"He looks terrible," Harry told Ron in the Gryffindor common room, having slipped back from the hospital wing. "He's sweating through his sheets and can barely get a sentence out without stopping to breathe."
"Thirty-four bones," Ron said, with a shudder. "All at once. That's not nothing."
By the fireplace, Hermione had Moste Potente Potions open in her lap and was making a reasonable effort to appear absorbed in it.
She was listening to every word.
Is he alright? He must be in terrible pain.
The thought sat in her chest like a stone.
That rogue Bludger. She stared at the fire.
From the stands, she had watched him through the binoculars he'd given her — the ones with the adjustable focus she'd been careful never to mention. She had seen him register the danger behind him, had seen the moment he understood what was coming, and keep flying toward the Snitch regardless.
He knew. He had known it was there, and he'd gone for the Snitch anyway.
She could not decide whether that was brave or infuriating. She was currently leaning toward infuriating.
When he fell, everything else emptied out of her head at once.
He had been lying completely still on the pitch, and she had been standing in the middle of the stands entirely unable to do anything useful, and then the Bludger had come wheeling back toward the people crouched beside him.
She had pulled out her wand and blasted it apart before she'd consciously decided to. Whatever points Madam Hooch later deducted, she would do it again without hesitation.
She had run down from the stands and pushed through the crowd of Slytherin students gathering on the pitch, and looked at his still face on the grass, and then looked at Harry.
"Why didn't you stop the match?" she demanded. "Why did you have to keep going for the Snitch?"
"We weren't really thinking about it," Harry said miserably. "We just wanted to catch it as fast as possible. Draco felt the same—"
"You're both completely mad!" she shouted.
Then Pansy Parkinson was pushing through from the other direction, shouting at Crabbe and Goyle to move, and Marcus Flint was barging through the younger students without looking to see if they stumbled, bellowing at two of the Slytherin players to get Draco to the hospital wing before Lockhart arrived to make things worse.
Hermione stepped back and walked away.
He had plenty of people around him, all of them better placed than she was. She had not been useful there. She was not useful anywhere, and she walked back to the castle in a state of considerable frustration.
That evening, she sat by the fire and told Ron she had no interest in discussing Draco's injuries because she had reading to finish. She stayed there until Harry came back through the portrait hole.
"He's asleep," Harry said to Ron. "Madam Pomfrey gave him another dose of Dreamless Sleep Draught."
"You can't keep taking that," Ron said. "It's not meant to be used repeatedly."
"What else can she do? He's still in pain even when he's unconscious."
Harry turned to Hermione and asked her something about a Basilisk, about Parseltongue, about Colin Creevey. She followed the conversation and made the right responses. The rest of her attention was somewhere else.
She lay awake in the dormitory for a long time.
She had read about Skele-Gro. She had a good understanding of what it did and what it cost. The biological work of three months compressed into a single night — that was not a theoretical description but something happening to an actual person, two floors below her, right now.
"I'll go and see how he is tomorrow," she told herself, and finally fell asleep.
---
She heard Draco's voice before she reached the hospital wing door.
Quiet, controlled, and very carefully not raised — the particular restraint of someone who is furious and choosing not to show it. And then Dobby's voice, high and guilty, responding.
She stopped in the corridor and listened to enough of it to be certain.
Dobby had controlled the Bludger.
She stood very still for a moment. From Draco's tone, it was clear he'd had no idea. He was lying there with thirty-four regrown bones because of his own house-elf.
She turned and walked back down the corridor.
She was angry, and relieved, and guilty for having let the suspicion form at all, and then angry again, and then simply tired. She went to breakfast without making sense of any of it.
---
After his discharge, Draco became a minor Slytherin legend.
The catch had been genuinely spectacular — Snitch snatched one-handed while a rogue Bludger bore down on his blind side — and by the third morning, the Slytherin table's enthusiasm for the subject had not visibly diminished.
When Pansy and Blaise were still going at breakfast, Draco said, with an edge of genuine discomfort: "Sit down. There's nothing to brag about."
"Too much modesty is its own kind of arrogance," Pansy said, rolling her eyes.
"Many of the older students are talking about it," Blaise added. "Just accept the recognition."
Across the aisle, Hermione looked up from the Gryffindor table and fixed him with an expression he recognised immediately.
He looked away.
He knew why. He wasn't certain how much she had overheard outside the hospital wing, but it had clearly been enough. The approval of the entire Slytherin table meant nothing against that look. Thirty-four healed bones and a match-winning catch felt entirely pointless.
In either of his lives, he had not wanted to win through anything other than his own ability. He was discovering that this mattered more to him than he had previously understood.
The problem was that he hadn't arranged the Bludger. He couldn't explain this without explaining Dobby, and he couldn't explain Dobby without explaining a great deal else. Hermione had apparently decided to be cold and keep her own counsel, which left him no way in.
He ate his breakfast and tried to think of something else.
Later, Harry found him in a corridor and fell into step beside him.
"How are the bones?" Harry asked.
"Healed," Draco said. "No lasting damage."
"Good," Harry said, and then, lower: "I think I know more about the Basilisk. Hermione helped me work through it. We both think the theory's probably right."
"Then be careful," Draco said. "Don't follow the voice alone. Whatever's moving through the school is large and dangerous at close range."
"Hermione says the same thing," Harry said. "But if I can hear where it is—"
"Knowing where it is doesn't help you if you haven't worked out how to deal with it," Draco said. "Understand what you're facing first. Then move. Going in unprepared is suicidal."
Harry considered this. "You really do think it's a Basilisk."
"I think it fits," Draco said carefully. "A creature that moves without being seen, that petrifies rather than kills — a Basilisk travels through pipes, and the victims have likely been seeing it indirectly. A reflection. Water on the floor. A camera lens." He paused. "It's a theory. But it accounts for everything."
Harry nodded slowly. Then: "How do you know so much about this?"
"I read," Draco said. "It's not particularly obscure if you know where to look."
Harry took this at face value, which was one of his more disarming qualities.
What Draco noticed was that Harry had said nothing about Dobby — which meant Hermione hadn't told him. She was keeping his secret while refusing to speak to him, and he genuinely could not make sense of this approach.
---
On Thursday, Potions. He saw his opening and moved toward her before class.
She walked straight past him with her chin up, went to the back of the classroom, and sat down beside Neville Longbottom with the deliberateness of someone making a point.
Draco sat down and stared at his ingredients.
Neville Longbottom. She had chosen Neville Longbottom over him.
He was still working through this when Goyle's cauldron exploded at the front of the room. The resulting splash of Swelling Solution covered two rows of students with impressive range. In the confusion, he went to collect the antidote from Professor Snape's stores, and on the way back, registered — with more relief than he intended — that Hermione had been at the back of the room and was completely unaffected.
He applied the antidote to his own swelling nose with more force than necessary and told himself to concentrate.
On the way back to his bench, he noticed the door to Professor Snape's private stores standing slightly ajar. He registered the small figure nearby. He registered the bicorn horn and the Boomslang skin in her hands.
He turned back to his bench and fixed his attention on his own cauldron.
Hermione Granger — the most rule-abiding student in Gryffindor, possibly in the school — had just stolen from Snape's private collection during a Potions class, using a cauldron explosion as cover.
He was not going to think about what she was brewing, or where, or whether it was connected to the Polyjuice Potion ingredients he had just watched her pocket.
He stirred his own potion and kept his eyes forward.
---
The Duelling Club opened in the third week of December.
Draco had known from the moment the notice went up that it would be a disaster. Lockhart had no genuine duelling experience — this was, by December, barely a controversial opinion — and putting him in charge of a room full of students armed with wands was exactly as dangerous as it sounded.
He was not surprised when Professor Snape knocked Lockhart from the stage with a single spell and assumed command.
He was, however, surprised to find himself selected again as Harry's demonstration partner.
He stood opposite Harry on the stage and felt the particular awkwardness of someone who knows exactly how a fight will end. The gap in their current experience was considerable; Lockhart's curriculum had apparently included nothing in the way of defensive theory.
He raised his wand, cast Expelliarmus, and Harry's wand flew into the air.
He caught it and was about to step down from the stage when he looked over the students below and stopped.
Millicent Bulstrode had Hermione by the head.
Not a spell. Not a curse. She had seized Hermione's head between both hands and was squeezing with evident commitment, both their wands on the floor, and Hermione was making a small, pained sound.
"Harry," Draco said.
They came off the stage in the same moment. Harry reached Millicent first; Draco was directly behind him, pulling her back by the shoulder.
"Let go," he said, in the voice he used when he intended to be obeyed.
Millicent let go.
"Are you all right?" Harry was already asking Hermione.
"Fine. Thank you." Her voice was slightly unsteady, and something in Draco's chest tightened.
He turned to Millicent, keeping his expression cold and even. "You weren't using your wand. You didn't cast a single spell. This is a Duelling Club — you're not doing the House any credit. You're disgracing it."
Millicent started to object. From the stage, Professor Snape's voice carried cleanly across the room.
"Quite right, Draco. Since our demonstration was interrupted, perhaps Malfoy and Potter would show the group the correct method of ending a duel."
They returned to the stage.
Professor Snape leaned in and murmured Serpensortia with the air of a man passing on a professional recommendation, then stepped back.
Draco considered this for exactly one second.
No. A conjured snake would go for someone, and Harry would speak to it, and Harry would be the only person in the room who understood what he was saying, and the whispers about Harry potentially being the Heir of Slytherin would become a certainty overnight. That outcome helped no one.
He cast Expelliarmus again.
Harry's wand flew. As Draco stepped off the stage, he glanced at Professor Snape and registered a faint expression of calculated disappointment.
He filed that away for later consideration.
"Let me show you that properly," he said to Harry, returning the wand. "Lockhart should have taught you the mechanics before putting you up there."
He spent the rest of the evening working through Expelliarmus with Harry — the wand movement, the intent behind it, the follow-through. Harry had a natural feel for it. By the time the club dissolved into its final half-hour of general chaos, Harry had successfully disarmed Ron three times running.
"You have real instinct for this," Draco said, and meant it.
"Draco," Harry said, lower, glancing over his shoulder. "There's something I should tell you — about Hermione—"
"Don't," said Hermione, appearing at Harry's elbow.
Harry closed his mouth.
She looked at Draco. The expression on her face was not quite hostile and not quite warm — complicated in a way she clearly had no intention of explaining — and then she turned toward the doors.
"Sorry," Harry said quietly.
"It's fine," Draco said.
He walked out of the Duelling Club turning the problem of Hermione Granger over and finding no useful angle.
She was keeping his secrets and refusing to speak to him simultaneously. She suspected him of something and was protecting him from her own suspicions at the same time. She had chosen Neville Longbottom as a Potions partner, stolen Boomslang skin from Professor Snape's private stores, and was apparently brewing something in a location he had not been able to identify.
He could not determine whether she regarded him as a suspect or an ally, and he had a distinct impression that she hadn't entirely decided either.
---
Behind him, Hermione watched him go and made herself a silent promise.
She was going to work this out. Whatever he knew that he wasn't saying — whatever made him simultaneously the most suspicious and the most inexplicably trustworthy person she had met at Hogwarts — she was going to find the answer.
She needed to be more rigorous. More methodical. Less prone to losing the thread of her reasoning the moment he happened to look in her direction.
She was perfectly capable of that.
She turned and walked the other way, jaw set, and told herself firmly that she was.