When Sirius Black woke in his hospital bed in the Hogwarts hospital wing, he found a platinum-haired boy standing at the window.
He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, looking out at the grounds. His back was thin, and he had the look of someone whose thoughts were elsewhere.
"Draco Malfoy," Sirius said, without particular surprise. "What a rare visitor."
"I assume you've already heard." The boy turned around. His face was somewhat pale.
"Are you referring to Pettigrew's death, or to Quirrell's escape?" Sirius settled back against his pillows with the unhurried manner of a man discussing something considerably less consequential.
"You don't seem at all afraid," Draco said, with a trace of reluctant surprise.
"Does fear help anything?" Sirius asked, with a short laugh.
"No. But it might prompt you to take things seriously," Draco said. "Behind Quirrell's head is the Dark Lord's soul. That is not a trivial situation."
Sirius raised an eyebrow with the ease of someone conserving energy. He was wrapped fairly thoroughly in bandages, which limited his more expressive gestures somewhat.
"More to the point," he said, with a probing look, "I'm curious how you knew about Quirrell in the first place. I rather thought only Harry and his closest circle knew the details."
"I have my own sources," Draco said briefly.
"Ah, yes. You and Hermione Granger seem to be getting along rather well." Sirius glanced at him sidelong with a half-smile, as though something had just occurred to him.
"That has nothing to do with this conversation," Draco said.
"Of course not. I'm only wondering how Narcissa and Lucius will react when they find out their son has been keeping close company with a Muggle-born witch." Sirius's lips twitched. "The mental image is really quite something."
"I came here to discuss serious matters," Draco said, and the twitch at the corner of his own mouth was involuntary.
"All right, all right." Sirius ran a hand through his dark hair and leaned forward slightly. "My view of the situation is this: we've achieved a partial victory. Pettigrew is gone — the Dark Lord has lost one of his most devoted servants, a man who quite literally gave his life for him. That's not nothing."
"Don't say that name," Draco said, on reflex.
"As for Quirrell and the Dark Lord's escape —" Sirius continued, undeterred by this, apparently committed to using the name on principle — "I genuinely don't have a perfect solution either. But I've been thinking, and I believe their situation is considerably weaker than it appears. Quirrell has been subsisting on unicorn blood to survive. He's been Petrified for two years. The fact that he's still functionally alive at all is remarkable. He won't last much longer."
Despite himself, Draco's attention sharpened. He turned this over.
"I agree that Quirrell is finished," he said. "But that doesn't mean the Dark Lord is. When Quirrell dies, he'll possess someone else. He's done it before. He'll simply continue."
"His situation is worse than you're giving him credit for." Sirius sipped his tea with the air of a man who has thought about this more carefully than his relaxed manner suggests. "He won't die — not while any Horcruxes remain. But at this stage, he has very little magic left to spend."
"What do you mean?"
Sirius looked at him. "For Merlin's sake, I thought you'd worked this out. Use your head." He made an expansive gesture with his free hand. "The wand. Neville Longbottom's wand."
Draco stared at him.
"Why didn't he take it?" Sirius grinned — a sharp, satisfied expression that sat oddly on his hollow face. "He could have. He didn't. He left a perfectly functional wand behind and simply ran. And he didn't kill Longbottom, who was right there in front of him. He knocked him out and fled." He spread his hands. "A Dark Lord who doesn't reach for the nearest wand and doesn't use an Avada Kedavra when he has every reason and opportunity to — that's a Dark Lord who can barely sustain himself. He doesn't have the magic to control a wand that isn't his own. That's how weak he is right now."
The logic of it settled over Draco slowly, and then all at once.
Of course. That was exactly right. Even a basic possession required power. An unknown wand would have fought him. He didn't have the reserves to force it. So he ran.
He looked at Sirius Black with something approaching genuine respect, though he kept it off his face.
"Will he stay like this?" he asked, without much real hope.
"Of course not," Sirius said, without missing a beat. "He'll do anything to recover, and he'll do it as quickly as possible. What we need to do is identify the most likely method of recovery in advance and either destroy it before he can reach it, or be ready when he does." He tilted his head. "This is something Dumbledore needs to know about. I'm going to speak to him — I want to be properly useful, not just lying in this bed waiting for my ribs to knit. I'll tell him I know about the Horcruxes. I won't breathe a word about your involvement, I promise. Our arrangement stays between us."
"Do what you think best," Draco said, and glanced at him. "One more thing — Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs. Which one are you?"
Sirius broke into a genuine smile for the first time.
"You've pieced that together, have you? Yes. That was us — me, James, and Remus. I'm Padfoot. Remus is Moony. Prongs was James — Harry's father."
He didn't name Wormtail. Draco didn't ask.
"You were all Animagi? You transformed to be with Lupin during the full moon?"
"That's right."
"And Professor Snape's particular feelings about the Shrieking Shack?" Draco continued.
Sirius had the grace to look, if not exactly apologetic, then at least aware that he probably should be. "Yes, that's my doing. I was young and reckless and thought it would be amusing to lead Snape there — to let him find out what Lupin was. James stopped it at the last second."
Draco's expression darkened. "Reckless is a considerable understatement. Someone could have died."
It explained a great deal, actually: why Snape's composure splintered at anything involving the Shrieking Shack, why the full moon made him genuinely rattled. In his previous life, Snape had faced Greyback with considerably more steadiness. The difference had to be in what had happened here — an experience violent enough to leave something lasting, something that didn't look like ordinary fear but was.
Draco had learned, through hard experience, how persistent that kind of damage could be.
How Professor Snape had not quietly poisoned Sirius Black at some point over the years was a question he found genuinely difficult to answer.
"I've never forgotten it," Sirius said, the lightness dropping out of his voice for a moment. "And I've never stopped being grateful to James for stopping me. He always — when it mattered — he always came through."
It was the most unguarded thing Draco had heard Sirius say.
He was quiet for a moment, looking at this man — who had once been extraordinary, by all accounts, and had spent the better part of his adult life paying for a single bad night and the actions of a treacherous friend. He felt something that was not quite sympathy but was adjacent to it.
"He sounds like someone worth grieving," Draco said, after a pause. It was not quite enough. But it was what he had.
Sirius nodded, once, and said nothing more.
---
Hermione was already there when Draco arrived at the Hippogriff paddock.
She was standing under the oak tree at the paddock's edge, looking radiant and entirely untroubled, offering dead ferrets to the Hippogriffs one by one. The birds crowded toward her — dark grey, polished chestnut, one with feathers the colour of pale sand — and she moved between them without any visible hesitation. She had always had an ease with creatures that others found difficult or frightening.
Buckbeak was tied apart from the others.
"He fought hard the other night — engaged those werewolves directly, more than any of the others," Hagrid told Draco quietly, handing him a string of dead ferrets. "He's the worst injured. I've been giving him special care. Your job today is to feed him."
Draco accepted the ferrets, said nothing, and looked at Buckbeak.
Hagrid waited for a moment, then said, more quietly still: "I hear you kept Hermione safe, got between her and the werewolf. That was good of you. That was very good of you, Draco."
He glanced down at the pampered young Malfoy standing somewhat incongruously in the paddock dirt, and his expression became serious.
"She's a kind girl, and she's always been generous to me — more generous than she had to be. She deserves to have people in her corner. I know what your family's views are, and I know who your father is." He looked directly at Draco. "But Hermione says you're good, and I trust Hermione's judgement. So I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. But hear me — if you ever deceive her, or hurt her, or do anything to make her cry — I will make that felt. In points, and otherwise."
Draco was fairly certain that Hagrid was, technically, abusing his authority as a teacher to deliver a personal threat.
He gave a slight nod anyway.
Not because he was intimidated. Because on the specific subject of protecting Hermione from harm, he and Hagrid had somehow arrived at exactly the same position, and there was no point pretending otherwise.
Hagrid looked satisfied. He raised his voice toward the paddock: "Hermione! I've still got the Bowtruckles to check on — I'm leaving Fang here to look after you!"
Hermione waved cheerfully from across the paddock. Hagrid looked once more at Draco — specifically at Draco — and then strode off.
Draco looked at Fang, who looked back at him with large, gentle, entirely non-threatening eyes.
A fierce appearance concealing a coward's heart. He was familiar with the type.
He turned and walked toward Buckbeak.
The Hippogriff watched him approach. Draco looked back at it — at this particular creature, who had injured him in one life and saved him in another.
He had always known the correct procedure. He had simply never had reason to apply it properly.
He held the Hippogriff's orange eyes, bowed slowly and deliberately, and waited.
Buckbeak considered him for a moment. Then it bowed in return.
Draco straightened, tossed a dead ferret in front of it, and watched it snap the ferret out of the air with excellent aim.
"A kind of reconciliation," he thought, not unhappily.
"Well done." Hermione was beside him. "I told you it wasn't so difficult."
"You did." He glanced at her. "Repeatedly, over the course of several months."
"And now you've finally listened to me." She smiled at him, entirely pleased with herself.
"Harry's not here," he said, looking around the paddock as a way of composing himself. "Is he skipping?"
"He's gone to see Professor Lupin." Hermione's smile faded slightly. "We heard that Lupin is going to resign. He feels responsible for what happened that night — he thinks it wouldn't be right to stay."
Draco was quiet. He did not argue with this. Whatever Lupin's personal warmth and intelligence, the fact remained that not everyone who passed his classroom door could count on being warned in time. Some things, however regrettable, were simply true.
"Draco —" Hermione had turned to face him properly, dusting ferret fur from her hands. Her cheeks had gone slightly pink. "I haven't thanked you properly yet. For what you did that night. Not everyone would have done that."
She paused, seeming to struggle momentarily with whatever she was working up to. "How did you get there so quickly? You were in the castle, but I was deep in the Forest —"
"It might have been coincidence," Draco said. His eyes drifted, involuntarily, to her hand.
"Can I take that as you specifically came looking for me?" She raised her eyes and held his gaze with the particular directness she used when she was not going to let something go. "You told me on the Astronomy Tower that you would try to be honest with me."
Draco sighed. There was genuinely no escape from this conversation.
"Come and sit down," he said, and walked to the large flat rock at the paddock's edge. He picked up a ferret, tossed it to Buckbeak, watched it vanish in a single snap. Then he set down the remaining ferrets and turned to her.
"I can explain. But can you promise me first that you won't be angry?"
She studied him for a longer time than was strictly comfortable.
"I promise," she said, finally.
"Let me think about how to say it." He took a slow breath, drew a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hands, then took her hand and wiped hers as well.
"Draco," she said, patiently.
"Do you know what a Tracking Charm is?"
Hermione went very still.
"I put a Tracking Charm on your ring," he said, quietly, addressing the toes of his shoes. "That's how I found you so quickly. I was concerned — Pettigrew, the Dementors, the werewolves, and you going off into the Forbidden Forest — and I used the charm to locate you when I noticed you were gone." A pause. "I want to be clear that I had never used it before that night. I had hoped never to have to. I understand very well that it wasn't my right, and I have no defence to offer. If you want to be angry with me — or hit me — I wouldn't consider that unreasonable."
Silence.
He did not look up.
Hermione sat with it.
Her first reaction was, undeniably, fury. She wore that ring every single day. The thought of being located, tracked, observed without her knowledge — it scraped against every instinct she had about privacy and autonomy and the right to make her own choices.
And then she thought about the night in the Forbidden Forest. The moment she had heard him shouting her name and turned to find him there, placing himself between her and something that could have killed him.
She thought about the Astronomy Tower, and his voice breaking quietly in the dark when he said he didn't want her hurt.
She thought: if I had a way to find him quickly, in a dangerous situation, would I have used it?
The answer was yes. Without hesitating for very long.
"I don't like it," she said, carefully. "I want to be clear about that — I don't like being tracked without my knowledge. That's not all right, even with good intentions."
"I know," he said, still looking at his shoes.
"But," she continued, more slowly, "I also understand why you did it. I was worried enough about you on the Astronomy Tower that I searched half the castle to find you. If I had had something similar, I might have used it too." She looked at the ring on her hand, turning it slightly. "So here is my suggestion. We remove this one and replace it with something we both agree to — something mutual. A signalling charm, or a two-way locator. Something that works both ways and that we both consent to."
Draco finally looked up.
The relief on his face was so visible, and so unguarded, that she felt a sudden rush of affection for him that was quite separate from all her reasonable feelings about Tracking Charms.
"Yes," he said. "That's — yes. I think that's possible."
"Good." She nodded, satisfied. "I've been wondering, actually, whether such a spell already exists in a reliable form — something like a Muggle telephone, that transmits sound directly —"
"Oh, that's definitely something we could find a solution to." He looked at her with the particular calm grey focus that always made her heart do something inconvenient. "If it doesn't exist yet, we could probably devise something."
"We," she repeated, and smiled at him.
---
After a few more sessions at the paddock, exam week arrived.
Draco strolled into the Arithmancy classroom one morning to find it empty. Students who had been revising heavily tended to arrive at the last possible second these days.
He looked at the empty desks, a faint smile appearing — and then he sat down in the wrong seat.
He placed his pocket watch on the desk and waited, watching the hands.
Then the door opened. A thud. A surprised sound. And Hermione Granger, arriving out of nowhere via the Time-Turner, landed directly in his arms.
She was disoriented enough that she had grabbed his neck on instinct, and was staring up at him with an expression of complete bewilderment.
"Draco!"
"Mm," he said, and made no move to let go.
"What — did I sit in the wrong seat?" She looked around, confused.
"I did," he said. "On purpose."
"Why?"
He looked at her with calm, satisfied eyes. "To see the look on your face. I've been planning it for a year."
"You — for a year —" She was speechless for a moment. "You have been sitting to my left for an entire year just so you could do this on the last day of term?"
"It was entirely worth it," he said, and had the decency to suppress his laugh.
"Draco Malfoy, that is the most ridiculous thing —" Her cheeks were decidedly pink. She pushed lightly at his lapel. "Wait. When did you find out about the Time-Turner?"
"Quite early," he said, with complete serenity, and gently turned a strand of her hair between his fingers.
She stared at him. "You watched me guard that secret for an entire year, knowing the whole time, and you never said anything?"
"You looked exhausted. You were running yourself ragged keeping it hidden. Every time I came anywhere near the subject, you either panicked or came out claws first." He tilted his head. "I didn't want to add to your difficulties. I was waiting for you to tell me yourself." His voice was quiet and entirely sincere. "I kept hoping you would."
She didn't say anything for a moment.
The sound of students approaching in the corridor reached them.
"Let me go," she said, in a small voice. "People are about to come in."
"In a moment," he said. "There's something I've been wanting to ask you for months. The morning after we destroyed the Horcrux — the morning I came out of the Headmaster's office — you were in the corridor. You kissed me."
She went still against him.
"I need to understand what that meant," he said quietly. "I'm not going to let this remain ambiguous between us."
"It was — you were so tired," she said, her voice just above a whisper. "You looked like you might fall over. And I was — I was so glad you were all right. I didn't think. I just —" She stopped. "It was a forehead kiss. It was nothing."
"It wasn't nothing," he said.
"I thought you didn't remember it."
"I didn't, at first. I was exhausted enough to think it was a dream. I've been torturing myself about it ever since I realised it wasn't." He looked at her directly, close enough that she could see the light in his grey eyes. "I owe you an apology for that — for not acknowledging it properly, for making you feel as though it didn't happen or didn't matter. It did."
Hermione's throat felt tight.
"I'm sorry," he said, and he meant it.
The door opened. Students filed in, talking tiredly about their revision schedules, not looking at the corner of the room.
Hermione slid off his lap, sat in his usual seat, and turned to look very attentively at a bird outside the window.
After a moment, she said, in a tone carefully calibrated to sound casual: "Draco, I've decided to return the Time-Turner."
"Have you." He looked at her.
"You were right that I was trying to do too much," she said. "There's no such thing as limitless capacity. I've been trying to be perfect at everything, and it's been — well, it's been quite exhausting, actually. I've been thinking about what matters most, and I've made my choices."
He looked at her with an expression she couldn't quite read — warm and quiet and a little wry.
"Take it slowly," he said. "The important things don't have to be finished in a single term."
"You too," she said, meeting his eyes.
He understood what she meant, and nodded.
---
The examinations arrived and proceeded much as Draco remembered: Professor McGonagall's teapot-into-tortoise Transfiguration test; Professor Flitwick's practical Cheering Charm assessment; Professor Snape's Confusing Concoction; Professor Binns's medieval witch-burning essay; and Professor Sprout's outdoor Herbology practical, which took place in a greenhouse under a sun Draco felt was taking the whole thing personally.
Care of Magical Creatures had changed somewhat from his memory — rather than Flobberworms, Hagrid tested them on identifying and safely removing a branch from a Bowtruckle tree, which required the students to bribe the resident Bowtruckle with fairy eggs or ground beetles before taking anything.
Other departures from the expected were smaller:
Hermione ran out of the Defence Against the Dark Arts exam looking deeply shaken — her Boggart had been Professor McGonagall informing her that she had failed every subject. Draco said, gently, "I told you so," which she acknowledged was technically accurate.
Seamus Finnigan's Potions exam ended several cauldrons prematurely via chain reaction. Professor Snape's expression afterwards was not one Draco was able to describe succinctly.
During the Arithmancy exam, Ernie Macmillan discovered that he had been omitting his middle name from all his calculations for the entire year. "Oh no," he said, in the voice of a man watching a building fall down. "I thought those numbers were right. I've been using them this whole time. Merlin."
Neville Longbottom couldn't find his wand again during Transfiguration. This time, apparently, it was a genuine accident rather than anything sinister. Professor McGonagall's sigh from outside the examination room spoke volumes.
---
On the last Hogsmeade day of the year, they didn't join the crowds on the high street.
They found their usual place instead — the oak tree by the Black Lake, its roots old and broad enough to lean against, the grass below its branches still thick and green despite the summer warmth.
"Careful," Hermione called, looking up with concern — Draco was balanced on one of the thicker branches, concentrating on placing a small turquoise-coloured egg back into a nest half-hidden among the leaves.
"Nearly done," he said, his voice light.
When he dropped down from the branch and brushed bark from his robes, she said, "Thank goodness you were here — I couldn't have reached it."
"You'd have thought of something," he said, raising an eyebrow at her. "You always do."
She gave him a look of serene confidence that suggested she agreed with this, and they settled beneath the tree — him reading a newspaper, her lying beside him with a book, the way they had in the garden at Bath the summer before. They read in comfortable silence, exchanging occasional half-sentences, listening to the oak leaves overhead.
"Pettigrew was able to escape Azkaban simply by transforming," Hermione said, eventually, turning a page. "He was the only Animagus in Azkaban, presumably — so how did Sirius stay rational? Other prisoners don't."
"Dementors can't identify an Animagus in animal form," Draco said. "They target human consciousness — the emotions and memories that make a person human. In animal form, that consciousness is suppressed. The Dementor simply doesn't register you as a person to feed on." He looked up at the branches above. "That's how Pettigrew got out. And it's how Sirius kept his mind — he could transform, and while he was a dog, the worst of it couldn't reach him."
"That's fascinating," Hermione said. "And terrible." A pause. "Is Animagus transformation very difficult to learn?"
"Extremely," Draco said. "My father has been attempting it for over a year and hasn't managed it."
Hermione was quiet for a moment. Then: "Your Patronus still hasn't taken form. Draco — try again. Think of something genuinely happy."
Draco took out his wand and turned it over in his hand.
He thought through the things available to him.
He cast. A pale silver mist gathered at the tip of his wand, wavered, and faded.
"Still not quite," he said, and raised the newspaper again.
Hermione looked at him for a moment, thoughtful, and said nothing.
---
On the Hogwarts Express, they found a compartment to themselves — or near enough. Harry and Ron took the seats opposite, deeply absorbed in a Wizard Chess rematch that had apparently been in progress since breakfast, entirely oblivious to anything else.
Hermione pressed a small wrapped package into Draco's hands.
It was a Walkman — a Muggle cassette player, slim and silver, with a pair of headphones coiled on top.
"I asked my mother to find the newest one," she said, a little shyly. "You seemed interested in it, when I mentioned it last summer. The cassettes are the tricky part — you'll have to find a way to get hold of those."
"Don't underestimate a Malfoy's resourcefulness," he said, and handed her one of the headphones.
They sat with their heads leaning together, one ear each, listening to a song as the countryside swept past. Fields, farms, rivers, hills going green-gold in the late afternoon light. The music was slow and expansive and a little sad, the way all leave-takings were, even the ones you were glad to take.
London approached gradually.
"Write to me," he said, before they reached King's Cross. He looked down at her, and his voice was very direct. "More than once, I mean."
She smiled, and her cheeks went pink again.
"Whenever I have the time," she said, in the tone of a girl paying back a debt. "You know how busy I am."
He watched her go with a smile that felt strangely like déjà vu — he had said something almost exactly like that to her, at the end of their first year, when she had asked him to write.
He stepped off the train and walked toward his parents on the steam-hazed platform, just as he had a hundred times in memory. He looked like what he was: a Malfoy, fair-haired and composed, carrying himself with the particular ease of someone raised to believe that composure was the right response to anything.
He was aware of being looked at, as he always was. Aware of what those looks contained — his name, his face, a kind of reflexive attention.
In his past life, he had found it satisfying. In this one, it left him entirely unmoved.
None of them were looking at him as a person. They were looking at what he represented. It was Hermione who looked at the rest.
He found his parents easily — Lucius and Narcissa, standing together on the platform as they always did, effortlessly elegant, effortlessly themselves. Young, still. Proud.
He watched them for a moment before they saw him.
He hoped, quietly and with all the feeling he had, that he could keep them this way.
He let his gaze travel back along the platform to where Hermione had gone, disappearing into the crowd with Harry and the others.
She was already out of sight.
He stood still for a moment, a strange warmth moving through him.
Then he went to greet his parents.
---
He had spoken briefly with Professor Lupin after finishing the Defence Against the Dark Arts exam.
Lupin had been gentle about it, as he was about most things. He had closed his examination folder and looked at Draco with an expression that was kind and direct in equal measure.
"Mr. Malfoy. Your Boggart today was unexpected. I want you to know that I won't speak of it to anyone — it isn't my place to. But I did want to say something."
Draco had kept his face carefully still.
In the examination, his Boggart had shown him Hermione Granger — dead, with the word Mudblood carved into her arm and her face turned away from him.
"I can't control my thoughts when I'm fully transformed," Lupin said. "But I can remember everything once I come back to myself. After that night in the Forest, when I transformed back, I understood something. The way you behaved — where you went, what you did, what you put yourself in front of — it was not the behaviour of someone who happened to be in the area."
Draco said nothing.
Lupin looked at him with the quiet, unhurried precision of a man who had spent many years watching people carefully and drawing accurate conclusions.
"You love her," he said. "You love her so much that you would die for her. I think, on some level, you already know that. And I think the difficult thing is not the feeling itself, but deciding what to do with it."
He paused.
"I'll leave you to work that out. I only wanted to say — it is not something to be ashamed of. Whatever else happens." He offered a small, sincere smile. "Take care of yourself, Mr. Malfoy."
Draco stood in the corridor for a long time after Lupin walked away.
Outside the window, the grounds were bright with early summer, and somewhere across the grass, a girl with untidy brown hair and a beaded bag was helping Hagrid count his Bowtruckles.
He stood there, saying nothing, for quite a long time.
He already knew Lupin was right.
He had known for longer than he was willing to count.