One Saturday in December, Hogwarts awoke to find itself buried under several feet of snow, the lake frozen solid.
On this particular day, Ron Weasley stood in the doorway of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes and found himself completely speechless.
"Merlin! I can't believe it! How did they do all this?" he said to Harry in hushed awe, stepping inside.
It was an open day in Hogsmeade before Christmas.
The village streets were strung with lights and colourful decorations, every rooftop buried in snow, the rows of shops resembling iced biscuits lined up on a baking tray. There was warmth and noise everywhere—carol singers near the post office, shoppers spilling in and out of doorways, the smell of hot chestnuts drifting from somewhere nearby.
And yet Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes was instantly recognisable from halfway down the street.
Its decorations were so extravagant, so defiantly festive—some bizarre collision of Halloween and Christmas—that the shop seemed to radiate its own atmosphere. Gasps and laughter rippled outward from it in waves, infecting passersby halfway up the next street.
"If it weren't for those Dementors on the corner—and Professor Snape—today would be perfect," Harry said happily to Draco, peering from the doorway at the rows of colourful products filling every shelf.
In anticipation of today's Hogsmeade visit, Harry had been on his very best behaviour in Potions—resisting all temptation to cause trouble—giving Snape no opening to find fault. Unfortunately, the professor seemed to be haunting him regardless. Just a few minutes earlier, Harry had spotted a flutter of black robes and a pair of cold, dark eyes at a street corner.
"He won't do anything to you," Draco said, with only a trace of impatience. "He's a Hogwarts professor. He's not going to attack a student in the middle of Hogsmeade."
"You haven't done anything wrong, Harry," Hermione added. "There's no reason to be afraid of him."
She was considerably less cowed by Professor Snape than she had once been. The Wolfsbane sessions had not softened her opinion of the man—he remained as cutting as ever—but she had come to acknowledge, if grudgingly, that he was genuinely talented and willing, in his own thorny way, to teach.
"But I heard Sirius sent him a Howler the day before yesterday," Harry said, still uneasy. "And apparently made a mess of his office."
"So *that's* why you got into Hogsmeade so easily!" Ron shouted from somewhere inside the shop, with a delighted laugh. "Your godfather's brilliant! I'd love to know what he actually yelled in that thing!"
Harry smiled—genuinely, this time.
"It's good to have a godfather," he said to Draco, looking thoroughly pleased. "Uncle Vernon would never have signed my Hogsmeade permission slip—let alone sent threatening letters on my behalf. He'd be more likely to punish me for existing." He paused. "What did you actually say to him, last time? He's been much better since then. He replies to my letters now and always includes a lot of sweets."
Draco did not answer the question directly. Instead, he said, with a certain air of suggestion, "Yes, it is good to have a godfather. I imagine he might send you a rather exceptional Christmas present."
Harry looked expectant, then shook his head with a small smile. "I'll be grateful for anything he sends. Just having him as my godfather is already the best gift I could ask for."
"Stop hanging around out there!" Ron hollered from inside. "Harry, you have to see this!"
Harry, momentarily forgetting both Snape and his curiosity about Sirius's change of heart, plunged happily into the shop after his friend.
Draco glanced toward the corner where the dark robes had been. He was fairly certain that had been Snape.
The question was: what was Snape doing in Hogsmeade, and why had he been watching Harry?
He didn't seem like the sort of man who would stand down simply because someone's family shouted at him. What, exactly, had Sirius Black put in that Howler?
He was still turning this over when a hand caught the back of his sleeve.
"Draco. I need to talk to you." Hermione's voice was quiet and extremely serious. "Come with me."
He turned. Her lips were pressed firmly together, her expression unusually resolute.
It was a rare free day outside the castle—shouldn't she be excited? He looked her over, and something in her face made his own expression shift. His heart gave an odd knock. He turned and followed her without a word.
Hermione led him a considerable distance. They followed a path between rows of tall, snow-laden trees, leaving the noise of the village well behind, and headed straight for one of the quieter roads at the edge of the village—stopping only when they reached the Shrieking Shack.
There was no one else here. Only the howling north wind, the iron fence stretching across the hillside, and the lonely shape of the Shack itself on the frozen wasteland beyond, silent and desolate.
Hermione stood facing it, not turning back. After a moment, a few snowflakes began to drift down. One landed on her nose; the cold wind made her sneeze.
"All right, Hermione. What is it?" Draco finally asked, moving up beside her and positioning himself between her and the worst of the wind coming off the wasteland. "Why all the way out here?"
"Because it's a secret, and I need to be certain no one can hear it." She turned and looked at him sharply, the wariness of a cat that has spotted something it can't quite identify. "You know, don't you? Those hints you've been dropping—you were doing it deliberately."
"I'm not sure what you mean," Draco said carefully, his mind running rapidly through the considerable list of secrets he was currently keeping from her.
"Don't pretend! Every full moon, he falls ill and takes leave—and Professor Snape covers his classes. At the same time, Professor Snape inexplicably needs help brewing Wolfsbane Potion for someone." Her voice wavered slightly with the weight of saying it aloud. "Professor Lupin is a werewolf, isn't he?"
"Ah." Draco exhaled. "That." The knot in his chest loosened, and his manner returned to its usual ease.
Hermione did not find this reaction satisfying. She stared at him in silence, waiting for a definite answer.
"With your intelligence, I'd have thought you worked it out weeks ago," he said, by way of confirmation. He noticed a snowflake settling into her hair and leaned forward to pick it out—carefully, before it could melt and soak in.
"I'd had vague suspicions," she said. "But our conversation confirmed it. Why didn't you simply tell me?" Her voice softened slightly, despite herself.
His hands moving through her hair sent a faint, tingling warmth across her scalp—careful and unhurried, as if the snowflakes were something worth attending to. It was not an unpleasant feeling. It was, in fact, unsettlingly pleasant.
"Why the riddles?" she pressed, though her tone had lost some of its edge.
His grey eyes, lit with the reflected brightness of the snow, were fixed on her with a focused attention that made it rather difficult to maintain righteous indignation. She forced herself to hold his gaze and not look away.
He noticed her expression—the combination of annoyance and puzzlement—and felt a sudden, ungentlemanly urge to reach out and pinch her cheek. He did not act on it.
"More snowflakes are falling on you," he said instead, still picking them out with great deliberation.
"Don't change the subject!" She lowered her head in frustration, watching the tiny marks in the snow at her feet. "Sometimes I feel completely foolish—following along behind your hints, trying to guess what you're actually saying. Why do you do that to me?"
"I thought you liked puzzles," he said, with a faint smirk.
"I like puzzles I'm allowed to solve. I don't like being deliberately kept in the dark. There is a significant difference." She looked up, defiant. "If you had just told me directly, I would have believed you."
He went still.
"You'd believe me?" His tone shifted, carrying a note of genuine uncertainty—as though the idea were something he couldn't quite get his footing on.
"Of course I would. Why wouldn't I?" She looked at him squarely, and there was nothing guarded in her expression. Only a direct, uncomplicated certainty.
There shouldn't be that kind of trust in her eyes. Not directed at him. She should be cautious. She should be at least a little wary—that was simply how Hermione Granger ought to regard Draco Malfoy.
He stood very still, his hand paused in her hair.
"I—" he said, at last, very quietly. "I'm deeply grateful for that."
The sincerity in his voice caught her off guard. She studied his face, trying to read the look in his eyes—something complicated there, surprise and confusion and, underneath it all, something fragile and unexpectedly tender, like the ash left after a long-dead fire.
Why was he so moved? Did he really believe she didn't trust him? Had she somehow given him that impression?
Did he think just anyone could stroke her hair and coax her to sleep, and that she'd have let them?
Hermione felt her face go warm, somewhere between indignant and touched.
"So." He changed the subject, visibly collecting himself. "What are you going to do about it? Report him, or say nothing?"
She opened her mouth to answer—and then saw something over his shoulder.
"Draco." Her voice dropped. "The Shrieking Shack is supposed to be empty, isn't it?"
"Famously so. The most haunted building in Britain," he said, still absorbed in the snowflakes.
"*Look.*" She seized his arm and pointed.
He turned. In one of the dark upper windows of the Shrieking Shack, a faint light flickered.
He went very still. In all the times he had walked past that building, he had never seen anything like it.
"Let's go," he said quietly. An instinct he had learned to trust was sending up a warning. "Come on—away from the Shack."
"Yes," Hermione said. She took hold of his sleeve and they turned back the way they had come.
They had only gone a few steps when a snowball came from nowhere.
It shot directly at Draco. He tilted his head; it whistled past his fur-trimmed hat.
"Who's there?" His voice cut across the empty, snow-muffled air.
Silence.
He scanned the space around them, tension running through him. He took a step closer to Hermione—she had gone pale—and raised his wand.
A second snowball. This one aimed at Hermione.
He deflected it with a sharp flick of his wand, sending ice and snow scattering in all directions—and in the same movement, his free arm swept around her and pulled her firmly against him. He turned sideways, positioning himself between her and the direction the snowballs were coming from, wand raised and steady.
Hermione had no time to react. One moment she was standing in the snow; the next she was held against him, his arm solid around her, his body blocking the wind.
Something detonated quietly in her chest.
She pressed her face against his shoulder, breathing rapidly, very much aware that her face was on fire. A strange, dizzying lightness was spreading through her—she had to work quite hard at simply staying upright.
"Wand, Hermione," he said sharply.
She surfaced, hands unsteady, and managed to draw her wand on the second try. She aimed it forward alongside his.
She did not look at him.
Looking straight ahead, she told herself. Reason clearly agrees. Look straight ahead.
She looked at him anyway.
His profile was entirely focused—sharp-edged and very still, the kind of concentrated calm that was somehow worse than ordinary attractiveness. She looked away again, immediately.
Two lines of footprints appeared in the snow ahead of them, moving toward them from the treeline. Someone had cast a Disillusionment Charm.
"Show yourself," Draco said coldly, wand trained on the approaching prints. "Or I will cast a curse."
Two figures materialised. Harry and Ron, doubled over with laughter, pulling an Invisibility Cloak from over their heads.
"Harry! *Ron!*" Hermione exclaimed, equal parts relieved and mortified, her face now approximately the same colour as her hat. "You are absolutely terrible!"
"I know, I know, I'm sorry—" Harry wheezed, clearly not sorry in the slightest. "I just couldn't stop myself."
"We were hiding from Snape originally!" Ron managed, wiping his eyes. "Then we spotted you two, and—" He dissolved again. "Your faces! You looked like you were preparing to defend the castle!"
"It wasn't funny," Draco said, lowering his wand with a frown. "I could have seriously hurt you."
"He means it," Hermione said firmly, putting her wand away. She glanced at Draco. "What spell were you about to cast?"
"Confringo, most likely. Or Expulso," he said, with a fairly casual air.
Harry's laughter cut off. "We threw *snowballs*. Draco, that's—"
"Has anyone ever told you," Ron said, looking between Draco and the hand still resting at Hermione's waist, "that you can be genuinely alarming? Especially when it comes to protecting people?"
"Possibly," Draco said. He removed his arm quietly, making a show of putting away his wand.
Hermione became very interested in brushing snowflakes off her hair.
"Harry!" A familiar, slightly threadbare voice came from across the road. Professor Lupin was approaching, his worn robes no match for the temperature, his expression warm despite looking as though he hadn't slept enough in quite some time. "What are you all doing out here?"
Hermione took a small, involuntary step back. As Lupin drew closer, her expression grew careful and watchful. Without quite noticing she had done it, her hand found the hem of Draco's robe.
"Don't be nervous," he said quietly, tilting his head just slightly toward hers. "Stay calm. Act natural."
Hermione glanced at him sideways. The last embers of her earlier state of mind were not quite extinguished; his breath against her ear was not helping. She made a decision: focus on the werewolf professor, who was at least a safely external concern.
Lupin smiled at Harry in his warm, unhurried way. He glanced at the Shrieking Shack, and something flickered briefly across his face.
"Anything unusual going on?" he asked.
They all shook their heads.
"Professor Lupin, what are you doing in Hogsmeade?" Harry asked.
"Meeting a friend—though he seems to be running late." Lupin looked back at Harry with a slight smile. "As it happens, I've been wanting to catch up with you. Shall we all go into the Three Broomsticks? A warm Butterbeer would do everyone good."
"I second that," Ron said, teeth chattering. "I can't feel my toes."
Draco was happy to agree. He glanced at Hermione and caught her giving him a small, genuine nod—a crowd, she had clearly decided, was considerably safer than a deserted road.
So the five of them made their way back through the swirling snow, ducked down a side street, and escaped the cold into the warm, smoky, cheerfully overcrowded Three Broomsticks.
They found a table in the corner—slightly cleaner than the others—and settled in with large mugs of frothy Butterbeer.
Draco took a sip and felt warmth spread immediately from his stomach outward.
"Happy Christmas." He raised his mug to Hermione and Ron. The glow of the fire, the hum of voices, the smell of spiced ale and candle smoke—it was, despite everything, extremely pleasant.
Lupin and Harry had remained standing near a frosted window, speaking in low voices, their reflections dim against the glass.
Hermione wasn't touching her Butterbeer. She was watching Harry and Lupin over the rim of her mug with round, anxious eyes.
"It's the last week of term," Draco said, glancing at her with mild amusement. He took another sip. "He's not going to turn into a werewolf in a crowded pub."
Hermione chose to express her feelings about this remark with a very pointed look.
How long had he known? How could he have simply carried on as normal, knowing what he knew?
"I feel like you two have been having a private conversation no one else is party to for weeks," Ron said, looking between them with narrowed eyes as he sorted through his purchases—a bag of Dungbombs, some Hiccough Sweets, a bar of Frog Spawn Soap.
"Nothing significant," Draco said pleasantly.
"You have a cat too, haven't you?" Ron said, apparently following his own train of thought. From his expression, he had arrived at Crookshanks.
Draco simply raised his eyebrows in response.
"It is *not* nothing significant," Hermione said, directing this at Draco with feeling. "You, of all people—the one who supposedly hates risk—"
"Yes," he said lazily, raising his mug toward her. "Brave and fearless Gryffindor."
Hermione opened her mouth, shut it, and took a furious gulp of Butterbeer.
Then she realised she had Butterbeer foam all round her mouth.
"Hermione—" Draco raised his eyebrows and gestured vaguely in the direction of his own lips.
"What?" she said.
He indicated again, more clearly.
"What riddle is this?" she said irritably, and took another gulp, deciding to ignore him.
The extra sip made things considerably worse. Draco looked at the result, reached sideways for a paper napkin, and—without particular ceremony—simply wiped the foam away himself.
Hermione startled. She leaned back, caught between the impulse to escape and the sudden stillness of being looked at very directly at close range.
"Don't move," he said, his expression matter-of-fact, grey eyes unsettling at this proximity. He pressed the napkin against her lips gently, twice, then drew back.
"Better." He tilted his head, considered the result, and tossed the napkin onto the table.
Hermione's next attempt at a dignified sip ended in a cough.
"*Anapneo.*" He tapped her between the shoulder blades with his wand, then patted her back. "Could you be careful?"
"I didn't do it on purpose!" Her face was scarlet.
The patting was gentle and steady, and her brain was not cooperating with her in the slightest.
"Merlin's pants," Ron said, giving them both the look of a person who has ceased to understand his surroundings. He turned back to his nose-biting teacup.
Harry reappeared and dropped into the seat opposite Hermione, looking pleased. "Professor Lupin is going to give me private Patronus lessons!"
"Brilliant!" Ron said immediately.
"What did he say?" Draco asked, his hand still resting lightly on Hermione's back.
"That the Dementors have an unusual fixation on me and that I need extra practice." A shadow passed across Harry's face, then cleared. "He's brilliant, isn't he? He seems to actually know what he's doing."
"One of the better Defence professors Hogwarts has had," Draco said, and meant it. "You should take full advantage. A Corporeal Patronus is well within your reach."
"If you have any tips, share them with us!" Ron said earnestly.
Hermione was quiet.
She turned it over in her mind. Should she say something? Report what she suspected to someone in authority?
But she had listened to Draco. She had watched Lupin across the room—the kindness with which he'd spoken to Harry, the warmth with which he included all of them in his invitation. He was a genuinely gifted teacher, more knowledgeable and more effective than anyone who'd held the Defence position in her time at Hogwarts. He was diligent. He was principled. He was, by every measure that counted, good at his job.
Should a wizard like that be turned away simply because of what he was?
She said nothing. She sipped her Butterbeer carefully this time, very aware of the boy beside her, and let the question settle.
The fire was warm, the Butterbeer excellent, the noise of the pub comfortably cheerful around them.
And then Harry looked up from his mug with an expression she hadn't seen on him before—a kind of tentative, wondering happiness.
"Professor Lupin told me something else," he said. "My father's Patronus was a stag. My mother's was a doe." He looked down at the table, then back up. "He said they were both very powerful. Maybe one day—"
He trailed off. But the shape of what he meant was plain enough.
Draco looked at him. He remembered, from another life, the night that stag had blazed out of Harry's wand—enormous and furious—and charged straight toward him and Marcus, who had been costumed as Dementors, absolutely certain they had Harry cornered.
They had fled. He wasn't entirely proud of it, but they had fled.
He looked at Harry now and felt something uncomplicated and certain.
"You will," he said. "You'll conjure your Patronus. And you'll be as powerful as they were. More, probably."
Harry looked across at him in slight surprise.
"They'll be very proud of you," Draco said. "Both of them."
Harry held his gaze for a moment, then gave a small, genuine smile.
"Thank you," he said quietly.