A glorious Slytherin tradition is to ridicule Gryffindors at every opportunity, seizing each occasion regardless of the consequences.
At dinner the following day, Pansy Parkinson put on her usual performance — a theatrical fainting spell — drawing enthusiastic cheers from the Slytherin girls clustered around her.
Draco knew at a glance exactly who she was trying to embarrass.
"Don't do that. It's tasteless," he said as he passed her. "I made that perfectly clear yesterday."
"I know you've got some connection with Potter's lot," Pansy said airily, turning to wink at her girlfriends before addressing Draco again. "But this is none of your business."
Pansy Parkinson.
Like Vincent Crabbe and Theodore Nott, she had been a childhood friend of Draco's.
He knew her character well.
She was arrogant in the way all spoiled Slytherin heiresses were, and could not tolerate disobedience of any kind.
"Who have you been spending time with over the holidays? You've picked up some dreadful habits." Draco cast a suspicious glance at the girls behind her and was rewarded with a burst of giggles.
"Who they spend time with isn't the point — I think they're absolutely right!" Pansy said dismissively, crossing her arms. "I've worked it all out. 'Scarhead Potter' is just exploiting Dumbledore's favouritism to do whatever he pleases. Last year's House Cup was a farce — each of them handed two hundred points for nothing, four hundred between them. Who can compete with that? What's the point of us working ourselves to the bone when Dumbledore can simply conjure points out of thin air?"
"And what does any of that have to do with faking a faint?" Draco said impatiently. "He didn't earn his points by collapsing dramatically."
"He earned them for the Chamber of Secrets business, and everyone fell over themselves to praise him! Just thinking about it makes my blood boil. Because of that wretched 'Heir of Slytherin' rumour last year, every student in this house spent months being pointed at and treated like dirt by the other three houses. Then the truth came out and it had nothing to do with us — and not a single person apologised. Not one." Pansy's face twitched. "And we got ten measly points for all of it. Ten. Tell me honestly, Draco — doesn't that make your blood boil? Don't you feel the slightest bit wronged?"
It was as though yesterday had come round again.
At this exact point in his past life, Pansy had railed at him in precisely the same way. The resentment amongst the other Slytherins had been just as visible.
Slytherins were inherently prouder than students from other houses. Most came from old pure-blood families and had been raised to see themselves as a cut above the rest. Yet these same students — who wore their pride like a crest on their robes — had been savaged by rumour during the Chamber of Secrets affair and spent months as objects of scorn for the rest of the school.
Who wouldn't feel the injustice? Who wouldn't feel their dignity had been stripped from them?
At the time, Draco had felt exactly as they did — resentful, humiliated, convinced that Potter and his friends had sailed through on Dumbledore's blind favouritism.
From a distance, he had seen Harry Potter as the most arrogant, self-aggrandising hypocrite in Hogwarts.
But in this life, having spent time close enough to Harry to witness firsthand the hardships he had faced in the Chamber of Secrets — having felt the suffocating dread of the Dementors himself — Draco could, to some extent, understand him now.
Harry didn't think that way.
More often than not, Harry was not in control of his own fate.
Harry Potter was a pitiful soul dragged forward by forces far beyond his choosing. What had he ever done to deserve it? Given the choice, he might have preferred his mother alive to see him off at Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. He might have preferred a life without the lightning bolt scar that others treated as a badge of glory — might have chosen, instead, to be an ordinary, happy little wizard fussed over by his parents.
What others saw as a halo, Harry carried like a shackle.
Draco thought this quietly to himself.
Pansy was still going. She shot a look of pure contempt at the Gryffindor table and announced, "I'm going to make Dumbledore's favourite little darling feel exactly what it's like to be mocked. He'll find out what the rest of the school thinks of him."
Pansy has completely lost her way. Draco exhaled softly.
The rivalry between houses, the friction between perspectives — none of it was any single student's fault. Laying all that resentment at Harry's feet and making him suffer further was simply wrong.
But Pansy didn't understand that, and neither did the other disgruntled students.
Any young person, hot-blooded and proud, would struggle to see past their own wound. They acted on instinct — on feeling, not reason — never pausing to consider whether their retaliation might strike someone innocent or simply widen the rift further.
"Is there truly nothing I can say to make you reconsider?" Draco asked, studying her defiant expression.
"Nothing whatsoever. Someone has to make 'Gryffindor's golden boy' pay for what Slytherin went through, and I'm happy to volunteer," Pansy said, her eyes glinting. "I'll laugh him out of the hall. I'll make sure everyone knows he's a coward. How could someone who faints at the sight of a Dementor possibly have faced a Basilisk? There must be some trickery involved. Soon enough, everyone will see him for what he really is."
"That's rather extreme," Draco said, a note of disapproval in his voice.
"Your loyalties have completely drifted toward the Gryffindors!" Pansy said, her expression sharpening. "Draco, if I hadn't grown up with you and known you my whole life, I'd think you were some pure-blood traitor's child. I've never said a word about your behaviour — you shouldn't interfere with mine. Even if you don't want to mock him yourself, don't stand in my way. Understood?"
"All right." Draco stepped closer, expression carefully blank, and dropped his voice to barely above a murmur — just enough for her ears alone. "Since you're so fond of gossip, I happen to have something your girlfriends might find very interesting. Last night. You and Blaise. The broom cupboard beneath the spiral staircase on the first floor. Shall I go on?"
"What?!" The haughty composure vanished from Pansy's face in an instant, replaced by something close to horror. "How did you know? Did Blaise tell you?"
"No. He said nothing. But I have my methods." Draco smiled at her without a trace of warmth. "Shall we find out how quickly a rumour can travel? Give those gossipy witches something to talk about besides Dementors?"
The Marauder's Map is, without question, exceptionally useful.
"You absolute — this is not how a gentleman behaves!" Pansy's composure crumbled entirely. She hissed through her teeth, "We were unlucky — Peeves locked us in — nothing happened — "
"A gentleman? I never claimed to be one. I'm a Malfoy. A Slytherin. Nothing more." He settled calmly into his usual seat and reached for his porridge, utterly unmoved by her furious stare. "Besides — how many people do you suppose will believe that excuse? Rumours have a way of taking the most uncharitable interpretation possible."
"Stop! Don't say another word! I'm not saying anything more," Pansy snapped, her eyes blazing.
"Voluntarily, then? Good. Don't say I forced you."
"That's enough!" she hissed. "You have absolutely no class, Draco Malfoy."
"Likewise," he said lazily.
"You'd better keep your mouth shut." She was trembling with barely restrained fury as she turned on her girlfriends. "Scatter! All of you! Daphne, stop gawking and go!"
Draco watched with quiet amusement as the group of reluctant, indignant girls dispersed like startled birds. He clicked his tongue. "You really did go to considerable trouble to assemble such a willing troupe."
"Don't push your luck. And you'd better hope I never discover you've been sneaking off to any broom cupboards yourself," Pansy ground out through clenched teeth.
Draco offered an indifferent shrug.
A filthy place like a broom cupboard? Perish the thought.
A moment later, Harry and his friends rushed into the Great Hall and settled at the Gryffindor table for breakfast. The hall was peaceful — the Dementors were not mentioned again.
Just as it should be. Draco thought with quiet satisfaction.
Pansy Parkinson wasn't a bad person.
In her own way, she was simply foolish — always willing to play the thankless role of the one who strikes first.
The truly shrewd ones stayed out of it. They lingered in the background, watching and waiting, quietly fanning the flames while Pansy charged into the fray.
She was just like him, once. For the vanity of being at the centre of things, of earning a particular kind of attention, she was willing to be nudged forward by those around her — to lead the mockery, to regard cruelty as her prerogative.
She wasn't unaware that her taunts caused pain. She knew perfectly well.
Hadn't she refused, just now, to become the subject of gossip herself?
She was simply numb to the pain of others. As long as it didn't touch her, she didn't truly feel it.
Just as Draco had not truly understood death until the day he learnt what Thestrals were.
By then, it was too late for regret.
The dead cannot be returned. And once enough damage has accumulated, some things simply cannot be undone.
In this life, he had no intention of falling into the same trap twice. It would be better for everyone if his circle of reckless friends remained as small as possible.
After Pansy's abrupt silencing, the Slytherin table had grown noticeably quieter.
Pansy Parkinson's tempers, her capriciousness, and her complete disregard for tact were well-known within the house.
She never concerned herself with what anyone else thought. Her world revolved around her own feelings. One moment she could be warmly affectionate; the next, she could turn on the very same person without warning. She could heap compliments on someone she found useful, or take apart anyone she disliked with surgical cruelty.
She took very few people seriously. She was backed by one of the oldest pure-blood families in Britain — one that had produced a Minister for Magic — and their web of connections and influence made her a dangerous enemy.
The Slytherin students muttered about her arrogance behind closed doors, of course. But to her face, they were scrupulously polite. Few wanted to provoke a witch so sharp-tongued, so volatile, and so thoroughly connected.
That Draco Malfoy had silenced her with a handful of quietly spoken words — who would dare underestimate him now?
With that particular storm put to rest, no one dared raise the subject of Dementors again.
All in all, it was a tolerably calm morning.
Draco took a last sip of hot coffee, feeling oddly distant, and strolled out of the Great Hall with a quiet sigh.
There were faint shadows beneath his eyes — a sign he hadn't slept well.
He was still plagued by nightmares from his past life. They clung to him like something rotten, and he'd had to submit to more than a few Memory-Dampening Draughts just to purchase a few hours of decent sleep.
Yesterday's Dementor attack had stirred them up again, and he had spent the night staring at the canopy of his four-poster in silence.
He regretted not taking the opportunity to ask Madam Pomfrey for a Dreamless Sleep Potion while he'd had the chance. But Hermione had been right beside him, listening intently, and he hadn't wanted her to hear — otherwise she would have turned that sharp, searching look on him and demanded a full confession.
Wilful, prying girl. And she was hardly without secrets of her own.
At quarter to nine, he was sitting in the Arithmancy classroom turning over the pages of Divination and Symbols, when the door banged open and Hermione rushed in, breathless.
He raised an eyebrow and gestured to the seat on his right. "I thought you were heading to Divination. I saw you walking toward the North Tower this morning with Harry and Ron."
"Draco, are you quite sure you weren't imagining it?" Hermione efficiently stacked the armful of thick books she was carrying onto the desk, fished out her quill and timetable, and gave him a slightly mysterious smile. "One can't exactly attend two classes simultaneously."
Draco eyed her stack of books — the topmost one was titled Mortal Philosophy: Why Muggles Don't Like to Ask Questions, which looked very much like a Muggle Studies text. He had every reason to be suspicious.
"I'm very curious about your timetable." In his past life, Hermione had taken Divination and famously fallen out with Professor Trelawney over it. Why was this life different?
His gaze drifted to the folded timetable on the desk. He reached for it.
Hermione's hand shot out and slapped his away. "Don't touch that."
"So fierce." He pulled his hand back with a theatrical pout and let the matter drop.
Best not to antagonise her. He had absolutely no patience for working through the complex calculations of Arithmancy with anyone else in this class.
At Hogwarts, very few students elected to take Arithmancy. Most preferred Divination — which was, in practical terms, far easier. Professor Trelawney didn't object to students inventing their own prophecies of doom, and was perfectly willing to award an Outstanding to anyone who could curse themselves convincingly enough. This was considerably less demanding than the precise, methodical calculations Professor Vector required.
So it was that before the professor arrived, Hermione put the same question to Draco.
"Why didn't you take Divination?"
Having already lived through the course — and having excellent reason to be wary of Professor Trelawney — were not answers he could give.
"I simply find Arithmancy more interesting," he said, stifling a yawn to mask the lie. "It's a discipline built on consistent rules and rigorous mathematics. It feels more credible than interpreting tea leaves or squinting at crystal balls."
Hermione looked thoroughly satisfied with this answer.
"I completely agree — Divination is nonsense by comparison," she said, with the conviction of someone recalling a personal grievance.
Professor McGonagall, who taught Transfiguration, shared the same view — and she made no effort to hide it.
In her very first lecture on the subject of Animagi, she had dismissed Divination outright, calling it the least rigorous of all magical disciplines.
"Professor Trelawney predicted that Harry would die," Hermione murmured to him as their Transfiguration professor continued her disapproving remarks.
Draco wasn't surprised. That was exactly how it had played out in his past life — the death prophecy had caused quite a stir.
But — "How did you know?" he asked, puzzled. They had walked together from Arithmancy to Transfiguration without anyone mentioning it. When had she heard?
Hermione only smiled without answering, turning back to listen as Professor McGonagall roundly dismissed Divination as "unreliable, sloppy, and intellectually dishonest."
Behind them, Ron was muttering darkly about omens and ill fortune. Harry, by contrast, simply looked subdued.
The third-year timetable was considerably heavier than second year, which meant most students were bolting their lunches. Draco sat at the Slytherin table feeling vaguely drowsy, glanced at his afternoon schedule, and felt a familiar, sinking dread settle in his stomach.
Care of Magical Creatures. The Hippogriff.
He had not forgotten. He had simply been trying not to think about it. He drank a large cup of coffee, mechanically finished a sizable portion of steak, and braced himself.
Without warning, he spotted Hermione across the hall — she was snapping something at Ron, then snatching up her bag and heading for the castle doors with the expression of someone who had been deeply insulted.
What on earth has happened now? He watched her go until she disappeared through the entrance, then made up his mind without fully questioning why. He grabbed a green apple from the fruit bowl, shoved it into his robe pocket, and strode quickly after her.
He told himself his reasons were entirely sound: there was the mystery of Hermione Granger's timetable to investigate, after all. The more she refused to discuss it, the more intriguing it became. Catching up with her was simply the logical course of action.
That was all. His reasoning was perfectly sound.
"You seem upset. Are you alright?" he asked, falling into step beside her as she headed down the grassy slope toward the edge of the Forbidden Forest.
The rain from the previous days had cleared, leaving a pale, luminous grey sky overhead.
The grass underfoot was still faintly damp. Hermione drew a long breath; the fresh, clean scent of the earth after rain filled her lungs and lifted her mood a fraction.
"Oh, it's nothing serious," she said, aiming for casual. "I've just been reminded that I'm not actually good at everything."
She was particularly sensitive to those words, and Draco noticed how her lips pressed down at the corners when she said them.
"No one can be good at everything," he said. "Twenty-four hours is not very much time. Doing well at the things that matter to you is achievement enough."
"But I think you can do anything," Hermione said, glancing at him with an expression of mild frustration.
"You haven't seen me in Care of Magical Creatures," he replied, entirely serious. "I can't even manage my own textbook."
He held up The Monster Book of Monsters by way of illustration — it was bound tightly with rope, writhing with unmistakable resentment.
"You need to stroke it along the spine." Hermione couldn't quite suppress a laugh. She simply took the book from him and began to demonstrate.
In the process, her fingers brushed against his.
It felt like a small shock of static — sharp and unexpected. She pulled her hand back quickly, not daring to look at him, keeping her eyes fixed on the book as she continued the demonstration.
Good heavens, is there a charm misfiring somewhere? She was entirely at a loss.
Draco had felt it too. It travelled up his fingers, along his arm, and landed somewhere in the region of his chest. He glanced at her once, briefly, and said nothing.
She was still demonstrating. Her quick, graceful fingers ran lightly along the spine of the book; the battered, brown-green volume trembled slightly, then fell open in her palm and lay still.
"Dangerous creatures, demented textbooks — I shall be relying entirely on Miss Hermione Granger for my survival today." Draco concealed whatever it was he was feeling, and addressed the surrounding air in a tone of theatrical declaration.
Hermione laughed despite herself — but the smile faded quickly.
She thought of the disastrous Divination lesson. And the static. Was it simply because she had too much hair?
She glanced at the boy beside her, only to find his grey eyes already on her — pale and thoughtful, reflecting the shifting light of the clouds. She looked away at once.
"Shall we go?" she said quickly.
"Let's go." His tone was easy, as if the whole thing had been entirely one-sided.
Hermione let out a quiet breath and walked on beside him, the two of them exchanging cutting remarks about Divination and subjecting Professor Trelawney's theories on fate to a thorough demolition.
"In the end, I believe our destiny ought to be our own to shape," she concluded, maintaining a careful distance from him.
"You've always believed that," he said quietly, keeping the same measured space between them.
Hagrid's cabin came into view. A handful of students were already waiting, all looking entirely defeated by their textbooks. Some had tied them shut; some had crammed them into bags so tight the bags were bulging; one enterprising student had clamped the pages together with an enormous binder clip.
"Let's help them," Draco said, noting that Hermione had been distracted since the Divination lesson. He looked out at the struggling students and added, "You do want Hagrid's first class to go well, don't you?"
Hermione hesitated for barely a second before nodding. He took her heavy bag from her without ceremony — then immediately frowned at the weight of it. How many books had she packed?
Still, watching her move among the other students with purpose, her manner brightening as she showed each of them the correct technique, was satisfying in its own way.
Draco, of course, already knew how to quieten the book — his mother had told him when she bought it, and he'd been through the class once before. He simply had no interest in drawing attention to himself today. If Hagrid noticed him, there was every chance he'd end up demonstrating something involving that enormous bird, and he had no intention of repeating that particular experience.
The lesson went fairly smoothly. This time, almost every student — Neville Longbottom being the notable exception — managed to open their textbook without injury. Hagrid was visibly delighted.
Just as in Draco's first life, the newly appointed Care of Magical Creatures professor — in his moleskin coat, with his enormous, fierce-looking but thoroughly cowardly boarhound at his heels — ushered the class to a paddock at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, where a dozen or so Hippogriffs waited.
They were hardly creatures one could call endearing. They had the hind legs, bodies, and tails of horses, and the forelegs, wings, and great curved beaks of eagles. Even having seen them before, Draco found them unsettling.
"…Walk toward it, bow, and wait. If it bows back, you may approach. If it doesn't — move away immediately. Their talons are not for decoration," Hagrid said, beaming at his students. "Now then — who wants to go first?"
Silence.
Hermione looked at the nearest Hippogriff's steel-grey beak and took an involuntary step backward, directly beside Draco.
She was still smarting from the morning, so much so that she had positioned herself apart from Harry and Ron entirely, separated from them by a large boulder. She had chosen to stand next to Draco instead.
He was the only one who had bothered — genuinely bothered — to make her laugh rather than poke at her sore spots.
He had never once mocked her for not being good at something.
Hagrid asked again. Still no volunteers. In the end, Harry was nudged forward by Ron — there was no graceful way to refuse with Hagrid looking on with such naked pride and anticipation.
Harry stepped up, met the orange-eyed stare of the Hippogriff called Buckbeak, and gave an awkward bow, exactly as instructed.
Buckbeak stared at him. The class held its breath. Hagrid shifted his weight nervously.
Then Harry moved to step back — and his foot came down on a dry twig. The crack split the silence.
Every student stiffened.
Hermione forgot entirely about the morning. Worry flooded through everything else. Harry looked very small against the Hippogriff's spreading wings, and her heart was hammering.
Then Buckbeak bowed — and the field exhaled as one.
But Harry was reaching toward the creature's head now, his hand drifting closer to that cold steel-coloured beak —
"What if it bites him? It looks like it's about to open its — " Hermione heard her own voice, thin with panic, and without thinking she seized the hand of the boy beside her.
He didn't flinch. He turned his hand over without hesitation, fingers folding around hers as naturally as if he'd been expecting it.
The shock she'd felt earlier returned — sharper now, spreading up through her hand and settling somewhere deeper.
She went completely still.
This has absolutely nothing to do with static electricity, she thought, with a kind of quiet despair.
She didn't know what was wrong with her — why her heart was pounding like this, why her mind had gone so entirely blank.
It almost felt as if there was a small, second heartbeat between her fingers.
"He'll be fine. Don't worry." He didn't turn to look at her. He simply tilted his head slightly and spoke close to her ear, his voice low and even.
The breeze shifted, and a few strands of platinum-blonde hair grazed her earlobe.
His hand remained around hers — warm, unhurried, like the autumn air.
She thought, involuntarily, of a dim corridor in Bath and the smell of roses filling the dark. She thought of Slughorn's airless potions room, his hand steady over hers as they stirred, his hair brushing her ear as he leaned over the cauldron. She thought of the darkened train compartment, his arm around her, warding off something she had no words for.
Her heart had pounded just like this, each time.
Harry had already taken flight on Buckbeak's back. Most of the class was craning upward, watching the great wings cut across the sky.
Only Hermione stood without moving.
Her heart was still racing at a rate she found genuinely alarming — and she was beginning to suspect it had nothing to do with Buckbeak.
Hagrid ambled over, wearing an enormous grin. "Well? What did you think of my first lesson, Hermione?"
"It was — very — wonderful," she managed, and promptly released Draco's hand as if she'd only just noticed it.
"I was up at five this morning getting everything ready." Hagrid couldn't have looked more pleased with himself. "Wanted to make a proper impression."
Hermione smiled at him warmly.
Hagrid, thoroughly gratified, trotted back to the paddock and began enthusiastically inviting students to come and meet the other Hippogriffs. After witnessing Harry's apparently successful flight, most of the class had lost their earlier terror; a few were now pressing forward eagerly, peppering Hagrid with questions. The paddock rang with noise.
Draco didn't join them.
He stood apart, under the sweeping branches of a sycamore tree, staring at his own empty hand.
She had let go the moment Hagrid appeared — just as abruptly as she'd taken hold. He had walked away without a word.
He seemed to be constitutionally incapable of refusing her anything. If she reached for his hand, his hand was simply there. And it had felt — for that one strange moment — as though she filled something in him that had been hollow for a very long time. Then she had withdrawn, and the emptiness returned, worse than before.
Merciless girl. She had emptied him out completely. Even his throat was dry.
The taste of green apples.
Draco reached into his robe pocket with a sense of resigned necessity and bit into the apple.
If you can't fill the heart, fill the stomach. He looked at her without meaning to — her face flushed faintly in the autumn light, warm and unguarded.
The apple made a crisp, clean sound between his teeth.
Hermione turned and found him watching her. She noticed things she couldn't easily ignore — the deliberate way he was biting into it, the scent of it drifting over, tart and fresh, the slow sound of him chewing with every appearance of contentment.
And he was looking at her the entire time.
For one completely unhinged moment, she felt rather like the apple.
This is an absurd thought. "Hermione Granger, have you lost your mind?" she told herself firmly.
"Aren't you going to look at the Hippogriffs?" She fought to locate her normal voice while he continued watching her. "Half horse, half eagle? Remarkable magical creature?"
"I'm genuinely not interested in that particular activity, and I maintain that this is entirely in Hagrid's best interests." Draco cast a glance in Hagrid's direction, apparently weighing some private score-settling against present circumstances. "In this lifetime, I have absolutely no intention of provoking a creature with a ten-inch talons and a very short temper."
He shook his head, settled more comfortably against the trunk of the sycamore, and redirected his attention pointedly to the apple.
"That is the flimsiest excuse I have ever heard," Hermione said.
Something in her head told her clearly that stepping closer was inadvisable — that it would lead somewhere unpredictable, that she should hold her ground. She stepped closer anyway.
She tilted her head to look at him properly. The sunlight filtering through the treetops caught his lashes, tinting them pale gold.
He didn't speak. He just looked up at her from under those lashes and smiled.
"Why do you always have green apples?" she asked, a helpless smile breaking through despite everything.
"Want some?" He held it out to her with an expression of complete innocence.
"No, I'm not hungry." She looked at his hand — the hand that had so recently been holding hers. The fingers were curved around the apple now, gripping it easily. She dropped her gaze. "Are you? Full, I mean. Are you full?"
"I was. But lately I find myself hungry at odd moments." He bit into the apple again with quiet deliberateness, eyes steady on her face. "Or perhaps it isn't hunger exactly. Perhaps I simply like the taste of it."
Hermione stared at his mouth and lost her train of thought entirely.
His answers didn't quite parse. His expression was doing something unusual. Her face was warm.
She should change the subject. She should say something else. She should look at the Hippogriffs.
She wanted to look away and couldn't choose where to look. A light breeze moved along her cheek, and above them the sycamore stirred. She looked up instinctively — and watched the first autumn leaf spiral slowly down from the canopy, drifting past his pale hair and cool grey eyes, before settling without a sound on the still-green grass below.
That quiet landing reached directly into her chest.
It disrupted something.
Hermione Granger became aware, with a peculiar and growing certainty, that something was not right.
Something was, in fact, decidedly wrong. Ever since the Care of Magical Creatures lesson had ended, her chest had felt tight and her face had felt warm.
"Are you sure you're alright?" Hagrid appeared beside her, expression creased with concern. "You've looked a bit peaky since the middle of the lesson. There's quite a wind coming off the Forest — easy to catch a chill with autumn setting in. Might be worth stopping in at the hospital wing for something."
So, when the bell rang, Hermione found herself making her way back toward the castle at considerable speed, where she knocked on Madam Pomfrey's door and asked, somewhat desperately, for a Pepperup Potion.
Madam Pomfrey gave the young Malfoy boy waiting outside the door a measured look, then examined Hermione, said nothing pointed, and dispensed the potion.
"One dose only," she instructed, seeing Hermione — still expressing extravagant gratitude — out the door.
As the door closed behind them, Madam Pomfrey remained standing quietly on the other side of it.
"All the same," she murmured to herself, "it never hurts to be prepared."
"I loathe this stuff," Hermione complained in a thoroughly undignified manner, grimacing as she drank the potion in the corridor outside the hospital wing. "Why do Pepperup Potions make my ears steam and burn for hours? There must be a way to reformulate it and eliminate that side effect."
"It's certainly worth investigating. But are you feeling alright?" Draco asked, studying her.
He had already thought: with her complete indifference to coats and scarves, it was only a matter of time before she caught a cold.
Hermione tossed the empty phial into the waste bin by the door, sneezed with great feeling, and said flatly, "This is horrible."
"You look horrible." He stepped closer with an air of clinical concern, ducked his head slightly — brushing a strand of pale hair back — and pressed his forehead lightly to hers to check her temperature.
Hermione's eyes went wide.
His face was extremely close. The tip of his nose was nearly touching hers. He smelled of clean air and green apples and something else she couldn't name.
Too close — her pulse lurched into an erratic rhythm.
"What are your current symptoms?" He drew back from her forehead, but his grey eyes remained fixed on her.
"My face is burning. My ears are — well, steaming, obviously. My legs feel unsteady. And my heart is beating very fast," she began, itemising her symptoms with the automatic thoroughness of someone raised to be thorough, and then registered what she was saying and stopped.
"Temperature's normal, at least, but you are genuinely quite red — more so than before, if anything." Draco studied her for a moment, then simply took hold of her arm and guided her to the bench by the door. "Sit down."
Hermione sat, feeling somewhat dizzy.
After a period of quiet thought, he frowned. "I did say that Magical Creatures was a questionable class. Hauling students to the edge of the Forbidden Forest and leaving them standing in the cold wind for an hour —"
"This has nothing to do with Hagrid." Hermione raised a limp hand in dismissal. "No one else seems to have caught anything."
"Then you're under too much academic pressure. It's the first day of term, for Merlin's sake." Draco picked up the top book from the stack she'd set down beside her and squinted at the cover. "'Seeing the Future Through the Fog'? Why have you got that? Is that for a course?"
She turned to say something and made the mistake of looking at his face — and felt a sudden, internal catastrophe, as though all the air had been pressed out of her.
It was the Pepperup Potion. It had to be. She thought this with the conviction of someone choosing to believe something very badly.
"And this one — 'Family Life and Social Habits of British Muggles.'" Draco frowned at it. "A Muggle Studies textbook? Hermione, you're Muggle-born. Do you genuinely need this?"
She did not look at him again.
"I find it interesting to study Muggle life from a wizarding perspective — it opens up a different way of looking at things," she said weakly, gripping the edge of the bench. The steam from her ears was making it extremely difficult to marshal a coherent argument.
"Even so, you're not carrying these around all day when you already have a full timetable," Draco said with a note of exasperation.
Hermione said nothing. She sat hunched on the bench with her collar pulled up around her chin.
"Where are you heading next? Back to the dormitory for a rest?"
"I still need to go to the library — Professor McGonagall's essay won't write itself," she said, and started to get up.
She noticed Draco's expression go flat.
"You're ill," he pointed out.
"I'm barely ill. I'm practically recovered," she said, face very pink.
"Fine." The word was clipped. He picked up her entire pile of books, tucked them under his arm, and set off down the corridor at a brisk pace.
"Where are you going with those?" Hermione scrambled after him, all dignity abandoned.
"The library," he said impatiently, and — subtly, just barely noticeably — slowed down. "Were you going to carry all of that yourself? In your condition?"
"Oh," she said quietly. "Thank you."
"Of course you should thank me. I wouldn't even carry my own books if I could help it," Draco said, affecting his best air of imperious inconvenience, while taking very particular care not to let a single volume slide.
Hermione walked beside him, arms free, still occasionally sneezing. A smile settled quietly onto her face.
Madam Pomfrey stood behind the closed door of the hospital wing for a long moment.
She watched the two of them disappear down the corridor, her expression warm and knowing.
"Oh my," she said softly. "How utterly sweet."
"Ugh. It's revolting." From behind the curtain of a bed in the ward behind her, a dark-haired patient held out a cup of potion with the expression of a man facing a genuine ordeal. His face — handsome beneath its current pallor and grimace — was contorted in protest.
"Sirius, you are not a child. Do not make me feed it to you myself. Drink every last drop, and I mean every last drop." Madam Pomfrey's eyes snapped back to their usual brisk authority. She put her hands on her hips and swept back through the ward without another word.