This was Hermione Granger's first time in a boy's dormitory.
She was trying very hard not to be obvious about looking around.
After the conversation about the Basilisk wound down, she sat with her tea and watched a single leaf standing upright at the bottom of her cup, wondering how much longer the party in the common room would run.
"I'll go and check," Draco said, after a pause. "I won't lock the door. Just wait here."
"Will anyone come in?"
"Not without permission. Blaise and Theodore sometimes don't bother knocking, but Theodore went home for Christmas, and Blaise is occupied." He was already at the door. "I won't be long."
He left, closing it gently behind him.
Hermione waited a reasonable interval, then let herself look.
The room was nothing like Gryffindor. The Slytherin aesthetic ran to silver and deep green, dark stone and heavy carved wood, and candlelight reflected from surfaces that had been polished for a very long time. It was, she admitted privately, rather elegant — less like a student's room than a well-appointed study that happened to contain a bed.
The bookshelf was the most immediately interesting thing. She was across the room before she'd fully decided to go, holding her candle up to read the spines: Magical Drafts and Potions, A Compendium of Dark Counter-Curses, Forgotten Charms of the Medieval Period, Moste Potente Potions, three volumes on defensive theory—
She heard the door handle.
She panicked, shoved the candle onto the nearest surface, yanked open the wardrobe beside her, and climbed in.
The door would not close properly from the inside. She realised this approximately one second after getting in. She was holding it shut with two fingers through the gap, standing behind a long set of dress robes that smelled faintly of cedar and something she couldn't quite identify, and it was far too late to choose a different hiding place.
The footsteps crossed the room unhurriedly.
Then stopped.
"Got you," Draco said pleasantly, from directly outside.
The wardrobe door swung open. He was standing there with his head tilted, looking at her with an expression of genuine amusement that she had never seen on his face before.
"Did you think that was well-concealed?"
"I thought it was someone else," she said, with what dignity she could manage from inside a wardrobe.
"Someone else would have knocked." He held out a hand. "Come out before you knock something over."
She stepped out, pulling her robes straight. "I wasn't planning to stay in there."
"I'm sure." He glanced back toward the door to the common room, and some of the amusement faded. "The party is still going. Another hour at least."
He crossed to the low table near the fireplace, where a small collection of food had appeared while she wasn't looking — cake, a few delicate pastries, a fresh pot of tea.
"Dobby?" she guessed.
"Through official channels," he said blandly.
"You mean Dobby."
"Sit down."
She sat. The cake was excellent — layered with strawberries and cream, obviously freshly made — and she was considerably hungrier than she'd realised. She ate without comment, trying not to be too obvious about it. He sat across from her and didn't eat anything, just watched the fire.
"You spent the whole evening planning the break-in and forgot to have dinner," he said.
She didn't answer. He refilled her tea.
Eventually, he glanced at the clock on his desk — a peculiar silver-and-amethyst thing that chimed rather than ticked — and said, "They won't be finished for a while yet. You should rest."
She started to object.
"I'll wait in the common room. I'll come back when it's clear." He went to the wardrobe — the wardrobe — and produced a folded blanket. "This is new."
"Where will you—"
"Hermione."
She recognised the tone. She took the blanket.
"Bathroom is through there," he said. "There are fresh towels in the cabinet."
He left before she could finish whatever she'd been about to say.
She stood holding the blanket for a moment, then decided there was no particular reason to be difficult about it. She used the bathroom, climbed into his bed, and pulled the blanket — heavy, warm, embroidered with silver snakes — around herself.
She'd expected to lie awake for at least an hour. She was asleep within minutes.
---
At four in the morning, someone shook her arm.
She heard it distantly, registered it as part of a dream, and turned toward the source without opening her eyes. The dream had something to do with flying. Someone with fair hair just ahead of her.
Still half asleep, she reached out and found an ear, tugged it, and patted something soft and somewhat flyaway.
"Cute," she said, and went back to sleep.
She was not aware of this at the time.
---
The light through the French windows was pale and green — filtered through the Black Lake — when she finally woke properly.
She lay still for a moment, taking in the dark green silk curtains above her and the silver embroidery on the sheets, and then remembered exactly where she was and sat up sharply.
The room was quiet. The fire had burned low.
Draco was in the long armchair by the fireplace, covered with a blanket, apparently asleep. His hair, without whatever he used to keep it in order, had gone soft and a bit dishevelled, falling across his forehead.
She stood, padded quietly across the carpet, and crouched down to check that he was actually sleeping.
He was. He looked considerably younger asleep — the deliberate composure he maintained when awake was simply absent, and what remained was just a boy who had given up his bed and spent the night in an armchair.
She watched him for a moment. It occurred to her that this was a rare opportunity to look at him without any of the usual complications. She reached out and, with one finger, smoothed the slight furrow from between his brows.
His hand came up and caught her wrist.
"Stop," he said, without opening his eyes.
She went still.
He moved his head slightly, the light shifting across his face. The shadows under his eyes were visible.
"Who?" he asked, more warily.
"It's me. Hermione." She felt his grip relax a fraction but not release entirely. "I'm sorry — I didn't mean to wake you."
"You're up." He opened his eyes slowly, blinking at the pale light. "I tried to wake you at four. You didn't budge."
"Your bed is very comfortable."
Something crossed his face that might have been the beginning of a smile. "Evidently."
He was still holding her wrist. He seemed to register this a moment after she did, and let go, pushing himself upright on the armchair.
"My hair," he said, with sudden alarm, reaching up.
"It looks fine."
"It's a complete disaster—"
"It looks better like this, actually." She sat on the edge of the coffee table. "Hair wax at twelve is supposed to increase your risk of going bald."
"That's not a real fact."
"My father says it is."
He looked at her with profound scepticism. "Your father is a dentist."
"Dentists understand scalp health."
"That is a tremendous stretch."
She smiled. He made a resigned sound and stopped trying to do anything about his hair, which she took as a small victory.
Outside the window, something large and grey shifted in the depths of the lake — the giant squid, moving in its slow, unhurried way through the green dark.
"Merry Christmas," Draco said.
She'd forgotten entirely. "Merry Christmas!" The word felt warmer than usual, somehow. "You're the first person to say that to me today."
He stood, went to the desk, and pulled a small dark green box from one of the drawers. He held it out.
She opened it.
Inside, on black velvet, lay a small hand mirror — old silver, the back engraved in an elaborate pattern of scrollwork and waves, the frame worn smooth with age.
"Nineteenth-century French," Draco said. "I thought you'd appreciate it."
"It's beautiful." She turned it over carefully. The glass was clear and slightly convex, the way old mirrors were. "Thank you."
"Always carry it with you." His tone had shifted — straightforward now, no performance in it. "If we're right about the pipes, the Basilisk can come from any corner of the castle. If you're ever rounding a corridor and you hear something, use the mirror to look ahead before you turn."
She looked up at him.
He was watching her with a steady, careful expression.
"You're giving me a basilisk warning as a Christmas present," she said.
"I'm giving you something that will keep you alive and happens to also be decorative," he said. "Use it."
"I will." She tucked it into the inside pocket of her robe, close to her chest. "Is that why you've been telling me to be careful? Not because of bloodline, but because of—"
"Because the Basilisk is real and you go looking for trouble," he said. "It has nothing to do with bloodline. Statistically, any student is equally at risk."
"Thank you," she said again, and this time she meant it for rather more than the mirror.
He looked away.
---
They ate breakfast — Dobby had apparently supplied enough food to see them through to lunchtime — and moved, naturally, back to the question they'd left open the night before: not just how the Basilisk moved, but how the Heir was selecting targets.
"Mrs. Norris, Colin Creevey, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Nearly Headless Nick," Hermione said, counting them off. "If the Basilisk doesn't distinguish by bloodline on its own, then someone is directing it. And to direct it precisely, they'd have to know who's Muggle-born."
"Which means they know the victims," Draco said. "Not necessarily well. But they'd need to know enough to identify them."
"Justin practically announces it himself," Hermione said. "He's been telling people since September that he turned down Eton to come to Hogwarts. It's practically a badge of honour for him."
"So anyone paying attention would know. That doesn't narrow it much." Draco turned his cup in his hands. "Nick is more interesting. He's a ghost — he can't be killed, only inconvenienced. Either he was caught in the crossfire, or someone bore a grudge against him specifically. Who knows that he used to be a Gryffindor?"
"Everyone, technically. But who knows enough about him to target him deliberately?"
"What about Mrs. Norris?" Draco said. "Who knows Filch is a Squib?"
Hermione thought about it. "It's not common knowledge. The three of us only found out when Mrs. Norris was attacked and Filch started shouting at Harry. But Filch detains students regularly — anyone who'd been to his office and seen the Kwikspell correspondence could have worked it out."
"So the question is who else has been in his office," Draco said. "Not just Gryffindors. Any student who's been in detention."
"That's a long list."
"But it's a list. And then there's Colin." He paused. He didn't explain the pause. "He talks about his father being a Muggle milkman to anyone who'll listen. In the Gryffindor common room. That means any Gryffindor student could know."
Hermione went quiet.
"I'm not accusing anyone," Draco said, reading her expression. "I'm observing that the connection point is Gryffindor, not Slytherin — which should satisfy your instinct to argue with me about that."
"I wasn't going to argue."
"You were about to." He stood and went to his bookshelf. "The pattern is: victims who are Muggle-born or connected to a Squib, known to someone who is familiar with Gryffindor students or has access to Filch's office. That's our starting point."
He pulled a slim book from the shelf and set it on the table between them.
"I want to cross-reference the detentions list against the victims," he said. "And I want to know if Colin has any enemies."
"He doesn't," Hermione said. "His only distinguishing feature is following Harry around, and Harry's just quietly fed up with it. Nobody else really notices him."
"Everyone's noticed him. He's very loud." Draco sat back down. "But you're right that he doesn't have enemies. Which means if he was targeted deliberately rather than by chance, it was purely for what he is, not who he is."
Hermione looked at the mirror in her pocket, then back at him.
"Then we keep going," she said.
"We keep going," Draco agreed.
Outside the window, the Black Lake shifted green and grey in the early Christmas light, and somewhere deep in the pipes of Hogwarts castle, something large moved in the dark.