. “Were you?” he said evenly, though every nerve in his body screamed. Impossible.

Granger’s expression brightened with that particular kind of satisfaction that made his blood pressure rise. “Yes,” she said, turning to Riddle as though his arrival had been desired. “We were just discussing the ways Potions and Defence intersect. I thought it might be instructive to combine our lesson today. Demonstrate how potions can have… explosive applications.”

The pause before the word was deliberate.

Draco’s jaw flexed. “How educational,” he managed, because throttling a fellow professor in front of a student would, regrettably, complicate his employment.

She smiled, all teeth and triumph. “Excellent. Then you’ll assist. You’re far better suited to handle volatile reactions.”

It wasn’t a compliment.
It wasn’t even subtle.

“Of course,” he said smoothly, because that was all that was left to him.

The rest of the hour stretched into eternity. He stood beside her, discussing stabilising agents and counter-reactions while Granger launched into an eloquent lecture on the theoretical use of potions in defensive magic.

Every time she spoke — precise, confident, maddeningly certain — Draco’s focus splintered. Not because of what she was saying, but because he couldn’t stop wondering how she’d known.

“Of course, few defensive brews are simple,” she explained. “The Draught of Aegis, for instance, requires synchronised magical alignment between brewer and subject — a process most wizards can’t manage because they underestimate the volatility of emotional resonance.”

Riddle’s eyes flickered with interest — sharp, calculating. “You mean it requires trust, Professor?”

Granger continued, cool and unwavering. “No,” she said. “It requires understanding. Trust can be broken. Understanding can’t.”

She kept talking, confident, composed, every word measured, but he barely heard her. All he could think about was the impossible precision of her timing. She always arrived exactly when she shouldn’t.

He’d checked for detection charms. For surveillance spells. There was nothing. No reason she should have been anywhere near this classroom, and yet here she was — perfectly timed, perfectly calm, perfectly intolerable.

Draco found his gaze kept drifting across the room to the small rosemary plant perched on his desk. Its leaves were perfectly still, but somehow… watchful. Suspicious.

When the lesson finally ended, Riddle inclined his head, that eerie, adult smile flickering across his face. “Thank you, Professors,” he said smoothly before slipping out, leaving the room humming with leftover tension.

The door clicked shut. Silence.

Granger turned to him, entirely too pleased. “That went rather well, don’t you think?”

He stared at the cauldron — whole, unblemished, and utterly betraying him. Then at her.
“Miraculously,” he said dryly.

Her brows lifted, all mock confusion. “Whatever do you mean?”

“Nothing,” he said, sharper this time. “Just admiring how fate continues to arrange itself around your sense of misplaced morality.”

Her eyes narrowed. “If fate had anything to do with it, you’d be gone by now.”

“Tempting,” he murmured. “At least then I’d be spared your lectures.”

Her tone softened, deceptively calm, the way one might speak to a dangerous animal. “You can’t keep doing this, Malfoy. You can’t keep trying. You’ll destroy more than you’ll save.”

He almost laughed again, though it came out hollow. “That’s rich, coming from you. Tell me, Granger — does your sanctimony ever get exhausting, or do you actually enjoy the sound of it?”

She held his gaze, jaw tight, then reached into her robes and placed the small bottle of powdered silver on the desk between them.

“I believe this is yours,” she said quietly.

For a heartbeat, silence stretched between them — heavy and electric.

He stared at the bottle, his stomach sinking even as his expression remained perfectly still.

“I have never seen that before in my life,” he managed.

“Of course you haven’t.” Her eyes glittered, that quiet triumph that made his teeth grind. She turned toward the door, her posture insufferably smug.

“Try not to start any more fires while I’m gone,” she said over her shoulder. “It’s unbecoming of an alleged potions master.”

The door closed behind her with a click.

Draco stood there a long moment, jaw tight, pulse hammering in his throat. Then, quietly, he exhaled through his teeth.

“Insufferable little martyr,” he groaned, glaring at the closed door.

His eyes flicked to the rosemary on the desk, suddenly ridiculous and accusing. “And you — don’t look so smug, you’re complicit in this somehow.” He reached forward and tapped the rim of the pot with a finger. “One more rustle and I’m lighting you on fire.”
The plant, of course, said nothing.

Draco stared at it for a long moment, then exhaled through his nose. Merlin, he was threatening a plant. How much more insane could he look? If anyone walked in now, they’d have him condemned.

He straightened, dragging a hand through his hair, but the absurdity didn’t quite shake loose. The air still smelled of fireseeds and brimstone, and beneath it lingered the infuriating truth — she had done it again.
And for the life of him, he couldn’t work out how.

***

Draco decided to wait two weeks before he tried again. Let Granger think he’d finally come to his senses, that he’d abandoned his mission. Let her relax.

He was convinced she’d found a way to monitor him. Some charm woven into the stone, some surveillance spell hidden in a book. He’d spent nights tearing the place apart like a man possessed: stripping the wards, checking the runes carved into the foundations, even dismantling the bloody torches. Nothing. Not a whisper of enchantment.

He'd even moved the sodding rosemary plant into his personal chambers.

Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the room was watching him.

He’d scoured every inch twice over and come away with nothing but dust coated hands and the unsettling certainty that she was always one step ahead. It was infuriating — her precision, her timing, the impossible way she knew.

It had been two weeks of restraint.
Two weeks of pretending he’d given up.
Two weeks of her insufferably haughty greetings in the staffroom and at luncheons, each one accompanied by that little smile that made him wonder if she suspected.

Two weeks of teaching that perfectly polite horror in a school tie.

By the end of it, the effort of civility felt like a bruise. He decided the only logical course of action was to prove he could still outwit her, that he had deciphered her methods, peeled back whatever impossible trick she was using. Which, of course, he hadn’t. But pride had its own brand of logic, and it was rarely kind.

The letter was the first step. Discreet, professional, elegant. If Granger truly had found a way to eavesdrop — and by now, he was half convinced she’d invented some entirely new branch of espionage magic just to torment him — then parchment would be safer than conversation.

He wrote it in his neatest, most controlled hand, sealing it with the Hogwarts crest as if formality could disguise intent.

Mr. Riddle,
For your next lesson, meet me half an hour early at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. We’ll be foraging for potion ingredients.
— Professor Granger

Entirely innocuous.
Completely unsupervised.
Perfect.

He told himself that all day, letting the certainty soak into him like armour.

That Wednesday evening, the forest met them with damp air and a soundless hush that made even their footsteps feel intrusive. It smelled of moss and earth and the faint sweetness of night-blooming herbs. A crisp wind combed through the red and gold leaves above as evening sunlight dripped through the canopy in thin, trembling lines.

A squirrel darted up a tree, a fox crossed their path, and overhead, a tawny owl swept between branches — silent, dark-eyed, and gone again.

Riddle followed half a pace behind, quiet as a thought. There was an unnatural quality to the boy’s stillness, the way he moved as though the world had to accommodate him.

Draco drew in a slow breath, steadying himself. The spell hummed beneath his skin, the way muscle remembers pain. A curse meant to solidify the body in an instant, then reduce it to fine grey dust. Quick. Clean. Necessary.

He had to do it himself this time, directly. Leave no room for error.

Riddle crouched to inspect a patch of silver-dusted earth. “Moonstone,” he observed, brushing the soil away with careful fingers. “I imagine it’s essential to find it fresh, sir.”

“Indeed,” Draco said absently, scanning the tree line for movement. “Collect what you can. I’ll—” he adjusted his grip on his wand, attempting to keep his pulse steady, “—examine the quality of your selections.”

Riddle nodded and turned away, crouching beside the undergrowth, meticulous as ever.
Draco raised his wand. The incantation sat poised on his tongue—

“Professor Granger!”

He nearly jumped out of his skin.

The voice — out of breath and catastrophically unwelcome — drifted through the forest like the world’s worst apparition.

Granger stepped out from behind a tree, clutching a small handful of flowers, looking far too pleased with herself for someone who had just obliterated weeks of planning.

He didn’t scream in exasperation, but it was a near thing. His hand tightened on his wand until the tendons protested. He could practically hear the cosmic laughter.

“Oh, what a coincidence,” she said with polished ease. “I didn’t expect to find anyone else out here this late. I’m collecting for next week’s lessons. Wolfsbane, mostly. Such an excellent example of dual-purpose magic, don’t you think? Perfectly harmless in one context and absolutely lethal in another. Rather like spells, really.”

Her gaze flicked to his wand, then to Riddle. Perfectly casual, perfectly aware.

“I find it useful to remind my students that power isn’t just about control,” she added. “It’s about consequence.” A small, knowing smile. “But of course, you already know that, don’t you, Professor?”

Riddle rose, polite as ever, dusting his hands on his robes before clasping them behind his back. “Good evening, Professor Wormwood,” he said with a slight bow of his head. “Professor Granger was showing me how to identify and harvest moonstone.”

“Was he?” she said brightly, eyes flicking to Draco’s. “How diligent. Well, don’t let me interrupt. Carry on.”

He lowered his wand with the precision of a man pretending he’d meant to all along. “Indeed,” he said, voice dry as ash. “Just a lesson.”

Hermione adjusted her robes, glancing at the moonstone Riddle had gathered. “Excellent. It’s good to see you encouraging hands-on learning.” A faint glint of humour. “I do hope you’re using the proper safety protocols.”

“Of course,” he ground out.

Riddle’s gaze shifted between them, his polite mask never slipping. “Shall I continue, Professors?” he asked, head tilting slightly, curious, but with a precision that made the motion feel more like dissection than deference.

Draco caught the flicker of suspicion in the boy’s eyes, the quiet calculation of someone cataloguing weaknesses. Of course he’d noticed. The parasite noticed everything.

“Of course,” Hermione said quickly. “But stay within sight. The forest has a way of swallowing the unwary.”

Riddle inclined his head, perfectly courteous, but his gaze lingered a heartbeat too long before he turned away.

Draco watched him go, unease rising like bile.

And then there was only her.

She turned to him with that infuriating calm, the faintest curve of a smile that said she had, once again, won this game they were playing.

“You have got to be joking,” he said tightly.

“About what?” she asked, entirely too serene.

He gestured wildly at the trees, at her, at everything. “About this — this divine pattern of interference! How did you even find us out here?”

She blinked, all innocence. “Find you? Don’t flatter yourself, Malfoy. I came here for asphodel.”

“You mean wolfsbane?”

“Oh.” She looked down at her handful of plants. “I—well, both, actually.”

He nearly laughed; it came out closer to a growl. “Coincidences happen, do they?”

Her mouth twitched. “Perhaps you’re just not as subtle as you think.”

He gaped at her, words clawing up his throat. He could hex her. He could end this ridiculous dance. His hand shook as he felt the last scraps of his patience dissolve.

He turned on his heel before he did something he couldn’t take back. The forest pressed close around him, thick and suffocating. Behind him, she hummed softly, that same smug, satisfied tune that had begun to haunt his quiet moments.

By the time he reached the edge of the forest, he was nearly trembling with frustration.

How did she know?
How did she always know?

It wasn’t coincidence anymore. It couldn’t be. She was tracking him somehow — through his wand, his clothes, possibly even the bloody rosemary plant. The idea was absurd, but so was she, and lately, absurdity was winning.

He’d have to search again. Remove and check everything from his office, his quarters, even his potions stores. Strip every ward, test every rune, take apart the very walls if he had to.

If she thought she could keep outsmarting him, she was wrong.

But even as the thought sharpened, something else threaded through it, a pulse of restless curiosity he couldn’t quite name. She wasn’t supposed to be interesting. She was supposed to be an obstacle, a nuisance with too much moral conviction and an infuriating amount of restraint. And yet, the more she interfered, the more she occupied the quiet spaces in his mind.

It was tactical, of course. Understanding her was a matter of survival.

By the time he reached his chambers, the frustration had settled into something colder, steadier. The rosemary sat on his desk, smug as ever, catching the faint light from the sconces.

He set his wand down beside it. “You can stop gloating,” he said coolly. “She won’t win forever. Not even the brilliant Hermione Granger can be right every bloody time.”

The plant, of course, offered no response.

Still, he thought he caught the faintest rustle, or maybe it was the whisper of his own obsession taking root.

He’d unravel her secrets, thread by thread, until there was nothing left for her to hide.

***

Hermione had truly never been so tired in her life. The last few weeks had demanded constant vigilance and then some. Every spare moment was consumed by watching him. Merlin, she had barely even slept.

She’d taken to keeping the Marauder’s Map open behind her desk during lectures, the sheet of parchment hovering just out of her students’ line of sight. She’d flick her eyes toward it between sentences, mid-stance, mid-admonishment, the habit so practiced now it had become muscle memory. Draco Malfoy — the inked name was her permanent headache.

And it didn’t stop when the sun finally sank below the line of the horizon. Sleep had become theoretical, a concept she could describe in detail but no longer allow herself to experience.

Most nights she lay in bed with the Map hovering before her, the candlelight tracing gold across its surface. The ink shimmered faintly as it breathed names into being. Her eyes would strain and search for two tiny dots in a sea of shifting corridors. Sometimes the dots didn’t move at all, frozen for hours, but she still watched — elbows propped on the blankets, eyes stinging, breath held like the act itself might keep them in place.

The room would go quiet except for the faint crackle of the candle and the steady rustle of parchment as it drifted in the air. Her heartbeat filled the silence. She told herself she’d close her eyes in another minute — just one more — but the thought of looking away made her chest tighten.

Because the moment she blinked, the moment she rested, might be the one that mattered.

She couldn’t take the chance.
She couldn’t let herself relax.

The days blurred together in a haze of caffeine and concoctions — Pepperup Potions in the morning, Invigoration Draught by afternoon. She told herself it was only temporary, that she’d rest once things settled, once Malfoy stopped testing her patience and the limits of magical law.

Whenever it was possible, she’d resorted to being physically present. The invisibility cloak had practically become a second skin. She’d stood in the corners of his classroom, in the back of corridors, in the narrow gaps between potion stores — silent, watchful, and increasingly aware that she was one sleepless night away from hexing him out of sheer exhaustion.

The lessons with Riddle had been the worst of it. She’d sat through every one, invisible and silently fuming, waiting for the inevitable moment Malfoy’s ego demanded another spectacular display of poor judgment.

When she saw the powdered silver on the table that day, she knew instantly what he meant to do. The sight of it hit her like a jolt, breath caught, heart hammering once, twice, then steadying into the ruthless rhythm of action.

She didn’t hesitate once he’d left the room. There wasn’t time for thought, only instinct. One swift Silencing Spell to muffle her movement, then a quick pivot to grab the salt, and a blur of motion as she slipped from the room, her pulse thudding in her ears.

Outside the door she drew a single, grounding breath, took off the cloak, disillusioned it and hung it on a sconce, then turned the handle and stepped back in, calm, composed, the perfect professor. Her expression set to mild inquiry, as if she’d simply come to check on her colleague.

She crossed to the desk in a handful of quiet, deliberate steps, every sense sharpened to a painful edge. Her fingers closed around the small vial as she spoke to Riddle, cool glass biting against her palm. A seamless exchange: silver for salt, one tucked into her pocket, the other set neatly in its place.

It wasn’t elegant; it was messy, desperate, and far too close, but it worked. Both the classroom and Riddle remained intact.

And when she saw the brief flicker of shock on Malfoy’s face when he stormed in, the confusion under his controlled veneer, she almost laughed. That single, priceless expression almost made the sleepless nights worth it. Almost.

But, of course, she’d had to teach on top of it. Smile, speak, sound reasonable, rested — all while pretending she wasn’t constantly waiting to avert yet another disaster by the width of a unicorn hair.

And then there were the private tutorials with Riddle.

He unsettled her in a way she couldn’t quite articulate — too calm, too careful, always assessing. Yet beneath that stillness was a mind as sharp as glass, a hunger for knowledge that almost mirrored her own, though it burned with an entirely different fuel. Where her curiosity sought understanding, his sought control.

She could see, all too easily, how others might have been charmed by him, the even cadence of his speech, the polite smile, the impeccable manners that made him seem older than his years. If she hadn’t known better, she might have found him impressive.

But she did know better. And that knowledge made every word, every look, feel like handling blown glass — delicate, dangerous and one wrong move from shattering

She only hoped her attempts at subtlety were working. During their lessons, she’d begun to let the smallest remarks slip through. Nothing overt, nothing that would seem jarring. Just enough to suggest that she might believe in the idea that Muggles were… lesser. A strategic deceit. A test of trust.

Each time his eyes slid toward her, considering, she felt a flicker of dread under the careful calm.

Those two quiet weeks should have finally let her breathe. Because maybe, just maybe, Malfoy had come to his senses.

But rest never came. Every time she tried to focus on anything else, her thoughts looped back to him like a curse she couldn’t counter. What if he was planning something right now? What if she blinked, and that was the moment he acted?

It wasn’t even about vigilance anymore; it was compulsion. Her quill would still, her tea would go cold, and she’d find her eyes drifting to the map before she realised she’d reached for it. She told herself it was caution, that she was doing what needed to be done. But deep down, she knew it was fear. Not of him, exactly, but of stopping. Because if she ever stopped watching, he’d know. Somehow. And then he’d act.

The problem was, her suspicions had been right.

She’d barely finished her last class of the day. The air still smelled faintly of ozone and singed parchment, the aftermath of a dozen poorly cast Shield Charms hanging in the room like static. A shimmer of dust drifted through the slanted afternoon light, and her voice was rough from hours of correcting wand movements and counterspells.

She sat at her desk, prying open the stopper of a small glass vial. The Invigoration Draught hit her tongue sharp and metallic, chased by the bite of mint. It burned its way down, leaving her more jittery than awake. Her third since noon. Her fingertips buzzed faintly against the wood, her wand hand twitching from habit more than need.

For a moment, the quiet pressed in — just the distant buzz of students’ voices as they walked through the halls and the faint ticking of a clock. Then something shifted.

A movement on the Marauder’s Map caught her eye.

Two dots.
Draco Malfoy and Tom Riddle.
Converging where they most certainly shouldn’t have been.

Her stomach dropped.

A glance at the clock confirmed it, half an hour earlier than usual. Of course. Malfoy thought he could outsmart her. Mix up his patterns. Play clever little games with timing.

“Oh, for Merlin’s sake,” she muttered, already shoving back her chair so hard it nearly toppled.

The map fluttered shut as she bolted from her office, heels striking sharp against the flagstones. As she ran the corridors grew thick with students — chatter, laughter, the sound of hundreds of feet — and she pushed through it all, muttering rushed apologies as she elbowed her way forward.

“Sorry— excuse me— coming through— please, make a path!”

“Professor Wormwood!” Dippet’s reedy voice echoed from somewhere near the Grand Staircase. “No running in the halls! It isn’t proper!”

“Terribly sorry, Headmaster!” she called back without slowing, her breath catching in her throat as she veered down a shortcut.

The castle blurred past her in a rush of stone and torchlight. Every heartbeat felt like a countdown. By the time she reached the entrance hall, her lungs burned, and her hands shook from exhaustion, from fear, from sheer knowing.

She tucked herself into a corner, out of sight of the castle windows, her breath coming in ragged bursts. The Autumn evening pressed close around her, damp and cold, smelling of soil and smoke.

Focus.

She closed her eyes and forced herself to see it through the panic — the wings, the air, the weightlessness. She pictured feathers instead of fingers, wind instead of fear. Her pulse stuttered once, then steadied, her heartbeat syncing with the image in her mind until the world tilted and her body followed.

Bones shrunk and lightened; skin rippled into down. The ground seemed to lurch upward as her perspective narrowed and sharpened all at once, the scent of moss, the metallic tang of rain, the low hum of the earth beneath her claws.

Then she was airborne, feathers cutting through the wind as instinct took over where thought had failed. The castle dropped away, its windows burning with the last reflections of sunset — amber, gold, and the faintest trace of rose. Above, the sky deepened from blue to indigo, the first shy stars glinting like spilled dust across the horizon. It was the kind of light that made even familiar things look enchanted, and for a heartbeat, the sky felt endless.

She wheeled once, orienting herself, then turned toward the jagged outline of the Forbidden Forest.

The air was cold against her wings, sharp enough to sting, but she welcomed it. It kept her awake. It kept her moving.

She beat toward the trees, every motion a quiet, desperate litany.

Please, don’t be too late.

The forest rose up to meet her, a dark, tangled mass of branches that clawed at the sky. Hermione ducked and weaved through them, wings tilting sharply as she slipped between the narrow gaps. Every beat sounded too loud, every movement a risk.

Then she saw them.

Two figures standing beside a narrow path where the sunlight broke through the canopy: Riddle, head bent, inspecting something at the forest floor, and Malfoy, wand in hand, posture coiled and deliberate.

Her stomach dropped.

Hermione veered downward, branches whipping past her feathers, the world rushing up in a blur of grey and green. She landed behind the nearest tree, the shift back into her human form sharp and jarring. Feathers to flesh, wings to limbs. The impact nearly drove the air from her lungs.

Her heart was pounding so violently she could feel it in her fingertips. She pressed a palm to the rough bark, forcing her breathing to steady, to quiet. Then, through the thinning veil of leaves, she saw him begin to raise his wand.

No time.

Hermione grabbed the first thing within reach, a tall stalk of wolfsbane, its purple flowers vibrant against the dark earth, and stepped out from behind the tree just as his arm lifted for the strike.

“Professor Granger!” she called, her voice a little too high, a little too breathless.

Malfoy froze.

The conversation that followed shouldn’t have been funny, not in the slightest, but Hermione couldn’t quite stop the small, traitorous flicker of satisfaction that came with watching him flounder. He looked seconds away from hexing her into next week, jaw so tight she half-expected to hear something crack.

She kept her tone composed, her words measured, but inside she was still catching her breath, pulse racing from the flight and the rush of it all. Still, she couldn’t deny the faint, smug warmth curling through her chest. He deserved it — every ounce of discomfort, every frustrated glare.

But even as she watched the colour drain from his face, the triumph began to cool. This had been close. Too close. If she’d looked at the map a minute later, if she’d hesitated in the air, if she hadn’t spotted the movement of them through the trees… she didn’t let herself finish that thought.

No, she’d been lucky. Stupidly lucky. And luck wasn’t a strategy.

She’d have to be even more careful now. More precise, more vigilant. He was learning from each failed attempt, adjusting, adapting. And she would, too.

Still, she allowed herself one small, secret smile. For all his arrogance and meticulous planning, Malfoy couldn’t know that between the Map and the Cloak, he was never really out of her sight.

Honestly, what did he expect? To continue this ridiculous, murderous crusade unchallenged? To play God and get away with it?

No. Not while she was here.

He could glower all he liked, but he really didn’t stand a chance. She would always see him coming.

And truly, it would make both of their lives infinitely easier if, for once, he could just see sense and admit that she was right.

Afterall, she always was.

Chapter Text

It was a wonder, really, that Granger had only ever been called the brightest witch of her age. She was also, undeniably, a calibrated, inexhaustible nuisance with a talent for making him feel one step slower, one thought behind.

Not bright—blinding. Not clever—brilliant.

If you asked him, she ought to have been catalogued under hazards to wizardkind.

He adapted. Or, at least, that was what he told himself.

He began to treat her like a problem to be solved through sufficient observation. Something that would yield its pattern if only he paid close enough attention. As if she were a potion with a missing ingredient, and all he needed was the right combination of patience and scrutiny to perfect it.

He knew more about her than a reasonable person should.

She took her tea with a splash of milk and no sugar—an act of barbarism that, in his opinion, disqualified her from civilised society. Any proper cup demanded at least two.

She arrived to her classroom exactly seventeen minutes before the start of each lesson, every day, without fail. He’d timed it. More than once.

She preferred the east corner table in the library, the one half-hidden behind the Charms shelves, where the sunlight caught the dust motes and turned the air gold. She always tucked her hair behind her ear twice before reading, and she mouthed the first few lines of every page as if grounding herself in the words.

She was rarely without that same stack of folded parchment, creased, ink-stained, and handled far too carefully for mere lesson plans. He’d seen her poring over it at odd hours, tracing lines across it with her wand when she thought no one was looking. And if he lingered too long nearby, her brow would furrow and her gaze would lift, scanning the room until it landed on him. There was a sharpness to that look that always made him move. Pretending, of course, that he’d simply been passing through.

At staff luncheons, she’d take the seat furthest from Professor Beery, who had an unfortunate fondness for discussing compost in vivid detail. Draco had once seen her feign an urgent errand rather than endure another monologue on the pH levels of soil.

She lingered after classes to tidy chalk dust that no one else noticed, always peering at the floor behind her desk. She hummed softly, unconsciously, when marking essays in the staff room. Carried an extra quill in her sleeve like some paranoid duellist of academia.

He told himself it was all reconnaissance. That there was strategic merit in knowing her routines. But there had been nothing suspicious about her behaviour, only that she always seemed to be reading something. Though, admittedly, he expected nothing less of well-documented bookworm.

Still, he catalogued it all. Every look, gesture, and inexplicable habit. He’d mapped her days as if she were a constellation that might reveal its image if he only traced it long enough.

And yet, it hadn’t changed a thing.

No matter how closely he watched, she refused to make sense.

For all his careful notes and timings and deductions, she remained infuriatingly beyond his understanding. Always just slightly out of reach, as if she moved according to rules that no one else could see.

It was maddening.

He’d lead Riddle down a supposedly empty corridor, and she’d appear at the far end as if conjured from the stones themselves.

It was uncanny, the way she materialised. Not rushed, not startled, simply there, like the castle itself bent around her will.

Riddle had begun to notice. Of course he had.

“Is something the matter, Professor?” he’d ask occasionally, all practised politeness, head tilted in that faintly serpentine way.

“Nothing at all,” Draco would reply, perhaps a shade too quickly. “Focus on your work.”

The boy would nod, but his gaze lingered—sharp, calculating. Watching Draco as though the experiment had shifted, and he had become the subject.

Once, Riddle had even smiled faintly and said, “It’s curious how often Professor Wormwood appears where you are, sir. You seem… connected.”

Draco had nearly dropped the phial in his hand.

“Coincidence,” he’d snapped. “Hogwarts is small.”

Riddle had gone back to his work. Quiet, satisfied, like someone filing away an answer for later.

Since then, Draco had felt the boy’s gaze during every class and lesson, an almost physical thing, crawling along the back of his neck. Silent, prying, full of that nauseating curiosity that made his hair stand on edge. It wasn’t enough that Granger shadowed him like some moral watchdog; now Riddle was watching too.

It was almost poetic, really. He couldn’t decide which of them unnerved him more.

He was growing more frantic. Not that he’d admit it. He preferred to call it focus. But the truth was uglier. His inability to figure her out had begun to devour everything else. Every plan, every calculation circled back to her.

He replayed their encounters in his mind like puzzles he couldn’t stop picking apart. The tilt of her head when she challenged him, the exact cadence of her breathing before she spoke, the way she seemed to know before he did. Every gesture noted, every pause dissected, as if sheer scrutiny could produce an answer.

He tested her patterns. Changed lesson times, switched classrooms without warning, took alternate routes to the dungeons—and still, she found him. Always when alone with Riddle, always seconds away from success, and there she’d be. Calm. Composed. Dismantling the moment before it began.

His strategies grew smaller, pettier, more vicious in their simplicity. Born not of tactical precision now, but of pure, competitive spite.

A tripping jinx keyed to Riddle’s magical signature, carefully cast to send the boy tumbling inelegantly down the marble stairs. It might have worked, too, if Granger hadn’t appeared at that exact moment to cast a cushioning charm, claiming she’d “had a feeling someone might slip.”

Then there’d been the orange juice. A careful drop of something colourless, slipped into Riddle’s breakfast drink with careful precision. It would have been painless. Clean.

Of course, Granger had chosen that morning to sweep through the Great Hall like a moral tornado, scolding a Slytherin for recurring tardiness and, in the process, knocking over Riddle’s goblet with “tragic clumsiness.”

He’d watched her dab at the spill with her napkin, cheeks pink, all false embarrassment and apologies, while Riddle accepted it with perfect grace. Draco had nearly choked on his tea.

It went on like that. A misfired hex here, a volatile ingredient there—and always, always, she appeared just before the point of impact, dismantling his efforts.

It was unbelievable.
She was still stopping him. Always turning up just when he managed to get Riddle alone, as if some unspoken alarm connected them.

And for all his careful observation, for all the time he spent glancing into her classroom, sitting beside her at breakfast, monitoring her reading habits, he didn’t know how she was watching him. He only knew that she was.

She was brilliant. Maddeningly, impossibly brilliant. And he hated that he had to concede it.

Sometimes, in the quieter moments—when she subconsciously stirred her tea too long, or he caught her frowning in concentration over those damn parchments—something uneasy stirred beneath the irritation.

Not admiration, exactly. Something colder, sharper. The reluctant awe one might feel watching an opponent so deftly dismantle the board that you almost forget you’re losing.

One October morning, she appeared as he restocked his potion stores.

He hadn’t heard the door open. One moment, the room was quiet but for the scrape of glass against wood, the whisper of crushed ingredients; the next, she was there—a voice at his shoulder, too close.

“Just taking inventory,” she said, peering round him without apology.

He startled—nearly dropped the jar in his hand, catching it mid-fall with a sharp intake of breath. A curse rose in his throat, but he bit it back, jaw tight. Of course she was there. Of course. Merlin forbid he have ten uninterrupted minutes without her materialising like a righteous apparition.

“Of what?” he groaned, setting the jar down with deliberate care. “My patience?”

She smiled that insufferable, swotty, know-it-all smile—the one that managed to be both pleasant and superior at once.

And for a fleeting second, he wondered if she knew how she was getting under his skin, if she turned up at every inopportune moment not out of duty or coincidence, but amusement. It felt possible—likely, even—that she found their ridiculous little dance fun. That she was playing him, just a bit, for her own satisfaction.

“Of powdered acacia,” she said lightly. “You’re out.”

He blinked, incredulous. He wasn’t. He was never out of powdered acacia. He hardly used powdered acacia. He’d checked that shelf not five minutes ago, each jar lined in precise alphabetical order, every stopper sealed.

She moved past him anyway, robes whispering against the stone floor, scanning the shelves with that same maddening confidence—as if his stores were hers to audit. Her fingers brushed a layer of dust from a label, and she nodded, satisfied, as though confirming some private hypothesis.

He watched her, tight-lipped, aware of the faint scent of rosemary and parchment and tea that clung to her, the quiet efficiency in every movement.

And damn it all, she was right—one of the jars was missing. He stared at the gap on the shelf, feeling something twist unpleasantly in his chest.

Not that it mattered.
It shouldn’t have mattered.
But he hated that she’d seen it before he had.

Had she—no. Surely she wouldn’t have taken it?.

He began to speculate beyond reason.
Perhaps she’d trained a ghost to follow him. Perhaps the castle itself had taken her side and whispered his whereabouts through the stones. Perhaps she’d bribed the suits of armour, the treacherous bastards.

He continued to watch her. Obsessively.

He knew, somehow, Granger’s trick wasn’t mystical—it was worse. It was systematic. A kind of quiet arithmetic, an algorithm of Granger-ness: relentless, precise, and horrifyingly efficient. Every time he made a move, she was already waiting at its conclusion.

At first, he’d told himself it was strategy that kept him engaged. Professional pride. Intellectual curiosity. He refused to be outmanoeuvred by anyone, least of all her.

But somewhere between the failed hexes and the intercepted plans, he’d realised the truth. She’d made him think. Made him try.
He hadn’t had to do that in years.

It was intolerable.
And, somehow, almost… enjoyable.

The pattern, the challenge, the inevitable interruption, it was a rhythm now, and he’d learned to anticipate his own defeat. He told himself he only listened for her footfall so he could analyse it.

But there it was, that small, reluctant spark each time she appeared. The strange relief of having the game begin again. His temper burned hotter with her than with anyone else, yet it cooled faster too, tempered by the sharpness of her replies.

Somewhere along the way, he realised the part of him that had been iron since the war had started to remember what mercury felt like — volatile, fluid, alive.

It was disorienting.

To find himself thinking again, not just calculating. To feel the restless hum of challenge instead of the deadened quiet of survival. The cold, grey edges of the future he’d escaped from, the endless march of orders, the suffocating certainty of ruin, all of it seemed to recede, blurred to something distant and almost unreal.

She moved through the corridors with that infuriating certainty that there was still something worth saving, that the world could still be reasoned with, fixed, won.

He hadn’t believed in any of that for a while.

But when she argued with him, when she turned that fierce, narrow gaze on him like he was a problem worth solving, something treacherous stirred beneath the armour he’d built. A thought he’d buried long ago, rising again like breath drawn into old lungs.

He told himself it was nothing. Just proximity, routine, irritation.
But even irritation was something, and something was more than he’d had in a very long time.

***

The castle settled into autumn with its showy competence — corridors gilded in copper light, the scent of rain and woodsmoke threading through every draughty hall. Leaves skittered across the courtyard like restless parchment, and the evenings grew long and amber, the kind that made even stone seem to hum faintly with warmth. Candles burned lower, voices softened; the world exhaled.

Three days before Halloween, Draco found her in the staff room.

The cozy space smelled of old furniture, burning wood, and admittedly decent tea. Dust motes drifted lazily in the slanting afternoon light, catching on the curls of steam rising from the kettle. Granger sat at the long table with a small mountain of essays before her, quill scratching with efficient precision, steam curling from a mug near her elbow. Dumbledore was perched nearby, talking in that gentle, wandering way of his

She listened to his mutterings with that tired, attentive stillness, cheek propped in her hand, expression shadowed and drawn. The scene was disarmingly domestic, ordinary, almost pleasant, and for some reason, that made Draco feel worse.

He was bone-tired, though he’d never admit it. His thoughts had grown thin at the edges from too many sleepless nights and too much watching. His eyes burned, his collar felt too tight, and there was a pulse behind his temples that had become as constant as breathing.

He stepped through the doorway, and Dumbledore’s eyes flicked up at once, bright and knowing, as if he’d been expecting him all along.

Draco’s stomach tightened. His steps faltered, every muscle in his shoulders pulling taut. No matter how many times he told himself this wasn’t that Dumbledore—not the one whose fall he’d watched from the Astronomy Tower—his mind supplied the same image anyway: the spread of blue robes, the white flash of hair, the sickening drop into darkness.

The memory had fossilised somewhere deep inside him, and even now, the man’s presence made his skin crawl with a guilt that had long since outlived its cause.

"Ah," he said, rising with the mild theatricality of a man who could never simply leave a room. He turned and addressed Granger, "do come to me later, Matilda. After last bell. It should be reinforced."

Reinforced. Draco filed the word away. What it?

"Of course," Granger said. No blink, no questions, just the neat acceptance of a witch who looked as if she had spread herself too thin.

Dumbledore inclined his head to Draco, then drifted out, humming under his breath. The door whispered shut.

Draco crossed the room and collapsed into the low, threadbare sofa with the entitlement of the truly spent. He slung an arm across his eyes, boots still on, feet up, not caring about propriety or upholstery. The cushions sighed like they’d given up on everyone long ago.

The sounds came softly, predictably. Quill scratching. Steam rising. Paper shifting. He could map her by sound alone now, the faint tap of her quill when she paused to think, the small exhale through her nose when a sentence displeased her.

“I don’t know how you’re doing this,” he said into the fabric of his sleeve, conversationally, as if remarking on the weather. His voice sounded rougher than he intended.

A pause. Then, perfectly bland: “Doing what?”

He lowered his arm just enough to see her. She hadn’t even looked up. Of course she hadn’t. She sat exactly as before, back straight, quill moving in neat, merciless strokes. Completely unaffected by his presence, or pretending to be. It was impossible to tell with her anymore.

He studied her, too tired to pretend he wasn’t.

The glamour fit her like a blade in its sheath—sleek dark hair, parted with precision; not a curl in sight. Her features were altered just enough to pass casual scrutiny, but he could see the differences now that he knew where to look. The roundness in her cheeks had been carved away; her mouth was tighter, more severe. The effect made her look colder, harder, as if the disguise had stolen the softness he remembered from school and replaced it with something iron.

It was the eyes that gave her away. Not the face, not the hair, not even the righteous tone. The eyes. That same sharp, impossible focus, all defiance and calculation, a mind perpetually three moves ahead. He’d seen that look before, across desks, across library stacks, across rooms filled with people too afraid to meet it.

What did she look like now, beneath the disguise?

Had the war written itself into her the way it had carved itself into him? Into the set of her mouth, the tilt of her spine, the quiet vigilance that never quite left? He tried to picture her as she had been: the wild hair, the too-earnest mouth, the stubborn line between her brows that used to deepen when she lectured Saint Potter and his freckled, ginger echo.

“Don’t play stupid, Granger,” he said finally, settling deeper into the sofa, boots propped on the worn armrest. His voice came out low, threaded with the faintest trace of humour. “You keep arriving exactly where you shouldn’t. You make a habit of it.”

She dipped her quill, unhurried, as if he hadn’t spoken at all. “It’s called being at work, Malfoy.”

He huffed a laugh, short and tired. He turned his head to the side, watching her without meaning to.

The firelight caught in her hair, or what passed for her hair, throwing thin, copper glints through the darkness. Her sleeve was smudged with ink, a streak across her wrist that didn’t fit the rest of the polished disguise. It was almost comforting, that small imperfection.

He paused, considering, words rising before he’d decided if he meant them. “If I surrender,” he said, voice dry, “will you tell me how you’re doing it?”

That earned him the smallest pause in the scratching of her quill. Barely perceptible, a single heartbeat’s hesitation before the motion resumed. When she finally replied, her tone was as even as ever. “In your dreams, Malfoy.”

He smirked, weary but unwilling to let the silence win. “Every night, Granger,” he said, too smoothly, letting it land like a joke.

“Tragic,” she murmured, eyes still on the parchment. “Seek professional help.”

He let his head fall back against the sofa and stared at the ceiling, following the thin latticework of hairline cracks across the old stone.

His curiosity itched at him again, a quiet, relentless thing. He was too tired to fight it.
“What is Dumbledore patching for you now?” he asked. “Your halo?”

Her quill didn’t pause. “My patience,” she said simply, dragging the tip across the parchment in one clean, decisive stroke. “With colleagues who refuse to listen”—she turned to look at him then, one brow raised—“and who apparently think it’s acceptable to put their boots on upholstered furniture.”

He shifted only enough to make a point, letting his boots settle more firmly on the armrest. The movement was petty, deliberate, and faintly satisfying. “You could try asking nicely.”

“I could,” she said, tone flat. She turned a page with the same quiet precision, quill poised, eyes already back on her work.

He watched her annotate the margins, her compact script marching like soldiers, neat, disciplined, merciless. There was something soothing in it, watching her order chaos one stroke at a time. He’d never admit it, of course. But the steadiness of her presence was… grounding, in a way he didn’t care to examine too closely.

“Your glamour’s improved,” he said at last, because apparently, he couldn’t bear to be ignored. “Cleaner at the hairline. Less strain around the jaw.”

“Thank you,” she said without looking up, her quill still moving. “Your disguise is holding better too. Though, the eye colour remains a tragic oversight.”

He huffed a quiet laugh. “Genetic curse,” he said. “I tried trading them in.”

“You should get a receipt next time.”

“A what?”

She shook her head, a small sigh escaping her, somewhere between amusement and fatigue. “Never mind.”

He found himself analysing her, not just her face, but the rhythm of her movements. The way her hand lifted and fell, precise and unhurried. The faint crease in her brow as she read. The soft, steady sound of quill against parchment. He wasn’t sure why it drew him in, only that it did.

He realised, with something close to surprise, that he was talking just to talk. To keep her voice in the air. To pretend that this, the low fire, the soft light, the scent of smoke and tea, was ordinary.

As she continued marking, more questions landed on the tip of his tongue. Stupid ones. Mundane ones. What kind of tea was she drinking? Had she already had dinner? Did she ever stop working long enough to sleep?

He didn’t ask them, of course. He lay there, letting the silence fill up again, finding it… not unpleasant. It felt strange, almost novel, to sit and have a civil conversation with her. To exist beside her without the weight of strategy pressing down on his shoulders.

It was an uneasy truce, born of shared exhaustion and mutual exasperation — but still, it held.

 He closed his eyes again. “Why dark hair?”

“Why not?”

“It doesn’t suit you,” he said, and heard the lie even as it left his mouth. The sleekness suited this version of her far too well: the efficiency, the sharpness, the refusal to be read. It was seamless and deliberate. He wanted to know whether it was all mask, or if some part of her had grown into it.

She set the quill down, the small sound of it against the table sharper than a reprimand. When she looked at him, her expression was deceptively calm.

“What exactly are you doing, Malfoy?” she asked, voice smooth but lined with irritation. “You’ve spent the last two months accusing me of espionage, blatantly disregarding my request that you simply refrain from killing a student, and now you want to talk about my hair? Forgive me if I sound suspicious, but you’ve been an unrelenting pain in my arse.”

He arched a brow, the faintest smirk tugging at his mouth. “You’ve got the audacity to call me a pain in your arse? You’ve been systematically dismantling my peace of mind since the day term started.”

She didn’t look away. “If your peace of mind is that fragile, that’s hardly my fault.”

“On the contrary,” he said smoothly, “I’m beginning to suspect you take it as a personal challenge.”

Her scoff was measured, almost elegant. “You flatter yourself.”

“I tend to, yes.” He let the smirk stay, even as exhaustion tugged at the corners of it.

Her mouth flattened. “That self-importance must be exhausting. You’re obsessed with the idea that I’m tracking you. Which, to be clear, I’m not.” She turned back to her papers.

“You’re a horrible liar, Granger,” he said, letting his arm fall over his eyes again, voice gone dry and lazy. “Even you aren’t clever enough to be lucky this often.”

“Or you’re not as covert as you think.”

He almost smiled. “Blasphemy.”

Another page turned. “Consider the possibility that you’re predictable.”

“I have considered it,” he said, “and rejected it on numerous grounds.”

She made a small noise that might have been a laugh and might have been a death knell. He honestly couldn’t tell anymore.

He felt himself sinking a fraction deeper into the cushions, the bone-deep tiredness unspooling from his chest with faint, mortifying gratitude.
It was easier to be tired in a room where the lie wasn’t necessary.

With her, he didn’t have to keep the mask in perfect place; didn’t have to smirk or perform or remember which version of himself the world was meant to see. She didn’t expect repentance or charm. She didn’t expect anything. And so, for a few moments, he could stop pretending.

He could just be what was left of Draco Malfoy.

“Reinforce what?” he asked, propping his head up to look at her. “Don’t say patience again.”

She capped her ink with a soft click. “My ring,” she said after a beat. “It keeps my glamours in place, so I don’t have to focus on them.” A pause. Then, “How do you manage yours?”

He let the question sit between them for a moment, testing its shape. “Mine?”

She raised a brow, still not quite looking up. “Do yours fail often? From what I’ve seen, you don’t seem to have a physical anchor.”

“No, I don’t,” he admitted. “It’s becoming a bit of a strain.”

Her lips softened, not a smile so much as a brief concession to the existence of one. A human flicker, small and undeserved, but it landed all the same.

He didn’t move. “I don’t know how you’re doing this,” he said again, quieter this time, as though admitting it might undo him. “And it’s driving me mad.”

“Good,” she said, returning to her essays. “Perhaps you’ll start listening to me.”

“No,” he said, smirking to himself. “But I might start prioritising.”

“At last,” she murmured. “Growth.”

The tea steamed beside her elbow, the quill scratched in its steady rhythm, and somewhere beyond the window the wind rattled the last reluctant leaves against the glass.

He could fall asleep here, he realised, and wake to the same problem — the same faces, the same castle, the same impossible witch, and yet it all felt one step removed, like walking through a painting he half-remembered.

For a moment, that distance felt like peace. A life peeled away from the horrors of the future he’d fled. The screaming, the smoke, the endless breaking, it all seemed unreal in the warmth of this small, ordinary room.

And really, what did it matter if she kept interfering?
He had time. Years. Decades, even, before that future could take shape again. He could afford to wait, to plan, to watch, to out-think her. Let her win the rounds; he’d win the war.

His gaze drifted back to her, still marking essays, still infuriatingly calm, the lamplight catching at the edges of her hair.

“You could just tell me,” he said, voice low, almost conversational, “how you’re doing it.”

“Malfoy,” she said, exasperation threading through the word like a sigh. “Do stop trying.”

“Never,” he said, and smiled like a man who had just discovered a better game hidden beneath the one he thought he was playing.

***

He awoke to the sound of someone clearing their throat.

For a moment, Draco didn’t know where he was. The air was warm, faintly scented with tea and wood, the fire guttering low in the grate. His back ached. The sofa beneath him sagged in weary protest, and the side of his face was pressed into a cushion that smelled faintly of dust.

“Professor Granger!”

Draco jerked upright at the sound of his alias, his hand flying to his wand before sense returned. He looked up into the face of Headmaster Dippet — bright, earnest, and far too loud for the hour.

“Headmaster,” Draco said smoothly, forcing his voice into a warm, agreeable register.

“Excellent! Excellent!” Dippet enthused, beaming as if pleased to find him still alive. “Good heavens,” he looked around the empty room, “did you spend the night in here, dear boy? The staff room is for rest, of course, but I daresay it wasn’t meant for sleeping arrangements.”

He chuckled at his own joke, then tutted, eyes landing squarely on Draco’s boots still draped across the sofa arm. “Oh, Dear. The furniture, you see, was a gift from the Board of Governors — in 1863, I believe. Or was it ’64? In any case, the poor thing’s survived decades of misuse. Let’s not tempt fate, eh?”

Draco blinked the fog from his eyes and slipped automatically into damage control. He sat up, pulling his feet neatly to the floor and schooling his expression into polite contrition. “My apologies, Headmaster. I must’ve drifted off while reviewing assignments. It won’t happen again.”

Dippet waved a hand, mollified almost instantly. “Oh, nonsense, nonsense! A hardworking professor is a credit to us all. I merely worry you’ll wake up one day with quill ink on your face. Happened to me once. Terrible first impression on the Minister for Magic, I can tell you!”

Draco gave a tight, professional smile. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Yes, yes, very good.” Dippet rubbed his hands together, eyes alight with purpose. “Now, as much as I enjoy our little chats, I came to deliver the most delightful reminder!”

That tone set off alarm bells. Draco steeled himself.

“The Halloween Ball!” Dippet declared, with the energy of a man unveiling a miracle. “The finest tradition at Hogwarts, and it’s nearly upon us! The thirty-first — do mark your calendar!”

Draco resisted the urge to groan. “Ah. Of course.”

“Yes indeed! Costumes, Professor Granger! Costumes! The faculty must lead by example. A dash of whimsy, a pinch of fright! It’s good for morale, don’t you know. Builds spirit! Last year, Professor Beery came as a mandrake. Nearly deafened the whole hall when the band played too loudly, but my word, the commitment!”

“Remarkable,” Draco said flatly.

“I knew you’d agree,” Dippet said, utterly oblivious. “Now, I really do insist that you dress up. Nothing too grim, mind you — we’ve had enough of that in the world lately. Perhaps something tasteful!”

“I’ll… keep that in mind,” Draco said, every word a slow act of endurance.

“Splendid!” Dippet cried. “That’s the spirit I like to see! Always so dependable, Professor Granger. You’re a pillar of the faculty. Why, your enthusiasm alone could raise the dead — though let’s not test that literally, of course.”

Draco managed a thin smile. “No, let’s not.”

“Wonderful, wonderful,” Dippet said, already half-turned toward the door. “Well, I shan’t keep you from your marking. Must visit the kitchens — they’re carving pumpkins the size of carriages this year! Oh, the festivity!”

He left humming something that might once have been the school anthem.

Draco slumped back into the sofa, dragging a hand over his face. His skull throbbed, his patience frayed.

The things he endured in the name of subterfuge.

He exhaled, the fire spitting once before settling into a low, steady glow.

A ball. Costumes. Laughter echoing off stone. It would be loud, crowded, unbearably cheerful. Everything he had no patience for.
And yet.

He caught himself wondering what it might be like — the flicker of candlelight, the movement of robes, the sound of laughter.
And, before he could stop himself, what a certain witch might look like among it all.

He frowned at the thought, as if that alone could undo it.

The fire sighed and dimmed, its last ember sinking into ash. He told himself he dreaded the whole affair — the noise, the costumes, the company.
But as he pushed to his feet, weary bones protesting, a treacherous thought slipped through before he could stop it.

Maybe it wouldn’t be entirely awful.

He snorted once, quiet and self-directed. “Merlin help me,” he muttered, and left the room, his footsteps fading into the long, waiting quiet of the castle.

Chapter Text

The gilded mirror flickered faintly in the candlelight, her reflection rippling as though caught between worlds. Hermione tilted her head, adjusting the delicate strap at her shoulder, and studied the figure staring back. A woman half-buried beneath tulle and spellwork.

When she’d first spotted the gown in Gladrags’ back corner, it had been little more than a forgotten relic. Limp tulle, worn seams, the kind of garment that seemed to remember better days. But she’d seen its potential instantly. A few careful repairs and transfigurations later, the fabric had remembered what it once was.

Now it looked as if it had been conjured from moonlight and morning frost.

The bodice was corseted, structured enough to give her a faint hourglass silhouette, something she rarely saw in her own reflection. It drew in neatly at the waist before fanning outward into layers of tulle. Its shimmering feathers dusting the transition like dew caught in sunlight. The enchantments she’d woven into the seams ensured it moved with rather than restricted her. Each breath was a quiet negotiation between comfort and grace. Subtle enchantments threaded through the hem made it glimmer faintly as she turned, as if she were draped in water rather than cloth.

Along the skirt, faint embroidery in silver thread traced the outline of feathers, delicate enough to vanish when she spun. The neckline dipped just slightly, graceful without vanity, and the open back revealed the smooth line of her shoulders. She looked almost delicate. A rare illusion, and one she’d allow herself, just for tonight.

Her glamoured hair, dark and long with gentle waves, fell around her like ink brushed over snow. She’d drawn half of it back and fastened it with a narrow circlet of silver that arched across her forehead, its twin wings at her temples curving towards the back of her head. Between them, a single opal rested above  her brows, catching every flicker of light like a trapped star.

She let herself smile. Swan Lake had always been her favourite ballet. All that grace and tragedy, all that hopeless longing. She’d danced it once, years ago, when her biggest worry had been a blister or a missed step. She remembered the feel of the stage beneath her toes, the orchestra swelling like wind beneath her wings. For a moment, the memory ached sweetly through her chest.

Of all the costumes she’d worn for Hogwarts’ Halloween balls, half of them thrown together between  marking essays and having existential crises, this one felt different. It wasn’t clever or ironic or designed to impress. It was something entirely her own.

Her gaze drifted to the Marauder’s Map hovering beside the mirror, its ink shifting lazily across the parchment. She traced a finger over the nearest name. Draco Malfoy. Still in his chambers, by the look of it, likely getting ready, since Dippet had made attendance mandatory for all staff. Typical. He’d probably brood his way through the evening like some tragic ghost of Halloween past.

Her eyes flicked downward. Tom Riddle. Still in the Slytherin common room. Good. Only fifth years and older were allowed at the ball, which meant she could, if fate felt merciful, enjoy a few uninterrupted hours of peace. Merlin knew she needed them.

She exhaled, bending to slip on her shoes. They were made of white satin and were just practical enough to survive a night on the castle’s uneven floors. As she straightened, the map folded itself neatly at her gesture. She tucked it into her beaded bag which she then placed within the concealed pocket of her gown. A witch could be both beautiful and prepared, after all.

Malfoy hadn’t tried to kill Riddle again since their… conversation in the staff room. An unsettlingly civil encounter, clinging to her mind like damp air after rain. She wondered if he was wearing thin as well. He certainly looked it. The past weeks had carved shadows beneath his eyes and tightened his jaw.

Good. Perhaps exhaustion would succeed where reason hadn’t.

With one final glance in the mirror to ensure everything was properly in place — crown straight, hem even, feathers behaving — Hermione drew a steadying breath and stepped into the corridor.

The castle was alive with sound. Laughter echoed from distant stairwells, the kind that trailed behind running footsteps and swished robes. The air smelled faintly of wax polish, pumpkin spice, and the sharp, smoky tang of floating jack-o’-lanterns drifting overhead. Torches flickered with enchanted hues, casting strange, dancing shadows over the ancient stone.

Students moved in clusters toward the Great Hall. All chattering excitedly in their costumes. Some of the more subtle students wore elegant wizarding robes stitched with constellations or glowing runes; others sported charmed masks — veela, vampires, knights, and phantoms from old folklore. A few of the bolder ones had taken inspiration from history: a witch in a flapper’s gown bewitched to sparkle with starlight, a wizard dressed as a Victorian duellist. The mingling scents of perfume, roasted apples, and candle wax followed them like a festive fog.

By the time Hermione reached the entrance to the Great Hall, the noise had become a bright, glittering cacophony. She paused in the doorway, and for a moment, everything stilled.

The transformation was breathtaking. The enchanted ceiling had been turned into a sheet of swirling clouds, moonlight pouring through in liquid ribbons. Floating lanterns shaped like skeletal birds glided lazily through the air, their wings scattering sparkling dust. The long tables were gone. Replaced by round ones draped in black and silver. Candelabra centrepieces bloomed with thistles and black roses that glowed faintly. A small orchestra of bewitched instruments hovered near the dais, tuning themselves with soft, harmonious notes.

It was impossible not to be impressed. The house-elves had truly outdone themselves.

Hermione’s lips curved faintly in a small smile, though the thought that followed dimmed it. She wished, as she always did, that the elves were being paid for this brilliance. That their wonderous magic was treated as skill rather than servitude. But if people hadn’t been ready to hear that argument in her own time, she knew they certainly wouldn’t be in this one. Not tonight.

So, she pushed the thought aside, smoothed her skirts, and stepped into the light.

“Professor Wormwood!”

Headmaster Dippet swept toward her, robes billowing, hat askew, and enthusiasm radiating in excess. Hermione blinked. He appeared to be dressed as some sort of goblin general? Though perhaps court jester would have been more accurate.

His uniform gleamed with polished brass buttons and absurd gold braiding, and his epaulettes bobbed with every gesture like offended puffskeins. A monocle swung wildly from his chest pocket as he bounded up to her.

“My dear Professor Wormwood, magnificent!” he exclaimed, clasping her hand with both of his. “A tribute to The Guardian of Swan Lake, I presume? Brilliant choice! A true wizarding classic. Why, I haven’t seen a proper staging since ’23! I recall the second act vividly, the duel between the Guardian and the Prince! Such passion, such—”

“Yes. A personal favourite,” she interrupted, though she hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about.

“Splendid taste, my dear, splendid!” Dippet’s eyes darted around the room as though trying to absorb it all at once. “And what an evening! The elves have outdone themselves this year. Did you see the carved pumpkins in the courtyard? The size of carriages! I told them it was a touch excessive, but they insisted—oh, mind the confetti bats!”

Hermione ducked just in time as a bat swooped low over her head. Behind it trailed a shimmering cascade of black and violet paper that promptly tangled in her hair. She blew a stray piece from her lips.

“Yes,” she managed, brushing glitter from her skirt. “Quite festive.”

Unfazed, Dippet forged on. “Wonderful creatures, aren’t they? Entirely compostable! A triumph of charmwork, really. Why, just last year they—”

Hermione tuned him out as gracefully as she could manage. Her eyes swept the Great Hall in search of an escape.

Dumbledore stood near the orchestra, chatting amiably with Professor Binns. His costume was, of course, perfectly executed: he had come as Merlin himself, complete with a pointed hat that reached towards the floating candles overhead and a deep sapphire cloak patterned with the Mark of Merlin — three silver spirals converging at the centre, faintly glowing as he moved. A silver-buckled belt cinched the robes at his waist, and a wooden staff, carved with runes and topped with a crystal orb, held in his grasp. He looked every inch the legend, and entirely aware of it.

Binns, by contrast, had put in the bare minimum of effort. The ancient wizard had apparently decided that a simple dark robe and a parchment-coloured sash constituted a costume. If pressed, Hermione suspected he might claim to be “the concept of academia.”

A few paces away, Professor Beery was impossible to miss; a walking greenhouse of a man, his costume composed of twisting vines, bright blossoms, and a few twitching leaves that looked uncomfortably sentient. Every time he moved, a fine mist of glittering pollen puffed from his shoulders, catching the candlelight like dust motes. Hermione made a mental note to avoid him like the plague. She certainly didn’t want to be sneezing all night.

Professor Blott, meanwhile, had gone in a rather more… metallic direction. His waistcoat was covered entirely in enchanted forks that clinked in rhythm as he walked, the forks occasionally rose to attention, giving a crisp salute before clattering back into place.

Hermione stifled a laugh. Clearly, his enthusiasm for that riveting debate on Enchanted Cutlery had not yet waned.

Dippet was still mid-lecture on the “artistry of agricultural transfiguration” when his expression lit up as though he’d just remembered something wonderful.

“Ah! How splendid!” he exclaimed. “Our two brightest minds, perfectly coordinated! A triumph of staff unity, if I’ve ever seen one!”

Hermione blinked. “Coordinated?”

But Dippet was already waving excitedly toward the entrance.

She turned—and froze.

Malfoy had just entered the Great Hall.

Even under the glamour, she recognized him instantly. Something in the tilt of his head, the precision of his stride, the way he moved as though every inch of the room belonged to him. Conversation softened into a murmur as he passed, the crowd shifting unconsciously to make space.

He looked… striking.

His costume was composed of layered black fabrics that gleamed like oil in candlelight. Structured, elegant, and just shy of severe. The fitted coat was cut close to his body, while the collar swept high around his throat. Every angle of it seemed designed to command attention.

Black feathers, sleek, glossy, and faintly enchanted, fanned from his shoulders and trailed along behind him like a cape. They caught the light with each of his sure steps, and whispered as he walked, like the faint rustle of wings. A thin crown of dark metal rested over his glamoured black hair, wrought in jagged arcs that resembled feathers.

He moved through the hall like smoke given purpose, gliding, present, impossible to ignore. The students, of course, noticed. A cluster of seventh-year girls near the refreshments table all turned at once. Their expressions ranged from admiration to open swooning. One giggled into her sleeve. Another whispered something that made the rest of them dissolve into conspiratorial laughter.

Hermione rolled her eyes so hard it nearly hurt. Typical. Apparently, all it took was a dark crown and a well-cut coat to send the female population into hysterics.

She was still glaring at the poor girls when she finally registered what she was looking at: the faint emblem stitched in silver thread across his chest. A swan, elegant and luminous against the black.

Her stomach sank.

Oh, for Merlin’s sake.

Rothbart.
He’d come as Rothbart.

Which meant that Dippet’s giddy proclamation about their “coordination” wasn’t baseless. Her as Odette, him as the cursed sorcerer, it was practically choreographed.

Heat crawled up the back of her neck. The entire thing looked purposeful, as though they were two halves of the same whole. It seemed horribly intentional. The thought made her want to hex something, preferably him.

Malfoy’s gaze found hers then, and she saw the exact moment realization struck. His expression flickered — first surprise, then what looked suspiciously like mortification. A faint flush touched his cheeks before he schooled his features back into that infuriating calm.

Good. At least he was embarrassed too.

He came toward them, his stride unhurried, perfectly controlled, his dark coat stirring faintly around his boots. Hermione tried to look anywhere but at him, but the movement of those damned feathers held her gaze like a trap.

By the time he reached them, Dippet was practically vibrating with so much enthusiasm it was a wonder his hat stayed on.

“Professor Wormwood and Professor Granger!” he declared, absolutely delighted with himself. “What a magnificent pair! The very picture of balance — beauty and shadow, intellect and artistry! You must let the Daily Prophet photograph you together for the archives!”

Hermione forced a smile that felt more like a grimace.

She could already see the headline forming in her mind:
‘Professors Debut Coordinated Costumes at Hogwarts Halloween Ball.’

Simply perfect.

Dippet was still beaming, looking immensely pleased, when a burst of trumpet fanfare cut through the chatter. He jumped, straightened his hat, and cleared his throat.

“Ah—time already! Wonderful! Now, Matilda, you know the tradition,” he said, patting her on the shoulder. “The staff must open the first dance! Sets an excellent example of unity. Do make sure to find yourselves partners!”

Before either could object, he vanished into the crowd, his gold-braided shoulders bobbing like twin buoys among the sea of costumes.

Hermione exhaled slowly, her smile falling away the instant he disappeared. She made a mental note to find Dumbledore. Surely, he’d understand if she claimed him for the opening dance.

She dared a glance at Malfoy.

For a few awkward moments, silence stretched between them. The orchestra tuned behind them, a ripple of sound that trembled across the enchanted room. Then Malfoy spoke.

“Well,” he drawled, low and almost lazy, “it seems it will be rather difficult for you to deny you’ve been spying on me now.”

Hermione’s head whipped toward him. “Spying? Don’t be ridiculous. This was my idea.”

“Was it?” His tone dripped disbelief.

She crossed her arms. “Yes. Unlike some people, I don’t build my wardrobe around dramatic irony.”

One dark brow rose. “Says the woman who turned up dressed as a tragic swan.”

Her mouth opened, then closed again. “You’re the one who came as the man who curses her!”

Malfoy blinked. “Curses her?”

“Yes—Rothbart, the villain!”

He gave a short, incredulous laugh. “Villain? Merlin’s sake, Granger, where did you hear that?”

Hermione stared. “In the story. The ballet—”

“The ballet,” he interrupted, as if humouring a confused child, “is about Rothbart’s duty to protect the sacred spirit of Swan Lake, Odette. He saves her from being taken by a Muggle prince who sought to drain her power. It’s an allegory — guardianship, sacrifice, the preservation of magic. Everyone knows that.”

Her eyes widened. “Everyone—? That’s not how it goes at all! In the Muggle version, he traps her. He’s the antagonist!”

Malfoy looked genuinely baffled, then faintly amused. “Muggles wrote their own version? How typically self-congratulatory.”

“You mean,” she said, voice tightening, “that wizards stole a Muggle ballet and rewrote it to make the sorcerer look noble.”

He tilted his head. “Reinterpreted,” he corrected. “It’s a better story.”

“Better?” she echoed, incredulous. “The wizarding version glorifies a man who commits atrocities and calls it duty.”

“That’s the point,” he said calmly. “Duty isn’t always noble. It’s necessary.”

She scoffed and rolled her eyes. He would think that.

He went on, softer now, almost absently. “It was mother’s favourite. We saw it every time it toured Wizarding London. She used to say the music felt like longing given form.” A pause, then, lower: “I always thought she was right.”

Something about the admission, the softness of it, the way it didn’t quite fit the rest of him, caught her off guard. But then his expression shifted, the faint curve of a smirk sliding back into place.

“So forgive me,” he said lightly, “if I find it amusing that you’ve chosen to costume yourself as the very spirit my character swore to protect.”

Hermione bristled. “You make it sound as though I did it on purpose.”

“Didn’t you?”

“I—of course not! I’ve been planning this for weeks.”

He glanced pointedly at her feathers, then at his own, and murmured, “How convenient.”

Her retort tangled somewhere between outrage and disbelief. “You are infuriating.”

“I know.” His gaze drifted over her, from the glint of her circlet to the pale fall of silk and tulle, slow, deliberate, and far too perceptive. It felt less like admiration and more like exposure. “It suits you, though. The role.”

She opened her mouth to snap back, but the orchestra surged, melodic notes spilling through the hall. Students and staff were moving toward the floor, the air thick with spices, laughter, and the faint scent of smoke.

Hermione glanced toward Dumbledore, hoping desperately for rescue. But he was already stepping forward, offering his hand to Madam Blainey. The Hogwarts Matron, ever practical, had dressed as some manner of medieval healer — long dove-grey robes, her hair neatly pinned beneath a modest veil. The only indulgence she’d allowed herself was a wreath of dried lavender at her waist.

Dumbledore looked perfectly at ease beside her, his robes glowing faintly under the floating lanterns. The two of them lined up to dance, and the rest of the hall followed suit.

Hermione’s heart sank.

Traitor.

She turned back to Malfoy, heart thundering as he extended a hand. His dark sleeve flickering under the enchanted light. His expression was steady, polite, expectant.

“Well?” he said lightly. “We’ve been told to set an example.”

His voice was perfectly composed, but there was something else beneath it, the faintest edge of amusement, the challenge she knew all too well.

The music rose and Hermione drew herself up, every instinct in her screaming to refuse.

Instead, she placed her hand in his, the silk of his glove cool against her skin. “If you step on my toes,” she said evenly, “I’ll hex you.”

Malfoy’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “I think my toes are the ones in greater danger.”

She scoffed. “Hardly. I took dance lessons as a child. I’m not helpless.”

“Of course you did,” he murmured, that trace of amusement deepening as he led them towards the dancers. “How very thorough of you.”

She narrowed her eyes as they joined the line, “is that a problem?”

“Not at all,” he said, stepping a fraction closer to adjust their stance. “Just… relax, Granger. It’s a dance, not a duel.”

Her retort caught somewhere between annoyance and disbelief. “I am relaxed.”

He gave her a look that suggested otherwise. “You’re about as relaxed as a cat in a bathtub.”

The orchestra hummed in the background, strings testing the first trembling notes of the waltz. His hand settled at her waist — precise, almost mechanical — guiding her into the opening position. The warmth of his palm bled through the silk layers of the corset; the pressure was light, but enough to make her pulse quicken in protest.

His posture was infuriatingly perfect, spine straight, shoulders square, the embodiment of someone who had probably taken ballroom lessons since before he could read.

“Give me some credit,” he said, voice low, confident. “I was raised in proper society. I took ballroom lessons since I could walk.”

For a moment she worried he had read her thoughts.

“Of course you did.”

He moved closer to align their steps, his voice low near her ear. “You’ll have to trust me, you know. Just for three minutes.”

Her pulse jumped, and she scowled before she could stop herself. “That’s asking quite a lot.”

“I’m aware.” His tone was perfectly neutral, but the glint in his eyes betrayed his amusement.

The music began to build, a slow rise of strings warming into melody. The air shifted, soft, electric, as couples adjusted their stances. Hermione became acutely aware of every point of contact: his palm steady at her back, their joined hands hovering between them, the faintest brush of his sleeve against her wrist. She could feel the rhythm of his breathing, unhurried, calm.

His brow lifted, that infuriating half-smile tugging at his mouth. “Are you even capable of letting someone else lead, Granger?”

Her chin tilted up, eyes sharp. “When they know what they’re doing.”

Something flickered in his expression, amusement, maybe, or approval. The corner of his mouth curved further.

“Then try to keep up.”

The first notes of the waltz unfurled through the hall, slow, sweeping, regal.

Hermione’s muscles tensed instinctively as he guided her into motion. His lead was confident, every movement fluid and practised. Their steps aligned before she even had time to think about them, the rhythm pulling her forward in spite of herself.

She was forced to concede, however grudgingly, that he was as skilled as he’d implied. His confidence wasn’t posturing, it was earned.

He moved with quiet precision, the kind that required neither effort nor thought. Each turn was smooth, each shift of weight perfectly measured. His hand at her back adjusted with the music, steady and sure, guiding her as though the floor itself responded to his will.

She found her shoulders loosening despite her best intentions, her grip lightening as they fell into step. The music rose around them, swelling like a tide, and the world blurred into motion. Black and white and silver spun through a haze of candlelight.

Her skirts flared as they turned, the pale fabric catching the glow from above and scattering it like crystal. His dark coat cut sharply through it, the sweep of the feathers trailing through the air in ribbons of shadow. Every pivot brought another kaleidoscope of colour — the warm gold of lanterns, the crimson flash of passing robes, the glint of glass from the floating chandeliers overhead.

And for one impossible moment, she forgot. Forgot who she was dancing with. Forgot the weight of the room and the pretence of her borrowed name. There was only the rhythm. The clean geometry of movement, the familiar thrill of being led by someone who knew what they were doing.

She’d missed this, the clarity of it, the wordless conversation of balance and motion, the quiet joy of getting it right.

Of course, the illusion couldn’t last. Her pulse steadied. Her focus returned as the music swelled again and she caught sight of his expression — arrogant, composed, the faintest smirk playing at his mouth, as though he could sense her momentary lapse.

Hermione’s jaw tightened. Whatever grace she’d felt evaporated instantly, replaced by renewed irritation.

She refused to look at him, focusing instead on the line of his shoulder, the gleam of the feathers that brushed her each time they turned. The faint scrape of his boots against the floor, the measured drag of her own skirts, the music weaving between them. It all blurred into one taut, unbearable rhythm.

She pretended she couldn’t feel the weight of his eyes on her face. He was watching her. She knew he was. Gazing at her with that quiet amusement that made her want to both hex him and win whatever unspoken contest this was.

He caught her in a swift turn, the world tipping for a heartbeat — silk, shadow, and music spiralling, and her breath stuttered before she found her footing again.

He smiled the most insufferable smile she’d ever seen.

They completed the final turn in perfect time, his hand steady at her back as the music began its slow descent. Her skirts brushed his legs, the last sweep of motion fading into stillness.

The final notes lingered in the air, long and suspended, before fading into applause.

For a heartbeat, they remained where they were, hands still joined, the space between them charged and still. The music ended, but neither of them seemed to move right away. The warmth of his palm was still pressed against hers; she could feel the faint rhythm of his breath, warm and steady.

Then, as if suddenly aware of it, they both stepped back at once.

Hermione dropped into a hasty curtsey and he returned it with a low, faultless bow. The feathers at his shoulder dipped with him, catching the candlelight before settling again against the black of his coat.

Headmaster Dippet’s voice carried above the noise: “Marvelous! Splendid! Let the ball officially begin!”

The moment shattered.

Hermione turned from him immediately, forcing her breathing to steady as she slipped through the dispersing crowd. The swell of conversation rose again around her, laughter, music, the clinking of glass, all blurring into a single hum.

She let herself glance back once, just once.

Malfoy was still standing where she’d left him, surrounded by motion but utterly still. He wasn’t looking at anyone — only frowning down at his hand, brow drawn, his expression unreadable.

Something in her chest tightened. Of course.

Her stomach dropped. He must have only just realized what he’d done. That he’d spent an entire dance with his hand on hers. On a Muggle-born.

Old habits die hard, after all.

It must have been unbearable, she thought, for him to have to touch her.

Her mind flashed back, unbidden, to that moment several weeks earlier when she’d touched his hand, and he’d jerked away as if burned.

It shouldn’t have mattered. It didn’t matter. She didn’t care what he thought of her, she refused to.

So why did it sting?

The thought still landed like a small, uninvited weight in her chest.

Her eyes burned suddenly, traitorously. She blinked hard, turned away before anyone could see, and hurried the rest of the way to the refreshments table. The crowd seemed louder now, the lanterns too bright, her pulse too quick.

She poured herself a glass of pumpkin juice with unsteady fingers, the surface of the liquid trembling.

Ridiculous, she told herself firmly. Utterly ridiculous.

But she still couldn’t quite banish the image of him standing there — staring down at his hand, as though her touch were something he couldn’t wash off.

***

Hermione spent the rest of the night patrolling the edges of the Great Hall, pretending to supervise while watching the students whirl past in a blur. The orchestra cycled through waltzes, foxtrots, and the occasional lively quickstep that made even the ghosts bob along to the rhythm.

Malfoy remained near the periphery for most of it, speaking politely with a few colleagues and occasionally nodding to passing students. More than once, Hermione noticed a group of seventh-year girls approach him — giggling, whispering, emboldened by the atmosphere — only for him to decline each invitation to dance with effortless grace. On what grounds, she wasn’t sure. Perhaps professionalism. Perhaps disinterest.

Either way, she was glad of it. It was hardly proper for a professor to waltz with a student. She didn’t know what had gotten into those girls.

Her own evening passed without incident, a quiet conversation here, a polite smile there. Dumbledore joined her at one point near the refreshment table, remarking cheerfully on the surprisingly fine quality of the wine. He confided that he’d recently acquired a bottle of brandy from a friend in Paris and insisted she join him later in the week to try it “in the name of academic fellowship.”

She had agreed, amused and fond despite herself. It was impossible not to be, with Dumbledore.

As the night wore on, the candles began to sink lower in their sconces, dripping trails of silver wax onto the tables. The music softened; laughter turned to the low hum of tired voices.

Near midnight, she caught a small group of Slytherin boys crouched by the bowl of pumpkin juice, trying to discreetly pour firewhisky into it. They froze the instant she spoke their names; one of the rare advantages of being terrifyingly observant. She took ten points each and sent them straight to bed. Their faces were still red when they scurried from the hall.

Her final duty of the night was less dignified. Rounding one of the enormous decorative pumpkins near the entrance, she nearly walked straight into two students who had, apparently, mistaken the shadows for privacy and decided to get… handsy. The shock on their faces was only marginally less than her own.

She cleared her throat, very deliberately. “Ten points from Hufflepuff. And from Gryffindor. Now off to bed. Separately.”

They fled, robes tangled, leaving her to conclude, once again, that hormonal, adolescent recklessness appeared to be a fixed constant, regardless of the decade.

By the time the last students drifted out, and the enchantments on the instruments had begun to wear off and the Great Hall had quieted to a gentle murmur. The lanterns dimmed, the pumpkins flickered low, and the night’s glamour began to unravel.

Hermione sighed, smoothing a stray feather on her skirt. It had been an exhausting evening, not terrible, all things considered, but exhausting nonetheless.

The castle was nearly silent by the time Hermione found her way to a deserted alcove. She unfurled the Marauder’s Map with a flick of her wand, the parchment rippling like water as ink surfaced into familiar lines.

Her eyes swept over it automatically, names drifting across the page. Malfoy still in the Great Hall, speaking with Dippet. Good.

Her gaze slid over to the Slytherin dormitory.

Her brow furrowed.

No Riddle.

Her chest tightened. She blinked, certain she’d missed it, and scanned again, faster now, her finger tracing corridors and staircases, eyes darting from name to name.

Still nothing.

Then — there. A single dot, pulsing faintly in the depths of the castle.

Tom Riddle

In the restricted section of the library.

A cold breath escaped her before she could stop it.

She folded the map in one sharp movement and pulled the invisibility cloak from her bag. The air seemed to cool the instant the fabric settled around her shoulders.

The corridors were empty. The faint light of the torches stretched and bent across the walls as she passed, and every sound, the whisper of her shoes against the stone, the distant sigh of the castle, felt amplified in the silence.

The doors to the library gave a long, slow groan as she pushed them open.

Inside, the world had narrowed to shadow and candlelight. Her breath formed a cloud in the air, catching on the thin glow from the moonlight. The Restricted Section waited at the far end, its shelves towering and black, the chained books glinting dully in the dark.

A candle burned somewhere deep within.

Hermione moved toward it, silent beneath the cloak, her heartbeat loud in her ears. The brief, slow scrape of a quill reached her.

Rounding the corner, she saw him.

Tom Riddle sat alone at one of the narrow study tables, surrounded by a scatter of open books. The candle in the centre flickered weakly, its light cutting across the sharp planes of his face. He wasn’t writing anymore. He was simply looking — eyes fixed on the page before him, expression unreadable.

Hermione slipped off the cloak and rounded the bookshelf. “Mr. Riddle.”

 He looked up slowly, his gaze finding her through the shadows.

“Professor Wormwood.” His voice was calm, almost gentle. “You startled me.”

Hermione stepped closer, her shoes scuffing against the floor. “It’s well past curfew.”

A slight pause. Then, quietly, “Yes. I know.”

He placed his quill on top of the book with careful precision. “I couldn’t sleep. I thought I’d read a little. I am sorry, Professor.”

“Reading,” she repeated. Her eyes flicked to the chained volumes beside him. “In the Restricted Section.”

His expression didn’t change. “Curiosity,” he said simply. “Nothing more.”

Hermione came closer, glancing down at the half-covered page. The text was cramped and spidery, ink faded brown with age. Her stomach turned as she caught the diagrams — circles of runes, fragmented Latin, sigils she recognized all too well.

“Curiosity.” she echoed.

Riddle inclined his head, a small, almost elegant gesture. “It’s nothing,” he said lightly. “Just theory. I merely found it… interesting. Purely academic.”

Hermione forced a small, neutral smile. “Of course.”

His gaze lingered on her face, searching. “Knowledge is harmless on its own, isn’t it?”

She kept her tone even, her expression unreadable. “Yes, it is.”

A pause. Something in his gaze shifted. It wasn’t curious or afraid, but measuring, as though he were quietly cataloguing what she would say. “Then I suppose there’s no harm done.”

“None at all,” she said, matching his calm.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. The candle sputtered between them, its light thinning over the page.

Then he stood and straightened, smoothing the front of his robes as if nothing about this encounter was out of the ordinary. “I’ll return to the dormitory.”

“That would be wise,” she affirmed.

“Yes, Professor.” He moved to pick up the book he had been reading.

“Leave it,” she said.

He stopped, then slowly returned his hands to his sides. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet, a mirror of her own. “Of course.”

The way he said it — the precision of her tone in his mouth — sent a shiver up her spine.

He bowed his head and she watched him walk away, his steps soundless on the stone. The door creaked shut behind him, leaving the library in silence.

Hermione stood still for a long time before moving closer to the table. The book lay open where he’d left it, the candlelight guttering weakly against its pages. She leaned down, eyes tracing the words.

The pages recounted the lineage of old wizarding families — the Gaunts among them — their bloodlines marked with sigils of dominance and decay. Margins filled with symbols and spells she knew were binding oaths: servitude, control, inheritance through fear.

On the bottom right corner of the page, an image. A drawing, to be precise, of a ring she had seen in a different time.

The chill that ran through her then had nothing to do with the castle’s draft.

She closed the book with a trembling hand.

It was beginning.

Chapter Text

Draco sat at his desk, elbows resting on the worn wood, the classroom still warm from the residual heat of the cauldrons. The faint hum of the torches along the dungeon walls filled the silence, low and steady.

He wasn’t thinking about the ball.

He wasn’t.

It had been three days, and there were far more important things to occupy his mind than the image of candlelight catching in her hair or the feeling of her delicate hand clasped in his.

He sat back and gripped the armrests of his chair. It was ridiculous how easily the memories crept in, like a draught sneaking under a door.

The unspoken challenge in her amber eyes. The surprised little gasp when he’d spun her. The warmth that radiated through her corset.

He’d simply been studying her. It was a subconscious habit at this point.

Yes, that was all, just observations born of routine.

He exhaled through his nose, sharp and impatient, and pushed back his chair. Sitting here was useless. He needed movement, something to do, anything to keep his thoughts from wandering.

The air felt thick, like it was pressing in on him.

It was ten minutes before Riddle’s lesson. Enough time to fetch a few ingredients from the stores.

Yes, that would do.

He left the room, guided by the flickering light of the torches dancing along the stone walls as he made his way down the corridor. The scent of earth and bitter herbs met him as he pulled open the heavy door. Jars lined the shelves: hellebore, dittany, belladonna. He ran a finger along the edge of one, watching dust cling to his skin.

The dungeon was quiet except for the faint crackle of fire behind him.

He reached for a vial of powdered mandrake root, stopping when something pricked at the back of his neck—a slow, creeping awareness that crawled beneath his skin.

He’d felt it before.

He held his breath and listened.

The feeling sharpened, unmistakable now. The air itself seemed to tighten, charged with the kind of silence that preceded disaster.

He turned his head just slightly, scanning the shadows. Nothing. Just the faint shimmer of light against stone. He told himself he was being paranoid.

Still…

He took a slow step out of the cupboard, senses straining.

There it was again, the shift of weight, so soft it might have been imagined, the faintest disturbance in the air behind him.

He spun, wand snapping up out of reflex—

—and collided with something solid.

“Oof! Oh bloody—” a flurry of motion. Then the air rippled, bent, and peeled away to reveal a familiar figure clutching her face and swearing under her breath.

“Granger?” His voice came out sharp, incredulous. “What in Merlin’s—were you—under an invisibility cloak?”

She glared up at him, eyes watering, one hand pressed to her nose.

He blinked once. Then again.

Realisation hit.

“I knew it!” Draco’s voice rang off the dungeon walls, wild with vindication. He didn’t care that he’d lost all sense of composure—Merlin, he’d been right. “I knew you were spying on me!”

Granger’s hand was still clamped over her nose. “You hit me!” she said thickly, her voice muffled and nasal.

“Well, you shouldn’t have been spying on me!” he shot back, grinning despite himself. The rush of satisfaction was almost dizzying. “I should hardly be held accountable for actions against Grangers unseen!”

She let out a strangled, furious sound—half squeak, half growl. “Maybe if you’d actually listened to me for once, I wouldn’t have had to spy on you!”

“Listened—?” He barked a laugh. “You’ve been slinking around under an invisibility cloak like a criminal, and I’m the problem?”

“Oh, forgive me for trying to make sure you don’t kill a student!” she snapped, stamping her foot hard enough to echo. “You’ve been trying to carry out your ill-planned murder plots for weeks, Malfoy! What else was I supposed to do?”

He raised a brow, delighting in the way her temper flared. “I don’t know, was spying really necessary? You could’ve just shouted at me again about that morality nonsense like you always do.”

“I had to!” she shot back, jabbing her finger at him. “You’ve ignored every warning I’ve given you. I’d lecture you and then you just sneak off to try again!”

“I didn’t sneak,” he said, voice edged with self-satisfaction. “I told you exactly what I planned to do. You just didn’t like it.”

“Because it’s reckless, Malfoy!” she snapped. “You have no idea what you would cause! You could unravel our entire timeline!”

He rolled his eyes. “You keep saying that as if the timeline isn’t already in ruins. We’re standing in nineteen thirty–bloody–eight, Granger. I’d say the damage is done.”

“That’s not how this works!” she fired back, still clutching at her nose. “You don’t just change one thing and hope for the best. You could make it worse—so much worse!”

“It’s Riddle,” he said flatly. “It really, truly, cannot get any worse.”

Her eyes widened in disbelief. “Brilliant. Truly inspired. You’ve clearly thought this through.”

“I have!” he said, pointing at himself. “Thoroughly!” He hadn’t.

“Oh, yes, I can tell,” she muttered. “Your thoroughness really shines through in the way you just punched me in the face.”

“I didn’t punch you, I—” He stopped, gesturing vaguely. “—defended myself from a perceived threat!”

“You’re impossible!”

“And you’re a terrible liar.” He crossed his arms over his chest and raised his brows at her expectantly.

She glared up at him, breathing hard. He grinned at her.

He caught the faint trickle of red slipping down her chin. His grin faltered.

“Oh, hell.” She grimaced.

The rush of satisfaction bled out of him at once. He blinked, heart stuttering.

“Granger—wait.” He reached toward her and stopped, suddenly very unsure of what to do with his hands.

“I’m fine,” she said, trying to turn away.

“You’re bleeding.” He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief, but she jerked back.

“You think I haven’t realised that?” she seethed.

He held up the handkerchief, “just let me—”

“I said don’t!” Her voice cracked as she stepped away from him and looked down towards her feet. “You’ve done enough.”

The words hit harder than he’d like to admit. He dropped the handkerchief slowly, the corners of his mouth twitching into something that was almost a frown.

Silence settled between them—heavy, awkward, and far too loud.

Draco’s throat felt dry. He shifted his weight, but the movement only drew her eyes, sharp and unreadable, back to him. The air felt too thin, pressing tight against his ribs. For a ridiculous moment, he thought he might actually be sick.

Say something, he told himself. Apologise. But his tongue refused to move. The creeping panic crawled up the back of his neck, cold and absurdly human. He’d faced death, humiliation, war, and yet it was this, her scathing silence, that made his pulse stumble.

She looked away first. The smallest mercy.

And then—

“Professor Granger?”

They both spun.

“What?!” they snapped at once.

Tom Riddle stood in the corridor, eyes flicking from Draco’s raised hand to the blood on Granger’s face.

Riddle blinked, expression perfectly unaffected. “I came for our lesson, sir.”

Draco straightened his robes in a single sharp motion, face smoothing back into something almost professional. “Yes, well,” he said, tone clipped, “Professor Wormwood has had… an incident. She’ll need to visit the hospital wing. Our lesson is cancelled for today.”

Riddle’s gaze lingered on Granger a little too long, dark and assessing. “Are you all right, Professor?”

“I’m fine, Mr. Riddle, no need for concern.” she said tightly.

“Until class then,” Riddle murmured, though his eyes flicked once more toward Draco before he turned and left.

Silence stretched in his wake.

Draco sighed, rubbing a hand down his face. “Well,” he muttered, “that went about as well as could be expected.”

Granger looked like she was trying to hex him using sheer will.

Draco exhaled through his nose, the last of his triumph dissolving as another drop of blood fell from her chin. He dragged a hand through his hair, muttering, “Right. Let’s get you to the hospital wing.”

“I don’t need an escort,” she said sharply, wiping at her face with the sleeve of her robe.

He gave her a flat look. “Yes, well, my mother would have my head if she heard I’d let a bleeding witch wander off alone.”

“Oh, please,” she said. “Your mother isn’t here, and I’m perfectly capable of walking myself.”

I’m aware,” he said dryly. “Generations of pure-blood etiquette drilled into me—can’t very well ignore it now.”

Granger raised a brow. “You make it sound like escorting me is some sort of penance.”

“It’s called upbringing,” he replied. “Don’t take it personally.”

She let out scoff. “You’re impossible.”

“Oh, just bloody start walking then, will you? Honestly.”

She rolled her eyes so hard he half-expected them to stay that way, but she said nothing else. Together they set off down the dim corridor, their footsteps echoing against the stone. For a long moment, the only sound was the faint, wet sniff she tried and failed to disguise.

He tried not to look at her, tried not to notice the way her shoulders were drawn tight, or how the torchlight caught the faint smear of red on her lips.

He cleared his throat. “You have Potter’s cloak.”

Her head snapped toward him. “What?”

“The cloak,” he said, tone clipped. “You have Potter’s cloak. Honestly, I should have known. I’m disappointed in myself, frankly, that I didn’t consider it sooner.”

Hermione huffed, pressing her sleeve to her nose again. “You were too busy being paranoid.”

He shot her a sidelong glance. “And yet, apparently, not paranoid enough.”

That earned the faintest twitch at the corner of her mouth—too fleeting to be called a smile, but close enough that it left something strange and restless sitting in his chest.

Madam Blainey took one look at Granger’s bloodied nose and let out a scandalized gasp loud enough to wake the portraits. “Good heavens, what happened to you?”

Draco folded his arms, the picture of calm professionalism. “An unfortunate incident,” he said smoothly, “involving a misplaced elbow and poor visibility.”

The matron fixed him with a glare that suggested she doubted that very much, then ushered Granger toward a cot with brisk efficiency. “Sit. Tip your head back. No—not that far, unless you’d like to choke on it.”

Granger obeyed with visible irritation, wincing as Blainey pressed a charm-cooled cloth to her face. She turned her head just enough to pin Draco with a look sharp enough to carve his epitaph.

He raised a brow in answer, a silent, smug exchange that lasted all of two heartbeats before Blainey clucked at him to get out of her infirmary.

“Professor Wormwood will be fine,” she said, already bustling for a bottle of dittany. “Assuming no one else assaults her on the way back to her quarters.”

“Duly noted,” Draco murmured, and slipped out before Granger could weaponize one of her shoes.

His footsteps echoed through the corridor, steady and measured, though his pulse wasn’t.

He huffed, running a hand through his hair again. Merlin, what a spectacle.

He’d been right, of course, gloriously right, but the satisfaction had curdled, tainted by the image of her clutching her nose, cheeks flushed with fury as the blood dripped down her chin.

He hadn’t meant to hit her.
How could he have? She’d been invisible.

Still, the sound of it, the sudden, startled cry, lingered unpleasantly. Reflex or not, it hadn’t felt good.

He pressed a hand over his face and groaned. Potter’s cloak. Of course it was.

How had he not seen it? The quiet shifts of air that never matched the draughts, doors easing shut when no one was there, that prickle at the back of his neck he’d blamed on nerves. It was all maddeningly obvious now, obvious in the way things only were once you’d already made a fool of yourself.

But one thing didn’t fit.

The cloak explained why he hadn’t seen her. It didn’t explain how she’d always known where he was.

He slowed, turning the thought over as he descended the stairway. There was something deliberate about it, the way she always appeared at just the wrong time, the uncanny precision. Luck had nothing to do with that.

His smirk returned, colder this time.

If she wanted to keep secrets, fine. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t uncover them.

A bit of reconnaissance. Nothing drastic, just a peek behind the curtain. Her quarters, her desk, whatever she’d tucked away under all that self-righteous moral superiority.

It was only fair after all, she’d been spying on him for months.

He could certainly return the favour.

Draco adjusted his sleeve cuffs as he walked, already running through the logistics in his head.

***

Three days.

That was how long she’d been avoiding him, not that he was counting. Though, if he had been, he’d say it took a certain kind of determination to glare at someone that many times in passing without once breaking stride.

Fine. Let her sulk. It only made things simpler.

The faculty tower was nearly silent as he watched the door to her chambers. The corridor was dim and hushed, the torches low and guttering in their sconces. Old portraits snored faintly in heavy gilt frames, and the whole place smelled faintly of wax and dust, the scent of overeducated solitude.

Draco stood invisible in the shadow of a stone archway, wand at the ready, the cool prickle of a Disillusionment Charm crawling along his skin. His boots made no sound; he’d silenced them before climbing the spiral stair, just in case. He wasn’t about to be caught skulking by a ghost, or worse, by her.

From behind the door opposite him came the muted scrape of movement, then the faint rustle of fabric. The latch clicked.

Granger stepped out, wrapped in a red and gold striped dressing gown. It was garishly Gryffindor in his personal opinion.

She was clearly ready for her daily ritual, an evening bath followed by solitude and a staggering amount of tea and books. Probably. He wasn’t entirely sure, but it certainly seemed like the way Granger would spend her evenings.

Her dressing gown swished to and fro as she started down the hall toward the faculty baths, slippers shuffling against the stone.

He moved, his steps swift, silent and practiced.

The door was just beginning to swing shut when he slipped a hand through the narrowing gap, catching it before the latch could click.

Timing. Always about the timing.

He eased it open just enough to slip through sideways, letting it close again without a sound. The faint hum of her warding charm lingered in the frame, undisturbed.

A small, satisfied smile touched his mouth. “Honestly,” he murmured under his breath, “you’d think the witch would check her periphery.”

Her chambers greeted him in their usual state of overwhelming disarray. Books were stacked in teetering piles on every available surface, the desk a battlefield of ink-stained parchment and open volumes. The walls were worse, covered in notes, arithmancy diagrams, runes inked in a dozen colours, all linked by bits of string that crossed and crisscrossed the stone like the web of a particularly obsessive spider.

Three plants huddled on the windowsill, one of them drooping toward the light as if exhausted. The faint scent of tea, parchment, and rosemary hung in the air.

He let the Disillusionment Charm fall away; the magic slid from his skin like water.

It was exactly as he remembered it, chaotic, excessive, uncomfortably alive. A room that thrummed with thought, as if it had opinions of its own.

Draco’s mouth curved. “Still opposed to organization,” he chastised, stepping over a stack of books that had been converted into a makeshift end table.

There was method to the madness, he knew that much. He’d seen her frantically scribbling notes before, talking to herself in half-finished theories. What looked like disorder was, in its way, a map of her mind. Infuriatingly brilliant. Disastrously untidy.

He walked over to the desk, where parchment lay scattered in an uneven fan. He brushed one aside, and caught sight of something folded, the edges soft from use.

No headings, no visible ink. Just a plain, well-worn page.

He frowned, picking it up by one corner.

It thrummed faintly in his hand, that quiet, unmistakable pulse of dormant enchantment.

“Well, well,” he murmured. “What might you be?”

He held it to the light. Nothing. Not even the faintest shimmer.

He drew his wand, lips curling. “Revelio.”

The parchment remained perfectly blank.

His brow furrowed. All right. Fine. “Specialis revelio.”

The silence stretched. Then, unfurling like a ripple in a pond, words began to appear, jagged, shaky, and unmistakably sarcastic.

‘Congratulations, you’ve discovered paper.’

Draco blinked. “What?”

More ink scrawled itself lazily across the page.

‘Truly, a master of observation. Do write home about it.’

His mouth fell into a sneer. “Excuse me?”

The script shifted.

‘You smell like overcompensation and hair tonic.’

“Oh, absolutely not.” He jabbed the parchment with his wand. “I’ll have you know this hair costs more than—” He stopped, catching himself, and glared down at the sheet instead. “All right, clever little hex, let’s see what you really are. Aparecium!”

The letters rearranged again, smug as sin.

‘Latin. How original. Never heard that one before.’

Draco’s jaw tightened. “You insufferable bit of parchment—”

‘You’re making an arse of yourself, by the way.’

“Oh, for Merlin’s sake—”

He leaned over the desk, muttering a string of increasingly creative counter-charms, none of which produced anything but fresh insults. Each one grew more aggravating than the last:

‘Ooh, fancy. Someone read the advanced section.’

‘Ten points from Slytherin for terminal arrogance.’

‘Does that wand compensate for something?’

By the fifth one, his patience had thinned to a dangerous degree.

“I could burn you,” he hissed.

‘Sulking dramatically will not improve results. Consider tea and a nap.’

He was half a second from casting Incendio, when a creak sounded from outside the door.

Draco froze, ears straining.

Surely, she couldn’t be back already.

The latch gave a quiet click.

He had just enough time to swear under his breath before diving beneath her desk and disillusioning himself, robes tangling around his knees. His shoulder clipped the leg of the chair; it scraped loudly against the floor, echoing like thunder in the otherwise silent room.

The door opened.

The scent reached him first, soap and steam and something herbal that was unmistakably her. It drifted into the room the moment the door creaked open.

Draco held his breath.

This could not be happening.

Granger stepped inside, humming faintly, hair damp and curling at the ends, cheeks pink from the heat of the bath. She crossed to the mirror, combing her fingers through her hair, completely unaware that a disillusioned intruder crouched beneath her desk.

Bloody hell.

If she turned—Merlin, if she so much as looked his way—she’d see the shimmer of the charm. He needed her to move. Anywhere. The wardrobe, her bed chamber, the damned window, just long enough for him to have a chance to slip out unseen.

He watched, heart racing, as she languidly twisted her hair and secured it atop her head with her wand.

Then, with a terrible inevitability, she reached for the tie at her waist.

His stomach bottomed out.

Granger, he pleaded in his mind, don’t.

He prayed for some sort of divine intervention. Perhaps a well timed knock at the door or a bird crashing through her window. Anything.

She undid the tie.

Oh dear god.

In a moment of pure horror, the dressing gown fell to the floor.

Hermione Granger stood before him. Nude.

The moment was so sudden it felt like the air had been punched out of the room. Draco jerked away from her on reflex, a sharp, graceless flinch that sent the top of his head cracking hard against the underside of the desk. The noise was appallingly loud in the silence, a heavy thunk that seemed to echo straight through his skull.

Pain bloomed behind his eyes. He clamped a hand over his mouth, biting back a groan.

Please, for the love of Salazar, let him get out of here unseen. He didn’t care who was listening—Merlin, the fates, the castle itself—he’d take anything. He’d learned his lesson. Truly.

I’ll never snoop again, he promised whatever divine being would listen, not into her rooms, not into her papers, not into anything. Ever.

“Who’s there?”

He was a dead man.

Her voice went sharp. A wand whipped into view. “Finite!”

The world shimmered, and Draco knew he was suddenly, unmistakably visible, crouched beneath her desk like a burglar caught mid-crime.

“Fuck,” he groaned.

Granger screamed.

It wasn’t even a proper scream, really. More a strangled, banshee-like noise that seemed to rattle the windowpanes. She stumbled backward, frantically attempting to snatch her discarded dressing gown from the floor.

He scrambled out from under the desk on his hands and knees.

“WHAT IN MERLIN’S NAME—? What are you—? You absolute—!”

Draco shot to his feet, mortified. “Wait—Granger—I can explain—”

“Explain?! ” she shrieked, the dressing gown slipping from her grasp. “You’re in my room!”

His face was burning so hot he could feel it in his ears. Don’t look at her tits, Malfoy. Eyes up. Ceiling. Good man. For the love of Salazar, don’t look at Granger’s tits.

He looked at her tits.

Fuck.

“Malfoy!” She shouted as she finally managed to wrap the dressing gown around herself.

His gaze shot up and he stared fixedly at a crack in the stone. “This isn’t— it’s not— I wasn’t—!”

Merlin, he was cocking this up.

“Oh my god! Oh my god, what did you see?!” she was screeching now, clutching her robe to her body like armour.

“Nothing!” Draco blurted. “Nothing! I didn’t see a—anything!”

He had.

“Oh, that’s convincing!” she snapped. “You— you absolute pervert!”

“I’m not—” he started, voice cracking halfway through the denial. “I wasn’t—this isn’t—”

“You were hiding under my desk!” she shouted, red-faced and wild-eyed. “What were you doing? Collecting material for your disgusting little fantasies?!”

Draco’s mouth fell open in horror. “What?! Absolutely not! Merlin, woman, I was— I was investigating… something!”

“Oh, that’s what we’re calling it?”

“Would you please stop?” he said desperately, hands half-raised like she was holding him at wandpoint, still avoiding her eyes. “This isn’t— I’m not some sort of—”

“Pig?” she supplied, voice pitching higher. “Because that’s the word I’d use!”

He winced. “Granger, for the love of— I was under the desk for reasons entirely unrelated to you!”

“Oh, that makes it so much better!”

“It does!” he insisted, though he sounded like a man arguing for his own execution. “I was— I was— doing research!”

She barked a laugh. “Research.”

“Yes!” he exclaimed, flustered beyond recovery. “For a— a project!”

“You’re unbelievable!” she spat. “You absolute creep! You disgusting, insufferable—ugh! You’re vile!”

There was, quite plainly, no recovering from this. He’d accepted it. The situation called for immediate evacuation and quiet denial thereafter.

“Completely agreed,” he said quickly, backing hastily toward the door. “Terribly sorry. I—I’ll just be leaving now.”

“Do!” she snapped. “And if you ever come near my quarters again, I swear—”

“I won’t!” he said, tripping over a pile of books. “Believe me, I have never wanted to be anywhere less!”

For one agonizing moment they both stood there as he fumbled with the door handle. She trembling with fury, and he scarlet and mortified, before he managed a strangled, “right. Excellent talk,” and fled through the door, dignity in shambles.

***

The door slammed.

Silence rushed in behind it, thick and ringing.

Hermione stood frozen in the centre of the room, breath shallow, heart hammering like it was trying to punch its way out of her ribs. The air still smelled faintly of soap.

She pressed a shaking hand to her mouth. “Oh my God.”

Her cheeks burned so hot she thought they might actually ignite. Her ears too. Her everything.

She let out a strangled noise, halfway between a groan and a laugh, then pressed both palms to her eyes. “He saw me,” she whispered. “Oh, Merlin—he actually saw me.”

The words made her stomach twist all over again. She could still feel the heat crawling up her neck, the sheer horror of it.

She paced once, then again, dressing gown trailing around her ankles. The movement did nothing to cool her off. Her pulse was still a live wire, snapping at every thought that tried to make sense of what had just happened.

Her mortification came in waves. Malfoy blinking up at her from the floor. The brief flash of shame on his face when she’d caught him.

Her own hands scrambling for the robe, fingers useless, slipping, shaking.

And him—Good, Godric—red as a furnace, pretending not to look. Pretending badly.
The memory clawed at her chest. He’d seen her. Properly. Entirely.
Heat flared under her skin, sharp and humiliating.

She buried her face in her hands again and made a sound that could have been a scream if she hadn’t swallowed it.

“Idiot. Absolute—idiot,” she muttered, though she wasn’t entirely sure whether she meant him or herself.

It took several long, deliberate breaths before her pulse started to slow. Before she could force her shoulders down from around her ears. Her throat felt raw. Her dignity, shredded beyond recognition.

Her nose twinged faintly as she exhaled, a sharp reminder of that other humiliation, the moment she’d gotten careless. Too close, too confident in her own stealth. She’d practically brushed past him under the cloak; no wonder he’d noticed the disturbance in the air.

Brilliant work, Hermione.

She touched the bridge of her nose, wincing at the memory. He hadn’t meant to hit her, she knew that much, but the discovery had been inevitable. She’d all but delivered it to him on a silver platter.

And now, apparently, he’d decided that justified this. Spying on her.

She supposed, technically, it was fair. Infuriatingly, logically fair. She’d been tracking him for months; perhaps turnabout really was fair play.

But in her rooms?

Her jaw clenched, heat spiking up her neck again. There were boundaries, basic, civilized boundaries, and he’d bulldozed straight through them with that smug, nosy, aristocratic nerve of his.

Her rooms. Of all places.

She drew a slow breath, forcing her shoulders down, willing the shaking in her hands to stop. Enough. Focus.

Her gaze swept the room, half on autopilot, searching for a problem she could actually solve. That was safer. Manageable.

Then she saw it.

The parchment lay half under the desk, rumpled and inconspicuous.

A slow, incredulous dread crept up her spine as she crouched and plucked it from the floor. The moment her fingers brushed the surface, the faint pulse of old enchantment thrummed back against her skin.

The map.

Of course. Of course he’d been trying to read it.

Her jaw clenched. “You nosy, pointy little ferret,” she hissed under her breath.

She turned the map over once.

Sprawled across the very centre in confident, looping script, was:

‘Somewhere, a portrait is judging you.’

For a moment, she just stared, caught between disbelief and the slow, helpless crawl of amusement spreading through her chest.

“Oh, that’s perfect,” she breathed, a laugh bubbling up despite everything.

So he had tried to read it. Of course he had. And, apparently, it had gone exactly as he deserved.

Hermione shook her head, some of the tension finally bleeding out of her shoulders. “Serves you right,” she murmured, folding the map with a careful hand.

She set it on her desk, deciding she could dissect the Malfoy situation more later. There were more important things to occupy her mind. Things that mattered.

Riddle’s research, for one. Dangerous and worrisome, but… steerable. If she could find the right angle, the right way to frame it, she could turn it to her advantage.

Yes. That was what she needed, structure, strategy, something sane.

She reached for a quill, pushing stray strands of hair from her face as she sat. The embarrassment was still there, simmering beneath her ribs, but she could bury it under strategy and logic for now.

She had work to do.

Chapter Text

The last streaks of daylight slipped through the narrow windows of the Defence Against The Dark Arts classroom, staining the walls in diluted bronze.

Hermione inhaled the scent of parchment and chalk that hung thickly in the air. The smell was normally dry, comforting, and familiar. And yet tonight it felt almost oppressive.

It was too quiet. The kind of silence that made her pulse sound louder in her ears, that pressed against her ribs until she felt she might burst from the inside out.

Hermione paced the length of the room, shoes clicking rhythmically against the floorboards. Every sound, each step, each creak, seemed magnified in the stillness. She’d rehearsed this in her head again and again: how she would greet him, what she would say, how much warmth to show and when to pull back. Everything had to be measured. Controlled. He needed to believe she was sympathetic, curious, someone who could be guided or perhaps even won over.

A candle guttered on her desk, its flame bowing toward the faint draft that whispered under the door. The light trembled over the room, glancing across the dragon skeleton strung high above. Shadows gathered at the edges of the walls, deepening as the sun slipped further toward the horizon.

Her fingers found the ring on her hand. She twisted it once, twice, again. The habit almost subconscious. It steadied her, gave her something to do while her thoughts spun like threads winding tighter around her chest. Her palms were slick; she hastily rubbed them against her robes and tried to breathe through the rising tension.

He’s just a boy, she told herself. A clever, lonely boy with too many questions and no one to answer them.

The words tasted like ash even as she thought them. Because she knew better. She knew exactly what he was becoming.

When the hinges groaned and the door creaked open, the sound made her spine go rigid.

“Good evening, Professor.”

He said it lightly, the corners of the word softened by that careful politeness he wore like an intricate mask.

He stepped inside, closing the door with quiet finality, and began to cross the room. His movements had an unnerving ease about them, each step fluid as though he were gliding rather than walking. The fading light caught in his eyes as he approached, and for a fleeting second, they almost seemed to glow.

“I thought we might hold our lesson in the library this evening,” Hermione said, walking toward her desk. “Some of the texts there will serve you better than what I have here.”

His brows lifted, faint surprise flickering across his expression. The first genuine emotion she had seen from him. It quickly smoothed back into neutrality. “In the library, Professor?”

“Yes.” She gathered a stack of parchment from her desk, tucking it neatly beneath one arm. “I’ve arranged for access to the Restricted Section. I thought it would be… useful.”

He hesitated. “After the other night,” he said slowly, “are you certain?”

Hermione forced a small, dismissive smile. It was the kind a teacher gives when a student says something overly dramatic. “Oh, I think it’s perfectly reasonable. It’s only natural to be curious about one’s family, Mr. Riddle. And if there are answers to be found, you should have the chance to find them, with proper supervision, of course.”

For a moment, his gaze lingered on her, searching. Then came that slight tilt of the head, the polite half-smile. “You’re too kind, Professor.”

“Kindness has nothing to do with it,” she replied evenly. “It’s simply right.”

Something in his expression sharpened. He nodded once. “Then I’m grateful for your guidance.”

She gestured toward the door. “Shall we?”

As they walked, the last of the daylight clung stubbornly to the corridor, pooling in the seams of old stone as the world dimmed around it. November had a way of stealing the sun early, leaving the castle bathed in amber one moment and shadow the next. The sconces along the walls burned steadily, their flames stretching tall, sending thin fingers of light reaching towards each other across the vaulted ceiling.

From deeper within the castle came the hum of celebration. The first Quidditch match of the season had ended mere hours ago, and the aftermath still rolled through the halls—bursts of laughter, the clatter of goblets, the rhythmic chant of a victory song. By the sound of it, Slytherin had won.

Hermione could almost picture it: the banners, the butterbeer, the crowded tables of flushed faces. The air itself carried the remnants of the feast, roast meat, baked bread, and spun sugar, warm and thick with life. She wondered if Malfoy had been there. It was only natural, seeing as he was acting head of Slytherin house.

She jolted. Why was she thinking about Malfoy?

With a subtle shake of her head, she refocused her thoughts back to the boy next to her.

“Did you attend the Quidditch match, Mr. Riddle?” she asked, glancing sidelong at him.

“Quidditch,” he said mildly, “is... entertaining, I suppose, for those who value noise and spectacle over genuine accomplishment.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “I prefer pursuits of more… lasting consequence.”

Hermione smiled before she could stop herself. Well, she thought, that was one thing they could agree on.

As they continued, a pair of owls swept down the length of the corridor, wings whispering through the dim air. Hermione’s gaze followed them until they vanished into the dark, and a familiar ache stirred beneath her ribs. It had been weeks since she’d flown. Since she’d felt the sharp bite of wind and the clean, quiet of the sky. Perhaps, she thought, she might go out tonight. Just a short flight. It would do her good.

She pulled her gaze back to the corridor ahead, the moment fading like the last note of a song.

They walked the rest of the way in silence. Their footsteps echoed softly, a constant rhythm beneath the distant hum of the castle.

Riddle kept to her side, his posture impeccable, but there was a strange detachment to him—as though his attention was turned inward, his thoughts occupied by something vast and private. His eyes weren’t fixed ahead; they flicked from the portraits to the vaulted ceiling, then to her, studying her face with the same quiet intensity he gave to ancient texts.

Hermione kept her focus forward, careful to match his pace. It wasn’t fear, exactly, that unsettled her, it was the sense that his calm was only surface-deep, the kind of stillness that comes right before the lightning strikes.

They reached the library doors. Inside, the scent of parchment and dust wrapped around them like smoke. Madam Scribner watched their approach with a tight-lipped expression but said nothing as they made their way towards the back.

As they approached, the gate to the Restricted Section groaned open, its old wards rippling in recognition of her magic. The perks of being a professor.

“Stay close,” Hermione murmured.

They passed between shelves that leaned inward as if to eavesdrop. The air was different here, heavy with forbidden knowledge. Candles guttered low, and dust clung to the ancient volumes.

Hermione found a secluded table, one still touched by the last light of day. The sunset reached through the narrow windows in fractured streaks, painting the edges of the books and the grain of the wood in gold. Beyond that small pool of warmth, the Restricted Section stretched into shadow.

Riddle brushed a hand over the spines on the nearest shelf.

Hermione watched the movement— unhurried, the kind of touch that suggested ownership rather than awe—as his fingers trailed along the dust. “Go on,” she said lightly. “Pull whatever stands out to you. We can review them together.”

He glanced at her, expression polite, as though emotion were an art form he’d studied but never truly understood.

“That way,” she continued, forcing her tone to stay even, “if something raises questions or concerns, you can ask me directly.”

It was the safest phrasing she could manage; an invitation wrapped neatly around a warning. Better that he come to her with his curiosities than follow them alone in the dark.

They began stacking books across the table, their covers heavy with dust and years. The Line of Gaunt, Pureblood Dynasties and Their Decline, Hereditary Hexcraft, The Life of Salazar Slytherin: A Comprehensive Study. The bindings creaked as they opened them, the air filling with the scent of age.

Riddle leaned over one of the volumes, fingertips gliding across an embossed sigil of a serpent twined around a sword. “Fascinating, isn’t it?” he murmured, tracing the image as though it were sacred. “The Gaunts. I’ve learned they were descended from Salazar Slytherin himself.”

Hermione kept her tone even. “Yes. A family line descended from a great wizard,” she said. “Though history remembers them more for their downfall than their achievements.”

His eyes flicked toward her, sharp and glinting in the waning light. “My mother was a Gaunt, wasn’t she?”

Hermione hesitated for only a moment before nodding. “Merope Gaunt. She lived in a small village near Little Hangleton. From what I’ve gathered, she was quiet… overlooked. Even amongst her own family.”

He absorbed this silently, eyes lowered to the page. Then, after a pause, he said, “And my sire was—”

He stopped.

The word sire had been clipped, brittle. Too sharp for someone speaking of his own blood. His gaze flicked up to meet hers, dark and searching.

Instead of continuing, he changed course. “Do forgive me if this is rude, Professor,” he said, his tone careful, “are you a pureblood?”

Hermione blinked. “That’s quite a personal question.”

He gave a nod. “Of course. I only wondered. I know such things aren’t spoken of openly amongst faculty.”

She regarded him for a beat, pretending to consider, then said lightly, “No, I’m a half-blood. My mother’s a witch, she teaches at Ilvermorny in America, and my father’s a Muggle, though I‘ve never met him.”

Something in his expression tightened, almost imperceptibly. The faintest curl of distaste touched his mouth before he smoothed it away.

“Not entirely unlike your own parents, Mr. Riddle” she added, feigning casualness.

“Yes,” he said curtly. “Not unlike.” His gaze dropped back to the open book, the muscles in his jaw flexing.

A quiet stretched between them. Then he asked, in a voice that had cooled again, “What happened to the Gaunts?”

Hermione folded her hands in front of her. “They dwindled. Generations of inbreeding and isolation. Their home fell into ruin. By the time your mother was born, they had nothing left but their name.”

He studied the text as she spoke, the fading light casting half his face in amber and the other in shadow. His fingers traced a name: Marvolo Gaunt.

“They called him Slytherin’s heir,” Tom said finally. “He could have been great, but the Gaunts squandered greatness, generation after generation.” There was no sorrow in his voice, only scorn. “To allow such a legacy to rot through neglect—an unforgivable waste.”

Hermione met his eyes, her heart pounding uneasily in her chest. “Decline isn’t the same as extinction. With enough conviction, even a fading legacy can be restored.”

For a while, neither of them spoke. The soft fluttering of book pages filled the space between them, the occasional scrape of a chair leg or the faint creak of a binding breaking its long silence.

Riddle read with unnerving focus, his eyes skimming the text as though devouring it. When he did speak, his questions came in a tone of perfect curiosity, but each one edged toward something darker.

“Do you believe certain magics can be lost to time?” he asked once, not looking up from the page. “Or are they simply… hidden, waiting for the right mind to uncover them?”

Hermione turned a page with care. “No magic is ever truly lost,” she said evenly. “It waits, buried in language and lineage, to be discovered only by those willing to search for it.”

He seemed to like that answer. The corner of his mouth lifted, briefly.

Riddle bent over the pages again, fingers hovering over the ink as if afraid to smudge it. Hermione let the silence stretch, watching the way his eyes moved—quick, hungry, the rest of the world forgotten. When he finally spoke again, his voice had dropped, softer now, as though the words weren’t meant for her at all.

“The rituals—these accounts of soul-binding, blood oaths, enchantments through pain. Do you think they ever truly worked?”

She hesitated, just long enough to seem thoughtful. “It’s difficult to say. Many were exaggerated or corrupted over the centuries. But yes, some had… results. Not always the ones intended.”

He looked up at her then, studying her face. “You don’t seem opposed to the idea.”

“I’m opposed to recklessness,” she said lightly. “Not to knowledge. Understanding the darker branches of magic is how we keep them from being misused.”

The faintest flicker of amusement passed through his expression, quickly smothered. He leaned back in his chair, fingers resting on the page as though on the pulse of something living.

“You think understanding is protection?”

“I think encouraging ignorance is more dangerous.”

For a moment, he regarded her as though weighing that statement in his mind, testing for weakness. Then came the serpentine smile.

His gaze dropped once more to the text.

Hermione stayed still, watching him as the last of the light slipped lower across the page. The change in him was subtle at first, a flicker in his gaze, a shift in his breathing, but then it gathered, unmistakable. He was alight now, not with curiosity, but with recognition.

She knew that look. The spark that came when someone found a truth they’d been searching for. Only this wasn’t truth, it was hunger. The kind that fed on cruelty and called it brilliance.

He lingered on every passage about blood magic and the manipulation of will as though he were memorising a prayer. There was no horror in his expression, only the quiet awe of someone staring at destiny written down in ink. And Hermione understood, with a sick twist in her stomach, that she was watching the story begin, the first threads of the monster he would become, pulling taut before her eyes.

Still, she didn’t interrupt. She couldn’t. The smallest misstep now could cost her everything.

After a while longer, she forced herself to speak, her voice even. “That’s enough for tonight.”

“Of course.” He nodded slowly, gaze dragging from the page with visible reluctance. “You’ve been very understanding, Professor.”

He closed the book carefully, as if trying not to disturb it. When he stood, his shadow stretched long and thin across the table, swallowing the light from the lantern.

“Thank you for indulging my… curiosity.”

The words were courteous, but they felt like a warning.

She managed a small smile. “Anytime, Mr. Riddle.”

“I look forward to our next lesson.” He inclined his head and turned, steps whisper-quiet as he left the library.

Hermione stayed seated, hands resting in her lap, pulse thrumming. The air still felt tense, as though his presence hadn’t entirely vanished.

She exhaled, steadying herself. He was beginning to lower the mask, to test her with pieces of himself instead of the polished façade he showed the rest of the world. It was working. He thought she saw him clearly, and approved. Let him. If he believed she understood him, that she might even admire what he was becoming, then she could keep him close. Close enough to predict. Close enough to manage.

“Interesting,” drawled a voice behind her.

Hermione started, her hand flying to grip the edge of the table. The books trembled from the movement as she turned.

Malfoy stood in the narrow aisle between the shelves, half-shrouded in shadow. His expression was unreadable, though the tightness in his jaw betrayed him.

“What game are you playing at, Granger?” he said, voice low but edged. “Because from where I was standing, it sounded an awful lot like you were encouraging him.”

Hermione froze. Heat rushed up her throat so fast it made her dizzy. For an awful, fleeting second, the sight of him standing there—so close, the light cutting across his face—dragged her straight back to that night. The shock of his presence in her room. The mortified scramble for her robe. The way he couldn’t quite meet her eyes afterward.

Her stomach lurched. She hadn’t spoken to him since. Hadn’t wanted to. She’d been avoiding him for days—skipping breakfast, taking different corridors, timing her movements just so. And now here he was, lurking in the dark like some ghost of humiliation come to life.

She straightened too quickly, spine snapping taut. “I don’t recall asking for your opinion on my teaching methods,” she said coolly, though her voice came out thinner than she’d meant it to.

He stepped closer, silver eyes flashing. “Teaching methods? That’s what we’re calling it?”

She folded her arms, forcing her voice to steady. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Do you?” His tone softened slightly, the anger giving way to something uncertain. “Because it sounded—”

Whatever he’d meant to say vanished as she stood and turned sharply toward him, chin lifted. The air between them prickled. The memory of the last time they’d been alone hung heavy between them.

Malfoy hesitated, running a hand through his hair. “Look, Granger, about the other night—”

“Not a word,” she cut in, her tone clipped and final.

He blinked. “I only meant—”

“Not. A. Word.” Her voice dropped to a fierce whisper. “We will never speak of it. Do you understand?”

For a heartbeat, neither moved. Then his mouth tightened, and he gave the smallest, most aristocratic nod imaginable. “Perfectly.”

“Good.”

Hermione turned sharply, clutching her notes to her chest like a shield. She just needed to leave, to breathe, to put as much distance between herself and him as possible. But before she could take a step, he moved.

The sound of his boots on the floor was soft but decisive. He closed the space between them in two strides, one hand coming up beside her, palm braced against the shelf. She stumbled back instinctively, spine meeting the edge of the bookcase. The wood pressed cold against her shoulder blades.

Her breath caught. The air felt suddenly too thin, thick with the scent of him— leather, mint, and the faint trace of expensive cologne. Her pulse jumped painfully against her throat. He was too close; the lamplight caught in his eyes, pale and sharp and searching, and for a moment she couldn’t seem to look away.

“Let me pass,” she managed, though her voice came out quieter than she intended.

He didn’t move. Not at first. There was something unreadable in his face, frustration, maybe, or something more tangled. His jaw tightened, his hand still pressed to the shelf near her shoulder, as though he hadn’t quite decided whether to step back or move forward.

Hermione swallowed hard. She wanted to disappear, or hex him, or both.

“Please,” she said, low and strained. “Just—move.”

“No.” His answer came out quiet but firm. “Not until you tell me what you’re trying to do.”

She let out a short, incredulous laugh. “What I’m trying to do? You honestly think I’d just tell you?”

“I haven’t tried to kill him for weeks,” he said quickly, the words tumbling out before she could speak again.

Hermione arched a brow. “And I’m meant to be impressed?”

His answering laugh was brief and bitter. “It’s not nothing,” he said, and then his tone faltered. “Granger, I’m just—” He drew a sharp breath, the words roughening. “I’m just trying to understand. I need to know what your plan is. If you’re ever going to—” His voice caught. “If you’re ever planning to kill him.”

Her pulse beat hard in her throat. “And if I’m not?”

“Then I need to know that too,” he said quietly, frustration bleeding into his tone. “Because watching you humour him, talk to him, encourage him—it’s maddening. I don’t know what you’re waiting for, and it’s driving me insane.”

Hermione stared at him, caught off guard by the honesty in his voice. His shoulders were tense, his hand still resting against the bookcase as though he didn’t quite trust himself to let her go. He’d shifted focus, she realized, not away from Riddle, but toward her.

“How can I trust you?” she asked finally.

Malfoy’s throat worked as he swallowed. “I don’t expect you to,” he said quietly. “Not entirely. But you can tell me the basics. Enough that I stop thinking you’ve gone completely mental. I know I don’t deserve more than that. Not from you.”

For a moment, neither of them moved. The silence stretched—thick, taut, threaded through with everything she wasn’t saying.

Hermione’s pulse thrummed in her ears. She could feel the closeness of him, the warmth of his body crowding the space between the shelves. Her instincts screamed to move, to shove past him, to put distance between herself and his overwhelming presence. But she didn’t.

She looked at him instead. Really looked.

His eyes, usually so guarded, had lost their practiced detachment. There was something raw in them now—something brittle and human, caught between frustration and fear. It was the same look he’d worn after he’d realised he’d hurt her, only sharper now, almost panicked, as though he were afraid of losing control of something he didn’t yet understand.

She searched his face for deceit, the way she always did, cataloguing every twitch and tell, waiting for the sneer or the smirk to return. It didn’t. The intensity in his gaze held her still, and she hated that she couldn’t read it. Hated even more the flicker of conviction that maybe, for once, he wasn’t performing.

Her mind rebelled against it. This was Malfoy. He didn’t plead. He manipulated, provoked, controlled. Yet here he was, stripped bare of all that, asking her for something he had no right to ask.

And for a terrifying, treacherous moment, she wanted to believe him.

Hermione held his gaze, then straightened her spine. “I’m not going to tell you my plan,” she said finally. “Not yet. Not until I know I can trust you more than I do now.”

He gave a short, derisive laugh. “Of course.”

“But,” she continued carefully, “I will explain to you why I’m refusing to let you kill him.”

Malfoy’s brow arched. “Because you so intricately understand the consequences of time travel?”

“Yes,” she said simply, the calm in her tone enough to disarm him for a beat.

He frowned, folding his arms. “And how exactly did you come by that insight, Granger?”

“I was given a Time-Turner when I was fourteen,” she said, matching his stance. “Ministry-approved, directly from Professor McGonagall. It allowed me to attend multiple classes at once during my third year at Hogwarts.”

That made him blink. “Third year?”

“Yes.”

“I always wondered how you managed it,” he said, voice thoughtful. “You were everywhere at once.”

Hermione’s lips twitched.

He huffed a laugh that sounded half genuine, half exasperated. “So, you think that qualifies you to play with time like this?”

Her patience thinned. “I think it qualifies me to be trusted when I say that killing Riddle too soon would be catastrophic.”

Malfoy’s jaw flexed, but he said nothing, so she continued.

“You think you can change one event and everything will fall neatly into place? That’s not how time works.” Her voice went quiet, precise. Less a lecture now than a line drawn between them. “Every choice makes ripples. Kill him now, and you don’t just lop off the head of the snake. You unsettle everything that comes after. You don’t get tidy improvements; you get new paths, new absences.”

Hermione took a step closer, forcing herself to hold his gaze. He looked ready to argue, the same infuriating stubbornness tightening his jaw, but she pressed on before he could speak.

“Do you know why people decide to have children?” she asked. Her tone stayed steady, though her pulse quickened in her chest. “Some because it feels like the next sensible thing to do; some because mothers and fathers want a family and the world gives them the space for it; some—too many, in the years of the war—because they thought time was running out and they wanted something human to hold onto before it was too late.”

Her hands curled around the edge of the stack of parchment until her knuckles whitened. She could still remember the fear that had lived in every household during the second war—the way people clung to one another out of need as much as love.

“Do you have any idea how many children were born because of fear, because of hope, because of desperation?” she went on. “Nearly everyone in our generation was shaped by that urgency. People had children in wartime because they wanted to anchor themselves to a future they couldn’t see.”

She paused, watching him carefully. He wasn’t sneering or smirking; his face had gone still, unreadable. But she could tell he was listening. Actually listening.

“If you kill him too soon—if the first war never happens—then a thousand reasons for conceiving vanish,” she said, voice quieter but no less firm. “Marriages that happened because of time running out, pregnancies that began because people clung to each other in terror and faith…they might never occur. Parents don’t always decide to have children for the same reason. Remove the war, and you remove the pressure and the circumstances that led to those births. Harry, Ron, Neville, Seamus, Dean…even you. There’s a real chance most of them would never exist.”

Her throat felt tight now, but she didn’t let it show. This was the part she had to make him understand.

“I’m not standing here because I want revenge or because I’m reckless,” she said, measuring each word. “I’m here because I want to preserve the people I love. I’m trying to save everyone, Malfoy—not erase them. That is why I am waiting. That is why I won’t let you or anyone else decide to end this on impulse.”

Malfoy said nothing. He just looked at her, all that sharp anger and calculation slipping for a heartbeat into something she couldn’t name. Doubt, maybe. Or fear. Or the dawning understanding that she wasn’t simply lecturing him. She was warning him.

Hermione held his gaze a moment longer, long enough to see the crack in his composure, before she finally turned away.

“So…” she said, her voice trailing off. “That’s why I won’t let you kill him.”

For a long moment, the silence stretched between them, heavy and electric, the air still heavy with her words.

Then, at last, he exhaled—a small sound, almost like a laugh. “Was that so hard?”

Hermione rolled her eyes, the tension in her shoulders loosening by a fraction. “You should trust me, Malfoy. I’ve got considerably more experience with time travel than some bull-headed pureblood prat who decided to impulsively throw himself into the past for a poorly planned, suicidal revenge plot.”

“Merlin, don’t hold back on my account,” he gave a low chuckle, one brow lifting. “You know, you could just be civil instead of verbally flaying me alive. That is an option.”

Hermione scoffed, lips twitching despite herself. “I’ll keep that in mind next time you corner me in a library.”

His grin widened. “Looking forward to it.”

She rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth betrayed her—barely a curve, more reflex than choice. He noticed it. Of course he did.

Something eased between them, not warmth exactly, but the sharp edge dulled for the briefest moment. They just stood there. Silent. Two people far too tired to keep pretending they didn’t understand each other at least a little.

Then reality returned. Abrupt. Unsettling.

Hermione finally pulled her gaze away and brushed past him, her stride brisk, clipped. The sound of her steps like punctuation. She was desperate, now, to be alone. To have a moment of peace. To release this tension coiling through her.

She was definitely going flying tonight. She’d decided.

“Are you ever going to show me what’s on that parchment?” he called after her, his voice an infuriating mix of arrogance and amusement.

She didn’t slow. “In your dreams, Malfoy.”

“Every night, Granger.”

An exasperated groan bubbled up from her throat, and she shook her head, refusing to give him the satisfaction of looking back. Merlin, he was impossible. Always had to have the last word. Always pressing just enough to get under her skin.

By the time she reached the Library doors, her irritation had settled into something quieter, more complicated. The corridor beyond was cool and dim, a beam of moonlight stretching across the floor. She stepped into it, letting the door fall shut behind her, and tried to ignore the strange pull that lingered in her chest.

She didn’t trust him. She couldn’t.

But as she made her way towards the beckoning solitude of her rooms, a reluctant thought slipped through.

It would be nice, she quietly admitted to herself, if she could.

Chapter Text

The snowfall had begun as a whisper, soft and uncertain, but by the following morning it had buried the grounds beneath a seamless, unbroken white. The drifts reached the base of the castle walls, smoothing out the edges of stone and earth until even the shadows softened.

The trees bowed under the weight of it, their branches laced with ice that caught what little light the moon offered. Beyond them, the lake had vanished beneath a thin, silvery crust, its edges blurred where snow met frozen water.

The world outside her window was utterly still, hushed beneath its own beauty. Every few moments, a gust of wind pressed against the glass with a hollow sigh, scattering fine snowflakes across the pane before they melted and traced slow, wandering paths down the frost.

Inside, the air held the faint scent of woodsmoke and parchment. The castle seemed to have folded in on itself, drawing its warmth inward. Without the students, the corridors felt cavernous; laughter no longer echoed through the stairwells, and even the portraits had grown quieter, their whispers dampened by the weight of long winter nights.

Hermione sat by the fire in her room, legs tucked beneath her, a book lying forgotten in her lap. The flames whooshed softly, throwing thin shadows across the floorboards. It should have felt peaceful, she thought. A holiday spent in rare silence, with nothing demanding her attention. And yet, the quiet only reminded her how very empty the castle could feel once the noise was gone.

The Marauder’s Map was open on the table beside her, the ink faint in the flickering light.

Only a handful of names dotted the parchment now. Professors who stayed for the holidays, the ghosts who never left. And one set of footprints that hadn’t stopped moving for nearly half an hour.

Draco Malfoy.

She’d grown used to seeing his name move in measured loops like that. Always pacing. It had been six weeks since their last true conversation, even longer since he’d stopped trying to kill Riddle.

Something in him had shifted since they’d last talked. That she was sure of. There were no more reckless plans, no more whispered threats about ending things before they began, no more absurd attempts at spying.

She’d been grateful for the break. Grateful she didn’t have to split her attention between stopping Malfoy and teaching Riddle. She could finally focus all her energy on the boy.

And things had been going well. Almost too well. Tom had grown bolder with his questions—asking about the limits of the soul, the price of power, whether darkness was a thing to fear or to master. He spoke about it the way some people spoke about poetry.

It should have consumed her attention. And, it had, for a time. But even when she was across the castle, standing beside that boy and watching the gears turn behind his careful smile, some small part of her was aware of Malfoy’s absence. Of the silence where his arguments used to be. She’d expected to feel relief when he stopped fighting her; instead, it left an odd emptiness in its place, a quiet that followed her from lesson to lesson.

When they crossed paths in the corridors now, he was… polite. Cordial, even. He’d nod or offer some wry comment about the weather, sometimes he’d ask what she was reading. The first time he’d addressed her without a sneer, she’d almost thought he was mocking her.

But he hadn’t been.

It was strange, watching someone so sharp and composed strip himself of purpose piece by piece. Stranger still to realize that she missed their arguments. They’d been predictable, grounding in their own twisted way, proof that neither of them was willing to surrender. Now, when he passed her in the hallway with a civil “Good evening, Professor,” she didn’t know where to place him.

Every so often, when he caught her alone in a corridor or during one of her late-night patrols, or on the mornings he chose to sit beside her at breakfast, he’d ask the same question. Always in the same tone, light but probing, like he already knew the answer.

“Will you tell me your plan?”

And she always gave the same reply; calm as she could manage. “In your dreams, Malfoy.”

He’d smirk, look her boldly in the eye, and murmur, “Every night, Granger.”

She hated how the words stayed with her afterward, how they echoed when she was alone like this, with nothing but the fire for company and his name pacing in circles across a sheet of parchment.

She brushed over his name on the map with her finger, following its careful back-and-forth. Even from here, she could imagine the restlessness in it. The man trying to wear a path into the floor just to stop thinking.

It was Christmas Eve. The thought came to her distantly, as though it belonged to someone else’s life. They’d had the Christmas feast three nights ago, before the students had left for the holidays—long tables gleaming with gold and silver, the scent of roasted chestnuts, the ghosts humming carols just off-key enough to be endearing. She’d smiled through it, raised her glass when expected, even laughed once or twice.

Malfoy hadn’t been there.

She’d assumed he was busy, or perhaps simply uninterested. Since then, she hadn’t seen him leave his rooms at all. Not once. His name moved across the map from desk to fireplace to door, then back again, an endless pattern of motion without destination.

Her eyes lingered on the ink until it blurred.

Maybe he felt it too—the quiet ache of being displaced, of existing in a time that didn’t belong to him. For all their differences, they were bound by that single, terrible thing: the knowledge that everyone they’d ever loved was gone, or not yet born, or living lives that no longer needed them.

Grief had a way of sinking its teeth in deepest during the holidays.

She leaned back in her chair and rubbed her hands together for warmth, the fire snapping softly. Snow still pressed against the window, muffling the night into a kind of fragile peace. The castle, the map, the silence—all of it seemed to ask the same question she’d been avoiding.

How long could she keep pretending that solitude suited her? That she wasn’t lonely?

Her gaze drifted back to the map. His name was still moving—slowly now, tracing the outline of his room as if he couldn’t quite settle.

Surely, by now, he’d proved he could be trusted.

Six weeks without incident. Six weeks of civility, restraint, and—if she was honest—more patience than she’d thought he was capable of. He’d listened to her. Listened and stopped. That had to count for something.

Her chest ached with the quiet in the room. The crackle of the fire was suddenly too loud, the shadows too long. She didn’t want to admit it, but the truth was simple enough: she didn’t want to be alone tonight.

Neither of them deserved to be.

Not when there was another option.

Hermione exhaled slowly, feeling the decision settle in her. She could at least make sure he wasn’t spending Christmas Eve pacing holes into the floor. That was… charitable. Neighbourly. Entirely reasonable.

Her eyes dropped to her clothes, and she winced.

Plaid red-and-green pyjama trousers—wide-legged and ridiculously festive—paired with a matching, long sleeve, button down top, neatly tucked into the high waist. A sight somewhere between “holiday cheer” and “walking Christmas tree.”

She should probably change. That would be the appropriate thing to do. A proper witch did not go wandering the castle in sleepwear, and certainly not to another professor’s rooms.

But then again… propriety had never really saved anyone.

Besides, he’d already seen her in far worse.

Or far less, rather.

Her cheeks heated before she could stop them.

She stared at the map for another long moment, the inked footsteps looping endlessly in the same circle. Then she drew in a breath and pushed to her feet.

“Okay,” she said aloud, the sound startling the quiet of the room. “I’m doing this.”

Her voice steadied her more than she expected.

A quick check confirmed her glamour ring was still secure—the dainty golden band cool against her skin. She adjusted it out of habit, then gathered the cloak from the back of her chair and folded the Marauder’s Map carefully under her arm.

If she was truly going to do this, if she was going to knock on Draco Malfoy’s door on Christmas Eve of all nights, she could at least do it properly. It simply wouldn’t do to show up empty-handed. Her mother had taught her better than that.

She swept the cloak over her head. The fabric settled against her skin, weightless and familiar. The room took on a different tone through the faint shimmer of the material, the colours muted and edges softened, as though she were peering through thin mist.

She slipped into the corridor and nearly gasped from the shock of cold. Goosebumps immediately puckered along her skin and her breath formed a cloud in front of her face.

As she walked, her slippers made no sound, though the echo of her movement seemed to follow anyway. Torches burned in their sconces, the flames guttering as she passed. Every so often a strand of tinsel, left over from the students’ festivities, glimmered faintly in the flickering light.

Hermione tightened her hold on the cloak and turned down the familiar staircase that led to the lower levels. The smell of something sweet drifted upward, growing stronger with each step. The warmth came next, seeping through the chill like a living thing.

By the time she reached the corridor lined with portraits of medieval feasts, her fingers had started to thaw. She paused before the painting of the fruit bowl, smiling faintly at its bright, ridiculous colours, and reached out to tickle the pear. It squirmed with a delighted giggle and twisted into a doorknob.

Hermione’s hand lingered on the handle for a moment. Hesitating. It was ridiculous, really—she was only fetching wine and pudding—but it felt strangely significant, as though she were stepping across some invisible line.

She drew in a steadying breath and pushed the door open.

Warmth rolled over her the moment she stepped inside. The kitchen was alive in a way that felt distinct from the rest of the castle. Light spilled across copper pots and neat rows of dishes. The air was thick with the scent of cinnamon, nutmeg, and butter. Dozens of puddings sat cooling on a long oak table, their tops glossy with sugared glaze.

A small elf in a peppermint-striped apron and a matching hat looked up from polishing cutlery, nearly dropping a fork in surprise. “Oh! Whimsy is not expecting visitors tonight!” she squeaked, blinking toward the doorway. Her large eyes darted around, then landed right where Hermione stood beneath her cloak. “Whimsy thinks someone is here…?”

Hermione pulled the cloak off, draping the fabric over her arm. “You’re very perceptive. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Whimsy gasped, clutching the fork to her chest. “Oh, it’s Miss—Miss Professor!”

Hermione smiled at the flustered elf. “Just Matilda, please.”

The elf’s ears turned pink. “Oh no, Miss Professor! Whimsy could not! Professors is professors!”

“Even on Christmas Eve?” Hermione teased gently.

Whimsy’s expression flickered with a war between horror and delight. “Oh… well… on Christmas Eve only, Miss Matilda,” she said finally, wringing her hands.

“That sounds perfect.” Hermione stepped closer, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “I was hoping you might help me with something.”

“Whimsy will help! Whimsy is always happy to be helping!” the elf said eagerly, bouncing on her toes. “What does Miss Matilda be needing?”

Hermione hesitated, feeling absurdly like a schoolgirl sneaking biscuits. “I wondered if I might have a bottle or two of wine,” she said, “and perhaps some Christmas pudding—just a couple of servings, if there’s any to spare.”

The elf’s eyes went wide, and she nodded so fast her hat slipped sideways. “Oh, there is always being pudding! Whimsy will fetch the very best! And wine too—good wine! From the Headmaster’s special shelf!”

Hermione blinked. “That’s not necessary—”

But Whimsy had already vanished with a soft pop and returned a few moments later balancing two bottles and a tray of puddings that steamed faintly under a warming charm.

“There! These is the finest puddings in Hogwarts, and wine to match!” Whimsy declared proudly.

Hermione crouched to take the tray, smiling warmly. “You’ve saved Christmas, Whimsy. Thank you.”

The elf’s ears flapped with pleasure. “Whimsy is very happy to be helping Miss Professor Matilda. Whimsy is loving to save Christmas!”

Hermione bit back a laugh. “Then I’m doubly grateful. And please—don’t stay up too late finishing all this.”

“Oh, Whimsy is very happy to be cooking, miss,” the elf said, already bustling off toward another tray of mince pies. “Miss Professor is not to worry about Whimsy.”

“All right,” Hermione said with a grateful smile. She set the tray on the counter, drew her wand, and murmured a quick charm. The puddings and bottles shrank neatly to the size of thimbles. She tucked them carefully into her pocket.

“Thank you again, Whimsy,” she said. “Truly.”

“Whimsy is wishing Miss Professor a very happy Christmas!” the elf called, still beaming as Hermione pulled the cloak over her head, and vanished once more.

The kitchens’ golden glow spilled out for only a moment before the portrait swung shut behind her.

The warmth followed her a few steps into the corridor, then faded, leaving the air crisp and still. She adjusted the edge of the cloak around her face and started the climb toward the upper levels.

The castle was asleep. Paintings snored softly behind their frames. Outside, snow swept against the high windows, silver in the moonlight. She traced each turn from memory, winding through familiar passages and quiet stairwells until she reached the corridor where the torches burned lower, and the door to Malfoy’s rooms waited at the far end.

Hermione paused, her heartbeat quickening.

“Well,” she whispered to herself, “here goes nothing.”

***

Draco had been pacing for the better part of an hour.

The carpet by the hearth showed the path of his restlessness—a precise line worn between the armchair and the window, as though he could outwalk his own thoughts. He’d tried reading, poured himself a drink, even considered a potion for sleep, but nothing silenced the noise.

Draco stopped by the window, staring into the dim, wavering light of the Black Lake. The water pressed against the glass, shifting with the currents. He couldn’t even see the snow-blanketed world above.

Memories intruded where he least wanted them. His mother’s laugh, light and effortless, rising over the clink of crystal. His father, smiling for once, transfiguring snowflakes into silver ornaments while the elves rushed to hang them. A roaring fire, presents wrapped in perfect symmetry beneath the tree.

It should have been a beautiful memory. And that was precisely why it made him sick.

He’d thought distance might dull it—the ache of loss, the pull of what used to be—but grief had a way of making itself at home, no matter the century.

He sighed, pressing a hand to the back of his neck. Perhaps a run would help. His other form longed for it. The sharp cold, the clean air, the ground giving way underfoot. There was a kind of peace in motion. In instinct. He’d just decided to go when the sound came: a knock, quick and sharp, cutting through his thoughts.

He stilled.

No one knocked on his door.

He drew his wand, murmuring a quick detection charm—old habit. Nothing hostile, no hidden presence waiting on the other side. Just… someone.

He frowned as he cast a subtle glamour. His hair darkened to the ashy brown he wore around others, his facial features lost their sharp edge. Satisfied, he crossed the room.

When he opened the door, every thought emptied from his head.

Granger stood there. In plaid pyjamas. Holding two bottles of wine and a plate of Christmas pudding like some absurd, festive apparition.

For a moment, he could only stare.

“Granger?” he said finally, voice twinged with disbelief.

“Hi…” her voice was slightly breathless. “Um—happy Christmas.” She adjusted her grip on the bottles, looking equal parts uncertain and determined.

Of all the things he’d expected tonight, Hermione Granger at his doorstep wasn’t one of them. He could only gape at her like some kind of stunned idiot, his mind failing to conjure even a single coherent word.

Her smile twitched and she cleared her throat, trying again. “Um… it’s Christmas Eve,” she said carefully. “I thought you might not want to be alone.” It came out more like a question.

He blinked.

Hermione Granger was on his doorstep.

Hermione Granger was on his doorstep with wine and Christmas pudding.

He needed to say something. Invite her in. That was the polite thing to do. What in Merlin’s name was he doing just standing here like a bloody idiot, staring?

Was his room clean? Of course it was clean. It was always clean. He was obsessively tidy—painfully so. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he was apparently incapable of speech.

Say something, Draco. Anything.

But before he could, she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, her smile faltering. “I—if this is a bad time, I can go,” she said quickly, glancing down the corridor as though already planning her retreat.

“No!” he practically shouted at her. He winced and tried again, more evenly. “No. Don’t—just—wait.”

She froze, wide eyes shifting from side to side.

Brilliant. Smooth as ever.

He cleared his throat, forcing composure back into his voice. “I wasn’t expecting visitors, that’s all.” His hand found the edge of the door, and he stepped aside. “Please, come in before you freeze solid.”

For a moment she hesitated, studying him as though making sure he wasn’t about to revoke the invitation. Then she nodded and stepped past him, the faint scent of rosemary following her into the warmth of his rooms.

Draco shut the door behind them, heartbeat maddeningly unsteady.

Hermione Granger was in his room. On purpose.

He followed behind her, unsure what to do with himself. The silence stretched a little too long before his mouth, apparently with no input from his better judgment, decided to act on its own.

“Interesting choice of attire,” he said lightly, eyeing the loud pattern of her pyjamas. “Planning to blend in with a Christmas tree?”

The words were barely out before he wanted to hex himself. Sarcasm. Always the fallback.

To his surprise, she laughed as she set the wine and pudding down on his coffee table. A quiet, genuine sound that tugged something loose in his chest. “I wanted to feel festive,” she said simply, brushing off the comment as if it hadn’t even grazed her.

“Right,” he said, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Yes, of course.”

His eyes tracked her as she moved further into the room. It wasn’t large—few of the staff quarters were—but it was precise. The kind of space that was neat. Predictable. Filled only with what was necessary.

 The fire burned low behind a wrought-iron grate, shadows pooling over black leather and polished wood. Everything carried that same sleek discipline: silver-framed shelves lined with neat rows of books, a deep green throw folded with mathematical precision over the arm of the black sofa, a decanter on the table catching the flickering flames like a gemstone.

He had never thought much about it before. It was comfortable. Efficient. His. But as she turned slowly in the centre of the room, eyes moving from the shelves to the desk to the window that looked into the dark water of the Black Lake, Draco found himself feeling uncertain.

Her fingers brushed the edge of the sofa as she passed it, trailing lightly over the leather as though testing its texture. The reflection of the fire danced across her hair, softening the sharp lines of her face.

He didn’t know what he wanted her to say, but the quiet stretched again, and the longer she stayed silent, the more acutely aware he became of every carefully placed object.

He’d never felt self-conscious about it before.

Finally, she looked over her shoulder at him, a hint of amusement flickering in her eyes. “It’s very you,” she said. “Black, silver, expensive. The predictable embodiment of Slytherin wealth.”

Draco chuckled, the sound stiff and uneven. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Her smile deepened. “You shouldn’t.”

 “Well,” he drawled, recovering with practiced smoothness, “not all of us have the aesthetic appreciation for chaos that you do. I imagine your rooms currently look like the aftermath of a tornado.”

She snorted softly. “At least mine have character.”

“It’s pronounced clutter.”

She just rolled her eyes and let out a long breath through her nose.

For a while after, she didn’t move. Just stood there, studying him like she wasn’t entirely sure what to do next. The silence stretched again, fragile and awkward in a way it never was when they were arguing.

Draco cleared his throat. “You can sit, you know,” he said, gesturing toward the sofa. “It won’t bite. I’ll—” he glanced toward the sideboard, grateful for the excuse to move “—fetch some glasses.”

That earned him a small, nervous smile before she obeyed, perching carefully on the edge of the couch as though the furniture might judge her for existing on it.

Draco crossed to the glass cabinet against the far wall. The polished wood frame gleamed in the low light of the fire, and the rows of bottles inside reflected it back in warm amber tones. Every label faced forward. Every decanter was full.

He opened the glass door, scanning the familiar order: aged firewhisky, mead, a few bottles of good French wine. Beneath them, a neat arrangement of crystal glasses—cut for brandy, wine, champagne, and anything else a civilized wizard might need to survive academia.

He hesitated, hand hovering over the shelves, suddenly aware of how ridiculous this was, Hermione Granger sitting in his rooms, in plaid pyjamas, on Christmas Eve.

“Is it red or white?” he asked, trying to fill the space with something.

“Um… red,” she said after a moment.

He retrieved two of the delicate-stemmed glasses, feeling that faint tug of self-consciousness again as he turned back toward her.

She was watching the fire now, shoulders stiff, slowly twisting the golden ring on her finger.

He cleared his throat again. “Well then. Let’s see if Christmas spirit actually comes in a bottle.”

Draco carried the glasses over and set them on the low table with care. The couch dipped as he sat beside her, the fire popping softly in the grate. Heat from the flames licked across the side of his face, and he could smell the faint spice as she handed him a generous glass of wine.

She held her glass out to him, “cheers,” and took a long sip. He did the same.

After, neither of them spoke. The quiet pressed in—not unpleasant, but taut.

He rested his forearms on his knees, glass in hand, watching the wine catch the light.

“Don’t you want to be more comfortable?”

Her voice broke the stillness.

Draco turned his head. “Excuse me?”

She gestured toward him, a flick of her wrist that managed to encompass the entirety of his appearance. “You’re still in your teaching robes.”

He looked down. The heavy black fabric fell in exact, unforgiving lines to his boots. The collar sat too high, the sleeves too stiff. Merlin, he was sitting in his full formal robes like he’d just stepped out of a lecture.

“Right,” he said after a beat, as though he’d known that all along.

She offered a tentative smile, as if trying to help him out of the moment. “You could change, you know. It’s Christmas Eve, Malfoy. You don’t have to look like you’re about to lecture teenagers.”

His mouth twitched. “And here I thought formality was one of my more endearing qualities.”

“Hardly,” she said, lifting her wineglass to her lips.

He exhaled, a dry sound that might have been a laugh. “Fine.”

Draco stood, setting his glass aside and drawing his wand from his sleeve. The movement felt mechanical, an excuse to do something with his hands. A soft pulse of magic brushed over him; the stiff collar melted away, the fabric thinning and reshaping itself. The weight of his robes lightened, falling into a set of sleek black pyjamas, the material matte rather than glossy. A thick wool house coat settled over his shoulders, warm and structured and presentable.

He adjusted the collar with one hand, feeling the warmth begin to creep back into his neck and arms. He felt absurdly aware of himself—the looseness of the fabric, the casualness of it all.

He turned toward her. “Better?”

Granger’s lips curved upward. “Much.”

He gave a brief nod, reclaiming his seat. The sofa groaned quietly under his weight.

The silence returned, but this time it hummed differently. It was less brittle, almost tentative. He took a slow sip of the wine, the glass steady in his hand, and felt the warmth of the alcohol bloom in his chest.

They sat for a while, each of them dancing around words that somehow seemed too hard to say.

The heat of the room had grown almost stifling; or maybe it was simply her, sitting there in red and green with that look that said she was working up to something.

He broke the silence for her. “As much as I’m flattered that you’re concerned for my loneliness, I have to imagine there’s another reason you’re here.”

Her eyes met his as she worried her bottom lip between her teeth. “You’re right,” she said. “I wanted to speak with you.”

Every nerve in his body stood at attention.

“I’ve noticed,” she went on, “that you’ve kept your word. You haven’t gone after Riddle again. Not once.”

Draco inclined his head slightly, trying for nonchalance. “I am capable of restraint, you know.”

“I know.” She hesitated, seemingly searching for the words. “And I think… I can trust you.”

For half a second, he wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly. The crackling fire was the only sound in the room.

Trust. The word hit somewhere deep in his chest.

He’d been waiting for this, for her to see reason, to stop treating him like a ticking time bomb. And yet, now that the moment had arrived, he could feel the restless pulse of nerves in his throat.

She looked at him then, really looked, as if weighing a decision she couldn’t take back. “I want to tell you what I’ve planned,” she said finally. “I’m so tired of doing everything alone. But if I do—if I tell you—you have to promise me you won’t try to stop me. That you won’t interfere, even if you don’t agree.”

He studied her for a long moment. Her shoulders were drawn tight, her hands clasped loosely around the stem of her glass of wine. For someone so bloody self-assured, she looked terrified.

He wanted to say something clever, to break the tension, but all he managed was a quiet, “You’ve thought this through.”

“Every part,” she said.

He nodded, as if that settled something he didn’t entirely understand. Beneath the careful poise, something restless began to spark. Curiosity, yes, but also something sharper. She was about to trust him with the truth, and for the first time in years, he wanted to deserve it.

She exhaled slowly, and said again, voice firm, “you must promise. No interference. No changing anything. Even if you don’t agree.”

He looked her steadily in the eye, “okay.”

She was quiet for a while, studying him. Then, with an almost solemn expression, she lifted her hand and held out her smallest finger toward him.

Draco stared at it.

“What on earth,” he said slowly, “are you doing?”

“Making you promise.”

“With a finger?”

“It’s a pinkie promise,” she said, as if that answered everything.

He blinked at her, utterly at a loss. “A what?”

“It’s like… a Muggle version of an unbreakable vow,” she explained, voice deadly serious.

He tilted his head, curiosity sharpening through the confusion. “And what does it do?”

“Nothing,” she admitted. “But it’s… sacred, Malfoy. You don’t break a pinkie promise.”

Draco huffed a laugh, a low sound that felt foreign in his own throat. “You expect me to swear fealty by… touching fingers?”

“I expect you to promise,” she said softly.

Something earnest in her expression made him realise that this was serious to her.

He stared at her outstretched hand, at the single raised finger, utterly perplexed. For a beat, he did nothing.

Was he supposed to… touch it? Shake it?

“Merlin help me,” he muttered under his breath, and reached out cautiously. He held his smallest finger near hers, uncertain, until she moved first—curling hers around his in a deliberate hook.

Ah. That was the idea.

Their hands hovered between them with their fingers awkwardly intertwined. The touch was simple, but the warmth was startling. A small spark of something flared across his skin before settling into stillness.

“I promise,” he said at last.

She nodded, their fingers still linked for one last breath before she drew her hand back.

“Good,” she said. “Because I’m trusting you with everything.”

The room felt suddenly too small. The fire hissed, throwing gold across the space as she began to speak.

And Draco listened.

It came out in careful pieces. Names, places, and fragments of a life he hadn’t been part of. The war. The hunt. Potter and Weasley at her side. All half-starved and half-mad, chasing shadows of a monster who refused to die.

Draco didn’t interrupt. He simply watched her. Watched the way her hands moved when she talked. The small unconscious gestures that seemed to pull her memories into shape. He listened intently to the way her voice would catch now and then, not from self-pity, but from restraint. She was speaking clinically, almost like she was giving a report. But the cracks still showed.

She spoke of the Horcruxes—how each one had been made. How they had to be found, stolen, destroyed. How the locket had whispered to them, poisoned them against one another. How they’d run through forests and ruins, how the winter and lack of decent food had nearly killed them before Voldemort ever could.

Draco stopped her. “Wait,” he said quietly. “Back up.”

She looked at him, mouth closing mid-sentence.

“Did you say… he split his soul?”

“Yes,” she said simply. “Seven times.”

He stared at her, the words hanging between them. “Salazar,” he breathed, almost to himself. “So that’s how he did it. How he survived.”

She nodded once, her expression unreadable.

Draco sat back, the glass in his hand forgotten. His mind was already dissecting it—images of rituals, fragments of theory he’d only heard about through whispers and rumour. “That isn’t just Dark Magic,” he said finally. “That’s—madness. It’s—” He cut himself off, jaw tightening. “You can’t just tear out your soul and expect to still be human.”

“I know,” she said firmly. “That’s the point. He didn’t.”

The fire crackled sharply, a burst of light cutting through the dim. Draco turned toward it, jaw set. He felt… unsettled. A cold, crawling revulsion beneath his skin.

“He put pieces of himself into objects,” he said, forcing the words out, “and into his snake?”

“Nagini,” she confirmed. “The last one.”

He shook his head slowly, trying to make sense of it. “And you three were meant to find them all?”

Her shoulders lifted in a weary half-shrug. “Someone had to.”

“Someone,” he echoed, his tone sharpening. “You were eighteen, Granger. Dumbledore sent a group of children to dismantle a network of soul fragments and thought what—that it would be good for your character? The old man couldn’t do it himself? Didn’t want to get his own hands dirty?”

Her mouth tightened. “He didn’t send us. He asked Harry. We chose to go.”

Draco let out a soft, incredulous laugh. “Yes, of course you did. You, Potter, and Weasel—off to save the world like always.”

She didn’t rise to the bait. She just looked tired.

“You think that’s funny?” she asked crossing her arms over her chest. The wine in her glass sloshing dangerously close to the rim.

He met her gaze, the faintest edge of guilt flickering beneath the sarcasm. “No,” he said finally. “I don’t think it’s funny at all. I think it’s obscene. One of the most powerful wizards of all time knew what had to be done and let children do it for him.”

She just shook her head dismissively and went on.

The words tumbled out faster now, as though she’d crossed some invisible threshold and couldn’t stop. She told him about Gringotts, about the cup, about Bellatrix’s vault and their daring escape on the back of a blind dragon.

Upon saying his Aunt’s name she reached up absently, tugging at the cuff of her sleeve, pulling it lower over her wrist.

The motion was small, but it caught his eye.

Draco’ stomach sank.

He knew what lay beneath that sleeve. He’d been there. Not close enough to see it carved into her flesh, but near enough to hear her screams, to witness the aftermath.

Mudblood.

He swallowed hard, but the image wouldn’t fade. Bellatrix’s wild eyes. The way she’d brandished her knife. Granger begging and thrashing on the floor.

The thought hit him like a blow. If the words were still there—and they must be, cursed blades never healed properly—then she still carried his family’s shame on her skin.

Guilt rose like bile in his throat.

For a heartbeat, he thought he might be sick.

He looked away sharply, forcing his expression blank. The fire blurred at the edges of his vision, a wash of orange and shadow.

Granger was talking again, her voice low, the rhythm slower now, as if each word cost her something. She’d moved on to the final battle, describing it not as a victory but as a series of missteps strung together by desperation.

“We hadn’t killed the snake,” she said quietly, staring into the fire. “Nagini. She was the last Horcrux. Harry couldn’t destroy Voldemort while part of him still lived in his familiar. That’s what I meant to fix.”

Draco said nothing. He wasn’t sure he could have, even if he’d wanted to.

She shifted slightly, setting her now empty glass on the table. “I meant to go back just far enough to kill Nagini before Harry faced him. It should have been simple. In and out. A few hours, maybe.”

Her hand twitched against her knee, and he followed the movement automatically. She was staring at it, at a faint cluster of pale scars that stood out against her palm.

“But the Time-Turner misfired,” she said. “Or maybe it was cursed. I don’t know. There was a flash, and then—” she lifted her gaze to meet his—“I woke up here. In the year 1934.”

Draco reached for the second bottle of wine and refilled their glasses. There was a pleasant warmth running through his body now. It helped, in a way, to combat the chill of her words.

1934.

She’d been alone in a time that wasn’t hers, carrying knowledge she couldn’t possibly share.

Granger looked back down at her hand, running a thumb absently over the scars as if tracing an old map. He wanted to ask what the time travel had done to her, if she’d come close to dying. But something in her face stopped him.

She didn’t look fragile. She looked indomitable.

Draco sat very still, her words turning over in his mind like puzzle pieces falling into place. After a while, he finally spoke.

“So now you’ve had time to plan,” he said. “What is it you want to do, exactly?”

Granger looked up at him, her expression tightening. “I can’t stop him from becoming who he is,” she said. “I’ve accepted that.”

He frowned. “Accepted that the boy you’re tutoring will become the most dangerous wizard of our age?”

“I’m not here to stop it,” she said simply. “I’m here to make sure it happens right.”

His brow lifted. “Enlighten me.”

She took a breath, steadying herself. “Riddle isn’t driven by immortality. Not really. He wants power—complete, unmatched, untouchable power. If he thought creating a Horcrux would cost him even a fragment of that, he’d never risk it.”

Draco studied her, the sharp focus in her eyes. “You think you can make him believe that?”

“I don’t need to make him believe it,” she said softly. “I just need to frame it as an irrefutable truth. A law of magic that no one can defy.”

The words hung there for a moment, delicate and dangerous. She leaned back, eyes unfocused, as though seeing the web she’d been weaving for years.

“Magic is tied to the soul,” she went on. “Every part of it you remove takes power with it. If I can convince him that splitting his soul means splitting his strength—that he’d be dividing his magic between bodies and objects. Diluting it. Giving it away—then the idea becomes poison. He’d never willingly weaken himself.”

Draco let out a slow breath, the logic laying a foundation in his mind. “You’ll tell him that Horcruxes would make him less powerful.”

“Yes.” Her voice was steady now. “He wants to be invincible. So I’ll make him believe that in trying to preserve himself, he’d be destroying his own potential. I’ll make him think that immortality comes at too high a cost.”

He considered her in silence. The plan was equal parts brilliance and madness. “That’s… disturbingly clever.”

“Thank you,” she said.

He tilted his head, studying her. “And if he does it anyway?”

Her gaze dropped to her sleeve. She traced the hem between her fingers as she spoke. “I don’t think he will. He’s arrogant, not stupid. If he believes it will cost him his power, he’ll avoid it. Power is the only thing he worships.”

Draco swirled the wine in his glass. “What if you’re wrong?”

“I’ll find another way,” she said, and there was something maddeningly sure in her tone. “But I don’t think I am.”

For a moment, the fire was the only sound between them. Then she spoke again, her voice lower, thoughtful.

“There are some things that have to happen,” she said. “Moments in time that can’t be changed without breaking everything else. If I stop him too early, if I change the wrong event, none of it—” She hesitated. “None of them—will ever exist. Harry. Ron. Everyone we lost. They’ll never even be born.”

Draco frowned. “So you’re keeping the future intact by… letting him rise?”

“I’m helping him rise,” she said quietly, “but on my terms. I need him to become Voldemort, but a version I can predict. One I can manipulate. Without the Horcruxes, when he goes to kill Harry in 1981, he’ll die properly. As he was always meant to. And when he does—” she drew in a breath, steadying herself “—everyone will already exist. Everyone will be alive. The future will still unfold in a way that’s acceptable.”

He stared at her, the depth of her resolve dawning on him like a slow chill. “And what about the people he hurts along the way?” he asked. “You don’t want to try to stop that?”

Something flickered across her face, a flash of guilt, but it was quickly replaced by that same unflinching determination. “No,” she said. “I can’t. There are things I’ve accepted I can’t change. I just want to make sure that when it ends, it ends for good. No pieces left behind. No second chances.”

Draco’s gaze lingered on her, the candlelight catching in her eyes. He could feel admiration rising in him, unbidden. It wasn’t just that she had a plan; it was the audacity of it. She wasn’t trying to destroy Voldemort—she was planning to outthink him. To mould him into a monster of her own design.

He let out a quiet, disbelieving laugh, shaking his head. “You do realise,” he said, “that makes you almost as manipulative as he is.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But I’m doing it for the right reasons.”

“Hermione Granger,” he murmured, “puppet master of the Dark Lord.”

Her lips twitched, but her eyes stayed sharp.

The fire popped, the sound thin and bright, and all he could do was stare at her. At the witch who had once been his enemy, now calmly plotting to rewrite the course of history with nothing but intellect and nerve.

“Merlin,” he murmured finally, a touch of wonder in his voice. “You really are terrifying.”

Granger smiled faintly, eyes distant. “Harry and Ron used to say the same thing.”

Draco watched a wistful expression flicker across her face.

“I want to help,” he said before he could stop himself.

Her head snapped towards him. “What?”

He nodded once, steady now. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to bring him down. And your plan…” He hesitated, running a thumb along the stem of his glass. “Well, I suppose your plan has some merit.”

She analysed him, as if trying to decide whether to believe him.

He broke the tension before it could settle. “You know, the last four months might have gone a great deal smoother if you’d just told me all of this in the first place.”

That earned him a laugh. It filled the space between them like light.

“Oh, please,” she said, dismissively. “I thought you had come here to kill me.”

Draco’s mouth curved. “Yes, I gathered as much. The flying hexes and the occasional lobbed paperweight were something of a giveaway.”

Her chin raised a fraction. “You deserved it.”

“Possibly,” he conceded, tipping his glass toward her in mock salute.

“You came after me in my rooms when you first arrived!” she added, incredulous.

Draco tilted his head and smirked down at her. “Granger, we didn’t like each other in school, granted, but that hardly means I was plotting your murder.”

She lifted a brow. “The last I knew, you were a Death Eater.”

It was as if someone had dumped a bucket of cold water on him.

The title hit him hard. A clean, quiet blow to the ribs. He looked down into his glass, watching the reflection of the fire break across its surface.

“Right,” he said, voice roughened.

Neither of them spoke after that. The silence that followed wasn’t hostile, but it wasn’t easy either. Just the soft crack of burning logs and the sound of wine being sipped, each of them pretending not to notice the weight of the other’s thoughts.

When Granger spoke again, her voice was hesitant. “So why did you come back, then?”

The fire hissed, a log collapsed in on itself, and for a moment he thought he might let the question die there with it. But her eyes stayed on him, steady, waiting.

“There wasn’t one reason,” he said finally. “Not really.”

His voice sounded foreign in his own ears. Too calm compared to the way his heart thudded in his chest. He traced the rim of his glass, watching the wine ripple in the light. “There were… a hundred small moments. Things I saw. Things I did.”

He stopped, swallowing once. The images pressed in, uninvited. The dark marble floors of Malfoy Manor, the screaming, the sound of Bellatrix’s laughter cutting through it all.

And her.

Granger. On the floor. Pale and bleeding. That word burning red across her arm while he stood frozen and useless in the aftermath.

He set his glass down, jaw tight.

“But my mother…” His mouth felt dry. “He killed her. When the paranoia set in—when cruelty stopped being a tactic and became the point—he turned on everyone. On us most of all.”

His fingers curled into his palm so hard, his nails bit into his skin. “There was a test, of sorts,” he said, the words sour. “I failed it. Or passed it, depending on whose rules you use.” A humourless breath rushed out of him. “That was the final lesson, I suppose. That power doesn’t forgive softness. That our choices, even when we think they’re right, always have a way of coming back to hurt us.”

He stared into the blackness beyond the fire, jaw locked, and folded the memory away with practised care—into the quiet box where he kept that day. The lid clicked firmly shut, at least for now.

“After she died,” he said, voice low, level, “I decided I’d do whatever it took to change it. To protect her. To stop that version of us from existing.” He met Granger’s eyes, steady at last. “That’s why I came back.”

The silence that followed was heavy, the sort that demanded to be felt.

“I’m sorry,” She said quietly.

He almost told her not to be, but then her hand came to rest lightly on his leg.

The contact was small, gentle. It was just the weight of her fingers through fabric. The simplest touch. But it jolted through him like a current. He jolted before he could stop himself, the reaction instinctive. Violent. Raw.

Her hand withdrew at once.

A flush of pink scattered across her cheeks as she looked down at her lap.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I shouldn’t have— I know you’re… uncomfortable with me touching you.”

For a moment, he didn’t process the words. Then they landed, wrong and jagged. Something inside him shattered.

“What?” His voice came out too sharp.

She blinked, startled. “You flinched, that’s all. I didn’t mean—”

He straightened abruptly, pulse spiking. Of course. Of course that’s what she thought. Why would she think otherwise when he had given her no reason to?

 “You think I—” He stopped himself, fingers tightening on his knee. “You think I pulled away because of your blood status.”

Granger’s brow furrowed, uncertain. “It’s alright, Malfoy. I understand—”

“No. You don’t.” His voice broke low and rough. He leaned forward, every word vibrating with barely-contained anger. Anger at himself, at the thought, at the entire rotten history between them.

“It is very important to me,” he said, each syllable slow, deliberate, “that you understand your blood does not disgust me, Granger. In fact, I do not think I could care any less about your blood status.”

The last word cracked like glass.

He looked at her—really looked—and hated what he saw reflected there: surprise, doubt, that flicker of careful distance she still held between them. His hands were shaking now; he hid them by folding them together.

“I rejected all of that,” he went on, quieter but no less intense. “A long time ago. The bloodlines, the hierarchy, the filth that came with it. I want nothing to do with it.”

The air between them stilled, the kind of silence that balanced at the edge of breaking.

Granger swallowed once. When she spoke, it was gentle. “When?”

Draco’s gaze dropped before he could stop it—down to her arm, to the sleeve she’d tugged lower earlier.

“When it became glaringly obvious,” he said, his voice low and raw, “that Muggle-borns were never the thing to fear. That what we were doing—what I was a part of—was worse than anything they’d ever done to us.”

He let out a short, unsteady breath, eyes still fixed on her arm. “The rhetoric, the propaganda. All of it was just a story we told ourselves to feel powerful. To make our mediocrity look like superiority.”

She followed his gaze, tugging the fabric lower again in quiet understanding.

She just looked at him for a moment, and then said softly, “Oh.”

It was a small sound, fragile and wistful, like the air leaving a room.

Draco glanced at her, saw the way her eyes had gone distant again, and felt the silence settle between them.

He needed to change the subject. Needed to talk about something else. Anything else.

He cleared his throat, eyes searching for something to focus on. They landed on the thin gold ring on her forefinger.

“Why are you still wearing your glamour?” he blurted. He willed the sarcasm back into his voice. A desperate attempt to reestablish normalcy. “You do realise I know what you look like.”

She blinked, startled by the change of subject, then gave a small shrug. “Habit, I suppose.”

“I know it gets uncomfortable after a while,” he said, tone casual. “You can take it off.”

The words were out before he thought about them. His brain caught up a second later.

You can take it off.

Merlin’s sake.

Heat prickled at the back of his neck. He rushed to clarify, “only—only if you want to, of course.”

He could hear the stumble, could feel it, and he wanted to shake himself.

Brilliant. Very smooth, Draco.

He picked up his glass and downed the rest of his wine, trying to hide behind the motion, the rim of crystal cool against his lower lip.

Across the sofa, Granger was studying him with a maddening little smirk that said she’d noticed.

He wasn’t sure why that made his pulse jump.

Her eyes met his, curious, showing the faintest glint of amusement. “Only if you take off yours, too.”

He blinked, caught between relief and embarrassment, then managed a quick, too casual, “deal.” He frowned and straightened his collar, trying to seem more composed. “Fair’s fair,” he added, a shade too late.

Draco traded the empty glass for his wand, the crystal clicking softly against the table. The movement steadied him, though the faint warmth in his chest told him the wine had affected him more than he’d realised. Just enough to blur the edges of reason.

He exhaled, bracing himself, and raised his wand. “Finite.”

The glamour began to dissolve, the magic peeling away like cool water evaporating from his skin. It left behind the faintest chill, a ghost of sensation that traced down his shoulders and spine.

The ashen brown of his hair drained to its true colour, a white pale as moonlight. His eyes brightened to sharp mercury grey, and the soft angles of illusion hardened into something more precise. Harsh. Unyielding.

It felt like armour settling back into place.

The room almost seemed to change with it. He ran a hand through his hair out of habit, brushing away the last of the magic’s residue and forced himself to meet her gaze.

He watched her, waiting for what, he wasn’t certain. But he was waiting for something. Some sort of reaction to the change.

Granger’s gaze lingered. Her eyes moved over his face, not searching, exactly, just seeing. He couldn’t read her expression, and that unnerved him more than he cared to admit.

He rolled his wand in his hand, pretending not to notice her scrutiny. His pulse, the traitorous thing, drummed against his throat.

Why did he care what Granger thought of how he looked?

He’d never cared before. Not about her opinion. Not about anyone’s, really. But now, for some inexplicable reason, he did. He frowned at the internal admission.

The quiet stretched between them. Too long. He looked at her expectantly.

“Fair’s fair,” he said again, fighting to keep his tone even.

Granger hesitated only a heartbeat before reaching for the thin gold ring on her finger. With a small twist, she pulled it off and the glamour began to fall away.

It didn’t vanish so much as unfold. Like petals opening in slow motion.

Her colour returned first. The cold edges of the illusion softening into the warmer tones of her skin, the faint blush high on her cheeks. Her hair lightened as if ink had been pulled from it, straight strands winding into a cascade of curls that tumbled down her back, long and slightly wild, the way he remembered.

Her eyes stayed the same. That warm glowing amber, bright even in the low light. For a moment he thought they looked almost out of place in this neat, dark room. They were too alive. Too real.

It was like watching something bloom after a long winter.

His chest warmed.

He told himself it was the wine. Or perhaps the faint sense of familiarity, of seeing her again, unhidden, after so many months of wearing a different face.

He’d forgotten, somehow, what she really looked like. The small, human details that the glamour had dulled. The faint freckles dotted across her nose, the full shape of her mouth, the stubborn defiance still carved into every feature.

He realised, with a flicker of disorientation, that she was beautiful.

His breath caught, chest tightening as the world seemed to narrow to the shape of her face, the glow on her skin. The faint buzz of wine in his veins blurred everything just enough to make it feel dreamlike, dangerously easy to stare.

Before he could stop himself, his hand lifted, drawn by some unconscious impulse, toward the soft ringlet that had fallen in front of her shoulder. His fingers hovered there, inches from her hair, and the warmth rose higher, sharper.

Her eyes flicked to his raised hand, confusion clouding her features.

He came back to himself, as though waking from a trance, and pulled his hand back sharply towards his knee.

He cleared his throat, a flimsy attempt to disguise the awkwardness. He studied her, a question forming on his tongue. “How old are you?”

Granger blinked at him, as if the thought had come out of nowhere.

A crease formed between her brows for a moment before she answered. “I suppose I’m Twenty-three now. Though it feels a bit muddled with the timeline.”

He smirked. “Two years younger than me, then.”

She crinkled her nose and scoffed. “So, what? You think that makes you wiser?”

“Clearly not,” he said dryly, “given present company.”

That earned him a laugh. Genuine. Free. Unguarded. It was melodic, soft and light, and something in his chest constricted at the sound. It was absurd, really, how it affected him. Just a laugh. A very human, ordinary sound. But it filled the room in a way nothing else had all evening.

She looked at him over the rim of her glass, cheeks flushed from the alcohol.

“You know,” she said, tone teasing. “This is the first time you’ve ever looked at me without calling me something rude or insulting.”

He feigned shock. “That can’t possibly be true.”

“It is.”

“Not even once?”

“Not once,” she said, with mock solemnity.

He drummed his fingers on his knee, pretending to consider while watching the way her curls shimmered in the light. He shook his head faintly. “Then I suppose I owe you an apology.”

She gasped in exaggerated shock. “Draco Malfoy apologizing? I should have brought a camera.”

He smirked, enjoying her teasing far more than he should. “Don’t push your luck, Granger.”

She laughed again and he had to look away, acutely aware of how that sound did peculiar things to his composure. He took a sip of wine to cover it, though it only added to the warmth already spreading through him.

“I think we can start over,” she said after a moment, the smile lingering in her voice.

He looked back at her. “Start over?”

She nodded, expression certain. Determined. “I’m Hermione Granger,” she said, thrusting out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

He stared at her for a beat, the words hanging between them, absurd and perfect. Then he reached out and took her hand.

Her fingers were warm and steady, and he held them a fraction longer than was required, his pulse thudding in his ears.

“Malfoy,” he said finally, his voice low. “Draco Malfoy.”

Her mouth twitched into a grin, and before he knew it, he was grinning back.

They sat like that for a while—two professors in pyjamas, half-drunk and smiling like fools—before Granger leaned back into the sofa, clearly making herself more comfortable.

“Well,” he said, “I think this calls for celebration.”

Her brow quirked. “Celebration?”

“Of our newfound civility.” He raised his wand and flicked it lazily toward the drinks cabinet. “And I happen to know,” he added as a decanter and a set of whisky glasses floated obediently toward them, “that a little firewhisky can make even the strangest truces more bearable.”

Granger laughed and rolled her eyes. “You just want an excuse to show off your fancy, rich-person alcohol.”

He caught the decanter neatly from the air, poured them each a generous measure, and handed one to her.

“Perhaps,” he said, lifting his own in mock salute, “but I’m fairly certain history has proven that the best alliances are forged over too much drink.”

She clinked her glass against his, eyes still bright with amusement. “To unlikely alliances, then.”

He grinned. “I’ll drink to that.”

***

A few hours later, the fire had burned down to embers and the bottle of firewhisky had somehow emptied. Draco wasn’t entirely sure when that had happened—or when they’d stopped talking strategy and started trading stories. The line between laughter and confession had blurred somewhere along the way.

Granger had been sitting with her legs crossed like a pretzel on the sofa, half facing him, her cheeks flushed with heat and drink. She’d told him about the first time she, Potter, and Weasley had gone after Voldemort—at eleven, of all things—speaking between fits of laughter.

He remembered the way she’d leaned forward, eyes bright, while he’d tried not to grin.
“You mean to tell me,” he’d said, “that your grand crusade against the Dark Lord started with three first-years and a trapdoor guarded by a giant dog?”

“Fluffy,” she’d corrected with great dignity.

He’d blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“His name was Fluffy,” she’d said, pointing her glass at him as if daring him to argue. “Honestly, Malfoy, keep up.”

“Granger, that’s beside the point,” he’d said dryly, “you were eleven.”

“Twelve,” she’d corrected, taking a long sip of whisky. “A very clever twelve.”

He couldn’t help it—he’d laughed.

She’d grinned in triumph, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “And then, of course, there was the time I punched you.”

He’d frozen mid-laugh. “You really had to go and bring that up?”

“Oh, don’t look so wounded,” she’d teased, her tone unmistakably smug. “You deserved it.”

“I was thirteen,” he’d muttered. “Thirteen, Granger. And you broke my nose.”

“Barely,” she’d said, smiling like she’d won something. “It was a very satisfying punch, though.”

He’d scowled into his glass, which only made her giggle harder. “I still don’t know what was more shocking,” he’d said under his breath, “the punch or the fact that a Gryffindor actually had decent aim.”

“Oh, hush.”

The next story had come tumbling out not long after—her sneaking into the Shrieking Shack, the rescue of Buckbeak and Sirius Black. She’d told it like an adventure, all wild turns and impossible courage, her eyes gleaming.

Draco had tried to look unimpressed. “You realise the Ministry nearly imploded because of that hippogriff incident?”

“That’s rich,” she’d shot back. “You’re the one who tried to have the poor thing executed because he slightly grazed your arm.”

“I was attacked by a beast with talons!” he’d protested, sitting up straighter.

Granger had burst into laughter. “You milked it for weeks!”

“I was a child!” he’d said, though the reluctant smile tugging at his mouth had probably ruined the effect.

They’d gone on like that—snapping, teasing, laughing. The Yule Ball had come next, because of course it had.

“Honestly,” she’d said, rolling her eyes, “the way girls were tripping over themselves to get Krum’s autograph—”

He’d raised an eyebrow. “You were the one dancing with him.”

“Yes, well, he asked me,” she’d said, chin lifting in an unspoken challenge.

He’d meant to roll his eyes and tease her, but the thought of her with Krum had soured something in his chest. He’d dismissed it at once, blaming the whisky.

He’d changed the subject instead. “Well, we had our own entertainment in Slytherin. Truth or Dare, mostly. Nott once dared Goyle to nick a bottle of elf-made wine from the kitchens.”

Granger had chuckled. “Did he manage it?”

“Of course not,” Draco had said, smirking. “Theo and I had to finish the job. Nearly got caught by a house-elf, too.”

Her eyes had lit with mischief. “So you’re admitting to petty theft?”

He’d shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “Call it resourceful mischief. Besides, the house-elves adored me.”

“They pitied you,” she’d countered.

He’d given a soft huff of amusement, shaking his head. “Merlin, you really don’t know when to stop, do you?”

“Never have,” she’d said proudly.

He’d laughed quietly, unable to help himself. The sound had lingered in the warm air between them long after.

A minute later she’d been off again—her words and stories spilling out faster than he could keep up, her laughter echoing in the flickering light until the night blurred around its edges.

She was talking animatedly now about her sixth year at Hogwarts, waving her half-empty glass for emphasis.

“Harry was obsessed that year,” she was saying, her words slightly too round at the edges. “Always sneaking around with the bloody map, watching you.”

Draco blinked, half amused, half perplexed. “Watching me?”

She nodded, curls bouncing. “Constantly. He was convinced you were plotting something,” she paused and examined him, her nose scrunching up slightly. “Which, to be fair, you were.”

“Wait,” his brow furrowed in confusion, “what map?”

Granger froze. For a moment, she looked genuinely affronted by his ignorance. Then her eyes went wide, bright with drunken realization. “Oh my gosh,” she said, setting her glass down with a decisive clink. “Now I can tell you!”

He raised an eyebrow, amused despite himself. “Granger, what are you—”

But she was already rummaging through the pocket of her pyjamas, muttering triumphantly when she found what she was looking for. “The map! The Marauder’s Map!”

“The what?”

She ignored him entirely, flattening a worn piece parchment on the table between their glasses. “I solemnly swear,” she declared, voice hiccupping mid-word, “that I’m up to no good.”

Draco stared at her, snickering. “You really cannot hold your liquor.”

“Shh,” she said, waving a finger in his direction without looking up. “I’m showing you something.”

He didn’t really care about the parchment. What caught his attention—against his better judgment—was the fact that Granger was leaning halfway across the table, curls spilling forward as she braced herself with one hand. The position left her arse rather prominently angled toward him. The hem of her ridiculous plaid pyjama top tugged slightly askew, revealing a sliver of bare skin along her side.

For the briefest moment something deep in his core stirred, and he wondered what her skin would feel like against his lips.

He blinked, and froze.

What in Merlin’s name was he thinking?

It had been a long time. That was all. Long enough, apparently, for his brain to decide that Granger of all people was fair game for errant thoughts.

She turned toward him suddenly and he fixed his gaze onto his lap in a poor attempt to appear nonchalant.  

“Malfoy.”

Her voice summoned his attention again. She looked at him expectantly, eyes wide with delight. “There,” she said, beaming and pointing to the table. “I’m showing you.”

For a long moment, he didn’t look at the parchment at all. He was too distracted by the way her eyes crinkled as she smiled at him. How the warmth in her expression made the room feel smaller, softer.

It took conscious effort to drag his gaze down.

And then he saw it—the footprints, each labelled in tiny script, wandering across the castle’s layout. He recognized the corridors instantly, the dungeons, the towers. Names shifting faintly wherever someone moved. His own, hers, the students, the ghosts.

Draco leaned forward slowly, eyebrows lifting. “You’ve had this the entire time?!”

She grinned, triumphant. “Mmhmm.”

He gaped at her, putting the pieces together. “You used this to spy on me!”

“No, not spy,” she said primly, hiccupping again. “Observe.”

He snorted, the sound halfway between amusement and disbelief. “That’s what we’re calling it now, is it?”

She stuck her tongue out at him and then clasped a hand over her mouth while giggling at her own audacity.

“Merlin,” he muttered, “you’re hopeless.”

“I’m not hopeless,” she protested, then frowned down at her glass. “Just… slightly compromised.”

He gestured to the map. “Granger, do you have any idea the level of stalking this constitutes?”

“Oh, don’t be dramatic.” She waved him off with the easy confidence of the very drunk. “At least my ways of sneaking and spying—no, observing—were far less invasive than yours.”

She threw him a sideways glance, the corner of her mouth twitching in deliberate mischief.

He felt the tips of his ears heat almost instantly. “Right,” he muttered. “That.”

Her grin widened.

 “You really can’t let that go, can you?”

She just giggled in response.

He groaned, “For the record, it really was an accident.”

“I know.” Her voice softened. “It’s okay. Especially now that we’re friends.”

Draco turned his head, the words sinking in slowly. “Friends?”

She nodded, perfectly serious, though the hiccup that followed rather ruined the effect. “Yes,” she said, squaring her shoulders with great effort. “I decided after my third glass of wine.”

He blinked, trying not to laugh. “You decided?”

“Mm-hmm.” She took another sip—an unnecessarily large one—and set the glass down carefully. “And before you argue, I would like to state that I am perfectly in control of my faculties,” she declared, though her words slurred at the edges, “and I can decide who I want as a friend, thank you very much.”

He had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing at her. “Right. Of course. Perfectly reasonable.”

Her eyes narrowed faintly, as though she could sense the amusement radiating off him. “You’re mocking me.”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

“You are,” she insisted, pointing at him threateningly. “But I don’t care. It’s decided.”

She fell back against the sofa, her chestnut curls tumbling down her shoulders, and let out a sigh. There was no guile in her expression, no sharpness. Just the open, unfiltered honesty of someone who’d stopped trying to guard herself.

He looked at her for a long moment, the fire painting shifting gold along the edge of her jaw. “You’ll probably change your mind when you’re sober,” he said finally.

“No.” She shook her head at once, the movement slightly unsteady but firm in conviction. “I won’t.”

Her gaze found his again, warm but unfocused. “You’re not as terrible as you pretend to be.”

He exhaled through his nose and studied her. “You must be very drunk.”

“Probably,” she said, shrugging. “But that still doesn’t make me wrong.”

The steady rise and fall of her shoulders matched the slow flickering rhythm of the flames. She looked… comfortable.

Her glass sat forgotten on the table. She shifted slightly, curling her legs up onto the sofa beside him, moving with the boneless clumsiness of someone half-asleep. One of her feet brushed against his leg.

The touch was small, accidental, meaningless. And despite how much he tried not to, he flinched.

Her head turned lazily toward him, eyes half-lidded, voice soft with exhaustion. “Why do you do that?”

He hesitated. His mind caught between deflection and honesty. “Do what?”

“Flinch when I touch you,” she mumbled.

The words hung there for a long moment before he answered.

“It’s been a very long time,” he whispered, “since I’ve experienced touch that wasn’t… painful in some way.”

Her expression shifted, faint lines creasing her forehead, but she didn’t say much. Just gave a quiet little “oh,” the sound half-swallowed by sleep. She started to pull her feet back, slow and uncertain.

He grabbed her ankle before he could think better of it. “Don’t.”

She blinked up at him, clearly confused.

“Keep them there,” he said, refusing to meet her eyes. “It’s… nice.”

That seemed to satisfy her. She nodded once—sleepily, almost childlike—and settled back into the cushions again.

Draco watched her from the corner of his eye, the faintest crease forming between his brows.

Her breathing slowed and her features softened. The tension she seemed to carry everywhere, even in laughter, had eased. The faint lines on her forehead smoothed out as the light of the fire flickered across her face. She looked peaceful. Perfectly at ease.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen anyone look like that in his company. Certainly not because of it.

The realisation formed a fragile feeling in his chest. He didn’t dare move, afraid to shatter this tiny, perfect moment. The stillness, the warmth, her.

He sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. Honestly, he thought, glancing at her half-sleeping form, what is this witch doing to me?

He kept focusing on the point of contact — the faint pressure of her foot against his leg. It was nothing, really. Barely there. But it held his attention all the same.

The warmth of it blurred everything else, the ticking of the clock on the mantle, the steady heat of the flames, even the burn of whisky in his throat. It was the only thing he could feel with any sense of clarity.

He didn’t notice right away that she was speaking. Her voice came soft and slow, almost slurred by the proximity of sleep.

“I miss them,” she murmured.

He turned his head slightly. “Who?”

Her lips moved faintly, the words caressing the air between them. “Harry. Ron.” She let out a long sigh, “my parents.”

The ache in her voice lodged deep in his chest. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

She didn’t respond.

When he looked over again, her eyes were closed. Her breathing had evened out, calm and steady. She’d fallen asleep just like that — mid-thought, as if exhaustion had finally caught up with her.

After a while, he lifted his wand, murmuring a soft summoning charm. A blanket unfolded itself from the armchair and drifted down to cover them both, settling lightly over her shoulders and his knees.

He told himself he’d move before she woke. That was the appropriate thing to do. He would just sit here for a few more minutes. That was all.

But the fire kept flickering, the warmth spreading in slow, steady waves. He leaned back into the sofa, eyes half-lidded, and let the rhythm of her breathing lull him.

It occurred to him, just before sleep took hold, that this was the first Christmas in years that felt like something worth remembering.

Chapter Text

Hermione couldn’t be certain, seeing as her memory was presently foggy at best, but it felt rather like she’d been hit by the Hogwarts Express.

Not just hit. No. It had reversed, come back for another go, and parked itself squarely on her skull.

Her head throbbed with a steady, merciless rhythm. Every breath made her temples pulse. She grew increasingly aware that her mouth tasted like the inside of a cauldron left too long unwashed, and her tongue seemed to have grown a layer of felt overnight.

She wasn’t dead, unfortunately. Death would’ve been quieter. More comfortable.

Her cheek was pressed to a pillow that smelled nothing like her own, less rosemary and more cedarwood and smoke. Beneath her palms, she felt coarse wool, and across her legs… something heavy. Warm. Shifting.

Her brows pulled together.

The surface under her wasn’t a bed. It was too narrow for that, too firm. A sofa, maybe? One that most definitely wasn’t hers. Which begged several alarming questions.

Where was she?
Why did she feel like she’d taken a Bludger to the head?
And, most pressingly, what—or who—in Merlin’s name was lying on top of her?

The light behind her eyelids flickered, cool and watery, prying at the edges of her headache. She cracked them open and immediately regretted it. Pain bloomed behind her temples, sharp and insistent.

She braced herself against the pounding in her head and turned carefully, blinking through the haze as she tried to piece together her surroundings.

The world slowly swam into view in soft, rippling blue-greys, the morning light filtering through the waters of the Black Lake beyond the enchanted windows. Bookshelves loomed in silhouette, along with a coffee table littered with empty wine bottles, glasses with far too little alcohol left in them, and a finished bottle of firewhisky. A Christmas pudding sat in the middle of the table, entirely untouched.

The fire had burned down to dull orange coals, and her neck ached from the awkward angle she’d slept in. She tried to shift just enough to sit up, maybe pry herself free, but something heavy pinned her hips in place.

Hermione frowned, wiggling experimentally in an attempt to free herself. No luck. The weight shifted slightly in response, accompanied by the faint rustle of fabric and a low sound.  Almost a moan.

Her heart stuttered.

She held her breath as she lifted her head ever so slightly towards the sound. The dim light of morning picked out a pale shape against the dark wool of the blanket.
A tousled shock of white-blond hair, stark and unmistakable even in shadow, rested across her lap.

For a second, her mind refused to compute the evidence. Then, very slowly, reality settled in, cold and merciless as the frosty winter morning.

Malfoy.

Everything came back at once.

The Firewhisky. The map. The late-night laughter. Telling Draco Malfoy about Horcruxes and the war and how, somewhere between her third glass of wine and the second lengthy story he had indulged, she’d decided he wasn’t entirely awful. Decided he was her friend.

Now he was apparently also her blanket.

Oh, Merlin.

She was in Draco Malfoy’s rooms. Wearing plaid pyjamas. With her new ‘friend’ asleep on top of her.

“Brilliant,” she muttered to no one, rubbing her temples.

Her head throbbed in response. She groaned, and the sound made the man currently draped over her legs shift slightly. The movement sent a dull ache through her hips and a flicker of irritation up her spine.

She tried to sit up. No use. The dead weight wouldn’t budge.

“Malfoy,” she said, voice coming out in a rasp.

Nothing happened. The soft, steady rhythm of his breathing continued, uninterrupted.

She cleared her throat and smacked his shoulder lightly. “Malfoy, wake up.”

He didn’t even flinch.

“Malfoy,” she said again, sharper this time. “You’re crushing me.”

Still nothing. Only a faint murmur that sounded suspiciously like contentment.

She groaned and tried to wriggle free, but that only seemed to make things worse.

He simply stirred a bit, adjusted his position, and somehow managed to press closer.

The man slept with the stubborn determination of someone dead to the world and entirely committed to staying that way.

“Oh, come on,” she hissed and moved again.

The shift was small, but it changed everything. The blanket slipped lower, and his hand, previously caught awkwardly between them, slid beneath the hem of her pyjama top until his palm rested against her ribs. Warm. Solid. Foreign.

Dangerously close to the underside of her breast.

Hermione squeaked. Her heart gave one hard, panicked thud.

He sighed — sighed — and his thumb twitched against her skin, as though his unconscious mind had chosen to do the exact most mortifying thing possible.

Her pulse was hammering now, heat climbing the back of her neck.

This wasn’t happening. Surely this wasn’t—

“Malfoy,” she said again, louder, her voice breaking on the last syllable. “Malfoy!”

That finally did it.

He jerked awake, blinking hard, hair a chaotic white halo in the blue-grey light. “What—what?!”

“You’re—” she pushed at his chest, “crushing me!”

It took him a second to focus, to realise where he was, and then she saw the precise moment comprehension hit. His gaze dropped to where his hand still rested underneath her shirt.

He went rigid.

Colour rushed up his neck so fast it made her own skin prickle in sympathy. She could feel the second-hand embarrassment rising, hot and immediate, until it set her cheeks alight to match.

He jerked back, hands half-raised in useless apology. “I—I didn’t—Granger, I swear—”

“Malfoy,” she said, cutting him off, voice steadier than she felt. “It’s fine.”

“But I—”

“It’s fine.”

She sat up fully, tugging at the hem of her plaid pyjama top and forcing an awkward laugh. “Honestly, let’s just add it to the growing list of things we’re never going to talk about again, shall we?”

That earned a weak, uncertain half-smile from him. He rubbed the back of his neck, gaze skittering away from hers too quickly, as if still embarrassed. The motion was small, almost shy. Decidedly un-Malfoy-like.

Hermione’s focus shifted back to throbbing in her temples and the horrifying state of her hair.

She ran her fingers through her tangled curls, grimacing at the knots and the dull ache pulsing behind her eyes. “Do you,” she said finally, squinting over at him, “also feel like you’ve been hit by the Hogwarts Express? Or is that just me?”

Malfoy blinked, as if caught off guard by the change in subject. Then he huffed out something between a laugh and a groan, rubbing at the bridge of his nose.

“More like trampled by an Erumpent,” he muttered.

Hermione nodded solemnly. “Ah. Good. So it’s not just me, then.”

The tension broke. Not completely, but enough for her to breathe normally again. Her head still throbbed, her stomach still rolled faintly, and the taste of whisky clung stubbornly to the back of her throat, but at least they’d moved past the part where Draco Malfoy had almost accidentally groped her in his sleep.

Progress.

She pressed the heel of her hands to her eyes. “Please tell me you’ve got a hangover potion somewhere.”

He let out a long sigh. “I’m afraid not. But I’ve a few spare Pepper-up potions that might take the edge off.”

“I’ll take it,” she muttered, squinting at him.

He stood and walked into the adjoining room, and a stillness settled over the space. It felt soft and companionable in the way of early mornings.

Hermione’s gaze drifted across the room, tracing over the details she hadn’t paid attention to last night. A pair of dragon hide shoes tucked neatly by the door. A dark wooden chest in the corner near the drinks cabinet, its silver fittings glinting faintly in the low light. And on the desk, a familiar potted sprig of rosemary.

She did a double take.

It was clearly the same one she’d brought him at the start of term. It had been an excuse, really, to step into his classroom and glean more information about his identity. She’d half expected him to throw it away the moment she left. But there it was, upright and green. Thriving against all odds.

She didn’t know what to make of that.

Next to it sat a single, poorly wrapped parcel — red-and-gold paper, green ribbon, the sort of well-meaning disaster only Dippet could produce. She didn’t need to open it to guess the contents: perhaps a tin of treacle fudge or a book titled Staff Unity: Building Bridges Between Departments.

She startled.

That was a Christmas gift.

It was Christmas morning.

She hadn’t even said anything.

A grin formed as she quickly called into the next room, “Happy Christmas, Malfoy!”

There was a pause, long enough that she wondered if he’d heard her, before he returned carrying two slim vials. He handed her one.

“Happy Christmas, Granger.”

“Thank you,” she said, turning it over in her hands before adding, more quietly, “And for last night, too. It was… nice. To have someone to talk to.” She hesitated, then gave a faint, sheepish laugh. “To not be alone on Christmas.”

Something in his expression softened before she looked away, bringing the potion to her lips. It burned pleasantly on the way down, dampening the dull ache at her temples.

“I enjoyed it too,” he whispered, as if it was something he hadn’t wanted to admit out loud.

She glanced up, meeting his eyes briefly before fussing with the edge of the blanket. “And sorry for falling asleep on your sofa. I did seem to make myself rather at home, didn’t I? If it happens again, just wake me and send me back to my rooms. I’d hate to be a nuisance.”

That drew an amused sound from him. Not quite a laugh, but close. “So you’re planning for it to happen again, then?”

She shrugged. “Now that we’re working together, I imagine there’ll be a fair amount of planning involved. Your rooms are better suited for it than mine.”

“Better suited,” he repeated, lips twitching. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Not at all,” she said primly, lifting her chin. “Purely practical. Yours have an actual lavatory, which makes them infinitely more convenient.”

This time, he did laugh.

Hermione stood, stretching the stiffness from her shoulders, and with a flick of her wand vanished the remains of their late-night mess — the glasses, the bottles, a few errant drops of spilled wine. “See?” she said, a small, smug tilt to her mouth. “I can clean up after myself.”

Malfoy crossed his arms over his chest, examining the cleared table. “Once in a century occurrence. I should record the date.”

She gave a short laugh, shaking her head. “Do that, and I’ll expect a commemorative plaque.”

“Something tasteful in bronze, perhaps.”

“I’d prefer gold.”

He didn’t reply, though she could still feel the trace of his amusement in the air between them.

Hermione glanced toward the mantel. The clock above it ticked steadily, the sound unusually loud in the quiet. Her eyes widened slightly. “Breakfast will be starting soon,” she said, straightening the hem of her shirt. “I should probably go freshen up. Change into something a bit more appropriate for a meal with faculty.”

She hesitated, hand playing with the edge of her sleeve. “Will you be there? At breakfast, I mean. I didn’t see you at the Christmas feast.”

He looked at her then, and for the first time that morning, the faint humour drained entirely from his face. His gaze flicked to the dying fire before settling somewhere near her shoulder.

“I’ve made a bit of a habit of not celebrating Christmas,” he said. His voice wasn’t flat exactly, just distant. The next words were quiet enough that she almost missed them. “For a few years now.”

Hermione stilled, caught between wanting to apologise and knowing he wouldn’t want her to. She nodded instead, the motion small.

“Right. Well,” she said, mustering a reassuring smile, “you should come anyway. Get something to eat. I’ll make sure Dippet doesn’t corner you with tinsel.”

That earned her a look — faintly amused, faintly something else. The corners of his mouth lifted, though the expression didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Okay,” he said at last, and the word carried more warmth than she’d expected.

Hermione leaned forward to collect the folded map from the table, brushing her fingertips over its worn edges before tucking it safely under her arm. Beside it lay her ring, the thin gold band glinting faintly in the light.

She slipped it back onto her finger. At once, the familiar shimmer of magic rippled across her skin — a faint tightening at her jaw, the almost imperceptible shift of her features settling into someone else’s face.

The feeling was always the same: that brief, hollow tug of recognition turned inside out. A reminder of who she wasn’t allowed to be.

She exhaled slowly, thumb brushing the smooth band before letting her hand drop to her side. When she looked up, Malfoy was watching her.

There was something odd about the way he observed her, the way he tracked the glamour as it settled over her skin. His expression was hard to read; a faint crease appeared between his brows as his gaze lingered on her face a beat too long.

“What?” she asked, hand coming up to wipe at her cheek. “Do I have something on my face?”

He opened his mouth, closed it again, then said abruptly, “Don’t wear that when you’re here.”

Hermione blinked and looked down at her hand. “What—my ring?”

“Yes.” The word was sharp. “When it’s just us. I’d rather you didn’t.”

She stared at him, trying to puzzle out his expression. “Oh. Why?”

He hesitated, the quickest flash of panic appearing before he replied, “It’s… unsettling. Talking to you when you look like someone else. That’s all.”

Hermione tilted her head. His tone didn’t quite match his words, but she couldn’t work out why. Still, he seemed uncomfortable enough that she decided not to press.

“All right,” she said simply. “I won’t wear it when it’s just the two of us here.”

He gave a short nod, eyes dropping to the floor as if that settled it.

“Good,” he said, quiet but firm.

Hermione unfolded the Invisibility Cloak, the silvery fabric pooling cool and weightless in her hands. She hesitated, watching Malfoy where he stood by the hearth. His gaze had gone distant again, fixed somewhere near her feet.

An impulse stirred — quiet but insistent. She wanted to try something.

Moving carefully, she crossed the small space between them. “Malfoy,” she said gently, just to keep from startling him.

He looked up, eyes widening slightly as she approached, and before she could overthink it, she lifted a hand and set it lightly on his shoulder.

The reaction was immediate, a faint intake of breath, the way his posture went suddenly rigid beneath her touch. His shoulder was warm under her palm, the heat of his skin radiating through the fabric of his pyjamas. She held her hand there for a few breaths, offering the smallest pressure, steady and deliberate.

“I’ll see you at breakfast,” she said quietly, giving him a small smile.

He blinked at her, throat working as he swallowed once, a quick, uncertain movement that seemed to catch him off guard as much as her. Something flickered in his expression, gone before she could name it.

Hermione let her hand fall, the fabric of his sleeve slipping from her fingers as she stepped away.

“Yes,” he said after a pause. His voice carefully controlled. “See you at breakfast.”

She smiled again, a touch uncertain but genuine, then lifted the cloak and drew it over her shoulders.

The fabric rippled once, and she vanished.

As she moved towards the door, she risked one last glance back. Malfoy was still standing where she’d left him, brow furrowed faintly, like he was trying to solve a problem without fully understanding the question.

She slipped out, pulling the door shut behind her.

And just before the latch clicked, she heard him whisper, low and unguarded—

“Fuck.”

The word hung in the quiet for a moment, swallowed quickly by the soft creak of the hinges and the distant hush of the corridor.

Hermione drew the cloak tighter around herself and kept walking, a small warmth blooming in her chest.

After four years on her own, it was strange, and admittedly rather nice, to think she might have a friend again.

To know she was no longer alone.

Chapter Text

The Christmas Holiday passed in a blur of parchment and candlelight.

What began as a single evening of “quick research” in the dungeons had stretched into several quiet days.

Hermione brought over all her notes, spread them across his living room like a general preparing for siege, and unpacked most of the contents of her beaded bag. Together they sorted through everything, even her copy of Hogwarts: A History from their own time, which might, with luck, help them predict certain events before they unfolded.

It felt surprisingly easy being around him. She’d daresay it was even comfortable. Malfoy had a sharpness to him, but also restraint; he listened. Properly listened. And for someone accustomed to Harry’s distracted nods and Ron’s tendency to check out the moment she said Arithmancy, that was… novel. Refreshing.

He was clever, infuriatingly so. He refused to accept her conclusions at face value, picking at them with a quiet precision that drove her mad.

“You’ve decided which moments are essential,” Malfoy said one winter afternoon, lazily twirling his wand as though he hadn’t been watching her intently for ten minutes. “How exactly did you determine that?”

Hermione didn’t glance up from the book she was annotating. “Arithmantic probability modelling,” she said briskly. “Each event has a measurable temporal signature — a kind of mathematic resonance that correlates with its influence on later outcomes. By mapping those resonances, I can determine which points in the timeline carry the highest cumulative weight.”

He leaned back, considering.

“So, you’re measuring the importance of history,” he said finally.

“Not importance. Essentiality,” she corrected. “They’re not quite the same thing.”

He hummed under his breath, clearly unconvinced. “And this method of yours… it accounts for every possible influence?”

“Of course not,” she said, bristling at the challenge in his voice. “It’s impossible to quantify everything. There will always be unrecorded variables — minor choices, chance encounters, unseen decisions. But the model accounts for what can be measured. It’s the most comprehensive approach I could devise.”

When she looked up, his expression carried that familiar flicker of amusement — the one that made her want to throw something at him.

“So the rest,” he said, “all the little things that don’t fit your numbers… you’ve decided they don’t matter?”

Hermione frowned, irritation prickling at the back of her neck. “That isn’t what I said.”

“It’s what it sounds like,” he replied, smirking as he lifted one pale eyebrow. He was doing it deliberately, because of course he was — goading her just to see if he could wind her up. And no matter how many times she told herself not to react, her pulse still jumped, her tongue still moved before her brain caught up.

“I can’t account for everything, Malfoy,” she snapped, the quill trembling slightly between her fingers. “You know that. If the parameters are too broad, the mathematics collapse. It’s like brewing a potion while someone keeps changing the ingredients. It won’t work. You have to define the limits, or the entire model falls apart.”

“Maybe,” he said with a noncommittal shrug, “or maybe you decided what counted as ‘essential’ because it suited your theory.”

Hermione let out a breath, sharp and exasperated. “Honestly, you’re impossible. I don’t decide the data, Malfoy. I interpret it. That’s how Arithmancy works.” She brandished her quill at him like a weapon. “If you think you can do better, by all means—”

“Oh, I don’t need to,” he cut in smoothly. “I’d just like to test your models.”

Her brows lifted. “You want to go through them?”

“All of them,” he said, already reaching for one of her neatly stacked parchments. “You can explain while I look for mistakes.”

She scoffed. “You can’t even follow half the formulae.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “Granger, I was second in our class. You really think I can’t follow a few complex arithmantic equations?”

“I didn’t mean—”

He leaned towards her, grin widening. “You did. But that’s all right. You can apologise when I find something you missed.”

Hermione practically threw the other stack of formulae at him. “You are the most aggravating person I’ve ever met.”

“And yet you keep bringing me your notes,” he said lightly, eyes gleaming. “It’s almost like you enjoy having me around.”

She rolled her eyes, picking up her book to disguise her growing smile. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

He leaned back, smug and far too pleased. “Oh, I don’t need to. You’ll do it for me when I’m right.”

Hermione muttered something uncharitable under her breath and dipped her quill back into the ink, telling herself it was easier to let him talk than to admit what really kept her there.

It wasn’t the arguing. Not exactly. It was the challenge of it.
He made her think harder. Forced her to justify every assumption, every calculation, every neatly ordered thought. And, infuriatingly, she liked that. The mental tug-of-war. The rare feeling of being matched.

He spent nearly three hours poring over her notes, eyes flicking quickly across the parchment, occasionally stopping to ask for clarification. Each time he did, she explained, half expecting the usual glazed look she got from others. But Malfoy didn’t tune out; he listened. His questions were sharp, precise. The kind that forced her to pause and consider before answering.

At some point, she stopped being irritated. They fell into a rhythm — the quiet scratch of quills and turning pages, the faint hiss of the fire in the grate, their breathing syncing in the stillness of the dungeons. The sort of calm that only came from working beside someone who understood the language of focus.

She indulged him, letting him make notes in the margins, and for a while, they sat in companionable silence. Until, inevitably, the discussion shifted.

To Riddle.

The name alone stirred the air between them.

“He only ever wanted power,” she said, pacing before the hearth. Her voice took on that clipped, lecturing rhythm she slipped into when she was sure of her ground. “That’s the constant. Every decision he makes is about control.”

Malfoy lounged on the sofa, long fingers drumming lightly on his chest. A brief flicker of tension tightened his jaw before he looked up at her.

“Power, yes,” he said softly. “But not for power’s sake. He wants what power can’t give him — permanence. You’re mistaking his methods for his motive.”

She frowned. “You mean immortality.”

“Yes,” he said with certainty.

She rolled her eyes, muttering something about him projecting, but the thought unsettled her.

When he pressed her further — questioned her lack of concern for the less frequent names in her notes, the early followers whose loyalties were already forming — she bristled again.

“You focus so much on Riddle,” he said, “that you’re forgetting he doesn’t rise alone. If you want to fix history, stop only looking at the snake and start monitoring the nest.”

She didn’t have a reply for that.

She stayed for several more hours, and he continued helping her sift through her plans. They talked until long after the fire burned low and the room fell into a gentle hush, broken only by the soft pop of settling embers.

He sat at the desk, sleeves rolled up, head bent over her notes, the firelight casting a warm glow along the sharp line of his jaw. She stood beside him, gathering parchment into neat stacks — though her hands slowed without her meaning them to.

Because she slowly realised he wasn’t just reading.

He was comprehending.

Really comprehending. Fully and effortlessly, with that quiet, razor-edged concentration she’d only ever seen in herself. His focus didn’t waver, not once. He moved through her equations with sharp, deliberate attention, his mind cutting cleanly through the complexity as if it were simply another language he happened to speak.

He was focused. Absorbed in her equations as though they were worthy of his full attention.

She found herself watching his hands.

Long fingers moving with care, steady and sure as they traced the margins of her notes. Pale skin stretched over elegant bones. Veins visible beneath the surface like delicate strokes of ink. He turned a page and she caught the subtle flex of his knuckles, the fine exactness of movement. Controlled, deliberate, and almost graceful in a way she’d never noticed before.

They were hands made for refinement.

For spellwork, for potions, for thought.

There was something hypnotic about them, a quiet beauty in their careful precision.

She looked away quickly, startled by the intensity of her own focus, by the uninvited awareness of him.

When she was finally ready to leave, she hesitated.

His confession from Christmas lingered — the awkward, halting admission that touch didn’t come easily to him. He’d said it like a casual fact, but she’d understood the truth beneath it.

It made sense, she realised. The way he held himself. The way he always seemed poised for impact, even when he appeared calm.

And that understanding made her want to reach out again. Gently. To prove that not every touch had to startle.

So, before she stepped away, she carefully rested her hand on top of his.

He tensed immediately, fingers curling into a fist under her palm. Not from fear, she thought, just instinct. The body bracing before the mind could catch up.

She felt him draw a slow breath. When he looked up at her, his eyes caught hers in a way that made the moment stretch into a stillness she didn’t quite understand. There was a sharpness there, a focus that wasn’t his usual academic scrutiny, something warmer at the edges before he blinked it away.

For a moment they simply looked at one another. His fingers tightened slightly against the desk, a small, controlled movement. His shoulders rose, then eased, like he was recalling himself by degrees.

She registered the return composure that followed — the careful exhale, the polite nod, the way he straightened as if refocusing on the matter at hand. It seemed like nothing. A brief startle, that was all.

“Goodnight,” she said, withdrawing her hand.

He gave a brief nod. “Granger.”

And that was that.

Out in the corridor, she told herself she did the right thing. He’d been through enough. Learning to tolerate something as ordinary as touch shouldn’t have to be another battle. She was helping him, in her own small way. It was practical. Necessary.

The fact that he still went rigid each time only confirmed what she already knew: progress would take time. People didn’t unlearn instinct overnight, not when it had been so deeply carved into them. She understood better than most.

It didn’t bother her. Not really. If anything, it reminded her that he was trying. That counted for something.

And his reactions — the stiffness, the hesitations, the way he shielded himself without meaning to — all fit together with the things he’d never said aloud. It wasn’t weakness. It was experience.

When she reasoned her way through it, she found it easier to move on.

To think about his arguments instead.

About the debates that filled the quiet between them, the theories she could measure and prove.

Especially the one that lingered since Christmas.

His uncertainty about Riddle’s motives had annoyed her at first. She was convinced that Voldemort had always been driven by a single, all-consuming desire for power. But Malfoy’s phrasing stayed with her.

You’re mistaking his methods for his motive.

Power for the sake of immortality, he’d said.

Not the same thing.

She didn’t agree. But his doubt was enough to make her want to prove it.

And so, as the first week of term approached, she came up with an idea. A practical one. Her third-years would face a Boggart. It was a lesson that served her well once, and the memory made her smile despite herself — Neville’s Snape in a dress, her own panic at the sight of Professor McGonagall telling her she’d failed all her classes.

It seemed so dreadful at the time.

Now, it felt almost quaint.

Perhaps, she thought, if Riddle’s fear truly was of mortality, if Malfoy’s theory held even a sliver of truth, then the Boggart would show it.

And if not, then she’d be right, and that would be the end of it.

By Monday morning, the castle had shaken off the quiet of the holidays.
The corridors hummed with voices again, the steady patter of shoes on stone, the faint crackle of enchanted torches, the clatter of someone dropping a cauldron two floors below. It felt normal. Comfortable.

Her classroom, however, was too still.

Hermione moved between the rows of desks, checking each with the same precision she used for spellwork. The faint shimmer of defensive wards hummed along the walls, steady and contained. She brushed a speck of chalk from the blackboard and adjusted the sleeve of her robes.

The wardrobe in the corner gave a short, sharp jolt.

She turned towards it, wand flicking once in warning. “Oh, hush,” she said firmly.

The noise stopped.

A few minutes later, the door creaked open and her third-years began to file in. Gryffindors came first, louder than necessary after two weeks of freedom. The Slytherins followed, quieter but no less self-assured. Satchels were shrugged off, chairs scraped, parchment rustled. The air carried the faint chill of the January morning.

Riddle wasn’t late, but he was the last to arrive. His uniform was immaculate, his expression unreadable. He took in the room once before choosing a seat beside Mr. Avery, who looked faintly proud to be noticed. Hermione didn’t miss the way Riddle’s eyes settled on her. Assessing.

She straightened.

“Good morning,” she said, and the noise of the room settled at once. “Welcome back. I trust you all enjoyed the holidays.”

A few polite murmurs. Someone yawned.

Clearly a group ready and eager to learn.

“Excellent,” she continued. “We’re starting the term with a practical lesson. Something new to test your ability to say focused when confronted with fear.”

The class perked up at that. Behind her, the wardrobe gave another rattle. Louder this time. Several students jumped. Hermione kept her tone even.

“Now, can anyone tell me what a Boggart is?”

No one moved at first. The wardrobe shook again, a low thump echoing through the room. The students closest to it exchanged weary looks.

Finally, an auburn-haired Gryffindor boy near the front — Douglas Webley, she remembered — raised his hand.

“Yes, Mr. Webley?”

“It’s a shape-shifter, Professor,” he said quickly. “Takes the form of whatever frightens the person facing it most.”

“Correct,” Hermione said. “Ten points to Gryffindor.”

A small ripple of unease went through the class. She could feel the tension rise, just slightly, as the wardrobe creaked again in protest.

“Now,” she said, walking towards it, “fear is natural. The trick is learning how to face it. How to stay calm.”

Her wand was steady in her hand. The wardrobe’s hinges trembled.

Hermione exhaled once and looked over her students, one half looked remarkably enthusiastic and the other increasingly apprehensive.

If her theory was correct, this would be just another lesson, and she could move on with her plans.

If Malfoy’s was…

Well, she would think about that later.

She set her jaw.

“Right,” Hermione said, clapping her hands once for attention. “Queue up, please — in front of the wardrobe.”

The class hesitated, exchanging uncertain glances before pushing back their chairs and shuffling into motion. The sound rose gradually, a careful scuffling of shoes, a few nervous laughs, and a trickle of hushed whispers as the class approached. Someone dropped their wand; another bent to pick it up and knocked over an inkpot in the process.

Hermione vanished the ink spill with her wand. “Quickly, please. It’s a queue, not a scenic tour.”

That earned a few embarrassed chuckles, but the movement hastened. Within a minute, they’d arranged themselves — more or less — before the rattling wardrobe. The Gryffindors bunched together towards the front; the Slytherins, predictably, hung back. Riddle stood somewhere in the middle, eyes forward, expression calm but focused.

“Good,” she said. “Now, when you face a Boggart, the key to disarming it is laughter. You defeat it with the incantation Riddikulus.” She demonstrated the flick and sweep of the wand, slow and deliberate. “Emphasis on the second syllable. Rid-DI-ku-lus.”

The class echoed her, a jumble of uncertain voices:
“Riddikulus!”
“Ridikulus?”
“Rid—ridiculus—”

Hermione sighed softly through her nose. “Again. All together, please.”

The next attempt was better. Mostly. Mulciber, near the back, rolled his eyes; a Gryffindor girl stifled a laugh. Hermione ignored both.

“Very well,” she said once they’d managed a passable unison. “Remember: confidence matters. The charm draws its strength from your intent. Picture something absurd — something that breaks the fear before it takes hold.”

She glanced down the line, taking in the nervous faces, the clenched hands on wands. “First volunteer?”

Webley stepped forward, predictably eager despite the tremor in his grip. Hermione offered him an encouraging nod.

“All right, Mr. Webley. Wand ready.”

He raised it, arm stiff.

Hermione moved to open the wardrobe, laying one hand against the cool wood. The surface shuddered under her palm. She steadied her breath.

“On three,” she said, voice even. “One… two…”

She reached for the handle.

“Three.”

The latch clicked.

The wardrobe gave a violent jolt and burst open with a crack like splitting ice.
Something dark spilled out, crawling across the flagstones before rising, twisting, reshaping itself.

The first thing Hermione saw was teeth. Rows of them, long and glistening, attached to something enormous and… amphibious? Webley gave a strangled yelp as the creature solidified — a Grindylow, grotesquely oversized, its claws screeching as it dragged itself forward. Its eyes rolled white, wet tentacles dripping onto the floor.

“Go on, Mr. Webley,” Hermione urged, stepping aside. “Remember the spell.”

He raised his wand, clenched knuckles turning white. “R-Riddikulus!”

For a second, nothing happened — then the Grindylow gave a squeal, its limbs ballooning outward. Its claws curled into oversized mittens and its fanged mouth filled with rows of rubber duck teeth. A pair of knitted socks appeared on each of its tentacles.

The class erupted into laughter. Even the Slytherins couldn’t help it.

The Boggart shrieked and recoiled, retreating towards the cupboard. Hermione beamed. “Excellent form. Five points to Gryffindor.”

She gestured for the next student. “Miss Weaver — you’re up.”

The girl stepped forward, trembling but determined. The Boggart shifted again, elongating into the figure of a terrifying hag with stringy hair, greying skin, and needle-like teeth. It was dressed in torn scraps of fabric that hung over its emaciated form. The girl’s eyes blew wide.

“Remember: humour.”

Miss Weaver took a deep breath. “Riddikulus!”

A sharp pop of magic, and the Hag’s hair stood on end, bright pink and sparking. The fabric transformed into a set of ridiculous Quidditch pyjamas, complete with flapping snitch-patterned slippers. Laughter broke through again, shaky but genuine.

One by one, the students stepped forward.

The Boggart became a towering spider, then an enormous screeching owl, then a giant troll. Each time, Hermione’s voice guided them, calm and steady, the rhythm of reassurance threaded through her words. “Focus on the image. Mean it. Laugh.”

Each transformation filled the air with the sound of unsteady laughter.
A snake turned into a green ribbon that tied itself into bows.
A banshee donned a wig and began to sing off-key opera.
A ghostly figure in black robes was suddenly dressed as a French maid and wielded a feather duster.

The chaos built into something almost joyful. Even the nervous ones joined in now, wand hands steadier, laughter easier. The Boggart was tiring, its transitions slowing between forms.

Tom Riddle stepped forward from the line, wand already drawn. His face was calm. No tremor of nerves, no hint of hesitation. He looked entirely unfazed.

This was it.

Hermione’s hand tightened around her wand. “All right, Mr. Riddle,” she said firmly. “When you’re ready.”

The Boggart stilled. The laughter died away.

For a moment, the only sound was the hum of the wards and the sound of breathing as the Boggart analysed the boy.

It took longer to change than she expected.

The Boggart’s shifting form eventually collapsed inward until it flattened into a sheet of silver glass. A mirror now stood where the smoke had been, tall and old, the edges pitted with tarnish.

Hermione frowned. Boggarts didn’t usually turn into objects.

The surface cleared, and she saw him.

Riddle stared at his own reflection. Only… it wasn’t quite his own.

The boy in the glass looked softer somehow, smaller. His robes had been replaced by an ordinary grey jacket and scuffed shoes. His hair hung untidy over his forehead. His eyes—still dark, but dull—held none of their usual sharp, calculating gleam. A Muggle boy. Unremarkable. Powerless.

She felt a flicker of satisfaction.

She was right.

Malfoy could shove it.

For a long moment, no one spoke. The classroom seemed to hold its breath.

Then the reflection moved. Its lips parted, and a voice filled the air, low, flat, and steady.

“You are nothing.”
“Just like your father.”
“No magic. No legacy. Ordinary.”

The words carried like a curse, quiet but absolute.

Riddle’s wand hand lifted. His face had gone pale, but his expression didn’t flicker. He spoke clearly, his voice cold enough to cut through the whispering air.

“Riddikulus.”

The mirror warped, the reflection twisting grotesquely until the reflection was suddenly wearing clownish robes and a top hat, juggling bright rubber balls that bounced off the glass and squeaked with each hit.

The class laughed, high and nervous, but Riddle didn’t. His lips pressed into a line. A faint tremor passed through his wand before he lowered it.

“Very good, Mr. Riddle,” Hermione said evenly, though her pulse hadn’t slowed. “Five points to Slytherin.”

Riddle stepped away without a word, his hands shoved into the pockets of his robes. The air felt heavier in his wake. Even the laughter that followed seemed cautious. As if no one wanted to draw his attention.

Hermione forced herself to exhale. “All right,” she said, steady again. “Next, please.”

A handful of students went quickly — a shadowy creature grew a burst of colourful feathers, a Blast-Ended Skrewt became a singing teapot. The Boggart moved more sluggishly now, its edges flickering with fatigue.

And then Mr. Avery stepped forward.

He looked pale, eyes darting between her and the shifting creature. Hermione gave him a nod of reassurance, but she could tell it didn’t reach him. His grip on his wand was too tight, his lips moving as though reciting the spell under his breath.

The Boggart started changing before she’d opened her mouth to instruct him. When the shape solidified, Hermione’s stomach turned cold.

A man stood there, tall and sharply dressed, with Avery’s same narrow jaw and cutting eyes. The resemblance was unmistakable.

“Disgrace,” the man spat, his voice low and controlled, the sort of anger that didn’t need to be raised to hurt. “Is this what you do with my name? My blood?”

Avery froze. His wand dropped to his side. The man stepped forward.

“Pathetic boy,” he said, tone soft, cruelly patient. “You’re no son of mine.”

Then he moved. His arm rose, hand open — a father’s strike, practiced and certain.

Avery shut his eyes and braced himself.

Hermione didn’t think. She stepped between them, wand raised before she’d even registered moving.

The blow never landed. The Boggart hesitated, its shape rippling, searching for a new target.

The air around her shifted.

Hermione’s throat tightened.

The figure in front of her changed again. The fine robes of Avery’s father melted away, colours bleeding into black. Flesh drained to grey.

And then Harry stood before her.

She recoiled as if struck.

No.

He was upright, but wrong. His head tilted unnaturally to the side, his glasses cracked, one lens missing. His eyes were open and blank, the whites clouded like smoke. His skin was a greyish pallor that seemed to absorb all the light in the room. There was no breath in him. No movement, except for the slow, deliberate lift of his head as he looked at her.

Anything but this.

“You let me die.”

The words were quiet. Detached. Not angry. A simple statement of fact.

“No,” she rasped.

Hermione’s vision tunnelled. Her chest seized, air catching in her throat. The sound of her heartbeat filled her ears, thick and frantic.

“You were supposed to save me.”

He took a step forward. The way his body moved was wrong — stiff, puppet-like, as though his bones remembered motion but his flesh did not.

“You couldn’t save any of us.”

Her wand hand trembled. She tried to speak again, but her tongue felt heavy. Every nerve in her body screamed to move, to act, but she couldn’t. She could smell the faint, musty scent of his robes. Hear the uneven drag of his feet sliding along the floor.

“This is your fault,” the dead voice whispered.

She gasped and her breath shot back into her lungs like she’d been plunged into ice water. Her wand hand trembled violently.

“Riddikulus,” she strained. The word scraped out of her throat, thin and desperate.

She tried—Merlin, she tried—to picture something funny, something absurd, something bright. A rubber duck. McGonagall in tartan pyjamas. Ron’s awful dress robes. Anything.
But her mind, normally so quick and reliable and orderly, was nothing but white static.
No cleverness. No control. Just the echo of Harry’s voice and the crushing weight of all the times she’d failed him.

The spell hit anyway, weak and unfocused.

Harry’s form twisted, bending backwards as if jerked by invisible strings. His limbs folded wrong, the angles all grotesque and impossible. His face stretched into something absurd—a clownish grin carved across grey skin, a sagging party hat sliding down one ear.

The students gasped, half-laughing, half-afraid.

Hermione didn’t laugh.

She couldn’t even breathe.

She simply stood in horror.

Her hands shook. The thing wearing Harry’s face was still grinning that hideous, vacant smile, and she felt the world tilt around her.

She could barely think against the rising panic.

Something snapped.

“Confringo!”

The explosion cracked through the room like thunder. The Boggart burst apart in a flash of violent orange light, fragments of magic and smoke scattering across the floor. A rush of heat slammed into her chest. The wardrobe rattled violently, then slammed shut with a metallic clang.

The echo seemed to lodge somewhere in her chest, vibrating under her ribs.

She was breathing too fast.

Her vision narrowed. The edges of the room blurred, colour and light dulling until there was only the wardrobe and the scorch mark where the Boggart had been. She could feel her pulse everywhere: in her throat, her fingertips, the base of her skull. A cold, buzzing pressure built behind her sternum.

“Class dismissed,” she rasped. The voice didn’t sound like hers.

The sound of the students leaving was distant, muffled, like she was underwater. She fixed her eyes on a spot on the wall and didn’t move until the last set of footsteps reached the door.

The latch clicked. Silence.

Hermione exhaled shakily, the sound catching halfway out. She moved towards the door on instinct, locking it with a flick of her wand. The wards settled with a faint shimmer, and the barrier felt almost physical — a wall holding back the rest of the world.

Her wand slipped from her fingers and hit the floor with a clatter. She clenched her hands at her sides, trying to steady herself. But she couldn’t stop trembling. The smell of smoke still clung to the air, acrid and sharp.

Her eyes burned. Her chest felt tight. Something inside her gave way.

The first sob broke loose without warning, raw and broken. Then another. And another.

She dropped into the nearest chair as her knees gave out, and the tears came before she could even think to fight them. Not graceful tears, full, shaking sobs that tore out of her chest and left her gasping.

Every breath she dragged from her lungs hurt. Every sound felt too loud in the empty room.

Harry’s face, broken and accusing, burned behind her eyes. Not the boggart’s Harry, but her Harry. The boy she’d fought beside, bled beside, grown up beside.

The boy she’d lost.

The boy she would lose again if she made one wrong move.

A terrible, unbearable pressure swelled inside her, tightening her throat until she could barely draw air. It felt like years of holding the world together had suddenly crashed down; every death, every choice she’d had to make, every impossible burden she’d carried because no one else would. Because she couldn’t stand not to.

The weight of it crushed her.

Her hands clawed at her face, fingers digging into her scalp as if she could hold herself together by force alone. But the sobs kept coming, breaking violently out of a place she usually kept locked so tightly that even she didn’t dare look at it.

She didn’t know who she was crying for.

Harry, who had died once already.

Herself, who might as well have.

Or the terrifying truth that she was right back where she’d been before: the only one who knew everything, the only one who could prevent what was coming, and the only one who would take the fall if she failed.

It was too much.

It had always been too much.

And alone in the dim, smoky classroom, she broke.

For once, she didn’t try to push the feelings away.

She buried her face in her hands and let herself fall apart.

***

Draco sat around a table with seven boys whose futures he already knew. One boy who would one day destroy everything good and right, and six others would orbit him like obedient little moons, each convinced they were destined to reshape the world.

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

The first meeting of the Felix Club had been his idea. Regrettable, but necessary. If he wanted to understand how Voldemort began, they couldn’t just watch Riddle. The Dark Lord didn’t rise through brilliance alone. He rose on the backs of sycophants.

Sycophants like these.

Mulciber, Avery, Lestrange, Rosier, Nott, and his own grandfather, Abraxas Malfoy. Each one a future catastrophe waiting to happen, wrapped neatly in school robes and teenage arrogance. He knew what they would become the way others knew family histories, except his version was considerably darker.

He’d told them the Felix Club was about ambition — a curation of Slytherin’s “brightest minds,” all united by purpose and potential. They’d lapped it up. Of course they had.
Flattery was the universal Slytherin solvent.

He’d borrowed the idea from Slughorn, though his version lacked the flattery and the pandering. Slughorn curated influence; Draco curated information.

Dessert was the only indulgence: sticky toffee pudding, still steaming, served on delicate porcelain that looked absurd in the hands of boys who hadn’t grown into their ambition yet. The air was warm with treacle; candles burned low in tarnished silver holders.

Draco sat at the head of the table, posture relaxed, expression politely neutral. Across from him, Riddle toyed with his spoon with a calm that was practiced rather than natural.

Abraxas Malfoy sat to Draco’s left — immaculate, composed, and every inch the Malfoy heir he was bred to be. Draco kept his gaze carefully away from him. It was absurd to think the boy could recognise him, but sometimes Abraxas looked at him with a tilt of the head or a narrowing of the eyes that was so familiar Draco had to stop himself from bristling.

He watched the interactions instead: Avery’s eager nodding, Lestrange’s snide little smirks, Rosier’s pointless posturing, Nott’s quiet calculations, and threading through it all, Abraxas’s automatic deference to Riddle.

Not obvious.

But there.

The early shape of a hierarchy that would one day stain the world.

That was why he’d assembled them.

To watch the beginning. To see where the first lines were drawn.

He tried to focus — truly — to track the early currents of loyalty.

But his mind wouldn’t stay where he put it.

It kept drifting.

Pulling away from Riddle, from Abraxas, from the entire room… and circling back to one particular witch.

Granger hadn’t been at dinner.

He’d noticed it immediately. His gaze had slid to her chair without thinking. Empty.
No book propped beside her plate, no parchment, no quill tapping restlessly against her fingers.

His jaw tightened. He tried to drag his mind back to the table, to the boys around him, but the distraction only grew worse.

Because every time he forced his attention to the way Mulciber butchered basic etiquette or Abraxas’s clipped reprimands, his mind tugged him somewhere else entirely. Back to Christmas morning.

Back to waking on the sofa with her warm against him, the blanket tangled around them. To his hand, mortifyingly, tucked under the hem of her shirt, resting along her ribs.

He hadn’t meant it. He’d been asleep.

But the memory of it wouldn’t leave him.

The satiny softness of her skin.

The slow, even rise of her breathing under the palm of his hand.

The startling peace of it.

It was the best sleep he’d had in years.

He could almost feel it still, the ghost of her heartbeat under his palm, the calm that settled over him before he’d even realised where he was.

He tried to shake it off, hard.

But his thoughts kept circling, stubborn and unwanted.

Where was she now?

Why hadn’t she been at dinner?

Was she eating? Resting? Or running herself into the ground again like she always did?

He scowled down at his untouched pudding as if it were personally responsible, the caramel hardening at the edges.

This wasn’t helpful.

It wasn’t rational.

And it certainly wasn’t what he should be thinking about.

Mulciber’s grating voice broke through his distraction. “You can’t tell me the Ministry knows what it’s doing, letting Mudbloods work in magical law. It’s asking for chaos.”

He was obviously parroting something his father had said during the Christmas holiday.

Draco barely managed not to roll his eyes.

Avery laughed, caramel syrup shining on his spoon. “Maybe you should tell them that.”

Before Draco could interject, Abraxas leaned forward, tone cool. “The Ministry doesn’t care what you think, Mulciber. You’re a child. Do remember that.”

Mulciber went red. Abraxas’ gaze flicked automatically towards Riddle, who hadn’t looked up. The faintest smile curved at the corner of his mouth. Approval.

Draco felt it like a chill.

The Malfoy heir continued, voice smooth and deliberate. “Change doesn’t come from noise — it comes from position. From influence. When I inherit my father’s seat on the Wizengamot, then I’ll be able to decide who wields wands and who doesn’t. That’s how progress is made.”

Rosier gave a low hum of agreement, and even Nott looked impressed. Mulciber ducked his head, chastened.

Draco glanced down at his own untouched dessert. The smell of warm dates and sugar hung heavy in the air. He prodded the surface of the pudding with his spoon.

Had she eaten?

He told himself her absence meant nothing. She missed meals sometimes. Everyone did. But the thought stuck like a splinter.

He pushed the pudding around his plate, watching the caramel skin break and sink. The smell rose up, too sweet, too heavy. It made him think of Christmas Eve — and the possibility that she might still be working somewhere, forgetting to eat altogether.

A faint unease prickled at the back of his neck. It was ridiculous. She was fine. She was always fine.

Still, when he looked back at the table, his attention had splintered. Riddle was speaking to Abraxas in that measured, almost gentle tone of his but Draco couldn’t seem to catch the thread. The words blurred, muffled under the low murmur of conversation and the faint crackle of candles burning too low.

His gaze shifted back to his food.

Should he bring her some later?

Was that something one did for their friend?

The table suddenly went silent.

When Draco looked up, Riddle’s eyes were already on him. Calm. Curious. Calculating.

“Something on your mind, Professor?” he asked softly.

Draco forced himself to smile. “Only dessert.”

Riddle’s stare lingered on him, head tilted slightly, that polite, almost gentle curiosity that never quite reached his eyes. He had a knack for silence. For letting it stretch in the air until it smothered.

The candlelight caught in his irises and for an instant, something shifted.

Draco’s breath hitched.

A flash — the long, gleaming table at Malfoy Manor, candles guttering in the draught, the sound of screaming somewhere just out of sight. The air thick with fear and smoke and the metallic scent of blood. Shadows along the walls, a voice like silk saying “Bring them in.”

He heaved his occlumency walls into place.

He blinked hard. The image was gone. The pudding. The boys. The low, steady murmur of Riddle’s voice.

Draco cleared his throat, forcing composure into his voice. “It’s nearly curfew. You should all head back to your dormitories.”

They heard the dismissal.

Chairs scraped. Silver clinked. The boys murmured their goodnights and their thanks, gathered their cloaks and made their way towards the door. Draco stayed seated, waiting for the last of them to leave.

When the door closed, he finally exhaled.

“You seemed distracted this evening, Professor.” came a voice behind him.

Draco jolted and turned.

Riddle stood a few paces away, hands clasped loosely behind his back. Draco’s pulse quickened.

“I didn’t see Professor Wormwood at dinner,” Riddle continued. “Is she well?”

Draco looked up sharply, masking the reflex with a shrug. “I’m sure she’s fine, Mr. Riddle. Probably marking papers.”

Riddle hummed, noncommittal. “I see. Forgive me, I had simply assumed you would know.”

Draco frowned. “Why would I?”

Riddle’s lips curved, just faintly. “Oh, no reason. I had the impression the two of you were… close.”

The word hung between them.

Draco shook his head sharply. “We’re colleagues, Riddle. Nothing more.”

“Of course,” the boy said softly, studying him. His eyes flicked to the door, then back to Draco, assessing, calculating. “She had a very interesting Boggart today, you know. Most peculiar.”

Draco’s stomach dropped. “Boggart?”

“Yes,” Riddle said, almost idly. “It took the form of someone she seemed to know. It said the most horrible things to her. One would almost wonder where the fear came from.”

He felt the blood drain from his face. “That’s enough,” he said quietly.

Riddle inclined his head, the picture of polite obedience. “Of course, Professor.”

He moved towards the door, footsteps soft on the stone. At the threshold, he paused.

“Do give her my regards,” he said, that false smile returning.

Then he was gone.

Draco didn’t move for several seconds after the door clicked shut.

A Boggart.

The word rang in his skull.

Draco’s stomach turned. Bellatrix. It had to have been Bellatrix. The thought came first and fastest, cold as ice.

He could picture it too clearly: her wild eyes, her manic grin, that shrill, laughing voice. The one that would never miss a chance to sneer—“Mudblood.”

His jaw tightened. One word like that, in front of Riddle, in front of a room of students — it would have been enough. Enough to tear down the careful life she’d built here, to expose everything.

Or worse. What if the Boggart hadn’t been Bellatrix at all? What if it had been Voldemort? The very face Riddle would come to wear. Merlin, the boy could have recognised himself.

Draco swore under his breath, pacing. “Bloody foolish witch,” he muttered. “Of all the things to risk…”

Did she have any idea what she’d done? What that could have meant? He could almost hear her now, voice maddeningly calm — explaining how it was necessary, how she had it “under control.”

She clearly hadn’t thought it through.

He raked a hand through his hair, restless energy coiled tight beneath his skin.

He needed to speak with her.

What she had done was reckless.

Yes. That was it. He wasn’t worried. He was angry. Someone had to tell her how idiotic she’d been, and since no one else could, he’d do it himself.

He grabbed his cloak, the fabric snapping as he swung it over his shoulders, and snatched his wand from the table. His steps echoed sharply as he left the room, the cold dungeon air biting through the thin wool.

He told himself it wasn’t concern driving him. It was responsibility. Caution. Logic.

But his heart wouldn’t slow down.

By the time he reached the faculty tower, the castle had gone still. Only the faint sputter of dying torches broke the silence. Her door loomed at the end of the hall.

He knocked once and whispered, “Granger.”

Nothing.

He checked to make sure he was alone and tried again, louder. “Granger!”

Still nothing.

The echo faded into quiet. He hit the door again, harder this time, the sound cracking through the corridor. “Open the door!”

Silence.

He stood there breathing hard, the anger starting to fray at the edges. She was fine, he told himself. Probably asleep. Overworked.

Or maybe—maybe she was still in her classroom. Grading papers. Sorting books. Doing something tedious and predictable because of course she couldn’t leave well enough alone.

That had to be it.

He exhaled through his nose, forcing his pulse to steady. He was getting ahead of himself. Ridiculous, really, to be running through the corridors over a colleague who could take care of herself.

Calm down, Draco.

He wasn’t worried. He was annoyed.

That was all this was. Anger. Nothing more.

Still, his chest felt too tight, his thoughts too loud.

He adjusted his cloak and started down the corridor, wand clutched loosely at his side. He’d check the classroom, make sure she hadn’t managed to blow herself up or expose them both, and tell her exactly how irresponsible she’d been.

And then he’d leave.

The Defence corridor was dim and quiet, bluish moonlight pouring in through the high windows. As Draco turned the corner, a faint light flickered from beneath her door, a sliver of brightness in the dark.

Relief punched through him before he could stop it. He exhaled, his grip on his wand easing slightly.

See? he told himself. She’s fine. Working late, as usual.

The corner of his mouth twitched. Typical Granger. She’d probably rewritten her lesson plans twice and alphabetised all her textbooks. He’d knock, scold her for not being careful, and then he could go back to his quarters and stop feeling… whatever this was.

He reached for the handle. It didn’t turn.

The wards hummed under his touch. Defensive.

He frowned.

“Granger?”

Silence. Then a soft, stifled sniffle.

Every trace of irritation drained out of him, replaced by something tight and visceral. He rapped his knuckles against the wood. “Granger, open the door.”

“Go away.” Her voice was quiet, muffled, trembling in a way he’d never heard before.

He pressed his palm to the door, lowering his voice. “Let me in.”

“I said go away, Malfoy.”

He hesitated. Every logical part of him screamed that he should. She didn’t want company, and he had no right to insist. But the thought of walking away, of leaving her in there sounding like that—

He sighed, leaning against the frame. “If you don’t let me in, I’ll just sit here until morning. Then you can explain to Dippet why his Potions Master has frozen to death outside your door.”

A pause. Then a small, broken laugh from the other side. The sound made something twist deep in his chest.

He didn’t know why he cared this much. He shouldn’t. It wasn’t his problem. She wasn’t his problem.

But he couldn’t make himself walk away.

The wards shifted beneath his palm, and, for a second, he thought she’d changed her mind.

Then came the whisper of breaking magic: threads loosening, wards dissipating one by one.

The faint static that had bristled against his skin vanished.

And then — a soft click.

Draco pushed the door open.

The classroom was dim, lit only by a single candle on her desk. The air smelled faintly of smoke and something metallic.

She stood near a student’s desk, wand in hand, though her arm hung limp at her side. Her eyes were swollen and rimmed pink, her glamour dull in the low light, as if even the spell was almost too tired to hold. She wasn’t looking at him.

For a moment, he forgot what he’d meant to say.

Every bit of anger he’d carried here, every sharp word, every rehearsed reprimand, disintegrated on his tongue. The irritation he’d clung to so stubbornly collapsed into something heavier. Something softer.

His chest tightened. He told himself it was pity. Just pity.

“Granger…” he started.

She still wouldn’t look at him, just twisted the ring on her finger again and again, like she was trying to ground herself.

He hated how much it hurt to see her like this. Hated the way the sight of her, tired and utterly human, made him feel unsteady, like he wasn’t on solid ground.

He searched for the armour of detachment he usually wore so easily, but it wouldn’t come. His throat felt dry.

He should have left when she told him to. He should turn around now and spare himself the mess of it. But his feet didn’t move.

What was he supposed to do? How was he meant to comfort her?

Comfort wasn’t something he knew how to give. He’d seen people comforted, sure. A hand on a shoulder. A quiet word of reassurance. But he’d never done it. Not really.

He took a hesitant step forward, his voice low. “Are you—” He stopped, tried again. “Are you all right?”

The question sounded absurd the second it left his mouth. Of course she wasn’t. She very clearly wasn’t.

Off to a great start, Draco.

She blinked, finally looking at him, eyes glassy and distant..

There was something in that look that made the ground tilt beneath him. He wanted to reach out. He didn’t.

He couldn’t.

So, he stood there instead, caught somewhere between moving closer and running away, every instinct in him at war with itself.

She broke the silence first. “I’m fine.”

She really was a terrible liar.

Draco lifted an eyebrow in scepticism. “Really? Because you don’t look fine. You might want to work on your delivery.”

Her mouth twitched. “I’m not in the mood, Malfoy.”

She turned away, moving towards her desk.

He followed without thinking, drawn along the path she cut through the dim room. “I heard there was a Boggart,” he said quietly.

Her hand froze on the edge of the desk, knuckles white.

“How did you know that?”

“Students talk,” he lied. “Word travels.”

“Oh.” The single syllable sagged under its own weight.

She lit another candle wandlessly. The flame flared, then settled, softening her features into something fragile and worn. She didn’t turn.

“Do you remember,” she asked suddenly, voice brittle, “what my Boggart was in third year?”

He blinked. It took him a moment to reach back through time. “The exams,” he said. “Failing everything. Terrifying stuff, Granger. I still have nightmares.”

She laughed — barely a sound, more an exhale of something that wanted to be humour but wasn’t strong enough.

“Yes. That.”

The laugh faded. Her fingers twisted the ring at her hand in frantic, restless spirals. “I knew they could change,” she whispered. “I just… didn’t think. I didn’t think I’d be the one to face it.”

Something cold slid through Draco’s chest. He stepped closer — she didn’t seem to notice.

“What was it?” he asked.

He braced himself for Bellatrix. For Voldemort. Something he could parse, could predict.

But when she looked at him, her voice was barely a breath.

“It was Harry.”

His stomach lurched.
Potter?
Why Potter?

She didn’t see the shock on his face — her eyes had gone glassy again, fixed on some far point behind him.

“He was dead,” she said. “Broken. And he was talking. Saying it was my fault. That I hadn’t saved him. That I should have.”

Her voice cracked. Violently. Like something tearing.

“I know it wasn’t real,” she said. “I know that — but it didn’t matter. It felt real.”

He took another step towards her. Close enough now to see the faint tremble of her lips. The way her breath hitched.

“And it’s always like that,” she went on, voice rising, words spilling out faster, harsher. “Every time something goes wrong, I’m the one who’s supposed to fix it. I’m just one person — one person — and somehow it’s my responsibility to stop everything from falling apart.” She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “And if I can’t, then it’s my fault. Always.”

Her breath shuddered.
“It’s always me. I’m so tired. I’m so—”
Her voice broke entirely.

She wasn’t crying quietly this time. The grief blistered into anger, a jagged, shaking fury.

Draco didn’t think.

He just acted on some sort of instinct he didn’t understand.

His body moved before his mind caught up. One moment she was shaking in front of him, and the next he was closing the distance, hands sliding up her arms, gathering her in with a force he didn’t recognise as his own. He pulled her hard against his chest, as if he could hold the pieces of her together by sheer will.

Granger stiffened — a small, startled jolt — her hands pressing once against his chest in reflex, like she might push him away.

But then she didn’t.

She went still.

Her forehead dropped to his shoulder, not gently but heavily, as if her body had finally reached the end of what it could bear. He felt it — the way she sagged, just slightly, into him. The way her fingers curled into the fabric of his robes, desperate for something solid.

His grip tightened, his hands splaying across her back, fingers pressing into the tense line of her spine as if anchoring her would anchor him too.

Her hair brushed his jaw, soft strands catching slightly on the stubble he hadn’t bothered to charm away. The faint scent of parchment and rosemary rose with every trembling breath she dragged in, mingling with smoke from the dying candles. He inhaled without meaning to. It settled in his chest like warmth and ache tangled together.

Something in him twisted. A sharp pull, deep and unfamiliar, igniting every place he’d spent years keeping numb.

And she…
she held on.

They stood there too long. Far, far too long.

Long enough for the scent of her to sink into his lungs.

Long enough for him to know that letting her go would cost him something he didn’t yet have words for.

And in the silence, in the warmth of her against him, a thought rose unbidden — not a sentence, but an ache, a question formed from the way her fingers clutched at him:

When was the last time anyone held her?

He remembered her at school — always touching people, always offering comfort like she didn’t even think about it. An arm around Potter, a steadying hand on Weasley’s shoulder, hugs of joy and reassurance given freely, instinctively.

But who had done that for her in this time?

Who had she leaned on?

Could she even seek comfort?

Certainly not now. Not here.

The realization hollowed something out inside him. Because holding her like this — feeling her shake against him, feeling her trust him with this much of herself — it didn’t feel suffocating the way touch usually did.

It felt… grounding.

Strangely steadying.

Like the warmth of her pressed to him was cushioning the part of him that had always braced for impact.

It was different when he chose it.

Different when it was her.

Merlin help him, he wanted to give her this.

Wanted to offer her comfort, not because he ought to, but because something in him demanded it.

And then—too late—he felt it: a tight, rising panic under his ribs.

Because whatever this was, whatever had taken root in him without permission, it was growing.

Too fast.

Too much.

He wasn’t ready for it. He didn’t know how to manage it. And the realisation terrified him in a way nothing else ever had.

The thought spun through him, dizzying, and he clung to her before he could stop himself, as if the contact could keep him from slipping over some edge he’d only just realised he was standing on.

When his pulse finally stopped crashing in his ears, he forced himself — slowly, reluctantly — to let her go.

His hands hovered for a beat too long before he dropped them, fingers flexing at his sides.

She didn’t step back immediately.

For a moment they just stood there, too close, the space between them thick and fragile. Draco shifted his weight, unsure what to do with his arms, and finally settled for putting them in his pockets.

When she did move, it was barely anything — half a step, her shoes scraping softly against the stone as she looked up at him. Her gaze flicked to his and then away, down to the floor, then back again as if she couldn’t decide where to land.

Her eyes were still wet, lashes clumped and shining, but the fury had eased into something clearer. Something quieter. Something that made his stomach tighten.

Draco cleared his throat and immediately regretted it; the sound felt too loud in the room. He reached up and ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back even though it didn’t need pushing, anything to give his fingers something to do.

He needed to say something.

“You’re not alone.” The words scraped out rougher than intended. “Not in this.”

She didn’t look away, but her hands came together in front of her, twisting the ring on her finger, the movement small and nervous.

Draco shifted again, eyes darting briefly to the floor before forcing himself to meet her gaze. His fingers tapped against his leg, a restless little beat he couldn’t stop.

The silence that followed wasn’t graceful.
It wavered.
It crackled.
It felt too intimate, too revealing, and neither of them seemed to know how to step out of it.

He tried again.

“You don’t have to do everything yourself. You can—” He hesitated, willing his voice to sound light, teasing. “You can come to me. If you need to. I am capable of helping.”

She looked down at the floor.

For one awful second, he wondered if she could hear it — the frantic, uneven beat of his heart. Had she felt it when he’d held her? Did she know what had flashed through him, sharp and unbidden, when she’d leaned into him?

Merlin, he hoped not.

He dragged in a quiet breath, steadying himself, reigning everything in with the kind of iron control he hadn’t needed in years.

“I don’t really know how,” she finally admitted, “to rely on anyone else.”

Draco nodded, his jaw tightening. “I understand,” he said quietly. He knew that feeling well.

The room fell still again. Neither of them moved.

Then, quietly, Granger smiled. Not at him, more to herself. A small, knowing curve of her mouth that made Draco feel like he’d missed the punchline to a private joke.

“What?” he asked warily.

“I was right,” she said, her voice soft but triumphant.

He frowned. “About what?”

“Riddle,” she said, stepping away and moving back towards her desk.

The warmth of her proximity left him instantly. The space where she’d been felt abruptly, shockingly cold, like someone had pulled a cloak off his shoulders. Draco’s hands hovered uselessly at his sides, fingers curling as if they hadn’t yet caught up to the absence.

She sat behind the desk as though nothing had changed, the candlelight catching in her eyes, a faint spark returning beneath the exhaustion.

She cleared her throat. “That’s why I had them face the Boggart — to understand what he fears. It worked.”

Draco stared at her, thrown for a moment.

Just like that she was back to theories and analysis, her voice steady, her posture composed.

Of course she was.

But he…

His pulse was still uneven. His skin still tingled with the ghost of her pressed against him.

Irritation sparked.

“You risked exposing yourself with a Boggart just to prove you were right?” he said, louder than intended, frustration cracking through the softness he hadn’t been prepared for.

“Yes.”

He tipped his head back and sighed. “You’re ridiculous.”

She ignored the jab, that faint smile still tugging at her mouth. “His Boggart was himself, but as a Muggle. No magic. No power. That’s what he fears most. Not death, not pain. Powerlessness. You see? It proves it.”

Draco sank into the chair in front of her desk, crossing his arms to bring back some of the warmth she’d taken with her.

Her certainty was infuriating—and yet, gods, he was relieved to see it.

Relieved to see the light back in her eyes, the edge of her voice sharpened by belief instead of grief.

Her being pleased with herself, smug and analytical and maddening, it was better than the shaking, furious girl he’d held minutes ago.

He wasn’t cruel enough to take that from her.

“Right,” he said dryly. “So congratulations, then. You’ve figured everything out.”

She tilted her head, amusement flickering in her eyes. “Don’t sound so bitter. It’s okay to be wrong, you know.”

“If it helps you sleep at night, Granger, I’ll concede.”

He watched her as she looked back down at the desk, her shoulders no longer so heavy, her movements steady again. She’d already slipped back into logic and analysis, where she felt safe.

And he found himself quietly grateful for it.

Better this than tears. Better her certainty than her collapse.

He wouldn’t be the one to shake that fragile recovery loose.

And maybe that was for the best.

Because while he was perfectly content to let her have this victory, to let her believe she’d proven something, he knew she was wrong.

He’d seen the real thing. The look in the eyes of the man that boy would become. The hunger for power was only a means to an end.

The fear wasn’t powerlessness.

It was death. Always death.

Draco said nothing more. He just watched the candlelight flicker across her face and let her be right.

For now.

Chapter Text

The walk down to Hogsmeade was almost always miserable in January, but Draco thought today felt particularly vindictive.

Snow streaked across the landscape in sideways sheets, the little ice crystals sharp as needles in the wind. Each gust swept across the grounds, snaping at cloaks and clawing at exposed skin. The sky hung low above them as they walked, a flat, unending smear of iron-grey. Drifts of snow clung to the castle’s turrets like thick white scars, and the trees along the path bowed under the weight of winter, their branches crackling whenever the wind roared past.

The air was so cold it tasted metallic on his tongue. Every breath burned going in and froze coming out, blooming in pale clouds that drifted away before dissolving into the relentless white.

The chill pressed through the wool of Draco’s cloak and settled deep into his bones. He shivered.

Even his warming charm couldn’t seem to keep it out.

Draco tucked his chin deeper into his scarf, not that it helped. The knitted fabric had already gone stiff with rime. Snowflakes melted through his hair and down the back of his neck, a slow, icy trickle that made him grit his teeth. His polished boots sank into the half-packed path with a wet crunch, each step splashing slush against his calves in a manner he found personally offensive.

So much for a leisurely school outing.

He reminded himself—not for the first time—that he had only volunteered for this because Granger had.

Not because he wanted to.

And certainly not because he had a fondness for shrieking, sugar-crazed adolescents.

But because he was becoming the sort of pathetic, ridiculous wizard who rearranged his schedule around a witch who didn’t even realise she was running him ragged without trying.

After what happened in her classroom, the hours he spent away from her had become… uneasy. His mind kept circling the same thought, that she might be breaking again somewhere he couldn’t reach her.

He hated how much the idea of it affected him.

So now he kept half a pace behind her. Close enough to catch her if she slipped, far enough that she wouldn’t accuse him of hovering.

Not that he was hovering. Obviously.

He watched the hem of her teaching robes sweep through the snow as she continued on in some enthusiastic explanation for the Ravenclaw girl walking beside her. Arms waving, voice bright, completely absorbed. Hermione Granger in her natural habitat.

The girl had run up to them while Granger was getting his opinion on a new lesson she had planned for next week; a rotating circuit of defensive stations where students would practise shield charms, spell deflection, and quick-draw counters. Draco had just murmured a teasing, “Ambitious… and only mildly dangerous,” when the girl skidded to a stop before them, bright-eyed and earnest.

“Professor Wormwood, for the counter-curse section of the essay, should we reference standard jinx reversals or the historical framework for—?”

That was all it took.

Granger launched into a dissertation-level exposition, complete with citations, wand movements in the air, and an unnecessarily detailed comparison between 17th-century curse-breaking theory and modern Ministry protocol.

The girl’s expression had passed through several stages: interest, confusion and alarm, until it reached a sort of glassy-eyed resignation.

Granger, oblivious to her student’s disinterest, continued on. And on.

“—and of course, when you consider the footnotes in Brannock’s Compendium of Applied Defensive Theory, you’ll find the nuance behind the standard reversal sequence is far more complex than people assume, especially given how the Goblin Rebellions influenced—”

It was truly remarkable, he thought, how she didn’t seem to need to breathe.

Draco couldn’t help the small lift at the corner of his mouth.

Typical Granger.

He fixed his expression, smoothing the smile away, but the warmth lingered anyway, tucked somewhere in his chest.

Around them, the rest of the students were being their usual insufferable selves.

Mulciber and Lestrange were pelting each other with snow, each throw harder than the last. Avery was shrieking every time ice went down the back of his robes. Nott pretended he wasn’t involved while very obviously nudging rocks with the toe of his boot towards Rosier, who had taken to filling his snowballs with them.

Idiots.

The lot of them.

No, this certainly wasn’t how he would choose to spend his weekend.

As they continued their trek towards Hogsmeade, Draco’s eyes drifted towards Riddle.

The boy was beside Abraxas, the two of them moving in quiet tandem at the back of the group, refusing to join the others’ chaos. Snow and ice clung to Riddle’s dark hair as he spoke too softly for Draco to hear. Abraxas leaned in, nodding as though receiving instructions rather than engaging in conversation.

And all the while, Riddle’s dark eyes kept flicking over to Granger.

There was a quiet, intense interest in the look that made the hair on the back of Draco’s neck stand on end.

He didn’t like that look. Not one bit.

He tore his attention away, refocusing on the witch in question. She was still mid-lecture and still completely unaware that her student was seconds away from walking into a tree just to escape.

Draco exhaled and shook his head as he watched her passionate gestures with a growing fondness.

Eventually, they reached the outskirts of Hogsmeade, the roofs were dusted in white, and the streets were already bustling with students running, shrieking, and slipping on the ice with unearned confidence.

Granger didn’t notice any of it, and poor Miss Weaver was slowly trying to back away while eyeing a group of her friends who were very clearly waiting for her.

Draco decided the situation required immediate intervention.

“—and if you adjust the wand angle by even a fraction—”

“Professor Wormwood,” Draco cut in smoothly, stepping between her and the girl she was unintentionally cornering, “I’m sure Miss Weaver would like to go explore Hogsmeade before the day ends.”

The student practically sagged with relief. “Yes—thank you, Professor.”

Granger blinked, as though pulled abruptly out of her own head. “Oh! Merlin—yes, of course, go on. Enjoy yourself.”

The girl shot Draco a grateful look before fleeing to her friends who all giggled and waved at him. He lifted his hand in greeting, and they all shrieked and skittered off towards Honeydukes, whispering, rather loudly, amongst themselves.

When Granger turned back to him, her brows were already rising in challenge. “Was that entirely necessary?”

Draco shoved his hands in his pockets. “Absolutely. You’d have lectured her straight through lunch if I hadn’t intervened.”

“I would not,” she huffed.

“You would,” he smirked, stepping toward her. “You were halfway to drawing a diagram in the snow. I saw the look in your eyes.”

Her eyes narrowed. “There was no look.”

“Oh, there was a look,” he said, teasing now. “The ‘Merlin help us, she’s found a topic she loves and none of us are going to escape the lecture’ look. Terrifying, really.”

She smacked him on the shoulder.

It wasn’t hard, more of a sharp, playful tap, but heat shot through the spot like she’d set fire to his nerves. His body went tense for a fraction of a second, instinct bracing for impact before his mind caught up and registered her.

Her hand. On him. Casually. Like it was nothing.

She’d barely finished swatting his arm when she gasped.

She jerked her hand back and her eyes went wide. “Oh—Merlin, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think— I know you don’t like—”

He cut her off before she could spiral. “It’s fine.”

He was surprised to find that he meant it.

She blinked at him, still mortified. “Are you sure? I didn’t mean to—”

“Granger,” he said again, firmly, “if I were bothered, you’d know. Trust me.”

She let out a breath and lifted her chin in that prim little way she did when she was trying to recover her dignity. “Well. Good. Because you deserved it.”

His smile sharpened. “Obviously.”

“And for the record,” she added, “there is nothing terrifying about wanting students properly prepared. Some of us take teaching seriously.”

“Oh, I know you do,” he drawled. “You take it so seriously it becomes a spectator sport.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What is that supposed to mean?”

He could have let it go. Should have, probably.

But she was looking up at him with that swotty little frown, and the temptation to rile her was both immediate and irresistible.

“It means,” he said, voice light as he moved closer, “that half the class sits forward in their seats the moment you get going. You start pacing, your hands start flying, it's very dramatic. Quite the performance, really.”

She put her hands on her hips. “I don’t like your tone.”

Draco bit back a laugh.

He definitely should not enjoy this as much as he did.

“Your ability to forget the rest of the world exists the moment someone asks you anything even vaguely academic is truly remarkable.”

Her mouth fell open. “I don’t—"

“It’s impressive,” he interrupted, delighting in the way her blush crept up her neck. “Bordering on alarming, occasionally. But impressive.”

She stomped her foot and Draco decided he really rather liked when she was annoyed. Particularly when she was annoyed with him.

“I do not forget the rest of the world exists!” she hissed.

He snorted, “you just tried to explain counter-hex theory to a thirteen-year-old who was considering walking into a tree to escape you.”

“She was not—”

“She was.” He arched a brow. “You just didn’t notice.”

Her blush deepened, blooming hot across her cheeks. His gaze caught on the colour, and he had a sudden, disorienting thought: He wanted to touch it.

Just the lightest press of his thumb along the heated edge of her cheekbone.

An absolutely idiotic thought.

He shoved it down.

She took a small step back and crossed her hands over her chest. “Well, excuse me for trying to be thorough. Not all of us can rely on charm and theatrics.”

He couldn’t help it; he laughed. Properly. “Someone has to terrify the student body, I suppose. Glad you’ve volunteered.”

She glared. “You are impossible.”

“And you,” he said, drifting closer again, “are surprisingly easy to fluster.”

“I am not flustered.”

“You’re absolutely flustered.”

“I am not—”

“Granger,” he murmured.

They’d drifted together without noticing, and her warmth hit him, soft and impossible to dismiss.

He leaned in because she did, or he perhaps he imagined she did, but their noses were nearly touching, and the breath that escaped from between her delicate, pink lips was a warm caress against his face. He almost sighed.

He was close enough that he could see the flecks of gold in her eyes. Close enough that he had to lock his hands at his sides to stop from reaching out.

For one reckless heartbeat, he forgot how to breathe. The air between them felt too thin, too charged, and something in his chest pulled tight in a way that absolutely terrified him. He needed to break it, break the moment, before he did something profoundly stupid.

“Your face is the colour of a Gryffindor banner.”

She stepped back with a sharp little huff, hands flying to her cheeks in exasperation.

“It’s just the cold,” she insisted, voice lacking her usual conviction.

All he could do was stare at her mouth. At the mouth that had been so close to his own only a second ago.

He wanted—

No. No. Merlin, absolutely not.

He straightened his coat, forcing his eyes away before they betrayed him.

“No need to get your knickers in a twist about it,” he said lightly, brushing stray snow from his sleeve, as if his pulse weren’t hammering in his throat. “I’m only teasing.”

“Merlin, you’re insufferable,” she shot back, but there was a genuine smile threatening to break through her frown, and he found himself wanting to move towards it like a plant seeking sunlight.

He shouldn’t notice how the space she’d stepped out of still felt warm.

He shouldn’t want to lean back into it.

He definitely shouldn’t be fixating on the way her lips pressed together when she fought a smile, or the way the wind tugged at the loose hairs around her face, or how utterly, devastatingly alive she looked when she argued with him.

But he did.

And she, infuriatingly, mercifully, seemed completely unaware of the effect she had on him.

She shook her head, rolled her eyes, tugged her cloak tighter, and kept walking until she neared the Three Broomsticks.

Draco was having to remind himself how his legs worked.

Honestly, it wasn’t fair.

He forced his features into a smug little tilt, the only defence he had in his arsenal.

“You’re… something else.” He murmured as he approached, and watched as her eyes widened almost imperceptibly.

Granger started to speak, but a flicker of movement caught at the edge of his vision.

Riddle slipped away from his group, quiet as a shadow, peeling off behind one of the shops. Not towards the High Street like the others, not towards Honeydukes or Zonko’s, but towards the narrow alley that led into the forest.

Into the dark trees that loomed beyond the buildings, sharp against the pale winter sky.

Unease churned in Draco’s gut.

Granger was saying something beside him. He registered the cadence of her voice, the faint amusement lingering beneath it, but her words blurred into background noise, muffled under the sudden weariness in his chest.

His eyes tracked Riddle’s slight figure as it paused at the corner of the building, glancing over a shoulder in a way that was anything but casual.

He was sneaking.

Draco pressed his lips together.

Granger’s voice tugged faintly at the edge of his awareness, but it barely brushed the surface of his thoughts. His focus tunnelled on the narrow gap between the buildings where Riddle had vanished, instincts tightening like a drawn bowstring.

What was he up to?

Nothing good. Draco was certain of that.

Her voice sounded again, closer this time.

But it was just noise.

Unimportant next to the cold prickle of dread running down his spine.

Then—

“Draco.”

The sound of his name on her tongue hit him like a physical jolt. His head snapped toward her.

She stopped short at the suddenness of it, eyes widening for a beat.

“Oh, finally,” she said, hands flying up in a very Granger-like gesture of impatience. “I’ve only been trying to get your attention for the last two minutes.”

The irritation was unmistakable, brisk and prickly… and then, as she took in the stunned look on his face, it softened. Her posture shifted; her voice lost some of its bite.

“I just—” She glanced away and then back, a small crease forming between her brows. “Was that okay? Calling you that? I mean, friends do usually use first names.”

His pulse stumbled.

He forced himself to blink, to drag air back into his lungs. “Sorry—what?”

She let out a soft, incredulous laugh. “Honestly, do try to keep up. I know brooding is something of an extracurricular for you, but surely you can manage a simple conversation—”

But the teasing faltered the moment she really looked at him.

Her expression shifted, amusement draining into something more cautious. “Is… everything all right?”

“Yes,” he said—far too quickly.

Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t press. She simply watched him, expectantly, as if waiting for an explanation.

Waiting, he realized belatedly, for something else too, though he wasn’t quite sure what.

He tried, really tried, to summon the thread of the conversation back, to latch onto the warmth of her teasing, the startling intimacy of hearing his name, his first name, from her lips, the sudden dizzying need for her to say it again.

But his gaze flicked helplessly back towards the alley where Riddle had disappeared. A cold, needling dread clenching in his chest.

He wanted to ignore it.

Wanted to turn fully toward her.

Wanted to answer whatever she’d asked, maybe tease her back, enjoy the growing ease between them.

He swallowed, shifting his weight, forcing his eyes back to hers.

 “I’m fine, Granger,” he said, softly. “Just… distracted.”

The flicker that crossed her face was quick, so quick he might’ve missed it if he weren’t already looking at her too closely.

A tiny tightening around her eyes.

A small dip at the corners of her mouth.

Hurt. There and gone in an instant as she tucked it away.

She pulled her cloak tighter around herself, looking off towards the street as if adjusting to the cold.

“Well,” she said, too lightly, rubbing her gloved hands together. “I was asking if you wanted to grab a drink. At the Three Broomsticks.” She forced a small smile. “It’s freezing. I could definitely use a butterbeer.”

She was trying to make him smile.

Trying to keep things easy.

And Merlin, he wanted to go with her. Wanted to follow her inside, sit across from her, and hear her laugh about something ridiculous.

But his dread didn’t ease.

And the sight of Riddle disappearing into that alley clung to him, refusing to be ignored.

He simply had to know what he was up to.

He managed a nod, hoping it passed for normal. “Give me twenty minutes,” he said with false calm. “I’ll meet you there.”

She frowned slightly. “Where are you—?”

“I need to stop by J. Pippin’s,” he said smoothly, slipping in the lie with practiced ease. “I’m nearly out of a few essentials, and I refuse to spend the week improvising like some second-rate apothecary.”

He noticed the slight tremor in her hands, and watched as she tucked them under her arms before pretending she hadn’t. The cold had turned the tip of her nose pink, and despite her usual stubbornness, she was very clearly freezing.

“You, however, should go inside. You’re shivering, and I’d rather not be responsible for you turning into an icicle.”

She bristled immediately. “I am not shivering.”

“Granger,” he said flatly.

“I’m fine,” she said, shivering.

“Of course you are,” he said, tone dry. “But go inside anyway.”

He tipped his chin toward the door.

“Please, go warm up. Order me a butterbeer. Put it on my tab — unless you intend to argue with me about that as well.”

“I am perfectly capable of buying my own Butterbeer.”

“Yes, I know. Indulge me.”

She shifted, seemingly torn between calling him out and letting him go. The hesitance was subtle, but he saw it.

“Fine.”

Draco managed a reassuring smile. “Marvellous. I’ll only be twenty minutes.”

She narrowed her eyes and leaned to look behind him; at the spot he knew she had seen him watching.

“All right,” she pinned him with a suspicious glare. “Twenty minutes.”

“I’ll be there soon. Promise.”

Her eyes lingered a moment longer, but then she pulled her cloak tighter against herself, nodded at him and stepped away.

Draco watched her turn toward the warmth of the pub, wind whipping at her dark hair, her breath forming clouds in the frigid air.

He waited until she reached the pub door, until she disappeared into its warmth, before he slipped behind the nearest building.

When he was certain the alley was empty, he let the shift take him.

It came all at once—a jolt through bone and muscle, a collapse inward and outward at the same time. The world snapped into brilliant clarity: every scent sharpened, every sound crisp. Snow no longer stung against skin; it barely registered at all beneath the thick warmth of his fur. The shift left nothing behind but instinct, speed, and a body made for silence.

He stretched low to the ground, muscles tightening with a practiced, coiled ease. Movement felt natural here. Fluid and effortless as he slipped into the shadows cast by the looming trees.

Oh, how he had missed this form. It had been far too long since he’d last shifted. He needed to remedy that.

Perhaps he should tell Granger. It wasn’t as if she would turn him in for being an unregistered Animagus.

Maybe she’d even want to become one herself.

He shook thought away, he could debate the merits of telling her later. For now, he needed to focus.

Riddle’s footprints were easy to find as they cut away from the crowded High Street and into the dense forest. Draco followed, light across the snow, weaving soundlessly between trunks as the village noise faded behind him.

The forest was alive with sounds his human ears hadn’t registered. Birds fluttering from branch to branch, the scuttle of something small beneath a log, the distant creak of ice shifting its weight. A few creatures startled when they saw him. All of them wary. Alert.

But something else tinged the air.

Wrongness.

A faint, broken cry shivered through the brush.

He froze, every muscle going taut.

Another cry followed—high pitched, warping upward into something too sharp, too pained. He moved again, slower now, slipping between the trees until the forest opened into a small clearing bathed in pale winter light.

Riddle stood in the centre of it.

A solitary figure against the snow.

******************

In his hand, he held a wand Draco didn’t recognize. It was plain and rough, nothing like the elegant piece he had been using all year. This one looked borrowed. Or stolen. And very likely unregistered.

A tiny shape writhed at his feet.

The sound came again, fragile and awful.

A robin, small and helpless, twisted on the snow, wing spasming as though invisible threads jerked it. The other wing lay several feet away, half-buried in the drift, a scatter of bright blood speckling the white around it. The bird’s beak opened in a desperate cry; its legs scraped weakly against the ground as feathers were magically plucked from its body.

Draco’s stomach lurched. His paws pressed harder into the snow without conscious thought, claws biting down for purchase. Every instinct screamed wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Riddle’s expression didn’t change.

He watched the creature with clinical detachment, head tilted as though studying clockwork rather than suffering. His eyes followed every jerking movement with cold curiosity.

He flicked his borrowed wand.

The robin’s body snapped rigid, claws gouging erratic lines into the snow. Draco flinched, ears pinning flat, even before the boy murmured the next spell.

“Avada Kedavra.”

Effortless. Lazy. As casual as if he’d cast Lumos.

The green light flared and the robin fell still.

Draco’s hackles rose so abruptly it hurt. A violent shudder rippled down his spine, muscles locking tight.

A rustle of movement reached him.

A hare bound into the clearing, nose twitching.

“Imperio.”

Riddle’s magic rolled out smooth and cold. Draco felt it like a chill passing over his fur. His body recoiled. The hare’s ears drooped; its posture slackened, eyes going soft and vacant. It hopped forward towards Riddle’s feet, docile as a pet.

Draco’s breathing picked up, short and too high in his chest. He tasted the sharp edge of panic.

Riddle lifted his wand.

The hare rose onto its hind legs, wobbling unnaturally. It twirled once, stiffly, then again, faster, its limbs jerking in an unnatural dance. Draco’s vision warbled. Something cold and sick crept up his throat. He wanted to move, to look away, to do anything but watch—but he couldn’t. He was pinned, rooted by horror.

The hare’s movements grew sharper, wrong, until—

Crack.

One of its hind legs folded sideways with a sound that tore through the clearing. The hare didn’t run. Couldn’t. It simply squealed—a high, thin keening that sent Draco’s pulse racing—while its body contorted under the pressure of Riddle’s will.

Another sharp crack.

Riddle exhaled a quiet huff of amusement.

Draco’s vision spotted at the edges.

The squealing intensified, raw and frantic, clawing at every nerve he had.

Riddle continued to watch, eyes bright with interest.

He murmured something under his breath. Magic flared again, and the hare’s cry pitched upward into a sound Draco had never heard before—something between terror and agony, something that scraped at his bones.

Then the fur along the hare’s side lifted, peeled, and Draco’s breath seized entirely. His whole body recoiled, a violent jolt of instinct that nearly wrenched him backward. His stomach heaved; the world lurched sickeningly.

For a split second, the forest flickered.

Snow became flagstones.

The trees became a dark, vaulted ceiling.

And the hare’s screams twisted into a human sound—a prisoner on the floor of Malfoy Manor, writhing as skin sloughed from muscle under Voldemort’s wand. Draco felt the same sickening pull in his stomach, the same helpless terror, the same urge to look away even as his body stayed rooted in place.

The clearing returned in pieces, layered over the memory until it felt like he was seeing with two sets of eyes—one on the crimson-dotted snow, one on the blood-slick stone of the manor.

The hare kicked weakly, its feet digging desperate trenches as the spell continued its work. Its screams dulled into low, wet gurgles, each one rolling through Draco’s stomach until he thought he might be sick.

He swayed, disoriented, the two scenes overlapping for a heartbeat too long. Past and present collapsing into one another, indistinguishable in their cruelty.

Every instinct screamed to run, to flee the clearing, flee the boy, but he stayed frozen, his mind and body betraying him in his panic.

Riddle showed no emotion.

He simply looked interested, curious.

As though he were examining a puzzle piece.

As though nothing in this clearing mattered to him at all—not the blood on the snow, not the shattered limbs, not the living creature convulsing under his wand.

A rustle to the left caught Draco’s ear.

Riddle turned his head at the same moment.

A squirrel clung to the trunk of a pine, tail jittering, debating whether to flee. It shouldn’t have come closer. It should never have looked his way.

Run. Run. Run. Draco pleaded.

Riddle barely lifted his wand.

“Crucio.”

The spell hit before the creature even had a chance to run. It fell from the tree like a stone, hitting the snow with a soft thud that should not have sounded so final. A strangled squeal burst from it before it broke into frantic, choking cries as its small body arched in impossible angles.

Draco screamed internally.

Move.

He had to move.

He had to stop this.

All he had to do was shift back. Appear behind the boy. Grab his wand, hex him, drag him away from this clearing — anything. Anything but sit here and watch.

His muscles coiled, ready to spring—

—and locked.

He couldn’t do it.

The instinct to fight slammed against something deeper, colder. A memory of a different time. A different wand.

The squirrel’s cries climbed higher, desperate, shredding the air.

Riddle stepped closer, fascinated. He crouched beside the creature, studying the way its paws scrabbled weakly at the snow. The childlike patience in his face made Draco’s stomach twist.

Do something.

Shift.

Shift—

But the command died before it reached his limbs. His entire body trembled with the contradiction — instinct shouting one thing, terror whispering another.

And so he stayed where he was.

Frozen. Useless.

Forced to listen as the screams thinned into strained, wavering squeaks. Forced to watch as Riddle tilted his head again, evaluating, adjusting his angle, experimenting with pressure like he was fine-tuning a piece of delicate machinery.

The snow around the squirrel churned crimson. Its tail thrashed, then fell still.

Riddle didn’t even blink.

Draco swallowed, but the motion lodged in his throat. He felt nauseated, the taste of bile burning at the back of his tongue.  

He needed to leave.

Needed to run away from here, go meet Granger in the pub like he promised he would.

He tried to pull his occlumency walls in place, but it was harder in this form. He was losing control of his panic, he could feel the animal instinct starting to override his human brain. He needed to get out.

Riddle stood in the quiet that followed, wand dangling loosely at his side. He looked bored now, as though the creature had stopped being interesting the moment it stopped moving.

Draco let out a whine, a small, involuntary sound that cut through the clearing like a snapped twig.

No.

Riddle’s head lifted.

Slowly.

Sharply.

And then his eyes locked on Draco’s in the brush.

Draco realized, with a sick lurch of terror, that the boy wasn’t finished.

Riddle took a step toward him, then another, as if approaching a curious object rather than a living creature.

He lazily raised his wand.

Instinct took over.

Draco bolted.

A thread of magic snapped across the clearing like a wire.

His body jerked against his will. To his horror, his legs moved — not to continue his desperate retreat, but backwards, towards Riddle. A sickening pull seized his limbs, dragging them in a forceful, unnatural rhythm.

No. No. No.

Panic surged through him, high and sharp. His paws scraped uselessly at the snow, resisting as his body was turned around, but the magic tightened and forced him onward.

Riddle’s eyes brightened, intent and calculating.

Another flick of the wand.

“Crucio.”

Pain exploded.

His scream tore free, raw and instinctive, his animal body contorted violently in the snow. Every nerve lit up at once. Not burning, not stabbing, but a drowning flood of agony that swallowed all sense of the world around him.

His limbs spasmed uncontrollably, claws gouging the frozen ground. He tried to run. His body wouldn’t obey. It only twisted, convulsed, thrashed in wild, helpless jerks.

The pain didn’t ebb.

Another wave hit — sharper, deeper — ripping another animalistic shriek from him. His vision fractured, doubling, blurring into streaks of black and red and white. Snow. Trees. Blood. Riddle’s unmoving face. They flickered in and out of existence through the pain.

The manor flashed behind his eyes, cold stone, screams echoing, a wand pointed down at a writhing figure. His own name shouted. His own voice begging.

He lost track of his body. Lost track of sound. Lost track of breath. The world narrowed to a single point of unbearable sensation, stretching thinner and thinner until something in him snapped to protect itself.

The clearing tilted.

A cold darkness washed over his mind.

His screams grew distant, fading into a hollow ringing inside his skull.

Eventually, mercifully, everything went black.

******************

Hermione wrapped her hands around the two butterbeers on the table, letting the warmth seep into her palms as the Three Broomsticks buzzed around her — chattering students, clattering mugs, the bright, buoyant hum of a weekend Hogsmeade trip.

A perfectly ordinary afternoon.

She, however, couldn’t focus on any of it.

Malfoy was late.

Not late late. Not enough to justify panic, but long enough that her stomach had begun a slow, unwelcome twist. Long enough that she’d replayed the moment he left perhaps five times now.

Especially the part where she’d called him Draco.

She still cringed at the memory. It hadn’t been some bold gesture, she’d only said it because he hadn’t responded to Malfoy the first two times, and she’d needed his attention. It had been practical. Efficient. A verbal nudge because he had been, quite rudely in her opinion, ignoring her.

Nothing more.

But the way he’d snapped to awareness, the sharpness of his reaction, had thrown her. For a second, he’d looked… well, startled. As if hearing his first name had yanked him out of whatever fog he’d been lost in.

Not pleased, she refused to dramatize it like that, just surprised.

And then he had responded with a stiff, utterly unmovable, Granger.

Which was fine. Totally fine. Sensible, even. They had been colleagues first, and formality came naturally to him. But the firmness of the rejection had landed like a small, stupid sting.

She wanted to shake herself. It was completely reasonable if he wanted to call her Granger. Completely reasonable if he didn’t want—

Her fingers tightened around the mug.

She’d just… thought they were proper friends by now. That’s all.

Especially after last week. After she’d fallen apart in front of him like an absolute idiot, after the boggart incident had ripped her wide open and he’d been the one to pull her back together. The memory still sat raw in her chest. He’d been so gentle. So steady. So surprisingly kind.

She took a sip of butterbeer, mostly to force her thoughts to stop tripping over themselves.

But there was still the matter of him lying.

He hadn’t gone to J. Pippin’s. She wasn’t blind. He’d walked in the exact opposite direction, and he’d done it with the kind of intent that suggested he very much hoped she wouldn’t notice.

Which she did.

Immediately.

The prat.

Why lie? Why not just say he needed to take care of something? Did he think she was going to tail him? Did he still not trust her with—

She pressed her lips together, irritation pricking under her skin.

She was trying very hard not to feel hurt.

She was failing.

Malfoy was… careful with her now. He always seemed to weigh his words around her, as though he didn’t want to push too hard or pull too far. He had been the one encouraging them toward something like friendship. And then the moment she took a step across that line; he slammed the door politely shut.

And on top of all that, he was late.

Nearly fifteen minutes late.

Which, for Malfoy, whose entire personality revolved around punctuality, precision, and an almost comical level of smug, pureblood propriety, was not normal. Not in the slightest.

Her efforts at trust were beginning to feel a lot like sitting on her hands.

“—and when they sprout, Professor, they’re going to be marvellous! The colouration alone is enough to—”

She groaned inwardly.

Professor Beery had arrived the moment she sat down, settling beside her with the enthusiasm of a man who had been waiting all week for a captive audience. He was now describing his mandrake crop with breathless reverence.

Hermione summoned a polite smile. “That sounds wonderful, Professor.”

“Wonderful! Exactly! Their stems are already—oh, you must see them, Matilda, you simply must—”

She blinked.

Right. Matilda.

Her colleagues called her by her first name without hesitation. Even Beery — who forgot half his tools on any given day — managed it effortlessly.

And yet Malfoy, who had practically carried her through a panic attack, had backpedalled the moment she’d used his.

She took a steady sip of butterbeer, letting the steam warm the tip of her nose. Maybe she was overthinking. Maybe she’d startled him. Maybe—

“—and the leaves! Utterly responsive to human voice! Quite endearing, really—”

Hermione stared into her mug as if the swirling foam might provide answers. The warmth in her hands contrasted sharply with the tightening in her chest.

Beery beamed and barrelled on. “Oh! And their stems, of course — thick as broom handles at only three weeks! Imagine the lecture I’ll be able to give — I do hope they behave themselves long enough to demonstrate proper repotting, though they can get shy, which is not ideal when one is trying to encourage—”

Her sight drifted in and out of focus, the pub’s chatter blurring into a gentle hum around her. One moment she was staring at the curling steam; the next she wasn’t really seeing anything at all.

Where on earth had Malfoy gone? And why had he lied?

He hadn’t lied out of malice, she was certain of that, but he had lied. Deliberately. Smoothly. And then walked off in the opposite direction without a single explanation. Which was maddening, because she had given him nothing but reasons to trust her.

Why was he still keeping her at arm’s length?

She pressed her lips together, agitation simmering beneath her skin.

She didn’t need perfect honesty, she wasn’t unreasonable, but she hadn’t expected this kind of evasiveness from him anymore. Not after everything. Not after last week. If he’d simply said he needed to take care of something personal, she would have respected that.

Instead, he’d fed her an obvious lie and expected her to smile and wait like some sort of foolish schoolgirl with nothing better to do.

And if that stung, just a little, well… she refused to examine it too closely.

Still, irritation could only hold off worry for so long.

Because Malfoy wasn’t careless. He wasn’t forgetful. And he was never — never — late without reason.

So the lie… what if it wasn’t about her at all?

What if something actually was wrong?

The thought refused to dislodge itself.

“I’ve even considered naming the batch,” Beery said brightly. “Not individually, mind you — though I suppose one could, if one felt particularly inspired—”

Hermione offered a thin hum of agreement, her worry continuing its slow, steady climb.

Beery’s mittened hand slapped the table again. “And you must see the roots — I promise you, Matilda, they’re nearly as long as my arm—”

Hermione startled slightly. “That’s… very impressive,” she said, though she had absolutely no idea what she was remarking on.

Her eyes drifted toward the door again.

Still nothing.

The butterbeers were cooling. One untouched, the other only half-drunk. The knot under her ribs tightened.

She’d seen the direction he went.

She knew he hadn’t gone to Pippin’s.

And the fact that he hadn’t told her where he was actually going…

Little pricks of worry crawled up her spine, cutting through her annoyance like a sharpened blade.

Something wasn’t right.

Something was—

She swallowed.

Forty more seconds, she decided.

Then she was going after him.

Hermione straightened, resolve settling like armour.

“Professor Wormwood?” Beery chirped hopefully. “You did catch the part about the hybrid strain, yes? If you’d like, I could give you a private tour of the greenhouse this week. After classes, perhaps. They really are at a remarkable stage…”

“Oh—yes. Absolutely. Fascinating.”

It wasn’t. Or maybe it was, but she really could not care less at the moment.

She was done waiting.

She rose from her chair. “Thank you for the company, Professor Beery, truly, but I’ve just remembered I need to pick something up from Tomes and Scrolls.” She nudged Malfoy’s untouched butterbeer toward him. “Would you like this?”

His entire face brightened. “That’s very kind. And do consider my offer — the mandrakes would benefit from a knowledgeable audience.”

She smiled politely. “Of course. I’ll keep that in mind.”

She turned to leave before he could elaborate on soil composition.

The moment she stepped outside, the cold hit like a wall. The sharp, icy air startling her lungs. The winter sky was a pale colour somewhere between pewter and milk glass and it smelled faintly of snow and chimney smoke.

Hermione tightened her cloak and turned down the narrow lane behind the shops; the same direction she’d watched Malfoy walk earlier.

She stepped off the packed road and onto the uneven path leading toward the trees. The snow there was softer, looser, swallowing the sound of her boots. A faint set of footsteps marked the way ahead, nearly erased by drifting powder.

As she slipped further into the trees, the light dimmed, as though the forest had drawn it deeper into its own hush. Evergreens stood close together, their tops etched against the pale sky like charcoal lines. Nothing moved. Not a bird, not a squirrel, not even the wind seemed willing to disturb the stillness here.

It felt… dormant.

As though the whole place had settled into a long, heavy sleep.

Snow clung to the low branches in thick, sparkling heaps, softening every shape until the world blurred at the edges. The damp air smelled of old bark and cold earth, the kind of clean stillness that seeped into the bones.

Hermione’s boots sank into the untouched drifts, each step swallowed in a muffled thump. The sound still felt too loud in the quiet. She scanned the thick trunks and brush, her head on a swivel, looking for any sign of Malfoy.

There was nothing.

Her breath, puffing up in small clouds, was the only sign of movement in the stillness. The silence here was a stark contrast to the bustling village. It was heavy, stretched tight, as if the world were holding itself very still, listening for something.

She followed the partial prints deeper. The wind had scraped them nearly flat, turning each one into a faint suggestion rather than a clear mark.

Her irritation shifted further into unease.

Something was wrong. She knew it from the subtle prickle along her spine, the tightening in her gut.

Somewhere ahead, a small, broken sound rose. A whine, tired and raspy, quivered in the frozen air.

Hermione halted.

“Hello?” she called, forcing her voice steady. “Is someone there?”

Only a breath of wind answered, brushing softly against pine needles and bark.

She took another few steps. The cold pressed close now, not biting but crowding, as if the air itself had thickened around her. The prints beneath her boots veered subtly left, angling deeper into the narrow tangle of trees.

A scream tore through the forest.

A sudden, rippling shriek that split the quiet clean in two. Sharp, high, almost human, it sent a rush of wings exploding from a holly bush beside her. Birds burst upward in a frantic scatter, branches whipping as they fled.

Hermione jerked back, heart lurching painfully, ice cracking under her boots. For a moment she stood frozen, breath clouding in the cold air, listening to the echo fade into the trees.

Her heart slammed against her ribs. It was not quite human, but not quite not, either.

She drew her wand immediately. “Is someone there?” she called, louder this time, and tried to calm her shaking hands.

Another cry tore through the trees. Shorter, ragged, as if the voice producing it was losing the strength to make noise.

Hermione broke into a run, snow kicking up behind her, wand raised, breath burning sharp in her lungs. The path funnelled her through a tight cluster of pines, and then suddenly—

She burst into a clearing.

For a moment, her mind couldn’t assemble what she was seeing.

Blood stained the snow in uneven splatters. Feathers drifted in the cold air, catching the weak daylight like ash. A small bird lay crumpled near a tree root, its wing torn clean from its body. A squirrel not far from it, twisted in a way no natural death would cause.

Hermione’s stomach lurched.

Then her gaze snapped to the source of the earlier scream.

A fox.

A silver fox, collapsed on its side, whining in short, broken bursts. Its flanks heaved shallowly. Snow clung to its coat as it trembled, its limbs jittering with something that looked horribly like pain.

And beside it stood Tom Riddle.

He had arranged his expression into one of false concern. It was frightening, she thought distantly, how easy it seemed for him to slip on his mask of perfection.

“Professor Wormwood,” he said, voice even. “I’m glad you’re here. I came upon this horrible creature tormenting these small animals.”

Hermione forced her grip on her wand to loosen before he noticed the tension. Her heartbeat hammered at her throat, but she kept her face composed, her voice level.

“Mr. Riddle,” she said carefully. “Foxes do hunt smaller animals. It’s the natural order of things. We shouldn’t interfere.”

Riddle tilted his head, as if considering whether he agreed. “It wasn’t hunting,” he said mildly. “It was tormenting them. I felt I couldn’t allow it to continue.”

A cold prickle traced Hermione’s spine. His tone was so calm. So reasonable. So chillingly wrong.

“I understand your… instinct to intervene,” she replied, choosing her words with precision. “But in the future, you must allow nature to take its course. Animals behave according to instinct. It isn’t our place to dictate their methods.”

For a long, taut moment, Riddle simply looked at her.

“Of course, Professor,” he said, his polite smile not touching his eyes. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

The fox whimpered, a breathless sound. Hermione’s chest tightened.

“Good,” she said. “Now head back into the village. Students are meant to remain inside Hogsmeade limits during excursions.”

“My apologies, Professor. I was unaware.”

Hermione swallowed hard. She could feel her gaze trying to slide away from him — from the boy standing in the middle of this blood-stained clearing with the calm of someone who had simply tidied a mess. She knew — with sickening certainty — that none of this had been done by the fox. None of it had been natural. No hunting instinct produced this level of cruelty.

This was the work of malice.

Of intention.

And Tom Riddle looked at her with polite curiosity, as though waiting for a reward.

Her hands shook violently and she tucked them into her pockets, desperately hoping he hadn’t noticed.

Riddle turned as if to leave, footsteps soft and orderly in the snow. Hermione drew a breath to steady herself.

Then he stopped.

He didn’t look back at her immediately, he only shifted his head slightly, enough to let her know he had something to say.

“Professor,” he said, the word smooth as silk. “I’ve been meaning to ask.”

Hermione willed her tone to remain pleasant. “Yes?”

Riddle turned fully then, his expression pleasant, completely unphased by the carnage around them.

“I’ve wondered if we might continue our private lessons this term,” he said. “Only if your schedule allows, of course. Headmaster Dippet believes I no longer require them, but I always found your insight… very helpful.”

Helpful.

Her skin crawled.

He spoke with such careful respect, such practiced humility, but Hermione could still hear the faint echo of that scream in the trees, the fox’s broken whines, the eerie stillness of dead creatures that had clearly suffered.

Her heart thudded painfully.

But this — this — was what she had wanted from him. What she had worked toward for months. Access. Influence. His trust. If she stepped back now, recoiled, pulled away from him even an inch, he’d sense it. And losing his confidence could be disastrous.

She forced her voice steady.

“Of course, Mr. Riddle. Please meet me at my office at six o’clock this Tuesday evening. Come prepared with what you’d like to focus on. I’ll be more than happy to assist.”

A smooth sort of satisfaction took over his expression and he inclined his head.

“Thank you, Professor.”

He turned, walking out of the clearing, snow swallowing the sound of his retreat until he was gone.

Only then did Hermione turn back to the fox.

It lay half-curled in the blood-speckled snow, trembling so violently it shook the frost clinging to its fur. The rise of its chest was shallow, as if it hurt to take a full breath.

Hermione approached slowly, wand still in hand. She had never healed a fox before, but anatomy was anatomy — bones, muscle, organs, blood. The basics would hold. They had to.

She knelt beside it, the cold seeping instantly through her robes.

“I’m not going to harm you, all right?” she murmured, voice low, soothing on instinct. “Please, for the love of Merlin, do not bite me. I’m trying to help.”

Her hands shook despite her efforts to steady them. She reached out, laying trembling fingers against the creature’s side. Its fur was warm, too warm, heat radiating from pain rather than comfort.

Gently, she ran her hands along its black body — ribs, flank, down the back leg — searching for breaks or swelling. Her fingers brushed over at least two ribs that shifted wrong beneath the fur, and lower down the back leg hung at an unnatural angle. Each careful press drew a soft, broken sound from the fox, and Hermione felt something twist sharply in her chest.

“It’s all right,” she whispered. “I know, I know. Just hold still…”

The fox flinched at her touch, turning its head sharply toward her.

Hermione froze.

Its eyes—

Silver.

Impossible, unmistakable silver.

Clear even through the pain.

Fixed on her with a desperate, almost-human plea she felt like a blow.

Her stomach dropped, a free-fall that stole her breath.

“Oh my god,” she gasped.

The fox stared back at her — terrified, hurting, unable to speak — but those eyes were his. Malfoy’s. She knew them in an instant, the same way she knew her own reflection. Recognition hit so hard her vision blurred at the edges.

Her breath fractured. “Malfoy?”

The fox let out a short, exhausted whine, not denial, but something that felt horribly, heartbreakingly like yes.

Hermione’s pulse roared in her ears. Her mind spun, not connecting thoughts so much as scattering them. Malfoy. Here. Like this. Tortured. Collapsed in the snow with the bodies of other creatures surrounding him.

Her hands flew to her mouth, then dropped again, trembling so hard she barely recognised them as her own.

“Oh—oh my god—Malfoy, what—what did you—?”

The fox whimpered — a thin, guttural sound — and Hermione’s panic snapped into something sharper, more familiar, something that felt more comfortable: anger.

“Malfoy, you absolute idiot,” she hissed, crouching over his small, shaking body. “Why didn’t you just tell me? I thought we were past that. I thought—”

Her breath faltered, but the words kept spilling out, quick and furious.

“You shouldn’t go running off alone like this,” she snapped. “It’s reckless and completely unnecessary. You know that. And you still thought sneaking off without telling me was a good idea? Honestly, Malfoy—what did you think was going to happen? That I wouldn’t notice? That you—”

A broken whine cut her off.

Hermione abruptly stopped her tirade.  

The sound wasn’t argumentative or defensive or even annoyed — it was pain. Pure, unguarded pain.

Her mouth snapped shut.

This wasn’t a corridor spat. This wasn’t a disagreement about lesson planning or a snide remark she could fling back at him.

He wasn’t rolling his eyes or preparing a retort.

He wasn’t even upright.

Hermione swallowed hard.

“Right,” she muttered sharply. “Not helpful. Yelling at you while you’re half-dead is not helpful.”

Later.

Later she was absolutely going to have words.

But not now.

She pushed her hair back from her face with a brisk, trembling motion. “Okay. Here’s what we’re doing,” she said, tone clipped, bossy, forced into a steadiness she absolutely did not feel. “We are getting you back to the castle. Immediately. And you are going to keep breathing, do you understand? That is your only job right now.”

As if to contradict her, he gave a weak, miserable wriggle — an attempt to lift his head or shift his weight, she couldn’t tell. Whatever it was, it made him yelp.

Hermione’s heart lurched.

“Oh—absolutely not,” she admonished, one hand hovering over him but not daring to touch. “Do not try to move, Malfoy. You’ll make it worse.”

He let out a faint, distressed noise.

Her voice cracked — once — before she strangled it back into control.

“I swear, Malfoy, if you make this worse, I will personally drag you through every healing chapter in Magical Creatures: Advanced Care and quiz you until the end of time.”

She wasn’t sure if she was reassuring him or threatening him.

Possibly both.

“Right,” Hermione said, mostly to stop herself from spiralling. She swallowed hard. “We need to move you, and you are in absolutely no condition to stay awake for it.”

The fox blinked up at her.

She steadied her wand hand — or tried to. “I’m going to Stun you,” she said, forcing her voice to sound much more confident than she felt. “It’ll keep you still and stop the pain until I can get you somewhere safe. Is… is that all right?”

An exhausted grumble answered her, as if to say get on with it, then.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she muttered, breath hitching.

She raised her wand. “Stupefy.”

The spell landed softly. His body slackened at once, the violent trembling easing into stillness. Hermione let out the breath she’d been holding.

“Good,” she whispered to herself. “Good. That’s… that’s better.”

She tugged off her scarf with numb fingers, dropped it on the snow, and flicked her wand. The knitted wool rippled, stretching itself into a soft, sturdy blanket.

She leaned closer, bracing herself for what she might find as she slid her hands beneath his small, broken body. Even the idea of lifting him made her chest tighten — every angle of him seemed wrong, every shallow rise of his ribs a warning.

No. She couldn’t move him like this. Not without stabilising the limbs and the spine first.

Honestly Hermione, what were you thinking?

She cast the charm wordlessly, a modified Immobulus that didn’t freeze him, not truly — just locked things in place so nothing snapped further when she lifted him.

Only then did she try again.

*******************

Her fingers slid under him, and even with the charm holding him firm, she could feel how fragile he was, how his bones shifted in the wrong direction.

When she lifted him, his fur slid against her palms, and something warm and sickeningly slick pulled free. A thin sheet of skin, torn and left behind in the snow.

Hermione’s stomach lurched.

She didn’t look.

She absolutely refused to look.

*******************

Instead, she finished wrapping him in her transfigured blanket, and pulled him tightly against her chest, ignoring the feeling of his blood as it soaked through the fabric.

“Right. We’re going,” she whispered, tightening her hold. “We’re going now.”

He couldn’t hear her anymore, she knew that, but talking out loud helped her to focus. Helped her keep her fraying thoughts together.

She stood, clutching him securely against her body, his head tucked under her chin. Each step towards the village felt maddeningly slow, as though the snow itself resisted her, thickening around her boots, dragging her back.

Her heart hammered.

Think, Hermione. Think.

Animagus healing. She’d studied it. She had.

Not like this — not injuries like this — but enough to know the basics.

Voluntary transformations.

Minor magical strain.

Occasional disorientation.

That was what the curriculum covered.

Not this.

Stop. Focus.

Think.

She needed a plan. She absolutely needed a plan.

Hospital Wing?

No. No, she couldn’t. Madam Blainey asked far too many questions. And she was thorough, annoyingly thorough, which Hermione usually admired but today, that was the last thing she needed.

Her rooms?

Yes. Her rooms first. Privacy, supplies, no witnesses. She could set up a diagnostic charm matrix, figure out the damage, stabilise what she could.

Transform him back?

No.

Absolutely not.

Shifting with broken bones would be—

“Catastrophic,” she muttered under her breath. “Utterly catastrophic.”

If there were fractures, and there were fractures, she’d felt them, the shift could worsen them. Bones misaligning mid-transfiguration. Internal tearing. Magical whiplash through the nervous system.

Heal first. Transform second.

Order of operations. That was the rule. That had to be the rule. She needed rules.

She tightened her grip around his body, adjusting him so his head was tucked firmly against her shoulder.

“Okay,” she whispered to herself. “All right. Priorities. Control bleeding. Stabilize fractures. Check for organ damage. Check for magical residue. Reset the skeletal structure. Keep him stable. Then, and only then, consider transforming him back.”

This was fine. This was manageable. She had done harder things. She had.

She wasn’t going to fall apart now. She refused.

Think, Hermione. Think.

Fix the bones first. Heal him in this form. Then transform him back once the structural integrity is restored.

Yes. That made sense. That was logically sound. Probably. She’d have to modify a few standard human-healing charms to match vulpine physiology, adjust the magical density, account for limb proportion—

“Professor Wormwood!”

She nearly jumped out of her skin. “Oh, for Merlin’s sake.”

Professor Beery was trudging up the path toward her, wrapped in an oversized cloak, nose a ruddy shade of red from the cold. His eyes lit up at the sight of her.

“Oh, there you are!” he said cheerfully. “I was wondering if you might have a moment—there’s a fascinating nutrient deficiency I’ve observed in one of the Mandrake seedlings, I’d meant to tell you about it earlier, but—”

“Professor, I’m so sorry,” she blurted, clutching fox Malfoy tighter under the blanket. “Something urgent has come up, I… I’m needed back at the castle immediately.”

“Oh! Oh dear, nothing serious I hope?”

“No. Yes. Well—nothing you need to worry about,” she said breathlessly, shifting the bundled fox higher in her arms before Beery could get a proper look. “Thank you for your company earlier. And the… Mandrake update. Truly. I have to go.”

Beery’s brows lifted as he noticed the blanket in her arms.

“Goodness—Matilda, is that an animal you’ve got there? Do you need assistance? I can fetch one of the groundskeepers—”

“No!” Hermione said far too quickly, far too loudly. “No, really, it’s—handled.”
She forced a brittle smile. “Just a minor issue. Very minor. I’m needed back at the castle.”

“Oh—well—if you’re certain,” he said, blinking in mild alarm. “If you require help later—”

“Fine! I’m quite fine,” she insisted, already backing away. “Thank you again—really I must go!”

She didn’t wait for him to respond. She spun and hurried up the sloping path, snow crunching under her boots, the cold biting at her legs as the last of the village noise fell behind her. The thin veneer of control she had over her panic, hung on by a thread.

Malfoy jerked in her arms.

Just once, but violently, like a spasm.

No, no, no. He shouldn’t be moving. The stupefy should have held perfectly. Movement meant the spell wasn’t holding, or the pain was breaking through, or the damage was far worse than she’d calculated.

His body sagged again, but his breathing had changed, it was shorter now, harsher, a faint little rasp that scraped along every raw nerve she had left.

Hermione’s stomach dropped like a stone.

“All right,” she whispered through clenched teeth, feet crunching faster through the snow. “We’re not doing this out here.”

Hermione walked faster.

She adjusted her grip, pulling him closer—not gently, there was no time for gently, but securely, protectively—ignoring the way her blanket was already soaked through in spots.

“Just hold on,” she whispered, voice cracking around the edges. “I can… I can fix this. I will fix this. But you have to—”

A faint rasp answered her.

Her pulse spiked so hard it made her vision blur.

Hermione tightened her grip and broke into a run, the castle rising like a dark, cold sanctuary ahead of her.