Draco hadn't planned to attend the Quidditch match.
Since his rebirth, he had gradually come to understand that loud, celebratory occasions did nothing for him — they only hollowed him out further. The excitement and laughter that filled the stands brought him no joy; they served only as a constant, quiet reminder of the horror of the Battle of Hogwarts.
Sometimes he would look at a fellow student mid-laugh, in the middle of the corridor or at dinner, and see something else entirely superimposed over their face. He knew things about some of these people that they would never know about themselves.
He was afraid of their smiles.
All he could picture, when he tried too hard not to, was them lying still in the rubble — faces blank, eyes vacant. He thought about how easily it happened. How quickly. The fragility of it all pressed against the inside of his chest like something with weight.
He was even unsettled by small, ordinary things — oak leaves dropping from trees, candle flames going out, the wind making a mournful sound high above the castle. The innocent, careless happiness of people who did not know what was coming.
He was cowardly. He knew that. Timid, and selfish with it.
He could barely hold himself together; the thought of trying to hold someone else together as well was too much. And the grief that followed loss — the particular damage the dead left in the living — he had felt enough of that for one lifetime. Maintaining distance was simply the cleanest way to limit the damage.
For some people, he was the danger. Keeping away was the kindest thing.
He had told himself all of this, and he still came.
He stood in the Slytherin section of the Quidditch stands, reluctant and resigned. He already knew the result — Slytherin would lose badly, and there was no subtle, inconspicuous way to change that. The only sensible approach was to endure it. But he had a reason to be here, and so here he was.
This match was a rare opportunity to demonstrate to the Potter trio that Quirrell was their real problem.
Since their conversation in the library, a seed of doubt about Quirrell had taken root in Hermione's mind — but it remained speculation, unsupported by anything concrete, and she was too careful a thinker to commit to a theory without evidence. Draco needed to give that seed something to grow on.
Hermione Granger was not easily persuaded. But once persuaded, she became entirely unstoppable — the most tireless advocate in any room — and she had a particular gift for manoeuvring the other two into seeing reason. In her past life, she had guided Harry, step by painstaking step, through dangers he would never have survived alone, armed with nothing but books and a ferocious, uncompromising belief in doing the right thing.
She was the mind of the trio. A genuinely brilliant one. The kind of brilliance that solved problems others hadn't yet recognised as problems.
Potter and Weasley had always taken her for granted, in a way that quietly irritated Draco. Her achievements were absorbed into their story, her intelligence treated as a given, her contributions unremarked upon. Most people in her position would have resented it. She claimed she didn't care.
He had never entirely believed her. But then, she was capable of surprising him.
How someone like her existed, he still wasn't sure.
About five minutes into the match, exactly as he remembered it, Potter's broom began to shudder.
The moment the first tremor was visible from the stands, Draco stood, unhurried, and made his way along the row as though he simply fancied a change of position. He drifted to the back of the section, where Quirrell and Professor Snape were seated, and raised his binoculars to track the small figure struggling against the bucking Nimbus in the sky.
Then he waited.
She would come. He was certain of it.
He remembered — from another life, watching without understanding — a small girl with a Gryffindor scarf moving through the crowd toward the professors' row with entirely too much purpose for someone who was supposedly just trying to squeeze past. He had found it strangely compelling, even then. Not everyone would dare manoeuvre that close to Professor Snape with mischief in mind. He had never been sure, at the time, whether she was bold or simply hadn't known any better.
Either way, she had slipped off like a chipmunk with stolen goods, and he had laughed to himself before he knew why.
He didn't have to wait long.
Hermione arrived in a state of barely-contained panic, almost colliding with him before he caught her by the arm.
She was shaking. Her brown eyes were blazing, and both hands gripped her wand so tightly that her knuckles had gone pale.
"Draco, I just looked through the binoculars — Quirrell and Professor Snape, they're both muttering and staring at Harry — but I can't tell which one—" She was breathing hard, words tumbling over each other. "I don't know who I'm supposed to stop—"
She was on the verge of tears, he realised. Shock and fury fighting each other across her face.
"Hermione." He placed both hands firmly on her shoulders. "Listen to me. The curse breaks when eye contact is broken. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
She blinked at him, visibly trying to steady herself. Her wand hand was still trembling.
The noise of the crowd pressed in around them. He kept his voice low, leaning in close enough that she would hear him without being overheard — close enough to see her eyelashes, which were wet at the tips.
"We split up," he said, quickly and precisely. "One of us goes for Quirrell; if that does nothing, the other has Snape on the opposite side. That gap will tell us everything. One chance to distinguish the culprit. Stay with me."
Something shifted in her expression as he spoke — the frantic edge pulled back, just slightly. The steadiness of his hands on her shoulders seemed to anchor her.
He's here. He has a plan. She wasn't facing this alone.
"You'd go for Professor Snape?" she asked, her eyes wide. "You'd actually do that?"
Snape. The imposing Head of Slytherin House. The last person any student at Hogwarts — and certainly no Slytherin — would willingly cross. It wasn't a small thing to say.
"If it comes to it, yes," Draco said flatly, his jaw set.
Hermione exhaled. Her grip on her wand steadied.
She glanced up at Harry in the sky — clinging to the wildly bucking Nimbus with one hand, his whole body jerking with each violent spasm of the broom. Below him, the Weasley twins had flown up and were attempting to pull him across to one of their brooms, but every time they drew close the Nimbus lurched upward, out of reach. They had dropped back and were now circling below him, clearly positioning themselves to catch him if he fell.
There was no time to lose.
"I'll take Quirrell," she said, her voice dropping to a murmur. "I'll go first."
She moved without another word.
Pressing through the crowded row on the pretext of squeezing past, she stumbled — deliberately, sharply — into Quirrell from behind, sending him pitching forward into the seat in front. In the same motion, a small cluster of blue flames leapt silently from the tip of her wand and caught the hem of his turban.
Ten seconds later, Professor Quirrell was scrambling out of the stands with his headgear on fire.
Hermione was back at Draco's side almost immediately, one hand catching his sleeve. She was still wired with nerves — breathing fast, glancing between him and the sky.
"Did it work?" she asked urgently.
Draco had the binoculars raised. His expression was composed, almost studied. "He's back on the broom." He lowered the binoculars by a fraction, his mouth curving with an air of complete unsurprise. "Would you like to see?"
"Yes!"
He moved to take the binoculars from around his neck. He was too slow. Hermione ducked under his raised arm, slipping neatly between his arms to look through the lenses herself.
"Thank you!" she said, with total sincerity and zero awareness of what she had just done.
Draco went very still.
Hermione Granger was standing inside the circle of his arms, her back almost against his chest, peering through his binoculars as though this were the most ordinary arrangement in the world. Her hair — a great warm tangle of it — was practically in his face, and a few loose strands had apparently decided to tickle his cheek of their own volition.
She had even taken hold of his hand to adjust the angle.
In his previous life, this would have been utterly unthinkable.
In this life, she had also rested her head on his shoulder — quite casually, in the corridor on the fourth floor — without appearing to notice she'd done it. And now this.
He was Draco Malfoy. People did not simply commandeer him as a convenient binoculars stand.
Did she have any idea—?
Clearly not. Her entire attention was fixed on the small figure of Harry Potter far above the pitch, and the expression on her face had nothing to do with Draco whatsoever.
He stood there, holding perfectly still, and said nothing.
In the sky, Harry's broom gave one last violent shudder — and then Harry himself dived. A sharp, plummeting streak toward the ground. The crowd noise spiked. He pulled up at the last moment, landed hard, and bent double with his hand pressed to his mouth.
Something small and golden dropped into his palm.
He'd caught the Golden Snitch.
"Oh, that's wonderful!" Hermione's voice cracked with relief. Her eyes had gone bright with tears.
She turned around and threw her arms around him.
Draco's pupils contracted.
He stood rigid as cheers erupted in every direction, Hermione's arms wrapped tightly around him, her face buried briefly against his shoulder. The noise of the crowd was everywhere, but it seemed oddly distant.
She was warm. Her grip was real and unguarded and had nothing calculated about it.
He didn't move.
She pulled back almost immediately, looking up at him with a wide, unselfconscious smile. "Thank you, Draco. We won!"
His grey eyes were fixed on her. He could not immediately locate anything to say.
He had been certain, for a long time, that he was past the point of being surprised by his own reactions. That he had correctly identified himself as someone largely beyond being moved by things.
And then she did things like this.
She noticed his expression and paused — taking in, for the first time, the sea of silver and green surrounding them. Her gold-and-red scarf was extremely conspicuous.
A flicker of concern crossed her face, misreading him entirely. "Oh — I'm sorry. I should get back." She glanced once more at his still, unreadable expression — and fled.
She didn't see his expression change.
She didn't see the grey soften, or the light that surfaced briefly in his eyes as he watched her go.
"Congratulations," Draco said quietly to the retreating flash of red-and-gold scarf, to no one in particular.
He stood there a moment longer, alone in the noise.
Don't think about it. She's gone. Think about something useful.
Think about Potter being safe. Think about Snape's name being partially cleared, at least for now. Think about Slytherin's loss.
The House Cup was in serious trouble this year. He could feel it.
Potter had caught the Snitch in his mouth. In his mouth. Draco replayed the image with a kind of offended disbelief. What, precisely, was Gryffindor's definition of a "catch"?
He loved Quidditch. He always had — the specific, particular freedom of it, the clean rushing air, the sensation of the world falling away beneath a broom.
He had sacrificed several matches in his sixth year to the Dark Lord's demands, and that loss still rankled him in a way that few other things did.
He had always, quietly, envied Potter his Quidditch career. The talent, the recognition, the sheer straightforwardness of it. The way people cheered for him without complication.
If he were in the air right now — if it were him catching the Snitch — would people cheer like that?
He kept his expression carefully blank.
Would Hermione smile like that?
He looked out at the celebrating crowd, and noticed, somewhat to his own bewilderment, that the noise no longer made him feel only desolate.
Something — some very quiet, very tentative thing — had shifted.
His heart was still there. Still capable of making itself known.
Like a feather landing. Too light to be certain of, but undeniable all the same.
---
After the match, the Potters finally admitted to themselves what they had been too hasty to see before.
"Who'd ever have suspected Quirrell?" Potter told him, when he and Weasley made their way to the emptying stands to find Draco. "He always seemed so kind. Nervous, but kind."
"Nobody suspects the stutter," Draco said drily.
"We owe you an apology," Potter added, with the slightly pained expression of someone who had rehearsed this. "We were too quick to blame Professor Snape."
"It's not entirely our fault," Weasley interjected, with somewhat less grace. "Snape flies around the place like a great bat and docks points from everyone who isn't in Slytherin. He makes it very easy to assume the worst."
"If you applied half as much effort to your Potions as you do to complaining about the professor who teaches it," Draco said, "he might have considerably less to criticise."
Weasley opened and closed his mouth. Nothing came out.
"Fine," Weasley said, after a pause. "I've already won today. I won't lower myself."
Draco gave him a cold look and turned away.
That red-haired menace. A brain was a genuinely useful thing, and it was a shame he insisted on operating without one.
He walked back toward the castle in a thoroughly unimproved mood, and reflected that his opinion of Ronald Weasley remained entirely unchanged.
---
Side Story Two: The Awkward Slytherin (Harry's Perspective)
Harry still owed Draco Malfoy a Chocolate Frog.
When he'd first met Draco on the Hogwarts Express, he'd made up his mind based on a handshake and a few arrogant sentences — and then compounded the error by letting Professor Snape's sharp tongue do the rest of his thinking for him. He wasn't proud of it. He'd been unfair, and he knew it.
According to Hermione, while Quirrell had been busy cursing the Nimbus Two Thousand, it had been Professor Snape's counter-jinx that kept Harry from being thrown off entirely.
Thanks to Draco's prodding in the library, they hadn't accused an innocent man.
Harry wasn't sure how to feel about owing that much to a Slytherin, but he was trying to be honest with himself about it.
Draco was strange. He had this way of carrying himself — distant, self-contained, perpetually guarded — that made it very easy to assume he didn't care about anything. And then, without warning, he'd do something that quietly and decisively helped you, and then look at you as though daring you to mention it.
He seemed almost embarrassed by his own good deeds. As though being caught being decent was a personal failing he preferred not to advertise.
Harry thought he understood it, a little. Slytherins weren't supposed to help Gryffindors. There was probably a whole complicated internal politics to it that Harry didn't fully grasp.
Though — and this was a thought that genuinely unnerved him — Professor Snape seemed like a version of Draco who'd had about thirty more years of practice at being like that.
Harry sincerely hoped Draco didn't end up with the hair.
Still, even when Snape spent the next Potions lesson finding new creative ways to deduct points from Gryffindor, Harry found it difficult to work up the same old resentment. Snape was insufferably biased. He was mean in a way that felt personal even when it probably wasn't. Harry hadn't liked him before, and he didn't particularly like him now.
But the man had tried to save his life.
That didn't make the favouritism less infuriating. It just made it harder to reduce Snape to a simple villain.
He kept that thought to himself. Ron would never let him hear the end of it.