"I just ran into Harry and Ron at the library entrance." Draco dropped into the study corner and looked up in surprise. "Why did they look like they'd seen a Dementor?"
"Oh, ignore them," Hermione said, turning a page of *Small People, Big Plans* without looking up. "They're busy concocting catastrophes and cataloguing disasters like two paranoid Divination addicts. It's all nonsense."
"Persecution complex? Divination homework?" Draco said immediately.
"Exactly. They're frantically trying to make every day of the coming month a spectacular disaster, all to please that fraud Professor Trelawney." She clicked her tongue.
"She does reward that sort of thing handsomely," Draco said, setting several thick books on the table. He needed material for his essay on the eighteenth-century goblin rebellions. "If their week is sufficiently catastrophic, they'll probably earn an Outstanding."
"How do you know Professor Trelawney's marking style?" She looked up sharply. "You haven't taken her class."
Draco's expression flickered. Hermione Granger's perception was occasionally so sharp it made him genuinely uncomfortable.
"Plenty of Slytherins take Divination," he said, grabbing a book and flipping through it with perhaps a little too much purpose. "I've watched Blaise and Pansy racking their brains over it in the common room. Yesterday they were busy making up misfortunes for themselves while cursing Ron — apparently their entire weekend was consumed by the assignment..."
"Why are they cursing Ron?" Hermione frowned. "What does Ron have to do with it?"
"They think Trelawney suddenly piling on homework — McGonagall-style — is because Ron made a remark in class. About Lavender Brown." Draco rolled his eyes. "He said he wanted to—"
He stopped.
*Merlin.* He shouldn't have gone down that road.
Teenage boys said thoughtless things constantly, but Ron's particular remark — *Can I have a look at Uranus, Lavender?* — had been deemed too crude even by Blaise and Pansy, who had a very generous threshold for that sort of thing.
"Lavender? My roommate?" Hermione's frown deepened. "What did he say to her? She hasn't mentioned anything to me..."
"You don't want to know," he said quickly. "Please don't ask. I'd rather not offend your ears. Can we consider the topic closed?"
"Now you've made me twice as curious," she said, studying his slightly pink ears with a suspicious expression. "What did he say he wanted to see? Tell me."
"I genuinely cannot repeat it." He coughed, then swiftly produced a silver-green box from his bag and placed it directly on top of her open book, cutting off the question. "Happy birthday, by the way."
"Oh—" She set the book aside immediately and unwrapped it.
It was a copy of *Practical Defensive Magic and Its Use Against the Dark Arts.*
"I do love receiving books," she said warmly, flipping through it with a pleased expression. "No one ever thinks to give them to me — they all assume I've already got enough. Which is never actually true." She studied the table of contents for a moment, then glanced at him with a raised eyebrow. "Though Draco — aren't you letting Professor Moody get to you a bit? Your gift choices are starting to reflect his particular anxieties..."
"It's less anxiety and more forward thinking," Draco said, with complete seriousness. "I have my disagreements with his methods. But he's right about one thing: constant vigilance is not optional."
"That's a bit much," Hermione said, half-laughing. "I don't expect anyone to cast an Unforgivable at me in Diagon Alley." She dismissed the concern, but found herself studying the book's chapters with considerable interest.
"I can't stop worrying about you," Draco said, quietly enough that it was more for himself than for her.
Danger was not confined to Diagon Alley. It could arrive anywhere, at any time, and cause her harm in an instant. Even Hogwarts — supposedly the safest place in Britain — had already managed to put her in danger more than once. Between turning pages, his gaze moved from his book to her, finding some small relief in her unharmed presence.
"This is an excellent book," Hermione said, sitting up. "Exactly what a Defence Against the Dark Arts class *should* cover." She paused, then sighed. "Honestly — it's hard to find something this practically focused in amongst all the theoretical texts. Students from wizarding families always seem to know exactly which books to look for."
"But you know about this one now," Draco said, watching the slight shadow that had crossed her face. "It doesn't matter who found it first. What matters is that you'll work through every spell in it and cast them better than anyone who grew up with a library full of these."
"Obviously," she said, looking up at him. The shadow was gone. "I will."
He smiled slightly. There was something quite compelling about her certainty when she looked like that.
"Oh — Draco," she said, with studied nonchalance, turning back to her birthday present. "That old book on the corner of the table — the one I bought in Knockturn Alley — take a look at it. The sections I've marked in red." A quiet, pleased smile had appeared at the corner of her mouth, though she kept her eyes on her book. "I rather think you'll find them interesting."
Draco picked it up. One page was flagged with a bold red annotation in her handwriting: *Pay close attention!*
He read aloud the passage she had carefully translated beside it. "An ancient enchantment to restore a body... requires conditions of extreme specificity... the bone of a father, flesh of a servant, and blood of an enemy... and above all, the soul of the one to be restored... This is considered practically impossible, since the soul passes beyond the boundary of life and death at the moment of death..."
Draco's breath stopped.
"Yes," Hermione said. She snapped her own book shut and finally let the smile show fully. "I think the Dark Lord could use exactly this method. He meets every one of those conditions, doesn't he?" She looked at him, visibly delighted with herself. "That's why I insisted on buying it when I saw it. I'd actually turned to that page before, but I wasn't certain — the original text was in Ancient Runes and I didn't want to rely on a rough reading. So after I brought it home, I went through it properly with the Rune Dictionary and the Standard Book of Runes, and—"
"Have I told you recently that you're extraordinary?" Draco said, swallowing his astonishment.
"You have, on approximately one million occasions," Hermione said, with immense satisfaction.
He laughed despite himself.
The research into Voldemort's return, which had been circling without progress for months, had just broken open.
Because of her.
*Hermione Granger. How many more times are you going to surprise me?*
"I need to go to Professor Dumbledore immediately." A rare, unguarded smile broke across Draco's face. "May I borrow the book?"
"What are you waiting for? Go!" Hermione nodded, picked up her birthday present, and was reading again before he'd even reached for his bag.
Draco grabbed the old book and bolted from the library at something close to a sprint — more like a real fourteen-year-old boy than he'd allowed himself to be in a long while. He ran the length of the third-floor corridor and turned the corner toward the stone gargoyle, nearly colliding directly with Professor McGonagall.
"Mr Malfoy!" She caught the stack of books under her arm before they scattered, and stared at him. "What has become of your composure? What on earth is the matter?"
"I need to see Professor Dumbledore—" Draco managed, slightly breathless.
"Quite impossible. He left for London this morning." Professor McGonagall studied him with sharp eyes. "Is there something I can pass on?"
"No — it's fine. I'll send an owl." Draco straightened, recollecting himself.
"Very good." She looked him over with a suspicious expression that suggested she had not entirely accepted this answer. "And Mr Malfoy — kindly stop running in the corridors, unless you'd like me to note it in your record."
Draco bowed politely and walked away.
*What is Dumbledore doing in London?*
Clearly something significant had drawn the Headmaster away — which was not, in itself, reassuring. Draco suppressed his excitement, stowed the book carefully in his bag, and descended the stairs at a measured pace, thinking.
His own owl was too conspicuous. Anyone watching the Owlery would notice a Malfoy owl immediately. He would need to think of something subtler.
As he passed the second floor, he caught sight of Professor Moody.
The old Auror was limping toward the dungeons — his enchanted eye rolling in its socket — moving with a secretive, deliberate quiet that his wooden leg didn't usually allow.
Draco felt his instincts sharpen.
He knew perfectly well he should keep his distance. A sensible Slytherin did not provoke Mad-Eye Moody, particularly not after the ferret incident. Any confrontation was one he would lose before it began; Moody's reflexes and raw power completely outmatched him.
But he had missed too many things in his previous life by choosing not to get involved — Peter Pettigrew escaping from the Shrieking Shack being the most glaring example. He had learned, reluctantly, to borrow a little of Hermione Granger's persistent curiosity when something didn't feel right.
He followed Moody at a careful distance.
Moody's office was nowhere near the dungeons. A professor walking to a part of the castle where he had no business being, quietly, was suspicious.
His suspicion was justified. After glancing about in the corridor, Moody slipped into Professor Snape's office.
Professor Snape was not in his office. Draco had passed him on the stairs not twenty minutes earlier — carrying bottles and jars toward the Hospital Wing, presumably delivering potions to Madam Pomfrey.
Draco pressed himself behind an ugly stone statue and watched. After several minutes, Moody re-emerged, moving just as furtively as before. He took a small flask from his robes and drank from it, and then the enchanted eye swept in a slow arc — passing directly over the statue.
Draco crouched low and did not breathe.
He had no desire whatsoever to face Moody alone in an empty corridor. The man did not play by any rule Draco could anticipate, and he would not stand there and accept an explanation.
Fortunately, Moody did not stop. His wooden leg tapped faintly as he moved away, and only once the sound had faded entirely did Draco realise he was covered in cold sweat.
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"Are you certain?" Professor Snape's dark eyes narrowed.
"Yes. I watched him enter and remain for approximately five minutes." Draco kept his voice steady.
Snape would have no reason to doubt him. Draco had no motive to fabricate this — it would earn him nothing and could easily bring him into trouble.
Professor Snape moved around the room slowly, examining his desk — jars, books, parchment, everything laid out in its precise order — and after a long pause said, "The peculiar thing is that there are no signs of entry by force. The desk is undisturbed. The drawer locks are intact. Which is, itself, rather curious."
Draco said nothing, studying the room with him.
They stood in the dim, cluttered office, its shelves lined with hundreds of old jars and bottles — potion ingredients of every conceivable variety, including some remarkably rare ones. Dragon skin, powdered bicorn horn, the shed shells of magical creatures. A serious collector's treasure.
"In any case — thank you for telling me." Professor Snape turned, his expression settling into its characteristic inscrutability. "I will speak to him. I've heard what occurred in his Defence class." He paused. "You handled yourself appropriately. Dumbledore places great stock in Moody, and one cannot challenge him openly. Knowing when to exercise restraint is not weakness — it is strategy. Not every professor at this school has the good sense to appreciate Slytherin students for their actual qualities."
Draco nodded, bowed, and walked out.
He did not want Moody's appreciation. He wanted Moody to forget he existed entirely.
The best outcome this year was to stay invisible, stay out of Moody's way, and get through the term intact.
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He was not given that luxury.
In the next Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson, Moody waited until the class was well underway before making his announcement with barely-concealed relish.
"Today I'm going to demonstrate the Imperius Curse on each of you in turn. You'll experience it directly — and then we'll see whether any of you have the willpower to resist it."
"But — you said it's illegal, Professor." Hermione, sitting beside Draco, spoke before she had quite decided to. She glanced at him, a look of unease in her eyes, then said carefully, "You said casting it on another person—"
"Dumbledore himself wants you to experience it," Moody said, his enchanted eye swivelling onto Hermione with a slow, weighted attention. "If you'd prefer to learn the hard way — wait until someone casts it on you in the field with no warning — I'll happily excuse you. The door is right there."
Hermione's cheeks flushed. She stared at the finger Moody had pointed toward the door.
For a moment she wanted to take him up on it — to stand, take Draco with her, and walk out. She didn't want to see that expression on his face again, the one by the Black Lake that afternoon, the one that looked like a boy who had already decided.
But Draco didn't move. He had no intention of leaving.
He sat steady beside her, and beneath the desk, found her hand and covered it with his. His palm was warm. The grip was brief and careful, just a gentle press — a quiet signal. *It's alright. We're alright.*
Hermione didn't leave. She didn't argue any further. She fell silent, and squeezed his hand back.
"Any other objections?" Moody asked the room at large, not looking at her again.
No one spoke. Even Hermione Granger, who had argued with the professor directly, had gone quiet. No one else was going to try.
Moody smiled — a mirthless, satisfied smile — and waved his wand. The desks scraped aside. He began calling students forward one at a time.
A dark-haired Gryffindor boy sang three verses of the school song while hopping in a circle, to the delight of the class. Hermione's puffed-up indignation softened despite herself.
"Dean Thomas," she said quietly to Draco. "Harry's roommate."
A girl — blonde, bright-eyed — proceeded to imitate a squirrel with considerable commitment, to great laughter. Ron watched with obvious delight.
"That's Lavender Brown," Hermione murmured to Draco, going slightly pink. "Ron asked her—" She stopped herself.
Draco glanced at her with a carefully neutral expression. He had already worked out that she'd looked up what Ron had said. He coughed once and said nothing, turning his attention to the next student — Neville Longbottom — who was moving through a series of complex gymnastic poses with startling, uncharacteristic flexibility.
"That's—" Hermione began.
"I know who he is," Draco said quickly. "No introduction necessary."
She shrugged. "You taught him the Patronus Charm last term."
"Without much success," Draco said.
"I don't think that was your fault." She looked at him curiously. "Has yours materialised yet? Your Patronus?"
"No." He set his jaw.
"Don't worry," she said lightly. "I'll cover you until you manage it. If any Dementors appear, stand behind me."
She still felt the shame of that compartment on the Hogwarts Express the previous year — when the Dementors had come and Draco had stepped in front of her and she had done absolutely nothing useful. If she got the chance to reverse that, she fully intended to take it.
"Thank you," Draco said, with genuine softness. He found, to his mild surprise, that not having a corporeal Patronus seemed considerably less dire when she said things like that.
Then it was Harry's turn.
He was the only student to resist the curse outright — instead of jumping onto the desk as instructed, he knocked it over sideways. Moody praised this energetically and sent him through four more attempts, which Harry did not appear to enjoy.
*If Moody won't give Dumbledore's favourite any leniency, a Death Eater's son can expect none at all.*
Draco had known from the moment Moody announced the exercise that the man had been waiting for this. The only option available to him was to drift toward the back of the queue while Moody was occupied with Harry, reduce his visibility as much as possible, and hope the lesson ended before his name was called.
He took out his pocket watch — a small, unhurried gesture — and checked the minute hand.
It was that movement, the slight shine of the silver case, that caught the enchanted eye.
"Draco Malfoy. Come to the front."
Moody's voice carried the specific quality of someone who had been looking forward to saying those words.
Draco's shoulders set. He could feel the directed malice from across the room; it came from the small, human eye, not the enchanted one.
There was a quarter-hour left. He had no more room to stall.
Hermione was watching him. She had been talking with Lavender, and a small smile still lingered on her face — but when she turned and found him walking forward, the smile went away. Her expression became something more careful, more watchful, and quietly worried.
He gave her the best smile he could manage, which was not a convincing one, and stepped through the parted line of students to stand at the centre of the classroom.
The enchanted eye narrowed.
"Im—"
"*Expelliarmus!*"
He had reacted before the thought had fully formed. The disarming charm left his wand with enough force to send Moody's wand spinning across the floor and knock the old Auror stumbling back into a table.
The room went very quiet.
There was the sound of Moody fighting his wooden leg, trying to recover his balance. Around the edges of the room, students stared.
Someone whispered, "He actually disarmed Mad-Eye Moody..."
"Malfoy!" Moody's face contorted. He snatched his wand from the shaking hands of Neville Longbottom, who had picked it up. "Ten points from Slytherin! You think this is the Duelling Club? Do you think Dark wizards announce themselves before they cast? You completely disregarded everything I said about resisting with your willpower!" His voice was furious, but his enchanted eye was doing something else entirely — something that looked almost like satisfaction. "Wand away!"
Draco put his wand away in silence.
Moody intended to make this as painful as possible. That much was clear.
The problem was that Draco genuinely did not know how well his Occlumency would serve him here. Resisting Legilimency and resisting the Imperius Curse were related disciplines, but they were not identical — the mental posture required for each was subtly different, and he had worked on the former at considerable length in his previous life without ever having the opportunity to practise the latter.
His Occlumency was strong. He could clear his mind of surface thought and emotion, bury what mattered to him deep beyond reach. A skilled Legilimens wandering through his mind would find little of use. But the Imperius Curse was not a search — it was a command. It did not need to find anything. It simply replaced his will with someone else's, filling the emptied space he had worked so hard to create.
He had never learned to stop that.
"Look at me," Moody said coldly.
"*Imperio.*"
Draco had cast the Imperius Curse himself before, on Madam Rosmerta at the Three Broomsticks. He knew its character — apparently the least violent of the Unforgivable Curses, and in truth the most insidious of all. Any magic that bypassed the mind was extraordinarily dangerous.
His soul seemed to leave his body. It was a sensation of perfect weightlessness — warm, hazy, utterly without worry. The fear drained away. The room felt far away.
He stood in the centre of the classroom like an untethered balloon, aware in a pleasant, distant way that people were watching him, that the girl was watching him.
Moody's voice reached him as though from a great distance, and from that distance it sounded almost kind.
*Put your head in the water tank. Put your head in the water tank. Everyone will be so impressed. You want them to be impressed. Put your head in.*
If it had been a test of Legilimency resistance, Draco might have held his own. But the Imperius Curse was a test of willpower, and in this he had always been weakest.
He walked past the row of observation mirrors and toward the large tank at the front of the classroom — the same tank Professor Lupin had used to house a Grindylow the year before; now it was filled only with cold, still water.
He folded himself over the edge and lowered his head in.
*Why am I doing this?*
The thought surfaced somewhere, small and bewildered, quickly swallowed by the warmth of the voice telling him to continue. The water closed over his hair, his eyes, his nose. He blinked against the sting. He couldn't look away. Through the glass he could see blurred shapes, and one — a brownish, moving shadow — seemed agitated.
*She seems upset. Why is she upset?*
He stayed inside the question, drifting, while more water moved into his nose, his throat.
The burning was becoming something worse. He could feel the edges of his consciousness beginning to blur.
But the voice said *stay*, so he stayed.
*Why can't I come up?*
*Why—*
"*No!*"
Someone seized the back of his collar and wrenched him upward.
Draco came up out of the water with a convulsive gasp, coughing, barely able to orient himself. Water streamed from his hair and ran from his nose.
*Of course it was her. Who else would it be?*
He thought this with a kind of vague, affectionate clarity. He could hear other voices now, closer and more urgent — Harry and Ron — and their hands were pulling him sideways from the tank—
Then the sound began to blur and recede, soft at the edges—
He was smiling when he lost consciousness.
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This was the first time Hermione Granger had ever been truly, completely furious with a professor.
She had faced Professor Quirrell possessed by Voldemort. She had been caught in a classroom with a werewolf. She had sat through three years of Professor Snape's systematic cruelty and never entirely lost her composure.
None of it compared to this.
The Imperius Curse was an Unforgivable. Using it in a classroom was already an ethical catastrophe. Using it to direct a student headfirst into a water tank and then simply watching while he drowned — that was not teaching. That was not discipline. That was targeted violence wearing a teacher's robes, and Moody knew exactly what he was doing.
She had suspected for some time that he was targeting Draco specifically. There was no other explanation for the particular quality of his attention whenever Draco was in the room.
Perhaps it was what people said about Aurors — that years spent hunting Death Eaters left them unable to separate the father from the son. Like Bartemius Crouch, Moody seemed to have decided what Draco was before he'd looked at him. And Crouch, at least, didn't stand at the front of a classroom.
She had been willing to watch the lesson, she admitted it. She had even, briefly, been curious what the Imperius Curse would make *Draco* do — Draco, who was so carefully composed at all times, so watchful of his own image. Part of her had prepared, guiltily, to tease him about it for the rest of the year.
Then he had walked to the tank.
Through the clear water she could see his face, and it was the same expression she had seen on the shore of the Black Lake that afternoon — calm and emptied, beyond caring, accepting something terrible with perfect stillness. Like a boy who had already made his peace with a cruel end.
She hated that expression.
She hated more the small, satisfied curl at the corner of Moody's damaged mouth.
Draco had been under too long. The class had fallen into uncertain, anxious silence — no one entirely sure whether this was still the exercise, whether he would surface on his own at any moment.
Hermione stepped forward.
"Stop — Professor Moody, stop this now."
"Anyone who interrupts this class without basic respect will be penalised," Moody said, barely glancing at her. "This is part of the lesson. No one is exempt."
"He's about to drown!" She could see the bubbles at his mouth and nose moving wrongly — not the bubbles of someone still fighting upward, but slow, involuntary, the kind that came when breathing began to fail.
"Then he should have resisted the curse instead of making excuses afterward." Moody's voice was pleasant. "Just like his father, isn't it."
"That is *enough*," she said, and her voice came out steadier than she felt. "Please stop."
Moody looked directly at her. "Ten points from Gryffindor. Say one more word and you leave."
She understood, in that moment, that he was not going to stop. He did not intend to stop. There was no pity in his expression, not even the clinical detachment of a professor who has made a difficult pedagogical decision. There was nothing for Draco at all.
"*No!*" She lunged forward, grabbed Draco by the collar with both hands, and pulled.
He was heavier than she expected, and his grip on the tank's edge was still fixed — some leftover command, still running — her arms shaking with the effort of pulling him backward while his hands slowly, mechanically resisted—
Harry and Ron were there. They reached past her, pried his fingers from the rim, pulled him away from the tank, and tilted his head as he slumped, trying to clear his airway.
More students poured in — Zabini and Parkinson arrived at a run, then Crabbe and Goyle, then the rest of the Slytherins. Hermione was pressed back to the edges of the group.
She had pulled him out of the water. She didn't know what else she could do for him.
The thought that he might die — that he had come this close to dying — sat in her chest like a stone.
Through the press of bodies she could see him lying pale and still on the flagstones, his wet hair plastered to his face, hands slack at his sides. Like a unicorn struck down in the Forbidden Forest. Everything noble and precise about him, utterly undone.
She had reached for his hand when he struggled, and it was cold. That careful, certain warmth was gone from it entirely.
Those hands. The hands that had held hers on the stairs at midnight and said, *I want to take care of you. I want to hold your hand.*
Fifteen minutes ago she had told him she would protect him.
She had hesitated. For one or two seconds she had hesitated, because Moody was a professor, and professors didn't—
She pressed her teeth together and looked away.
She found she had no voice left. She couldn't shout, couldn't cry out, could only stand at the edge of the crowd and let the anger burn.
Then a tall, dark-haired Slytherin boy shouldered through the panicked students. Theodore Nott — usually quiet, usually keeping carefully to himself, good at Potions and nothing to do with trouble. His restraint was entirely gone.
"Everyone *back*," he said, in a voice that left no room for argument. "Get back — I need *space and air*."
The Slytherins, startled into compliance, obeyed.
Theodore knelt and began chest compressions — methodical, firm, the same resuscitation technique used in the Muggle world. Hermione hadn't known wizards were taught it.
It took a long time.
Then Draco convulsed, coughed, and began bringing up water in great, wretched heaves, gasping between them.
Hermione found that her face was wet. She pressed her fingers against her mouth.
The sharp, tight pain in her chest — the one that had been building since she'd seen his face through the glass of the tank — did not go away when he breathed. It stayed, spreading.
She looked at him: panting, pale, frowning with the effort of breathing, water still in his hair.
*Alive.*
She turned her head and looked at Professor Moody instead.
He was taking a slow, leisurely sip from his hip flask. As though none of this had been of any particular interest.
The anger that had been burning in her chest since the moment she'd seen Draco's face under the water gathered itself into something colder and more purposeful.
She was going to do something about this.
She didn't know what yet. But she would find it.