"Yes, it was a test! And very few of you passed—which is deeply disappointing!" Professor Moody's magical eye swept the room as students raised their hands with questions during Defence Against the Dark Arts. "Constant vigilance! If you don't wish to die at the end of a Death Eater's wand, you had better start practising it!"
The students exchanged uncertain looks and said nothing.
"If you carry on with this attitude, Hogwarts will become a sieve—something for any dark creature to slip straight through! Be vigilant!" Moody roared, brandishing his wand.
He's putting on quite a convincing performance, Draco thought, stroking his chin.
Sirius, disguised as Professor Moody, had claimed that he had arranged for someone to impersonate him as a test of Hogwarts's vigilance against potential Death Eater infiltration. It was a reason that would have seemed utterly feeble coming from any other professor—but from Mad-Eye Moody it was almost plausible. He had always been eccentric, had always pushed his students in ways that bordered on reckless, and the occasional unannounced test of the entire castle's alertness was, if anything, exactly the sort of thing one might expect from him.
The headmasters from the visiting schools, who had personally witnessed Hermione Stun "Professor Moody," privately scorned Hogwarts's teaching methods for several days. But as there was nothing further to observe, they eventually turned their attention back to preparing their own champions for the second task.
Barty Crouch Sr. remained unimpressed.
"Hiring Moody was a mistake. He has always had a troubling reputation at the Ministry. I would encourage you to reconsider, Albus," he said, with the stiff, worried expression of a man who had been lodging formal concerns all his life and had grown quite good at it.
Ludo Bagman, for his part, found the whole business rather entertaining—it was easy to be entertained when you weren't the one who'd been Stunned.
Complaints from the student body continued to accumulate. Sirius was pushing his portrayal of a paranoid, unhinged former Auror further than Draco had thought strictly necessary—further than he had thought possible—and Draco found himself revising his earlier, somewhat dismissive assessment of Sirius's acting ability.
"Professor Moody gets more unsettling by the day," Pansy complained loudly to Blaise in the Slytherin common room. "The way he speaks—it's as though he's planning to accost a student in the next lesson, or sneak into the dormitory disguised as one of us. Can you imagine? Someone daring to infiltrate our common room? It's an absolute violation of privacy!"
Standing nearby, Draco touched his nose with a flicker of guilt, recalling with a certain residual dread how Hermione had broken into the Slytherin common room in second year—impersonating the famously sharp-tongued Pansy Parkinson, of all people—and decided it was wisest not to dwell on what would have happened if she'd been caught.
"I don't like him either," Blaise said, grimacing. "Pansy, don't do anything rash. You can't actually punish him for any of this—he's a Hogwarts professor. Even if you caught him in the act, the most you could do is politely ask him to leave."
"This is absolutely outrageous. I, for one, am hoping something unfortunate happens to him very soon," Pansy said through her teeth.
She had not anticipated that the unfortunate event would arrive quite so swiftly.
On a bitter December day, lashed with sleet and freezing rain, Mad-Eye Moody was rushed to St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries following an altercation—described in official terms as "inappropriate"—with a Blast-Ended Skrewt from Professor Hagrid's Care of Magical Creatures class. He was expected to remain there for some time. Dumbledore was obliged to hire a temporary replacement for Defence Against the Dark Arts. And Sirius Black was finally free to show his real face.
"I may have taken some liberties with the script Dumbledore gave me," Sirius said, with evident self-satisfaction, rocking back and forth on two legs of his chair. "Harry told me he'd had quite enough of those Blast-Ended Skrewts."
"Every student at Hogwarts breathed a sigh of relief when word got out that they'd perished along with Moody," Draco said contentedly.
"In fairness, there weren't many left—fewer than ten," Sirius said, scratching his chin. "They'd have done each other in eventually even without my help."
"That may be, but we couldn't afford to wait," Draco said. He was still faintly shaken when he thought about it—six-foot Blast-Ended Skrewts rampaging through the pumpkin patch, and Hermione nearly catching a burst of flame from one with a thick grey shell. "You did the right thing. Not a moment too soon."
---
"Hagrid seems very sad," Hermione whispered to Draco during the next Care of Magical Creatures lesson.
She was watching Hagrid's solitary figure in the pumpkin patch, where he was attempting to dig a large grave for his "innocent and tragically taken" Blast-Ended Skrewts.
"Please don't tell me you've developed any sympathy for those Skrewts," Draco said, rolling his eyes. "Personally, I wish they'd gone to join their maker a great deal sooner."
"Of course I didn't like them," Hermione said, wrinkling her nose. "By the way—how is your arm? Those scratches from last lesson, when you were—"
"Perfectly fine," he said, with practised casualness, and let her pull back his left sleeve to look.
"There's still a mark." She frowned, touching it lightly with her fingertip. "The spines on a Blast-Ended Skrewt are extraordinarily sharp. Why hasn't this faded yet?"
"It will," Draco said, his voice dropping slightly. "It's fine. This particular mark isn't the sort I find most troubling."
"What could be worse than a Skrewt spine scar?" She looked up at him, exasperated. "You're just saying that to make me feel better."
Draco gave her a faint smile.
Of course there were worse marks. The Dark Mark, which he could still picture with horrible clarity on his father's wrist. The word Mudblood, carved into hers in a future he was doing everything in his power to prevent. He couldn't have said which one disgusted him more.
"Whatever mark it might be," he said quietly, "you won't be getting it. I'll make sure of that."
"Okay," Hermione said, looking at the sudden seriousness in his grey eyes—something shifting in them, like fog over still water—and said hesitantly, "Thank you?"
"Don't," he said. "You don't need to thank me for that."
"But I should." Hermione tilted her head. "Professor McGonagall told me you insisted on putting my name on the commendation—even though I kept telling them I hadn't done anything worth commending."
"You've done more than you realise," Draco said. "If you insist on debating the point, then I'd like to ask you this: why did you put my name on your own commendation? Even threatening to refuse the honour if they didn't include me? Do you have any idea what a Special Award for Services to the School means in terms of attention it attracts?"
"Of course I know! Because you deserved it!" Hermione said stubbornly. "During the locked room incident, I thought you ought to have been commended then. But you always refused any acknowledgement. And it was the same with Moody—without your map, I would never have pieced it together. And yet you wouldn't tell anyone what role you actually played."
"I—" He didn't have an answer.
At the time, all he had wanted was to keep a low profile. To survive the year without anyone looking too closely. Recognition, back then, had felt less like an honour and more like a target.
"I know you always keep yourself small and out of sight," Hermione said, drawing herself up. "So I took the liberty of doing it for you. I have no right to decide what other people deserve—but I have every right to decide what I do with my own name." Her expression settled into something firm and unbudging. "I want people to know what you've actually done. What kind of person you truly are."
She couldn't forget how Barty Crouch Sr. had looked at Draco—immediately, reflexively, through the lens of who his father was. She couldn't forget the comments she'd overheard from classmates who heard the name Malfoy and assumed the worst before he'd said a word.
He wasn't that person. He was thoughtful and quietly brave—kinder than he ever let anyone see—and his instinct was so often to help, even when he'd been given every excuse not to.
His pride made him reluctant to explain himself. His composure made it easy for people to dismiss him as cold. And Hermione found, quite simply, that she could not let those misunderstandings stand unchallenged. Not once. Not for anything.
Draco looked at her, something tightening in his chest. A thousand things surfaced and dissolved before he could find the words for any of them.
"You're aware, I hope," he finally managed, with a rueful sort of smile, "of what it means to have your name next to a Malfoy. A Slytherin. The son of a convicted Death Eater. It won't make you popular—it might make you a target, someday."
"Draco." Hermione's voice was quiet and very certain. "You are not only a Malfoy, or a Slytherin, or anyone's son. You are, first and foremost, yourself." She held his gaze. "The name beside mine belongs to Draco, who has light in him. And no one can say otherwise."
He looked at her for a moment longer than was entirely comfortable.
"Is that truly what you think?" he said at last, the corners of his mouth curving upward as though he were confirming something he'd been afraid to believe. "Hermione Granger would willingly have her name listed alongside mine?"
"Of course—why wouldn't I?" She frowned at the sudden brightness in his expression. "What are you so pleased about all of a sudden?"
"Nothing," he said softly, feeling something settle in him like the easing of a long-held breath. "It's alright. Everything's alright."
---
By now, Hagrid had finished digging and was lowering the crumpled grey remains of the Blast-Ended Skrewts into the pit with enormous, careful hands. He filled it in, then buried his face and wept.
Amidst the sounds of Hagrid's grief, the students discovered they were rather enjoying directing their own lesson. At Hermione's suggestion—passed quietly to Hagrid before class, when it was clear he was in no state to plan anything—they had turned to studying Glumbumbles: large, fur-covered insects whose secreted treacle had documented healing properties for minor cuts and abrasions. Draco had once seen Madam Pomfrey use the substance to treat a patient in the hospital wing.
"It was Hermione's idea," Harry murmured, wandering over. "He really wasn't in any state to put together a lesson."
"Naturally," Draco said, deftly filling a small phial with extract and glancing across at Hermione, who was patiently talking a bewildered Neville Longbottom through the process. "She ought to just take the position permanently."
He glanced toward the pumpkin patch and stopped.
A woman was picking her way across the frost-hardened ground toward Hagrid—fingers splayed, head tilted, with the expression of someone who finds other people's misery professionally useful. Thick magenta robes with a purple fur collar. Elaborate blonde hair. Jewelled spectacles. An alligator-skin handbag from which she was already extracting a Quick-Quotes Quill.
Rita Skeeter.
And trusting, good-natured Hagrid was about to walk straight into her without the faintest idea of the danger.
Draco had seen the Daily Prophet's coverage of Harry and Hermione in recent weeks—sometimes dragging in Ron and Viktor Krum for variety—and each piece had made him feel the specific irritation of someone watching something carefully tended being carelessly destroyed. Rita Skeeter did not care what she bit, as long as the wound made for good copy.
He hesitated for only a moment.
"Rita Skeeter," he said, coming to a stop at the edge of the patch.
She turned. Her eyes registered the colour of his hair, and she arranged her face into what she clearly believed was a winning smile as she came toward him.
"Young Mr Malfoy," she said warmly, extending a thick, heavily-ringed hand. "Is this our first meeting?"
Draco did not take it.
"My mother knows you," he said pleasantly. "Which is why I'd like to give you the opportunity to settle this between us quietly, rather than make it a matter of public record."
Rita Skeeter's smile remained, but something shifted behind her jewelled glasses. She withdrew her hand and regarded him with the look of a woman who had been doing this a very long time.
"I know you're an Animagus," Draco said.
The smile dropped entirely. Rita Skeeter went quite pale.
"I don't know what you're talking about—"
"You know exactly what I'm talking about," Draco said. "As you also know, an unregistered Animagus is in direct violation of Ministry law."
"What do you want?" The pleasantness was gone. She sounded, for the first time, entirely like herself.
"Nothing unreasonable," Draco said. "Nothing negative about Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, or Hermione Granger. No invented romance, no manufactured drama. Can you agree to that?"
He couldn't leave Hermione unprotected from someone like Skeeter. He had included the others by necessity.
He was, he reflected, an extraordinarily charitable person.
"That's completely unreasonable—Harry Potter alone is half my column—" Rita said, her voice rising.
"You're welcome to test whether my mother would take my side or yours in this," Draco said, with polite interest. "And if I ever see a beetle anywhere near Harry and his friends, I'll make certain they know to deal with it immediately."
He was not bluffing. In another life, Hermione had caught Rita Skeeter—in her Animagus form—and kept her in a sealed jar for an extended period of reflection. He had found the detail, upon learning it, rather elegant. Very Slytherin.
Rita's expression cycled through panic and indignation and settled somewhere between them.
"Write about other people," Draco said. "There's no shortage of interesting stories at Hogwarts. That's my only condition."
Rita Skeeter gave a single, stiff nod.
She didn't spare Hagrid so much as a glance as she departed—he was of no use to her now. She climbed out of the pumpkin patch, shot Hagrid a single contemptuous look, and marched away down the main path.
"What'd you say to her, Malfoy?" Hagrid asked, bewildered. "Why'd she leave? She said she wanted to know all about my Skrewts—"
"She had somewhere else to be," Draco said pleasantly. "Though sir—with respect—you might think twice before speaking at length to her in future. If she were to ask where your Blast-Ended Skrewts came from, for instance. What would you have said?"
"What d'yeh mean?"
"Were they acquired through legal channels? Could it be reported to the Ministry? Might it cause difficulties for Dumbledore?" Draco said.
The skin visible above Hagrid's enormous beard turned a pronounced pink. He said nothing.
"Illegal imports," Draco said, without particular judgment.
"Go study yer Glumbumbles, Malfoy," Hagrid said gruffly, turning back to his grave. "Stop pokin' around over here." His voice, when it came again, was thick with genuine grief. "You just don't understand what extraordinary creatures they were..."
---
The person most responsible for the current state of Hagrid's heart was at that moment making his way through the corridors of the castle.
Sirius Black, restored to health, was making a considerable impression on the female population of Hogwarts.
The combination was difficult to ignore: a reputation unfairly destroyed, years of wrongful imprisonment endured, innocence finally established. Add a lean, fine-boned face, an unmistakably aristocratic manner, and the particular quality of mystery that attached itself to a man who had been absent from the world for over a decade, and he outshone every spotty adolescent in the castle without apparent effort.
"I simply cannot decide between Sirius and Cedric," Pansy announced to the common room, clutching her autograph book. "I choose both."
"Lovely," Blaise said, with a pleasantness that did not reach his eyes. "Perhaps I should go and ask Fleur Delacour for hers."
Pansy shot up from her armchair. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"Exactly what you think it means," Blaise said. "Praising another man in front of me."
"I was talking about an autograph!"
"As was I," Blaise said, and left.
"He is absolutely incomprehensible," Pansy told Crabbe, who was sitting nearby with an unusually focused expression that she had only recently begun to notice on him. "You've barely been in the common room lately. Where have you been?"
Crabbe looked up, his eyes bright. "Draco's added to my training programme. He says my Quidditch is improving."
"You're still at it?" Pansy said, with a smile that didn't entirely hide her surprise. "Well. You have lost some weight. Good for you."
Crabbe gave her an earnest grin. "Thanks, Pansy. I'd better get to the pitch." He paused at the door. "I don't think that was a compliment, was it."
Pansy opened her mouth.
He had already gone.
---
"Sirius really is popular," Crabbe said wistfully, once he reached the training pitch. "There was a whole crowd of girls outside his classroom asking for his autograph. He turned them all away."
"Naturally," Draco said. "You can't expect the head of the Black family to hand his signature to anyone who asks. A signature in the wrong hands is a significant liability."
Goyle, arriving with a practice Beater's bat, blinked. "Is that what those girls wanted? That's—frightening."
"I doubt most of them had thought that far," Draco said. "The majority are simply admirers. But you can never entirely rule out the possibility I'm describing. It costs nothing to be careful."
He wasn't wrong that Sirius had made an impression across the board. The following Thursday, emerging from the disused second-floor bathroom, he found the Weasley twins holding forth to Lee Jordan in the courtyard with the enthusiasm of recent converts.
"He's brilliant," Fred said. "We put a Portable Swamp in the corridor last week, and he came over and showed us the anchoring charms to make it permanent—"
"You didn't lose any points?" Lee Jordan asked.
"He tried to give us extra points," George said. "For practical application of spellwork."
"And he suggested new shapes for the Filibuster Fireworks—said 'try a Hungarian Horntail'—" Fred said, with the reverence of a man recounting a revelation. "A dragon! Hogwarts finally has a Defence Against the Dark Arts professor worth the name. I feel as though I've wasted my entire education."
"Don't take it for granted," Draco said, walking over. "You've had at least one decent teacher before this." He meant Remus Lupin.
Lee Jordan glanced at him sidelong, visibly uncertain about the dynamic he'd wandered into—a Slytherin two years the Weasley twins' junior, speaking to them with something that resembled easy familiarity. To his evident surprise, the twins responded without missing a beat.
"True enough," Fred said. "He's doing well, actually—focusing on defensive equipment at the moment. Protective cloaks, spellproof gloves, a whole line of them. The Ministry's already placing orders." He shook his head. "Half the Auror Office apparently can't cast a reliable Shield Charm."
Not surprising. Draco had long thought that large bureaucratic organisations accumulated incompetence in direct proportion to their size.
"Take this to him for me," Draco said, handing George a small crystal phial of freshly brewed Wolfsbane Potion. George pocketed it without comment, his expression briefly becoming more serious.
"We've got to go," Fred said, checking his watch. "Tutoring session—we need to ask about the fusing charms for Decoy Detonators."
"Off you go, then," Draco said, and watched them leave. He meant what he'd said about the Weasley twins' advisors almost admiringly. The Black family really did cause disruption wherever they went.
---
Even the girls from Beauxbatons had taken to gathering at a careful distance to observe Hogwarts's new substitute teacher.
Walking toward the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom that afternoon, Draco glanced ahead and spotted Hermione approaching from the opposite direction, mid-conversation with Susan Bones, laughing at something. A faint, uneasy feeling settled in his chest.
The last time he'd seen her that animated in a corridor, it had been during Lockhart's first week.
"What do you make of Sirius Black?" Draco asked, with what he felt was admirable neutrality, as they settled into their seats. "We're not in the business of filling our timetables with little hearts again, I hope?"
"You remember that?" Hermione looked at him with affront and disbelief in equal measure. She slapped her class schedule flat on the desk in front of him. "Look at it. Nothing. Obviously I admire him—Sirius Black has genuine talent and is no fool—but I cannot believe you're actually—"
"Right," Draco said, examining the unblemished timetable with restored equilibrium. "Did you bring an autograph book? I recall someone once keeping a very carefully pressed—"
"Do not," Hermione said sharply, snatching the schedule back. "I collected that for library access. Restricted Section. I was being strategic. And besides, Sirius is Harry's godfather. He's a respected elder. That's entirely different and you know it."
"What about Cedric Diggory? Viktor Krum?" Draco asked, with studied casualness. "No one among the living you'd be interested in getting an autograph from?"
"What would I want their autographs for?" Hermione said, turning to her textbook. "They can't get me into the Restricted Section."
"I can," Draco said. The words were out before he'd quite decided to say them. "Get you books from the Restricted Section. If you wanted."
Hermione looked up. The scepticism in her expression gave way to something considerably more gratifying.
"Really?" Those warm brown eyes fixed on him with full attention, which was doing unreasonable things to his concentration. "Could you get something like Moste Potente Potions? Or The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection?"
"Yes," he said, holding her gaze and working very hard at appearing unaffected. "Tell me what you need."
"Well," Hermione said, dropping her voice slightly, "you are still the most useful person I know." She turned away with slightly pink cheeks, directing her attention toward the front of the classroom where Sirius was arranging his notes.
Draco raised an eyebrow and settled back in his chair with a quiet, private satisfaction.
---
Sirius brought visible relief to the class.
Rather than continuing Moody's harrowing experiments, he laid out a clear plan: they would cover defence against dark creatures—Dementors, Inferi, cannibalistic Trolls, and Zombies—and work through the Patronus Charm, the Shield Charm, and the Armouring Charm in turn.
"If there's anything particular you'd like to understand better, let me know," he said easily. "We'll work through it together."
Neville Longbottom's hand went up. "Sir—do you know anything about dealing with dragons?"
The class erupted. Sirius smiled.
"Mr Longbottom, I respect a man with ambition. I'll say this—the methods our champions used were genuinely impressive and well worth studying." He paused. "I understand you've already started learning about Harry's Summoning Charm in Professor Flitwick's class—" Harry sat up slightly, pleased. "As for the Switching Spell Cedric Diggory used, that's properly Professor McGonagall's territory, and I couldn't improve on what she'd teach you. What I can offer are the Conjunctivitis Curse and the Stunning Spell—both highly practical, both genuinely useful. We'll take them one at a time."
The students were delighted. They hadn't expected this—the composed, slightly severe Sirius Black turning out to create such an easy atmosphere in a classroom. He spoke about advanced magic as though it were entirely within reach, which settled the room's collective nerves more than any amount of reassurance would have.
"Right—let's begin with the Patronus Charm," Sirius said. "The incantation is on the board. I understand some of you can already produce one. Would those students raise their hands?"
A sparse scattering of hands.
Harry. Hermione. Seamus Finnigan.
Draco did not raise his.
"More than I expected," Sirius said, with genuine warmth. "A corporeal Patronus at your age is a significant achievement. I believe with practice, most of you can develop a full animal form. I'd like those of you who can cast it to demonstrate—no need to come to the front, just conjure them from where you're sitting."
Silver light filled the room. An otter leapt from Hermione's wand and traced a bright arc across the ceiling.
Draco watched it and felt the familiar dull weight of frustration.
More than a year of systematic practice. And still he couldn't push his Patronus past an indistinct silver mist. It wavered at the tip of his wand like smoke uncertain of its own shape, while every other Patronus in the room seemed to know exactly what it was. His apparently had not decided.
He looked at Hermione's otter—quick, alert, graceful—as it chased loops across the ceiling.
It looked just like her.
"Draco," Hermione said, turning to him during the practice period with patient attention. "Think of what makes you happiest. Concentrate on it—really hold it."
"I'm trying," he said.
He was not going to tell her what he was thinking about.
Her laugh. The warmth of her hand on his arm. The green-apple scent of her wrist. The way she'd pressed her face into his shoulder and cried because she'd been afraid for him. The soft, entirely unfair weight of her trust.
Every time he got close to holding any of it steadily in his mind, his thoughts slid sideways and his face grew embarrassingly warm.
"Draco, you need to focus—I think you're nearly there—" She was watching his wand with a small, intent frown. "Oh, why is it drifting again?"
"Concentrating is not as straightforward as it sounds," he said, with more feeling than he intended.
It had been simpler once. Or at least less complicated. Before the night of the weasel, he could look at her without his mind immediately presenting an itemised list of memories that had no business being in a Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom.
He looked at her now—the bright eyes, the expression of absolute, uncomplicated faith—and felt his thoughts scatter.
Every night without fail, she appeared in his dreams. He would wake with the specific, unhelpful awareness of her, and spend the following day unable to look at her for more than a few seconds without losing whatever thread he'd been holding.
"Try again," she said, warm and unrelenting. "You can do it. Just think of the happiest thing you can."
Reluctantly, helplessly, he did.
At the tip of his wand, the silver mist stirred—and began, very slowly, to drift into something that might, with some optimism, be the beginning of a shape.