Krum's footsteps were drawing near.
On the day the Triwizard Tournament announcement was posted in the Entrance Hall, Draco's inexplicable irritability reached its peak.
"Representatives from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang will arrive at six o'clock on the evening of Friday, the thirtieth of October. Afternoon classes will end half an hour early. Students are asked to return their bags and textbooks to their dormitories and assemble in front of the castle to greet our guests, before proceeding to the welcome banquet."
Draco read the notice, turned away, and spent the rest of the morning looking vaguely put-upon.
Hermione Granger, that heartless girl. He thought darkly, staring at nothing during a break between lessons.
Since when had she become so knowledgeable about Quidditch? Since when had she taken a passionate interest in Seekers?
It was perfectly obvious. She'd been hung up on Krum since the World Cup — he could still hear every word of praise she'd heaped on the man. And now Krum was coming here.
Draco needed to think of something. He couldn't simply sit and suffer through it.
He found himself listlessly preparing the antidote Professor Snape had assigned, distracted enough to nearly mistake Alihotsy seeds for mistletoe berries.
"Wait —" Hermione caught his wrist just as he was about to tip them into the cauldron. "Draco, stop — don't put those in!"
"What?" He blinked, then caught her hand in return. The seeds scattered between their fingers and skittered across the dungeon floor.
"Those aren't mistletoe berries — they only look similar!" Hermione attempted to crouch down and retrieve the seeds, but found herself unable to make much progress, as he had not released her hand.
He seemed entirely unaware of the fact. He was staring down at the few shrivelled, pearly-white seeds on the floor, holding her hand without apparent thought.
"...Yes," he said finally, his voice distant. "You're right. Alihotsy seeds. Much larger than mistletoe berries."
"Exactly. How did you nearly make that mistake?" Hermione looked up at him, genuinely worried. He had a distinctly unfocused look she hadn't seen on him before. "Are you alright? You've seemed distracted for days. Aren't you sleeping?"
"Perhaps." He glanced at her sideways, briefly.
She had her hair up again today — pinned back somehow, leaving her neck bare. A few loose strands drifted near her ears with every movement. He watched them.
Hermione felt heat rise to her face. "You — you're still holding my hand."
"Oh." A slightly absentminded smile. "Yes, so I am." He released her and went to find the correct ingredient.
"Actually, I'll get it." She watched him uneasily and kept her voice gentle. "Draco — could you rinse the measuring cylinder? The water's a bit cold and I don't think you should —"
"Of course, of course." He muttered, already moving. The utensils clattered together loudly. "Don't touch the cold water. It's not good for you."
At the next bench, Ron surfaced briefly from a complicated search through powdered bicorn horn and spoke quietly to Harry. "Is it just me, or does Draco lose about thirty points off his intelligence whenever Hermione's nearby?"
"Not just you," Harry said, with the mild shrug of someone who had arrived at this conclusion some time ago. "They both do."
---
Hermione Granger, the "perfectly fine, he's just a friend" girl who occupied a significant portion of Draco Malfoy's thoughts, had lately developed a habit of sitting in the Gryffindor common room and sighing for no visible reason.
She was struggling to understand something: what, precisely, was wrong with him?
She stroked Crookshanks absently, ruffling his fur into increasing disorder. Crookshanks, after tolerating this for longer than most cats would have, applied his hind legs firmly to her knee and relocated to Ginny's lap.
"You only ever sigh like that because of him," Ginny said, not looking up from her own work. She scratched Crookshanks behind the ears, and he settled immediately, the traitor.
"He's been genuinely off lately," Hermione said. The quill in her hand had started doodling on a fresh piece of parchment without her permission. "Distracted, irregular — happy one moment, distant the next. Talking strangely. He nearly added Alihotsy seeds to a restorative antidote yesterday. Alihotsy seeds, Ginny."
"Are we talking about Draco Malfoy?" Ginny raised an eyebrow. "The boy who was apparently perfectly calm when Moody nearly drowned him?"
"He was calm before and afterwards," Hermione said, with a sharpness that surprised even her. "Disgustingly calm about the whole thing. He even turned around and started comforting me."
She felt a renewed flicker of indignation just thinking about it. She had been the one lying awake at night over it. He seemed to consider it barely worth mentioning.
Didn't he take his own safety seriously at all?
"Strange that he didn't go to his father," Ginny remarked. "Lucius Malfoy has never missed an opportunity to cause trouble for someone who crossed the family."
"I asked him about that too. He said he thought there was a better solution. He made some arrangement with the professors — apparently Professor Moody has stopped singling him out." Hermione frowned thoughtfully.
"That's very Slytherin," Ginny said, with a small shrug. "They find ways around things. Sometimes those ways aren't very pleasant."
"Don't say that about him. He's not like that." Hermione's voice carried more conviction than she'd intended. "And whatever he arranged, I suspect it cost him more than he let on. He's barely been to the Black Lake these past few weeks. That used to be his favourite place."
"Hermione. The Slytherin dormitory is at the bottom of the Black Lake. He goes there every night."
"I know that." She stared at the fire. "I just wonder if he's sleeping."
Ginny studied her friend for a moment, then said, with the careful tone of someone choosing their words: "I know you care about him. But I'd be a poor friend if I didn't say this — be careful. Not everyone who seems vulnerable actually is. I don't want you being taken advantage of."
"He hasn't taken advantage of me in any way," Hermione said quietly. "He's always been kind to me. Genuinely kind."
"I believe that," Ginny said, and she did — she'd seen enough in that tent to know it wasn't performance. "But he's still a complicated person. What he's like with you and what he's like otherwise may not be the same. The Slytherins listen to him for a reason, and it's not because he's gentle."
Hermione was quiet. She knew Ginny wasn't wrong about that. She'd heard enough from Harry and Ron, enough of the whispers that filtered across from the other side of the castle.
But she also knew things about him that those whispers didn't.
He was used to showing people his armour. That didn't mean there was nothing underneath it.
Something was troubling him, clearly. And whatever it was, he was carrying it in his usual way — quietly, alone, giving nothing away. Hermione stared at the fire and thought about the look on his face when he'd held her wrist by the Black Lake, and felt uneasy in a way she couldn't name.
---
Hermione Granger was, it seemed, the only girl at Hogwarts whose thoughts were fixed on her complicated Slytherin friend rather than on the imminent arrival of foreign students.
Over the following week, the castle gradually stirred from under its usual mountain of homework. Suits of armour were polished until they gleamed. The portraits complained loudly about the dustcloths encroaching on their frames. Filch stationed himself near the entrance to inspect shoes, and Blaise and Pansy devoted several hours each day in the Slytherin common room to vigorous debate about potential Hogwarts champions, the nature of the tasks, and which Beauxbatons girls were likely to be the prettiest.
On the evening of the thirtieth, twelve massive palomino horses pulled an enormous powder-blue carriage across the darkening sky, and moments later a large, black ship rose silently from the surface of the Black Lake as though it had always been there.
At the welcome feast, Dumbledore — who had been absent from the school for some weeks — finally appeared, looking entirely unbothered by the speculation his absence had generated. With characteristic warmth, he introduced the delegations: Beauxbatons filed in first, moving with a grace that had the immediate effect of making every candle in the Hall seem brighter, and Durmstrang followed — their entrance deliberate, forceful, staves striking the stone floor in unison.
The girls of Beauxbatons drew most of the male attention. Fleur Delacour, whose Veela heritage was clear to anyone looking for it, held it particularly well.
Viktor Krum entered to something very close to a roar.
He was eighteen, and looked much as he had at the World Cup — dark, lean, slightly hunched at the shoulder, legs bowing outward in the way of someone built for a broomstick rather than the ground. His face was serious and difficult to read. He received the most enthusiastic reception of anyone in the room.
In Draco's previous life, Krum had sat at the Slytherin table. He was doing exactly that now, taking his place with the minimal fuss of someone entirely accustomed to being stared at, and offering the Slytherins nearest him a brief, sombre smile.
When an internationally celebrated Quidditch player — who also happened to be someone you had once idolised — sat beside you and smiled, social convention required returning it.
When that same person was also, in some complicated and infuriating sense, your rival, returning the smile was considerably harder.
Draco managed a stiff nod and what he hoped passed for a polite expression, and thought privately: Draco Malfoy, this is a new low.
After exchanging a few words with Krum — adequately civil, he hoped — Draco let his gaze drift to the Gryffindor table.
Ron was craning his neck toward the Ravenclaw table, where the Beauxbatons students were seated. Harry was doing more or less the same. Hermione, however, had her attention fixed on the Slytherin table. She was staring in this direction with an expression that, on any other Hogwarts girl tonight, Draco would have immediately recognised as mooning over Krum.
He discovered that the bouillabaisse on his spoon had acquired a distinctly sour quality.
That heartless girl. Was she already scrabbling around for something to write on so she could ask Krum for an autograph, like Pansy's friends? He pursed his lips.
After the feast, Professor Dumbledore, along with Barty Crouch — Head of the Department of International Magical Co-operation — and Ludo Bagman — Head of Magical Games and Sports — announced the Tournament arrangements.
Crouch looked somewhat haggard. The front page of the Daily Prophet had not been kind to him for the better part of a fortnight.
Bagman, by contrast, was exactly as energetic as always, waving at the students with the easy warmth of someone who assumed everyone was delighted to see him.
"...The impartial selector," Dumbledore said, after the usual length of preamble, "will be the Goblet of Fire." He produced an ancient-looking wooden cup from a jewelled casket. A tongue of blue-white flame flickered inside it.
"...Once the Goblet of Fire is placed in the Entrance Hall, I shall draw an Age Line around it... Once a champion is selected, they are bound to compete to the very end..."
Draco filed out of the Great Hall with the crowd, and as he passed through the Entrance Hall he caught part of a conversation nearby.
"They'll definitely be caught out by an Age-Repelling Potion —" That was Fred, talking to Lee Jordan, practically vibrating.
Draco fell into step briefly beside George. "You might want to reconsider. It's not going to be as straightforward as you think."
"Your girlfriend said exactly the same thing," George said, with cheerful impatience. "You're both equally dreary about it. We'll take our chances."
"She's not my —" Draco's face went slightly warm, and an unwilled bubble of something pleasant rose in his chest despite everything. He stopped. "Never mind."
He let the twins go without further argument, knowing it would have no effect, and turned toward the marble staircase — not toward the Slytherin dungeons, but upward, toward the stone gargoyle outside the Headmaster's office.
---
"Draco." Dumbledore was feeding Fawkes when he turned, his expression pleasantly unsurprised. "You've come to see me on my very first evening back."
"I wasn't going to lead with a critique of your staffing choices," Draco said, with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.
"I've already heard about it," Dumbledore said gently. "I've spoken to Professor Moody. He has assured me there will be no further incidents."
"You might also consider a word on behalf of Professor Snape. Moody has been attempting to force his way into Snape's office."
A slight pause. "He does harbour some old prejudices," Dumbledore acknowledged. "He was an Auror for a very long time, and that shaped him in ways that occasionally affect people who don't deserve it. But he is extraordinarily experienced, and there are few people better suited to this position right now."
"Because of Harry," Draco said.
Dumbledore smiled. "You are perceptive."
"The professorship isn't the main reason I came." Draco set aside that thread and drew a book from inside his robes — worn, annotated in the margins, filled with diagrams of bones and feathers. He placed it on Dumbledore's desk. "I've been researching."
Dumbledore took the book. Something shifted in his expression as he turned the pages — a sharpening of attention that he didn't quite conceal. After a long silence, he said quietly, "I think I understand what you're suggesting. And if you're right about the method, then he would need to go —"
"The Gaunt house. Little Hangleton." Draco kept his voice steady. "There's a cemetery nearby. If his intent is to use his father's remains —"
He had been trying to find a way to bring this to Dumbledore's attention for months. The evidence from his previous life was clear, but presenting it without revealing how he knew had required patience. Hermione's research had given him the opening he needed.
"That is one strong possibility," Dumbledore said thoughtfully, setting the book down. "When the Goblet of Fire has made its selection, I intend to visit Little Hangleton."
"There's one more thing. I'm not entirely confident in the Goblet's protections." Draco pressed on. "I think someone may be able to find a way around them."
Dumbledore studied him. "What makes you say that?"
"Harry's scar ached over the summer. He had a disturbing dream. I assume he may have written to you, or someone did." He chose his words carefully. "The Tournament has a history of fatalities. If someone wanted to put Harry in danger, engineering an 'accident' during the tasks would be one way to do it. Entering his name without his knowledge would be one way to begin."
"Harry hasn't written to me about it," Dumbledore said. "But I have heard it from another source." From Sirius, almost certainly. "Your concern for Harry is noted, and not taken lightly."
"Then you understand he isn't safe —"
"I promise you, the Age Line is not a simple charm to circumvent." Dumbledore settled back, his tone warm but measured. "And Hogwarts is watched more closely than it may appear. The portraits, the staff, the centaurs in the Forest, the Merpeople in the Lake — there are many eyes on this castle. There will be no repetition of last year's difficulties."
The headmasters in the portraits behind Dumbledore were nodding — small, barely perceptible movements.
Draco absorbed this. He had not appreciated the full scope of the monitoring. It gave him something, though it didn't entirely remove the cold feeling in his chest when he thought about what he remembered.
"One more thing," Dumbledore said, with the air of someone offering something valuable. "My research into the subject you and I have discussed previously has made some progress over the summer. When I return from Little Hangleton, I'd be glad to share what I've found." A light in his blue eyes, and a subtle gesture toward the door. "In the meantime — go and do what a fourteen-year-old ought to be doing. Meet your international peers."
Draco descended the spiral staircase with mixed feelings. Relieved that the castle's security was more robust than he'd assumed. Worried that Dumbledore's confidence might have a blind spot somewhere. And quietly, persistently uncertain that any of it would be enough.
---
On Saturday morning, Draco and Hermione arrived in the Entrance Hall within moments of each other and watched as Professor Dumbledore drew a gleaming golden circle on the flagstones — an Age Line, ten feet in radius, surrounding the Goblet of Fire.
The Line shimmered and settled. It looked deceptively simple.
Draco didn't trust it.
He took up a position on a nearby bench and settled in for the morning with what he hoped appeared to be mild, aristocratic curiosity. In practice, he watched the Goblet with the focused attention of someone waiting for something to go wrong.
Hermione sat beside him with a spellbook and glanced up at intervals. "I've never seen you take such a sustained interest in anything before." She turned another page. "You're not planning to do what Fred and George are planning, are you?"
"Absolutely not. I have no interest in dying," Draco said. "I'm simply curious to see who's brave enough to try."
"Mm." She studied his face with visible scepticism and returned to her book.
"Draco." She looked up again a few minutes later. "You have dark circles. I noticed yesterday as well."
"It's probably the lighting in the dungeons."
"It isn't." She frowned. "Have you been sleeping at all? Should I ask Madam Pomfrey about something for —"
"The lighting in the dungeons is genuinely quite poor," he said pleasantly.
She shook her head at him and turned back to her page.
Around them, the area near the Goblet had begun to fill steadily. Students from all four houses pressed together, watching older students cross the Age Line one by one with an anticipation usually reserved for Quidditch matches.
The lesson arrived in the form of Fred and George, who presented their attempt with magnificent confidence and were ejected from the golden circle in almost the same moment, landing on the flagstones with long, luxuriant white beards sprouting from their chins.
The laughter of several hundred students echoed off the vaulted ceiling.
"I told them," Hermione said, setting her book down and looking at the twins without surprise.
"They only had to ask around," Draco said. "Fawcett from Ravenclaw and Summers from Hufflepuff both went to the hospital wing for the same reason an hour ago." A slight, satisfied smile. "I think part of them just wanted to know what each other would look like with a beard."
Hermione laughed, and Draco filed the sound away quietly.
Around them, the hall filled with cries and commentary. "Cedric made it through!" — from a cluster of Hufflepuffs, vibrating with pride. "Warrington put his name in first thing this morning!" — from Pansy's friends, in Slytherin scarlet. "Angelina Johnson is in!" — from Seamus Finnigan, at considerable volume.
"I've never seen the Hufflepuffs like this," Hermione said, watching them with some bemusement. "They're usually so even-tempered."
"They don't often have this kind of chance," Draco said. "Winning the Tournament for your school is a significant honour — and for Hufflepuff, it would be especially so. The House Cup and the Quidditch Cup tend to come down to Gryffindor and Slytherin. That's not a slight to Hufflepuff — it's just the pattern. Cedric Diggory is the strongest seventeen-year-old in any house right now, and I imagine they know that."
"You rate him highly." Hermione looked up. "I'd have thought you'd support someone from your own house."
"I'll support our champion until the Goblet decides," Draco said. "But once a champion is chosen, it doesn't matter which house they're from. It becomes a contest between schools, not houses. Hufflepuff understands that instinctively, I think. The rest will catch on when they see the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students standing together."
Hermione regarded him with something that looked, quietly, like admiration. "You always manage to see the whole picture rather than just the corner you're standing in."
"Others will get there," he said. "It just takes them longer."
Nearby, the Beauxbatons girls were forming an orderly queue, tossing their folded entries into the Goblet one by one. When Fleur Delacour glided forward, something approximately duck-shaped escaped from Ron's direction. Harry intervened quickly.
"Why does it have to be a he, when you talk about the champion?" Hermione said, without preamble.
Draco blinked. "What?"
"You keep saying 'him.' Or 'champion' and then using 'he.' Why?"
"Once a champion is chosen," Draco said carefully, looking at her, "all of Hogwarts must support them. Him or her."
"That's better." She looked satisfied, and bent back over her book.
A commotion near the entrance. Draco looked up.
Durmstrang's students were filing in. Viktor Krum was at their head, wearing the same heavy, controlled expression he always wore, entirely unaware of or entirely unbothered by the stir he created. He stepped across the Age Line without ceremony and placed his folded parchment in the Goblet. The Goblet's flame turned briefly, intensely red.
The noise in the Hall jumped sharply.
Krum stepped back, and his gaze swept along the benches — slowly, absently — in the general direction of where Draco was sitting.
"Hermione." Draco spoke quickly. "The dark circles. You said you wanted to look at them properly. Could you —"
"Oh — yes, of course." She immediately set the book down and turned toward him, tilting her chin to get a better angle, forgetting entirely about the Goblet, or Krum, or anything else in the Entrance Hall.
He turned his face toward her and let her look, watching Krum's retreating back over her shoulder with an expression of careful neutrality.
"They are quite bad," she said, frowning at his eye sockets. "You really should see Madam Pomfrey. Or at least tell me why you're not sleeping, so I can actually help."
"It's a reasonable question." He turned it over, watching Krum reach the Durmstrang cluster and disappear among them. "Why can't I sleep..."
He leaned back against the bench, relaxed as a cat in a patch of sun, and gave Hermione the mild, slightly smug smile of someone sitting on more information than he intended to share.
She looked at him with the expression she reserved specifically for him — part exasperation, part warmth, part something she hadn't named yet — and went back to her book.
The Goblet of Fire flickered on its plinth, and the Entrance Hall hummed around them, and Draco watched.