Speculation about Peter Pettigrew intensified over the following days.
Everyone was trying to work out how he had managed to slip past the Dementors' tight cordon and reach Hogwarts.
By early November, Draco had found one or two wizard detective novels tucked around the Slytherin common room. The author, writing under the pseudonym "339," had appended a wildly imaginative summary outlining no fewer than twenty possible methods by which Pettigrew might have infiltrated the castle.
"Polyjuice Potion!" Gregory Goyle announced at last, having pondered in silence over the article titled *20 Ways to Secretly Infiltrate Hogwarts*. He lowered the pamphlet and looked up from the sofa with an air of triumph. "They used Polyjuice to disguise themselves as someone and just walked in."
"Oh, honestly," Pansy Parkinson scoffed. "If he could impersonate someone else, why would he show his real face at all?"
"Dementors can smell it." Theodore Nott looked up from behind his book—a rare occurrence. "The scent of a soul doesn't change with a change in appearance."
"But couldn't he turn into a rat?" Vincent Crabbe scratched his head, looking puzzled. "Couldn't he dig a hole under the Dementors' feet and crawl in? That way they couldn't smell him at all?"
A burst of contemptuous laughter swept through the common room.
Draco did not laugh. He raised an eyebrow and glanced at Crabbe with quiet surprise. That was, inadvertently, closer to the truth than anything else suggested tonight.
Pettigrew hadn't dug his way in, of course—but as an Animagus in rat form, he would have slipped right past the Dementors undetected. In a roundabout way, Crabbe had stumbled onto the very secret Sirius Black had spent over a decade in Azkaban piecing together.
His Slytherin classmates, however, had plainly not caught on.
Neither had Crabbe himself. He was already too absorbed in his sizzling honey toffee to register the laughter, and a moment later, having eaten one too many, he wobbled and floated several inches off the sofa—earning a fresh wave of mockery from the room.
"Oh, Crabbe, that idea was just too *sweet*." Pansy laughed so hard she nearly toppled sideways, which earned her a dark look from Blaise Zabini.
"What?" Pansy said, looking genuinely baffled. "Why are you glaring at me?"
"How can you call another boy sweet?" Blaise said in a low, tight voice.
"You're the sweetest, obviously. Are you actually jealous of *Crabbe*?" Pansy muttered.
Merlin, those two are insufferable. Draco rolled his eyes. He should never have sat next to Blaise.
"It couldn't be a Flowering Shrub Jinx, it couldn't be Apparition, and no one's going to fly in on a broomstick in broad daylight with Dementors on patrol," Blaise said at last, having been sufficiently appeased. He settled back with a triumphant air. "My money's on a secret passage. There's probably one Filch hasn't sealed yet, running from Hogsmeade—or further. Draco, what do you think?"
"Could be," Draco said lazily.
Blaise wasn't wrong that such a passage existed. Hogwarts did have at least one unsecured route in and out of the castle.
But thanks to Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs, Draco had been keeping meticulous watch over the castle's every corner with the Marauder's Map—and the secret passage theory was, he was quite certain, rubbish.
Pettigrew's name had never appeared on the Map. Not once, across every careful sweep he'd made.
For several nights running, after Quidditch practice, he had lain on his bed in his private room beneath the Black Lake and combed the Marauder's Map inch by inch—every corridor, every passage, even Hogsmeade itself—and found nothing.
It seemed that whether or not Pettigrew had ever set foot in Hogwarts that night, he was no longer anywhere nearby.
The fireside debate wound down at last, the Slytherins drifting away from the hearth in ones and twos, yawning as they headed for their dormitories.
Theodore hadn't moved. He turned a page of his book—*Strange Magical Puzzles and Their Solutions*—and asked Draco, without looking up, "So you favour the secret passage theory too?"
"I don't favour any of them. None of them make sense." Draco leaned back in the leather armchair and gazed up through the transparent dome at the dark, shifting water of the Black Lake above. "The question was never *how* he got in. It's *what he came for*."
"Fair point. Getting to the root of it is always the better approach." Theodore's tone held a note of quiet agreement as he returned to his reading.
Draco sighed and let his thoughts drift, watching the great squid trail across the gloom beyond the dome. The mystery remained stubbornly opaque.
---
A few days later, he gave up his fruitless searches on the Map and turned his attention to what was now more pressing: Slytherin would face Gryffindor on the second Saturday of November.
Captain Marcus Flint, who habitually wore the expression of a man preparing for his own funeral, had decreed that every spare moment of free time was to be spent in extra practice. Draco was no exception.
In Defence Against the Dark Arts, Professor Lupin was explaining the Grindylow to his students. The creature was pressed against the glass of its tank at the front of the classroom—a sickly green thing with sharp horns, making faces at the class and bending and stretching its long, thin fingers in an unsettling way.
"Can anyone tell me the key to handling one?" Lupin glanced around, then said, with a hint of resignation, "Hermione?"
"The trick is to break free from its grip. The fingers are brittle—if you act quickly, they snap easily," Hermione said, with that familiar note of satisfaction.
Classic Hermione Granger, Draco thought—always riding to the rescue when the professor's question hung in the air too long. He exhaled quietly and watched her settle back into her seat, pleased with herself.
She seemed entirely untroubled by Pettigrew or the Dementors, continuing to pursue her studies with undiminished enthusiasm from her preferred seat in the front row.
Then he noticed that Neville Longbottom was sitting beside her, and his mood immediately curdled.
*Perhaps I'll try the Impediment Jinx on Longbottom after class*, Draco thought pleasantly.
"Excellent—five points to Gryffindor," Lupin said. "I had originally planned to find a pond for you all to practise with in person, but unfortunately the weather today makes that impossible."
"Thank Merlin for that," Ron muttered to Harry across the aisle, still faintly shuddering.
The weather was, indeed, dreadful. A violent storm had been battering the castle since morning—exactly as it had in another life.
Which brought Draco back to the Dementor attack on the Quidditch pitch, and Harry plummeting from his broom.
Harry had mastered the Patronus Charm in this life, which was something. But it wasn't enough to put Draco at ease.
"You absolutely must bring your wand to the match," he told Harry after class, catching him in the corridor beside a bracket of torches. He was trying to sound casual, and knew he wasn't pulling it off. He felt like a fretful grandmother. "Take it onto the pitch with you."
Harry looked at him, puzzled. "Why? It's Quidditch, not a duel."
Draco could only shrug and offer no explanation.
If he told Harry now that a hundred Dementors were going to swarm the pitch, it would sound less like a warning and more like a curse. Wizards were a superstitious lot—one only had to look at the enduring popularity of Professor Trelawney to understand that.
---
Match day arrived. The weather had not improved. Thunder rolled in low and steady, and the wind came in hard off the lake.
Slytherin captain Marcus Flint woke with a face like a gathering storm.
"We compensate with technique," he said, grimly. "Account for the crosswind on every throw, watch your angles, and don't let the conditions rattle you."
"Could the match be postponed?" Graham Montague asked without much hope. "Could we ask Madam Hooch?"
"Only if there's a proper reason," Marcus said. "The weather alone won't do it."
He looked around at his team. No inspiration presented itself. The Slytherin players filed one by one out of the changing rooms, mounted their brooms on the sodden grass, and faced their Gryffindor opponents through a curtain of rain.
Madam Hooch's whistle cut through the downpour, and both teams gritted their teeth and launched themselves into the grey, roaring sky.
Draco was soaked through within seconds and frozen stiff not long after.
His attention was fractured in a way it never should have been—he had to track the Snitch through the storm, but he couldn't stop watching Harry's movements at the same time. As a Seeker, divided focus was a tactical weakness. He knew it and couldn't help it.
Harry had saved his life. Since then, the idea of standing by while Harry careened into danger had simply ceased to be an option.
A thunderclap cracked overhead, and lightning split the sky.
Then—there. A small golden glint in the grey, hovering almost motionless. The Snitch, its wings waterlogged, resting in mid-air.
*End this. Now.*
He drove his broom forward, snatched out his hand, and closed his fist around the tiny winged ball before it could react.
He turned, triumphant, scanning the stands—that vast press of soaked cloaks and wind-shredded umbrellas—looking to see if she had seen it; and it was only then that he heard the screaming.
"Harry!"
He spun round.
Harry was sliding off his broom—falling fast, hands still locked around his wand. A thin, silver wisp trailed from the tip, but it was nowhere near enough. There weren't one or two Dementors below. There were hundreds, pressing in from every direction, their rattling breath audible even over the wind.
Harry could not fall into that.
Blood roared in his ears. Without stopping to reach for his own wand, Draco wrenched his broom around and hurled himself downward, nearly vertical, like a Bludger thrown by hand.
"No!" Hermione screamed from the stands—though those around her were still struggling to understand what the Slytherin Seeker thought he was doing.
She understood in an instant. She had seen him fly recklessly before. He was going after Harry, and it was far too dangerous—she had never seen anyone ride a broom with less regard for their own safety—
She seized her wand and began casting the Patronus Charm, her heart hammering.
*Merlin, if you're real—don't let anything happen to him—*
Just when the crowd was certain Draco was about to plough headlong into the horde of Dementors on the ground, his broom swept into an angle that should have been physically impossible. He caught Harry across the back of his broom, hauled him in with one arm, and wrenched upward—ripping Harry out of reach of the Dementors and soaring back into the sky amidst a surge of their furious, rattling cold.
The stands erupted.
Draco didn't hear it.
He had been too close to them. The cold radiating from that dark mass had reached somewhere deep inside him—not his skin, not his bones, but further in, where the worst memories lived.
Images detonated through his mind in rapid succession. His father, dragged into Azkaban. His mother on her knees at Malfoy Manor, weeping, begging. The Dark Lord's pale eyes and quiet, terrible voice. Dumbledore falling from the Astronomy Tower. And Hermione—her face blank with horror, her arm pinned, the word being carved into her skin—
Several Dementors, unwilling to be cheated of their prize, were giving chase, their hoarse rattling breath close behind him as the screams in the stands shifted from triumph to panic.
He couldn't reach his wand. One hand gripped his broom; the other held Harry, who had gone entirely limp.
There's nothing I can do. I can't let go of either of them.
Black fog began eating at the edges of his vision. He ground his teeth together, held on to the last thread of consciousness he had, and aimed straight at the teachers' stands—at Dumbledore. The safest point he could think of.
His broom flew the rest of it. He was barely guiding it.
As he came in, he made out silvery shapes surging from all directions toward the darkness behind him—an otter, a tabby cat, a doe—and from the tip of Dumbledore's wand ahead, a phoenix blazed into being.
It swept past him in a rush of warm light, brushing the hem of his drenched robes, and drove back into the dark.
The crushing weight lifted. For one dizzying moment, he felt almost weightless—a bowstring drawn past its limit and finally released.
And then he and Harry tumbled together down the steps of the stands, and the gasps of those nearest were the last thing he heard clearly.
"...Their Patronus Charms worked—the Dementors were forced back." Dumbledore's voice, from somewhere above him. "It bought us the time we needed to respond."
That was his last coherent thought. Then came whiteness, swirling, and then a black tide that swallowed everything.
The Dementors' aftershocks moved through him in the dark like a current:
His father, led away in chains. His mother's weeping. The Dark Lord's bloodshot eyes and cold, measured words. Dumbledore falling. And Hermione—the word cut into her arm, her tears silent and falling, her screams that had carved themselves into him like a brand, as deep and permanent as any Dark Mark.
He didn't know how much time had passed. But somewhere in the dark, a warm hand touched his cold face, and a voice called to him—low and gentle and tight with worry.
"Draco… Draco…"
He knew that voice.
He pulled himself toward it like a drowning man pulling toward light, forced his eyes open, and found the dim glow of a wall lamp—and a girl whose eyes, in that low light, shone very bright.
The hospital wing. Of course.
"Oh, thank goodness—you're awake!" She rushed forward and flung her arms around his neck. Something warm and wet pressed into his skin, and he felt heat rise through him despite the chill.
"How are you feeling?" Her voice was thick.
"Not well," he said. His voice came out rough and low.
"Does it hurt somewhere?" she asked, pulling back just far enough to look at him, sniffling.
"No. I just feel… wrong." He closed his eyes.
"Madam Pomfrey said you need Cheering Draught." She wiped her eyes briskly, stood, and lifted a narrow-mouthed bottle from the cabinet beside him. "I've got it here."
"All right," he murmured, and tried to push himself upright. His arms didn't cooperate.
"Don't force yourself—I'll help." She leaned over him, coaxing him gently, and guided the thin nozzle to his lips. "Just sip."
Draco was caught entirely off guard by this. A strange, aching tightness rose in his chest—a kind of grief he hadn't expected, irrational and hard to name.
He was cold all over—the particular cold that reached through the skin and settled in the chest—and barely able to swallow, but he managed it. When she was done, she dabbed his mouth carefully with a handkerchief, thorough and unhurried, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
He had not expected this. That she would treat him so gently, so matter-of-factly.
Apart from his mother, no one had ever handled him with this kind of care. And even if someone had wanted to try, his pride and his wariness would have made short work of the attempt.
But Hermione Granger simply did not encounter those defences. She moved past them without trying, without even noticing they were there.
Draco closed his eyes and listened to the small, crisp sound of the empty medicine bottle being set on the bedside table.
"Better?" She leaned close again, one hand resting on his forehead, reading his face with a slight frown of concentration.
Her scent, close like this, was unmistakable—warm and faintly sweet, drifting down from her hair onto his face and dissolving what remained of his wretchedness like something soluble.
"Better," he said, and found he almost meant it. His voice had returned to its normal register. "How's Harry?"
"Resting. Over there." She tilted her head toward the bed on his left.
He turned slowly. Harry's bed was a still, silent mound beneath the blankets.
"He was distressed when he came round," she said quietly. "Madam Pomfrey gave him a Sleeping Draught. He'll be all right."
"Anything else?" he asked. He reached out and caught a strand of her hair between his fingers without quite deciding to.
"Professor Dumbledore is furious. You should have heard him dressing down the Dementors—he sent the lot of them off the grounds." A small, satisfied smile crossed her face as she let him turn the strand over between his fingers without comment.
"Good," he said.
"Gryffindor lost the match. Their whole team is devastated, especially Wood. Though he did admit you played well and caught the Snitch cleanly." She studied him with a small crease of worry between her brows; he still seemed too quiet.
"Anything else?" He continued to hold the strand of hair, feeling its weight.
Hermione glanced at Harry's still form and lowered her voice further. "Harry's Nimbus Two Thousand was destroyed by the Whomping Willow. He won't let them throw away the pieces."
Draco thought, with faint sourness, that a certain extravagant godfather would no doubt be sending a Firebolt before long. Trust Sirius Black to go straight for the most expensive broom on the market.
"Anything else?" He turned the strand of hair in his fingers as if he couldn't quite bring himself to let it go.
"Several students who'd been in your Patronus lessons successfully conjured full Corporeal Patronuses in the stands trying to help you." Her voice warmed. "Luna Lovegood's was a hare, Seamus's was a fox, Ernie Macmillan conjured a boar, Cho Chang a swan. The professors were astonished. Oh, and Ginny—she's only a second-year, and she managed a horse. It was quite a spectacle." She hesitated, then added quietly, "I don't think you would have seen it, you were already going under by then."
"I saw one," Draco said. "An otter. Just for a moment."
He would not have forgotten it in any case. He had been astonished by it once before, in another life—had found it entirely at odds with her serious, rule-bound exterior.
Looking at her now, he thought: it suits her perfectly. Clever, quick, warm. Of course it's an otter.
"Yes—the otter." Her expression went a little thoughtful. "It was the first time it worked. I think it was because I was too frightened and too angry—that seems to have unlocked something."
"So your Patronus failing wasn't about insufficient happiness," he said, with difficulty, his voice slightly rough with surprise. "It was about doubt."
"You could put it that way," she said, eyes crinkling at the corners.
She hadn't expected anger to be what finally ignited her conviction.
"You always manage to surprise me, Hermione Granger." After a pause, he looked at her properly and said, more quietly, "The otter is beautiful."
She gave him a satisfied little smile. "My Slytherin friend—I think I finally understand the benefit you were talking about. The benefit of teaching the Patronus Charm."
"Oh?" He waited.
"So that your students can save you in return. Is that the benefit?" She was clearly pleased with herself.
"It's embarrassing," he said flatly, ignoring her teasing. "Every student produces one and the teacher still can't. It's not doubt, and it's not rage."
"Are you lacking happiness?" she asked, the playfulness fading from her voice. She looked at him carefully. "Are you—are you unhappy?"
"Probably." He brought the strand of hair close to his face, almost unconsciously, and breathed in.
Warm and faintly sweet. He was too tired to be self-conscious about it.
"Then as soon as you're better, we should do something about that," she said, with an anxious energy, taking in his listless expression. She'd been terrified today and she wanted—needed—him to produce a full Patronus. "I've been wondering this for a while, actually—how can you be unhappy? You have everything, everything about you is—"
"Draco Malfoy, who ought never to feel sorrow. Naturally. How greedy of him to feel it anyway—probably just performing for attention." He said it himself, in a dry, flat voice, and closed his eyes.
He didn't know what was the matter with him today. His emotional governor seemed to have blown a fuse. He couldn't find his calm, his logic, his patience. Everything felt raw and exposed, unguarded and contrary. The Dementor's aftershock, he supposed—a cauldron of manufactured despair still hissing somewhere in his chest.
"That is not what I meant." She leaned closer, eyes bright with concern, and reached up to stroke the hair back from his forehead. "I just meant—wouldn't it be better, to be happier? To smile more. You look—" She hesitated. "You look lovely when you smile. Your usual one is nice, but when you really smile—properly—that's the most beautiful one."
"…Is that right," he said, in a voice that came out less steady than he'd intended.
"Of course." She studied him. "Draco, are you blushing?"
"It's warm," he said quickly, closing his eyes.
She laughed quietly and, before he'd registered that she'd decided to, she reached up and began to stroke his hair.
He went very still.
Since his rebirth, being touched unexpectedly had been something he'd found nearly intolerable—a reflex left over from the worst of his past life. The instinct was honed sharp. Crabbe had once tried to leap out from around a corner as a joke; he'd ended up against the wall before he'd finished drawing breath. Blaise, not believing the rumours, had attempted to clap him from behind and received the same treatment. After that, a small string of curious Slytherins had tried their luck, none successfully, until the legend that you could never catch Draco Malfoy off guard had become settled common room fact.
"Are you going to end up entirely alone?" Pansy had asked him once, looking at him as if he'd grown a second head, after he'd intercepted a Slytherin girl who'd merely wanted to touch his shoulder. "Where did your manners go?"
Draco didn't answer her then. After what he'd witnessed of Bellatrix—the specific, methodical violence of her—he had long since stopped underestimating what anyone was capable of.
He trusted no one. That was simply the arithmetic of survival.
Except for her.
Hermione Granger fell entirely outside those calculations. His wariness, the finely tuned reflex that stiffened at any unexpected approach—none of it applied to her. Her touch didn't set anything on edge. It did the opposite.
"You said you were warm," Hermione said, pulling him back into the room. She was shivering slightly. "But it's November. I'm actually quite cold. Has Madam Pomfrey forgotten to light the fire?"
Draco craned his neck toward the window. Outside: icy rain, howling wind, a sky like pewter.
"Do you want to—" he started, then stopped, slightly abashed. "There's room under the blankets. It's warmer in here."
"Absolutely not!" She raised her voice, then immediately clapped her hand over her mouth and glanced sideways at Harry's bed.
Harry stirred but didn't wake.
Hermione exhaled in relief and turned back to Draco, leaning in and keeping her voice low. She looked at the small furrow between his brows and, before she could stop herself, reached up and tried to smooth it out with her thumb. "It won't do. Stop it. You need to sleep, and I have to go."
"Just for a little while." He didn't smooth his expression. If anything, the furrow deepened. "I'm cold."
He had, without question, lost his mind.
The Dementors had excavated something out of him tonight—had left a hollow in his chest where his self-possession usually lived—and into that hollow had rushed every reckless, wilful, unguarded impulse he'd spent years learning to suppress. He didn't particularly want to examine this. He just wanted her to stay.
He wanted to hold her hair and not have to think. He wanted to fall asleep the way he had in the Great Hall—anchored by her warmth and her scent, without nightmares. He wanted her to breathe against his collarbone and fill the cold that the Dementors had left behind.
That's all. Entirely reasonable, under the circumstances. He told himself this.
"But you just said you were warm," Hermione said, looking at him with frank suspicion. She pressed the back of her hand to his forehead.
Not feverish, she thought.
"I feel dreadful," Draco said, and put on his best wretched expression. His voice acquired a slight, undeniable note of pleading. "And frightened. So many Dementors. I'm cold all through—even my heart feels cold—"
He was absolutely shameless, and he knew it.
"All right—don't be frightened, I'm coming." Hermione hesitated for only a moment, but the memory of that dense, rattling crowd of Dementors made it easy to give way. He'd flown straight into the middle of them.
He must be in a wretched state. The least she could do was stay a little longer.
She made her decision, took off her shoes, and carefully lifted the corner of the blanket to slip in beside him.
Draco made room for her without a word, with the focused compliance of a child who has been promised a sweet and is very careful not to do anything to jeopardise it.
"Better?" Hermione settled her head against his shoulder and began to stroke his arm, gently and steadily, trying to ease the tension in him.
It worked immediately. Her warmth reached him in layers—her scent, the soft weight of her against him, the rhythm of her hand—and the hollow the Dementors had left behind began, slowly, to fill. He wrapped his arm around her, tucked the ends of her hair carefully between his fingers, and felt the knot in his chest loosen.
"Much better," he murmured. "Not cold anymore."
"Draco, you do understand I can't stay indefinitely," Hermione said in a very serious voice, while simultaneously shifting to find a more comfortable position against his shoulder.
She was already regretting this.
Her "heart palpitations" had never been resolved—the forehead kiss was still unexplained, that hug at Honeydukes was still making her flush whenever she thought about it, and now here she was in a hospital bed because he'd made a sad face and said he was cold. She should not have given in so quickly. His pitiful expression must have bypassed her usual reasoning entirely.
This was the hospital wing. A place people came and went through at all hours! She'd left her blank Transfiguration essay—*The Identification and Classification of Werewolves*—in the Gryffindor common room and walked herself directly to the bedside of a boy who was extremely difficult to think clearly around.
And yet. He was warm, and he smelled of cold air and something faintly pleasant underneath, and the arm around her was gentle rather than restrictive, and she found she felt no particular urgency to leave.
"Hermione." His voice was drowsy, the usual composed precision gone entirely. "Put me to sleep before you go. Like I did for you in the Great Hall. You owe me."
"Draco." She shut her eyes. "I did not know you were capable of being this affectionate."
"Is that a problem?" he murmured.
"No," she admitted. She was smiling. "It's quite unexpected."
Perhaps no one else at Hogwarts had ever seen this side of him—the side that surfaced when his defences were down and he was too tired to reconstruct them. She couldn't help finding it rather endearing. Without quite meaning to, she nuzzled closer against his shoulder.
"How did Madam Pomfrey let you in this late…" he asked in a dreamy voice, rubbing his chin lightly against the top of her head.
"I don't know… she didn't make any trouble at all… just let me straight through…" Hermione said, baffled, stifling a yawn.
"Good… very good…" he murmured.
Her hand moved slowly, and he drifted into a dreamless sleep—no darkness, no cold, no voices—with the faint scent of green apples settling around him like something safe.
*(Madam Pomfrey, who had been subtly facilitating what she considered a rather sweet situation for the better part of a term: quietly minding her own business.)*
---
Hermione Granger was half asleep in the grey light of early dawn when she tried to turn over, found she couldn't, and opened her eyes.
Draco.
His face was inches from hers—thick lashes resting against his cheeks, lips slightly parted, soft breath warm against her forehead.
Oh. It's just him.
She closed her eyes again, relaxed, and nuzzled closer, inhaling contentedly. Perfectly fine.
Then her mind woke up the rest of the way.
*DRACO.*
Her eyes flew open.
She lay very still, ears ringing.
She was still in the hospital wing. In his bed. It was morning. She had fallen asleep.
She moved her head, very slowly and very carefully, and discovered that he had a large fistful of her curly hair, held tight in his sleep—exactly the way Crookshanks held a ball of yarn.
And his arms were wrapped securely around her.
He had been holding her all night.
Hermione's face went scarlet. Her thoughts became briefly incoherent.
She needed to leave. But her *hair*—
She swallowed, and stole a look at his face to check whether he was awake. The candle in the wall niche had burned out; by the light from the window, she could see the faint curve of a smile on his lips. He looked, for once, entirely at rest—as though the Dementors had never touched him.
At least there was that.
She spent the next ten minutes working her hair free, strand by careful strand, pausing each time he shifted. Once she was loose, she reached across to the adjacent empty bed, retrieved its spare pillow, and tucked it into his arms to replace herself. He adjusted, sighed, and settled without waking.
She recovered her shoes, took one last look at his face, and fled.
She tiptoed out through the hospital wing before Madam Pomfrey could begin her rounds—stepping quietly into the cold corridor at dawn with the expression of someone returning from an unsanctioned midnight excursion to the Forbidden Forest, cheeks burning and heart not entirely under control.
---
That morning, Madam Pomfrey opened the ward to visitors.
The entire Slytherin Quidditch team arrived in force: Keeper Miles Bletchley, Beaters Peregrine Derrick and Lucian Bole, Chasers Warrington and Montague, and a Marcus Flint who was, for once, beaming—all of them talking over one another about the catch.
"You could play Chaser as well as Seeker," Warrington said, with an approving nod.
"That dive—" Derrick shook his head in disbelief. "That was the best Wronski Feint I've ever seen performed on a Nimbus."
Draco gave them a faint smile.
Inwardly, he was wondering: when had she gone? And who, exactly, had left the extra pillow beside him when he'd woken that morning?
He'd been reckless last night. Entirely, inexcusably reckless. He'd made an outrageous demand and she'd given in, and she was almost certainly furious with him now, and he deserved it.
"Though the *purpose* wasn't exactly sporting—" Marcus said loudly, which earned him a collective glare from every Gryffindor on the other side of the ward.
Oliver Wood very nearly came across the room before the Weasley twins seized him, one on each side.
Madam Pomfrey arrived at a near-sprint. "Time! Out! Now! These patients need rest, not a brawl!"
Draco watched her bustle his teammates out, faintly amused. She'd been perfectly civil to Hermione last night.
When the ward was quiet again, he turned to look at Harry, who was staring at the ceiling with a distant expression.
"I'm sorry about the Dementors," Draco said. "And about your Nimbus."
"It wasn't your fault. You saved me." Harry didn't look at him. "I owe you a proper thank you."
Draco was quiet for a moment.
No. Harry owed him nothing. It was the other way around—it always had been. But he didn't know how to say that without explaining things he wasn't ready to explain.
"As I was falling," Harry said suddenly, "I heard my mother's voice again. More than before. More of what she said—what she was saying to Voldemort, just before—"
Draco looked at him, surprised. He hadn't expected Harry to bring this up. Not yet, not here.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly.
"She said three things. She was trying to protect me." Harry smiled—a tight, unhappy smile—and rubbed his eyes. "You were right, before. She loves me. If it weren't for—"
If it weren't for Voldemort. Draco heard the shape of what Harry didn't finish.
Harry turned his face to the side. Draco looked away, giving him the privacy of it.
"She would be so proud of you," Draco said, after a moment. "You almost produced your Patronus. I saw it."
"Thank you." Harry was quiet for a moment. Then: "You're the first person I've seen go under from a Dementor the way I did. You were unconscious for the whole afternoon. Were the memories… were they very bad?"
He asked it carefully, as if already bracing for denial. What could Draco Malfoy possibly have to grieve? His parents were alive and well and loved him. What could a boy like that—Harry thought—carry that would be worth a Dementor's attention?
"Yes," Draco said. "Very bad."
Harry looked at him, surprised. He had expected the cold shrug. The blank denial.
"What were they?" he asked, before he could think better of it.
"I can't say. They're too—" Draco's voice dropped. "They're too bad to say. All I can tell you is that they are very, very bad."
Harry looked at him then—properly looked—and saw something on Draco Malfoy's face that he recognised immediately, because he had felt it himself in front of the Mirror of Erised. A genuine, deep-rooted sadness. The kind that didn't need explaining because it simply was.
He had no reason to believe it was real—and yet he did. Inexplicably and completely.
Draco Malfoy had something in his past that hurt him. Perhaps had always hurt him. It had simply never shown before.
---
Harry was noticeably lighter by Monday morning, as they made their way from the hospital wing to the Great Hall for lunch.
There was something in it—in discovering that someone you'd never expected was carrying something heavy too. It didn't make the weight any less. But it made the carrying of it feel, somehow, less solitary.
That, Harry thought, might be its own kind of consolation.