Hermione Granger opened her eyes as the first rays of dawn broke through the curtains of Gryffindor Tower.
The May morning had a particular brightness to it, warm and clean, rather like her mood.
She rubbed her eyes, raised her hand, and looked at the silver ring shimmering on her finger in the early light.
The words "Good Night." engraved there were gradually changing, letter by letter, into "Morning, Hermione." — faintly luminous, as though it had been waiting for her to wake up.
She smiled without meaning to.
Had Draco woken up too?
She pulled the thin red blanket up around herself, quietly kissed the ring, and whispered to it, "Morning, Draco."
"Hermione, what are you muttering about behind the curtain?" Lavender Brown called from the mirror, examining a new blemish on her chin with a long-suffering expression.
"Nothing," Hermione said, peeking out with a flustered smile. She stretched, drew back the curtain, wished Lavender a cheerful good morning, and quickly exchanged her white lace nightgown for her Hogwarts uniform—white shirt, black school skirt, and stockings.
Through the mirror, Lavender watched her with a quiet, private sigh. That waist really is unfair, she thought. No wonder that arrogant Slytherin boy always seems so very enthusiastic about keeping an arm around it.
She pinched the soft flesh of her own stomach with resigned disapproval and decided, on reflection, to skip the doughnut at breakfast.
Merlin above, she wanted to fall in love too.
The trouble was that Slytherin boys didn't appeal to her. They were all so cold and closed-off—gloomy in a way that felt less like brooding depth and more like simply being unpleasant to be around. You couldn't approach a reserved Slytherin boy with the hopeful assumption that he was secretly warm and attentive—because in most cases, a cold boy was just cold. Boys like Malfoy, who were apparently quite considerate with their girlfriends in private, seemed to be a remarkable exception.
For Lavender, a warm, easygoing Gryffindor boy was always the safer and more appealing option.
Someone tall and lanky, for instance, with a healthy look about him, a decent sense of humour, and a few endearing freckles. The kind of boy who might occasionally say something that made you blush, or mention your name to his friends in a way that was suspiciously specific...
"What do you think of Ron?" Lavender asked, as Hermione sat on the edge of her bed to buckle a pair of black Mary Janes.
"He's great!" Hermione said, glancing down at the ring on her finger, where the words had updated themselves again:
"I miss you. Breakfast?" A small, warm glow in her chest.
Lavender gave her a look of faint suspicion. Why was she smiling quite like that?
"What do you think of Ron, exactly?" Lavender pressed, watching her closely. She had, after all, read Rita Skeeter's piece last year—the one about Hermione Granger's allegedly calculating relationships with Harry Potter and several other boys. "Is he your friend, or...something else?"
Hermione Granger, that narrow-waisted girl, already had Malfoy as a boyfriend. Surely she wouldn't want it all?
"Ron is my friend," Hermione said, noticing Lavender's odd expression with mild puzzlement as she stuffed her bag with her books. "Why? Is there something you wanted to ask?"
"No, nothing," Lavender said, touching her nose guiltily, then wincing as she discovered the blemish again. She opened the tin of spot ointment she'd bought from Weasleys' Wizarding Tricks in Hogsmeade with a troubled expression.
After a moment, she tried again, more carefully. "You and Malfoy—are things going well? You've seemed very busy lately."
"Wonderfully well," Hermione said, with a bright, unguarded smile. "I keep discovering new things about him to admire."
Lavender studied that openly delighted expression and decided she had been overthinking things. Hermione Granger was clearly thoroughly infatuated with her Slytherin boyfriend. The idea that she was also pursuing Ron was simply ridiculous.
She couldn't take Rita Skeeter seriously anyway. Rita Skeeter was a menace. A while ago, students from other houses had started looking at all Gryffindors with a suspicious sort of prejudice—as if the entire house were hypocrites who sang about fairness while cheating to win—and it was entirely because of that woman's sensationalist reporting.
Lavender watched Hermione's cheerful figure disappear through the dormitory door, quietly cursing Rita Skeeter under her breath.
---
As Rita Skeeter's credibility continued to decline among the students of Hogwarts, a small, handmade newspaper had quietly begun to circulate through the castle.
It was a lively, enthusiastic thing—a guide to Hogsmeade Village, illustrated and informative in equal measure. It covered Honeydukes, the Three Broomsticks, Zonko's Joke Shop, Weasleys' Wizarding Tricks, the stationery shop, the robe shop, Mrs Puddifoot's Tea Shop, the post office, and even the Hog's Head. It touched on tourist landmarks like the Shrieking Shack and practical matters like the Hogsmeade train station.
"You've done your research thoroughly," Hermione said, that afternoon, sitting close to Draco at a library table with the newspaper spread between them. "It even mentions that Hogsmeade was founded at the same time as Hogwarts, and that it served as a headquarters during the goblin rebellion of 1612."
"I suppose you spotted that in Magical Historical Relics," Draco said.
He quietly leaned closer, breathing in the scent of her hair—something fresh and light—and closed his eyes contentedly for a moment.
"Yes, actually," Hermione said, looking up in surprise. "I didn't know you'd read that."
"I read rather widely," Draco said, with a hint of self-satisfaction.
He read whatever she mentioned. Hermione had absolutely no idea of the work he had quietly done to keep pace with her, and he intended to keep it that way.
She felt a warm rush of something that was hard to name. There was almost no one else at Hogwarts she could talk to about the sort of things she actually found interesting—not even Harry or Ron, who would rather be bribed with Chocolate Frogs than open an extracurricular book. Only Draco always had something to say in response.
"You're adorable," she said impulsively, turning toward him and pressing a quick, tender kiss to the corner of his mouth.
Draco's face went immediately red.
This was one of the endearing contradictions she had noticed about him: when she was shy or flustered, he was confident and teasing. But when she was direct and affectionate, he became the one at a loss.
"People can see us," he said, looking around with a distinct edge of panic in his voice.
They weren't in the quiet study corner or the card room today. Hermione had wanted to sit by the window with the view of the lake, and so here they were, at an ordinary table in full view of the library.
"Is this the same Draco Malfoy who walked through the corridors with his arm around me?" Hermione asked, amused by his very rare helplessness.
"That's entirely different," Draco said, his ears turning red. "Kissing requires a certain... privacy. It's not the same as walking with one's arm around someone."
He had always been particular about this. The things between them were theirs—not for general display. Hermione bit her lip to hide her smile, ruffled his hair lightly, and decided to be merciful, steering the conversation back to the newspaper. "This was made by the Creevey brothers in Gryffindor. Colin and Dennis. It's become rather popular."
"That boy who trails after Harry and gave Rita Skeeter things to print about you?" Draco's expression went distinctly sour. "Colin Creevey."
Colin Creevey was another person he kept a careful internal distance from—for a reason he couldn't explain to Hermione, and wouldn't.
He was sixteen when he died. The wrong side of a war he had no real part in.
"Draco—could you set aside that impression for a moment and look at the newspaper itself?" Hermione said gently. "If this had been written by someone you'd never heard of, what would you think of it?"
Draco pressed his lips together, glanced again at the pages—the illustrations, the write-up on Weasleys' Wizarding Tricks—and made a small, reluctant expression of admission. "Not bad."
"I agree." She nodded. "Draco, please try to be a little kinder about Colin. You know what Rita Skeeter is. He's a year below us, he's eager, and he was easily taken advantage of. That's not a crime."
"I have no desire for him to cause you any further trouble," Draco said, still displeased. "He should be more careful before he says anything to a reporter."
"He hasn't caused me any trouble since. All winter, he's been saving me the best spot by the fire in the common room when I come in. I'm fairly sure it's his way of apologising," Hermione said.
"Common courtesy from a junior to a senior," Draco said, though with slightly less chill in it than before.
"And his enthusiasm for Harry remains absolutely undiminished," she added, ruffling his hair again with a grin. "He's been pestering Harry for an exclusive interview, and Harry's been conducting a daily guerrilla campaign to avoid him."
"I imagine Harry isn't terribly keen on being interviewed," Draco said drily—and with some personal memory of what Rita Skeeter's interviews looked like in practice.
He had quietly shielded Harry from several of those, in this life.
"Harry has been remarkably clever about it," Hermione said. "He told Colin he'd only agree to an interview if Colin could arrange to interview all the champions. That bought him some time." She paused, her expression softening with worry. "His mind is really on the third task. It's already mid-May, and the details still haven't been announced. He seems anxious."
"It should be very soon," Draco said, looking out the window at the Quidditch pitch below.
The distant green figures out there were probably Crabbe and Goyle, running their usual drills. A few yellow figures too—Cedric Diggory, training his team.
Draco knew that within about a week, those players would find the pitch unavailable to them. A magnificent hedge maze was coming. The third task.
He thought briefly of Sirius and the Graveyard plan. The things that lay ahead of Harry in that maze, and at the end of it, were extraordinarily dangerous.
But they had prepared. They had changed things. It would be different this time.
"Hermione," he said, "what kind of person is Diggory, to you?"
"Cedric?" She thought about it. "A good one, I think. In the beginning, some of the Hufflepuffs were wearing those awful badges—'Support Cedric Diggory, the REAL Hogwarts Champion'—and Harry was really bothered by it. But Cedric eventually put a stop to it. That mattered to Harry." She paused. "He has a lot of influence in Hufflepuff. People follow his lead."
"Blindly follow his lead?" Draco asked, in a tone that was partly casual and partly something he couldn't entirely account for.
"No—because they respect him," Hermione said, with exasperation. "They follow his lead because they trust his judgment. He tries to do the right thing. He's not flawless, but he's honest, and he acts fairly. How often do you see that?"
Draco said nothing for a moment.
"I suppose you admire him," he said at last.
"I do, yes. You asked, so I'm being honest." Hermione looked at him steadily. "I admire him. He demonstrates real leadership, and the kind of integrity that actually costs something to maintain. If there were more people like that at Hogwarts—people who spoke up when things went wrong, and held the line when it was difficult—the school would be a more harmonious place."
Draco absorbed this with a carefully blank expression. One might almost have thought he agreed.
"I only admire him," Hermione said, with a knowing look at his face. "The person I actually like is you, you jealous creature." She leaned slightly closer and, taking advantage of a momentary absence of other students nearby, pressed another quick kiss to the corner of his mouth.
"Well—yes," Draco said, his ears pink again, his expression finally relaxing into something satisfied.
Hermione turned back to the books on the Disillusionment Charm and the Silencing Charm stacked on her side of the table.
She flipped through a few pages, then began muttering under her breath, "Draco Malfoy, the Silencing Charm is sixth-year material. How many spells have you been quietly practising that I don't know about? Will I ever actually catch up to you?"
"I genuinely look forward to the day that happens," he said softly, with a small smile.
Then the smile faded. He stared out at the Quidditch pitch again, his gaze going distant and slightly dark.
What would Cedric Diggory's fate be, in this life?
Would the Hufflepuff champion—honest, well-liked, and entirely undeserving—die at the foot of the resurrection altar again, the first casualty of the Dark Lord's return? Simply because he had been unlucky enough to touch a Portkey at the wrong moment?
Draco did not know.
He knew only that whatever the answer was, it troubled him more than he was prepared to admit.
---
At that same moment, the subject of Draco's thoughts was standing in the Quidditch stands, trying, with dwindling patience, to decline an interview request.
"Why not ask Harry?" Cedric said, maintaining a polite smile through what was becoming considerable effort. "He's a champion too, and you're all in the same house—"
Colin Creevey's expression flickered, but he rallied admirably. "I want to interview every champion and present them from multiple perspectives. You were exceptional in the lake task—you were the first to return safely—"
"Every champion?" Cedric looked Colin up and down, visibly wondering whether a first-year was really the appropriate journalist for the job.
"Yes!" Dennis Creevey appeared cheerfully from behind his brother's shoulder. "Professor Dumbledore has given us permission to run a proper newspaper! Have you seen our first issue? It's about Hogsmeade!"
Cedric hesitated.
He had, in fact, read the Hogsmeade issue. And "Professor Dumbledore has given us permission" was the sort of thing that was somewhat difficult to brush aside—though Cedric had a suspicion that Dennis Creevey's interpretation of events and the actual facts might not be perfectly aligned.
"All right," Cedric said carefully. "But I'd want to see the article before you print it. After what Rita Skeeter wrote last year, I tend to be cautious about journalists."
He had reason to be. Skeeter had taken a particular interest in Cho—in the many male Quidditch players Cho had occasion to practise and train alongside—and had framed it all in the most damaging way imaginable. Cho had been upset about it for weeks, and it had taken Cedric considerable effort to help her move past it.
Since then, the words "interview" and "journalist" had developed a slightly unpleasant association.
"Of course!" Colin said, brightening immediately. He produced several sheets of parchment from his brother's bag and launched, with great enthusiasm, into a prepared list of questions.
---
Beauxbatons' champion, however, was not as accommodating as Cedric.
Fleur Delacour looked down at Colin Creevey—he was quite a bit shorter than her—with an expression of cool disbelief.
"You want to interview me?" she said. "Why should I agree?"
Colin tried the same approaches he'd used on Cedric. They had no discernible effect.
"And these questions—" Fleur looked at the parchment he held out. "Will your Veela bloodline give you an advantage in the competition? How many boys asked you to the Yule Ball? Which Hogwarts house do you find most attractive?" She looked up at him. "These questions are rubbish. I have no intention of answering any of them."
She took the parchment, crumpled it into a ball, and flicked it with considerable precision toward the far wall.
It bounced twice, rattled between the stones, and fell to the floor—not unlike, Colin thought privately, his sense of professional dignity.
Fleur turned and walked away, her Beauxbatons robes swaying at her heels.
But Colin, in the moment before she disappeared around the corner, caught her expression. Her face—usually so composed—was vivid with genuine anger.
He had absolutely no doubt that if he had said anything further, she would have hexed him without hesitation. Turned him into a mute, perhaps. Or done something involving bats.
The corridor was very quiet. The two Creevey brothers stood motionless for a full two or three minutes, somewhat shaken.
"Colin," Dennis said carefully, patting his brother's back, "don't cry. She was probably just in a bad mood. Girls sometimes have a few days each month that are a bit—"
"No," said a cold, decisive voice. "That has nothing to do with it."
Both brothers spun around. Professor Moody was standing not far behind them, his magical eye whirring slowly in its socket, the crumpled parchment in his hand.
"Who wrote these questions?" he asked, with flat impatience. "Stop sniffling and answer me."
"We—we surveyed students," Colin said, blinking hard. "To find out what people most wanted to know about the champions. We didn't make anything up, these are genuine questions people asked—"
"That," Moody said, "is precisely the problem."
Colin stared at him.
"Fleur Delacour is a champion first and a young woman second. You put those in the wrong order." Moody's scarred face was stern, his forehead creased deeply. "You wasted an interview opportunity turning it into tabloid nonsense. Why not ask her how she cast such a powerful Sleeping Charm in the first task? What magical creatures live in French lakes that aren't found here? How she feels being a student at Hogwarts, what she makes of the British wizarding world, what her view is of the other champions?" He let the crumpled parchment drop. "There are a hundred interesting questions you could ask. Instead, you asked whether she has Veela blood."
Colin had stopped trying to blink back tears. He was simply staring.
This was Professor Moody—the retired Auror who had no interest in anything except catching Dark wizards and startling students into heightened vigilance. The man who had turned a ferret into Draco Malfoy in front of a full classroom without a flicker of remorse.
And yet.
"I—" Colin began. He stopped. He started again. "You're right, Professor. The questions were wrong from the start. They were full of people's assumptions about her—not about what she's actually done."
"Yes," Moody said. He limped forward and stopped in front of the boy. "You owe Miss Delacour an apology. Not me." His voice, though still sharp, had lost some of its edge. "She is a lady, and deserves to be treated as one—recognised first for what she can do, not subjected to the kind of questions that reduce people to gossip." He paused. "If you want to run a good newspaper, don't forget that. Not ever."
"We do want to run a good newspaper," Colin said, the wobble in his voice finally steadying. "That's why we started it. We—we want to get things right."
Moody regarded him for a moment. Then he said, more quietly, "I don't doubt that. But every question you put to someone carries weight for them. Think about what kind of newspaper you're making, and what kind of journalism is worth doing."
He turned and limped away, his wooden leg tapping unevenly on the stone floor.
The two brothers watched him go.
Neither of them noticed that around the corner where Fleur Delacour had disappeared, a trace of light blue fabric was faintly visible, resting lightly against the wall.
Around that same corner, just out of sight, Fleur Delacour stood very still.
At the corners of her lips, almost imperceptible—a small, quiet smile.