"It's alright. You're safe now." He patted her back gently, his voice low.
Hermione trembled, still not entirely convinced it was real.
Was this a hallucination? Perhaps she had already been killed under the werewolf's claws and this was simply what her mind conjured in the last moments—
But the warmth at her back was too solid for a dream. The scent at his collar was too specific, too real.
She held on, and he held back — without hesitation this time, without the usual careful restraint. His arms were firm around her, more certain than she had ever felt from him.
She could feel his heartbeat.
Violent. Strong. Very loud.
She pressed her face against him and breathed, and felt the fear slowly drain out of her.
As consciousness reasserted itself and the ground became real beneath her again, a series of truths arrived with the cold night air, quiet and unavoidable.
Draco had stepped in front of her. He had stood between her and the werewolf with no wand, no plan, and no hesitation. He had turned his back on it and held her.
*Is she really that important to him?*
Why was he always there? Why, when she was helpless, did he always arrive? Why, this time, had he not pulled back — not maintained that careful distance — but held her like this instead?
She tried to lift her face from his shoulder, her cheeks still damp, her voice coming out unsteady. "Draco — why?"
"What?" His grey eyes were soft, searching her face.
She had a dozen questions and when she met his gaze, none of them felt possible to say. His expression was too open. She felt her throat close.
"It's nothing," she managed, and lowered her eyes, looking as forlorn as a cat that couldn't find its way home.
Draco exhaled. He stroked her hair, and pulled her in again, and she made a small, helpless sound and buried her face in his shoulder.
"Don't be afraid," he said quietly. "I'm here. No one is going to hurt you."
She clutched his shirt. She couldn't let go. Between life and death, all the distance she had been so carefully maintaining had ceased to make any sense.
She didn't care what it meant. She didn't care that they had been arguing an hour ago. She just wanted to stay here, held like this, for as long as possible.
It was a terrible idea and she felt entirely powerless to act on any other one.
"We need to get back to the castle," he said after a moment, his voice still soft, his eyes still worried. "The werewolf is still out there. It's not safe here."
"You're right. And Harry and the others — we have to find them." She sniffled and, very reluctantly, lifted her face from his neck.
He didn't want to move either. He had nearly lost her. She had nearly been hurt, and she had been alone when it happened.
*Too close.* He pressed a brief, quiet kiss to her hair, then steadied himself. "Come on — before it comes back."
"Mmm," she agreed, in a voice that was slightly aggrieved.
She let go of him, and he went to retrieve his wand from the nearby grass. He came back quickly, hawthorn wood in hand, and held out his other hand to her.
"Can you stand? We should go."
She took his hand and got to her feet. Her legs were not entirely reliable. The bushes moved in the wind and she flinched at each one.
"Are you still frightened?" he asked.
She bit her lip and said nothing, which was answer enough.
*Hermione Granger.* Even now, with tears still drying on her face, she was too proud to admit it.
"The ground's uneven," he said, putting his arm around her shoulders. "I don't want to slip. Hold on to me."
She had absolutely no reason to believe he was in any danger of slipping. He was walking perfectly steadily. She was the one whose legs kept threatening to stop cooperating.
He had managed it very cleverly — asking for her help rather than offering his — and she found herself leaning into his side without it feeling like surrender.
"That's much better," he said, with great sincerity. "Thank you."
She laughed despite herself, which she suspected was what he'd intended.
"What happened, Hermione?" he asked, as they began to move. He kept his voice steady and interested, and she understood that he was trying to keep her attention on words rather than shadows.
She told him everything, haltingly — Crookshanks and Scabbers at Hagrid's hut, Harry giving chase, the black dog that had been Sirius dragging the rat through the hole in the Whomping Willow, the Shrieking Shack, Lupin's transformation, Pettigrew's escape in the chaos, Sirius fighting the werewolf and losing, Snape arriving and being overcome, Harry and Ron running down the slope—
"And then I got separated from them," she finished. "And then you arrived."
"Merlin's beard," Draco said quietly.
He put his hand on her shoulder, and then remembered something. "Pettigrew was in the Shrieking Shack all this time?"
"It seems so," Hermione said, her gaze falling on the lake ahead.
She stopped.
On the bank, in the moonlight, lay Harry, Ron, Sirius Black, and Professor Snape — all unconscious.
Draco was already moving forward to check them.
"Are they—" Hermione's voice caught.
"Alive." He straightened. "All of them. But Sirius is badly injured — he needs the hospital wing immediately."
Something crashed through the undergrowth behind them. Draco pulled Hermione behind him at once.
In the moonlight, an enormous figure lurched out of the trees.
"Hagrid!" Hermione gasped.
"Hermione!" Hagrid's voice was thick with distress, his beard soaked with tears. "I couldn't find Professor Dumbledore — I ran into Professor Snape on the way and told him what had happened — I even sent an owl — Merlin's beard, what happened to Harry?"
"We encountered a werewolf," Hermione said, exhaustion washing over her. She leaned against Draco's side. "Hagrid, Sirius Black needs the hospital wing now — he looks very badly hurt—"
"You!" Hagrid had just noticed Draco. His expression shifted immediately, going suspicious and protective. "Draco Malfoy! What are you doing here? Hermione, come away from him — what are you doing holding his hand? Have you forgotten how he—"
"We don't have time," Draco said curtly. "Take Sirius Black to the hospital wing. *Now.*"
Hagrid looked at the dark-haired man lying still by the water's edge — white-faced, covered in blood, barely breathing — and his argument evaporated. He gathered Sirius up as easily as lifting a child and fixed Draco with a stern look over his shoulder. "You behave yourself while I'm gone, Malfoy. Hermione, if he gives you any trouble—"
"Hagrid," Hermione said firmly, "go."
Hagrid went, moving at a speed surprising for someone his size.
"We can't stay here," Draco said, surveying the remaining unconscious figures. "Can you manage a Mobilicorpus?"
Hermione considered. "I've never cast it on a person before."
"It's essentially a levitation charm — you know how to perform those."
"*Mobilicorpus,*" she repeated quietly, almost to herself, as though the incantation were a handhold.
"Can you walk?" He looked at her carefully. She was swaying.
She gave him a look of determined stubbornness and turned pale.
Without further discussion, he shrugged off his robe and draped it over her shoulders. Then he crouched with his back to her.
"Get on."
"I can probably walk," she said, even as she wrapped her arms around his neck and rested her face against the side of his.
"You can take over when I get tired," he said. He stood, adjusted his grip, and picked up his wand. "Don't let go."
"I'm not actually fragile," she said, from his shoulder.
"Of course not. Now — can you take them up?"
She raised her wand and cast. The unconscious figures rose from the grass one by one, drifting upward like pale ghosts until they floated steadily in the air. She let out a slow, controlled breath.
"Good," Draco said. "Keep them at that height. I'll lead."
They walked. Anyone glancing out across the Hogwarts grounds at that hour would have seen a strange procession: a platinum-haired boy with a girl on his back, guiding a line of floating, unconscious people through the moonlit dark toward the castle.
They caught up with Hagrid at the hospital wing doors, where he was knocking with a fist the size of a cabbage.
Madam Pomfrey opened the door in her plaid dressing gown, half-asleep and visibly annoyed. Then she saw what was outside and the annoyance transformed immediately into something professional and alarmed.
"What in Merlin's name—" She turned on Hagrid, who was already carrying Sirius through the door. "Put him down *carefully*, you enormous — and you, don't you dare touch—" She registered Draco, standing at her threshold with Hermione on his back and four unconscious people suspended in the air behind him, and stopped.
She looked at them for a moment with an expression Draco could not immediately classify.
"I was simply passing by," Draco said, with his most innocent face. "I happened to offer some assistance."
"In the middle of the night," Madam Pomfrey said.
"The timing was inconvenient," he agreed.
She gave him a look that communicated, with great efficiency, that she had formed her own theory about what exactly he and Miss Granger had been doing outside the castle at midnight, and that she planned to keep it to herself for now. "Come in. Put them on the beds. Carefully, Miss Granger."
Hermione slid from Draco's back, steadied herself, and directed the unconscious patients onto the ward beds one by one with painstaking care. When the last one was settled, she exhaled and lowered her wand.
"Well done," Draco said.
She almost smiled. She sank onto the nearest chair instead.
Draco sat beside her. In the candlelight he examined her face properly for the first time — the scrapes on her cheek and the scratches along her forearm, small but numerous.
"You're hurt," he said.
Hermione blinked, as though she hadn't noticed.
He had already located Madam Pomfrey's medical kit on the side table. He washed his hands, drew his chair closer, and lifted her chin with two fingers to bring her face into the light.
"It's nothing serious," she said.
"Hold still."
She held still. His touch was very careful — the damp cotton wool cool against her cheek, his fingers angling her face with the kind of patient attention she was not accustomed to being given.
She found herself staring at him because there was nothing else to look at from this distance. His eyes were focused and grey and completely unguarded in a way they rarely were.
He was treating a small scratch on her cheekbone as though it required the full concentration of a Potions examination.
She winced when the cotton wool reached her elbow.
He stopped at once. The colour left his face. He set down the swab.
"I'm sorry — I'm sorry, I'll be more careful—" His voice had dropped, and there was something in it that she hadn't heard before. Unsteady. "I'm so sorry."
"It's fine," she said. "It barely stings."
He picked up a fresh piece of cotton wool, dipped it, and touched the wound again with a lightness that was almost nothing at all.
She felt a completely unreasonable tightening in her throat.
He cared. He genuinely, visibly cared — not in the controlled, managed way he usually showed concern, where she could almost see him deciding how much to let through — but openly, unguardedly, as though the scratch on her arm were personally painful to him.
She looked at his profile in the candlelight and felt the full misery of it: she liked him terribly, and she had absolutely no idea what he felt.
From across the ward, Madam Pomfrey cast a series of rapid diagnostic spells and began working methodically through the patients. She directed one brief, eloquent glance at the pair of them and returned to her work.
*That Malfoy boy,* she thought to herself, watching him blot ointment onto the girl's elbow with the delicacy of someone defusing a hex, *is making an extraordinary fuss over some minor scratches.*
"There," he said finally, sitting back. "Done."
Hermione looked down at her arm, carefully bandaged.
"Thank you," she said softly.
He put away the kit and turned his attention to Madam Pomfrey's assessment of the others.
"Sirius Black is the most seriously hurt," Madam Pomfrey said crisply, moving between beds. "Multiple lacerations, several quite deep. Three broken ribs at minimum. How he managed to get into this condition—" She made a pained sound and moved on. "Mr. Potter, some scrapes, nothing structural. He's also suffered significant mental strain — Dementor exposure, likely." She set a large bar of chocolate on his bedside table. "That when he wakes. Mr. Weasley — a fracture. He'll need Skele-Gro and a few days in bed."
She paused at the last occupied bed. "Professor Snape has a deep laceration on his leg and a wrenched ankle. He'll need rest."
"Was he scratched by the werewolf?" Draco asked, keeping his voice even.
"Hit a tree, I think," Hermione murmured to him. "I remember the werewolf threw him. I don't think it was claws."
Draco's expression eased slightly.
Hagrid was finally permitted back into the ward. He squeezed through the doorway, made his way to Harry's bedside, and sat down with such force that the chair screamed in protest. The moment Harry's eyes opened, Hagrid let out a sound like a wounded animal and began to cry.
"Harry — I thought — as soon as yeh left I went ter Dumbledore's office but no one was there — I were so worried — I ran inter Professor Snape on the way and told him which direction yeh'd gone and he ran off to find yeh—"
Madam Pomfrey gave him approximately ten minutes and then removed him from the ward.
The noise had done its work; the other patients were stirring.
Professor Snape came round first. His expression as he surveyed the ward — cold, precise, contemptuous — suggested that unconsciousness had not softened him in the least.
He looked at Harry.
"Very well," he said, in a voice like something being sharpened. "The entire Ministry of Magic has been working to protect Harry Potter from Peter Pettigrew. And yet here we are. The famous Harry Potter goes where he pleases, without concerning himself with the consequences to others."
"Professor — we saw Pettigrew! We caught him and he escaped—" Harry protested.
"Convenient," Snape said. "An excellent excuse for an unsanctioned excursion into the Forbidden Forest at midnight."
"We saw him—" Hermione began.
"Where is he, then?" Snape looked at her, his tone fractionally less pointed.
Hermione hesitated. They had violated a considerable number of rules to get to this point. She was attempting to calculate how honest to be.
"He was hiding in the Shrieking Shack!" Ron's voice came from the adjacent bed. He had woken up and was trying to sit upright, discovered his leg, and fallen back onto the pillow with a grimace.
Something moved across Snape's face — a quick, violent darkening, like aconite dropped into water.
"Preposterous," he said, with a disgust so specific it was almost informative. "I am finished entertaining this nonsense." He turned his gaze to Harry — the sharp, intent look Draco had seen him use a dozen times — and held it. "Professor Dumbledore is not at Hogwarts. I will be speaking to the Board of Governors tonight. They will not be moved by the testimony of three students. You can all expect to be expelled." He paused. "As for Professor Lupin — once the Board learns he is a werewolf, his position will not survive the morning."
He shifted his gaze to Draco. Slowly. Deliberately.
"Draco Malfoy." His voice was quiet in a way that carried more weight than volume. It had the texture of a reminder — of a name, and what it meant, and what obligations came with it. "As your Head of House, I strongly advise you to distance yourself from these particular students."
Draco lowered his eyes in an attitude of respectful attention.
He did not move his feet.
Snape held his gaze for a moment longer, then looked away and said nothing more.
Harry watched him go — limping, black robes dragging — with an expression divided between anger and something that might have been grudging confusion.
He couldn't understand it. Snape hated them. Snape went out of his way, consistently and creatively, to make their lives more difficult. And yet Snape had appeared at the edge of the forest and stood between them and the werewolf.
And then come in here and threatened to have them expelled.
"If I get expelled," Ron said, from his pillow, in the voice of someone contemplating a very particular doom, "my mum will actually kill me."
"We won't be expelled," Draco said.
Hermione looked at him quickly. "We won't?"
"This situation can be managed, but you need evidence. Proof that Pettigrew was genuinely present — that this wasn't simply an excuse to be where you weren't supposed to be." He looked at her. "You need time."
Her hand had found his sleeve again. She turned it over in her fingers, thinking, and then she touched the chain at her collarbone — instinctively, barely aware she'd done it.
His gaze went to it. The faintest change in his expression — recognition.
"You know about it," she said, not quite a question.
"I know such things exist," he said carefully.
"Using it the way you're suggesting isn't permitted," she said, lowering her voice. "It was given to me strictly for academic purposes."
"That's your decision entirely." His expression was neutral, but his eyes were watching her face.
"What are you two on about?" Ron asked, from his pillow, with the irritated tone of someone who had been excluded from at least four separate conversations this evening.
Hermione didn't answer him. She looked at Harry — pale and still, staring at Sirius's unconscious face with an expression of helpless guilt — and at Sirius, bandaged and motionless.
She made up her mind.
She looked back at Draco. Her cheeks were warm. "Will you — come with me?"
"If you need me," he said.
"Harry." Draco nodded toward him. "Come here."
"What?" Ron struggled to sit up and gave up again. "What are you three—"
Hermione reached into the collar of her robes and drew out a long, fine gold chain. She looped it carefully around her own neck, then Harry's, then Draco's. It seemed to extend without limit, adjusting to fit all three without effort.
At one end of the chain hung a small, glittering hourglass.
"Hermione—" Ron stared. "What is—"
She set her hand on the hourglass and turned it three times.
The ward dissolved.
Ron sat in silence, blinking at the spot where they had been.
Then he looked at his injured leg, lying useless on the hospital bed, and said something under his breath that Madam Pomfrey would certainly not have approved of.