Professor Moody's remarkable achievement had not escaped the attention of Deputy Headmistress Professor Minerva McGonagall.
"Alastor Moody!" Draco could hear her roaring through the solid oak classroom door. "Casting an Imperius Curse on a student! That is not how we teach here! Did Professor Dumbledore not make the rules clear to you?"
"He may have mentioned something," Moody's voice came back, unhurried. "But I believe students need to understand firsthand how terrifying these spells truly are. If necessary, I'll have them experience more—"
Every student in the classroom heard it perfectly.
The last traces of anyone finding his lessons interesting evaporated at once.
"More spells — do you mean the other two Unforgivable Curses?" Neville asked Harry in a low, trembling voice.
"Have you considered the consequences?" Professor McGonagall roared from the corridor. "The students' parents will be writing to the Board of Governors demanding your immediate dismissal!"
"I never intended to stay long! I'm here as a favour to Dumbledore, nothing more. I'll be gone after one year. Let the Malfoy boy complain all he likes — I'd love to have a word with his father, and with Snape while I'm at it!" Moody said dismissively to Professor McGonagall, then limped away down the corridor, his wooden leg tapping against the stone.
Despite Draco's insistence that he was perfectly fine, Professor McGonagall escorted him to the Hospital Wing under the uneasy eyes of the entire class. There, Madam Pomfrey made him drink a large cup of one of Professor Snape's strangely flavoured restorative potions and confined him to bed for the rest of the day.
Half of Slytherin house descended on the Hospital Wing before the hour was out, making any actual rest impossible.
Blaise, Pansy, Crabbe, Goyle, his Quidditch teammates — they arrived in waves. The consensus was unanimous: Draco should write to his father at once and tell Lucius everything.
"He's a danger to every student in Slytherin," Pansy said, her eyes narrowed. "We must deal with this before it goes any further."
The very Slytherin assessment earned nods of agreement around the room.
Draco, sitting up in his hospital gown, said nothing.
He stayed quiet until Madam Pomfrey put her hands on her hips and began firmly herding people toward the door.
When they had gone, Theodore Nott slipped in alone.
"What's your thinking?" Draco asked.
"Replacing a dangerous professor is easy. Finding a less dangerous one is considerably harder." Theodore sat down, his expression calm and measured. "As things stand, you have leverage over him. It's entirely your choice how you use it."
Draco considered that. It was, as always with Theodore, precisely correct — cold, practical, and more Slytherin than anything Pansy had said.
This boy, who usually kept to himself and avoided entanglements, had not stood aside when it mattered.
"I haven't thanked you yet." Draco's pale face coloured slightly — he had always been poor at expressing gratitude, particularly to fellow Slytherins. Saying thank you was simply not how they communicated. "You saved my life."
"It's nothing." Theodore looked away. After a moment he added, with the air of someone stating a practical fact, "I know what a Thestral looks like. I'd rather not see death again."
Theodore had lost his mother young. He and his father, Nott Senior, had managed alone since.
Draco had known him since childhood — one of very few people who could hold a conversation with him as an equal. But Theodore had never formally attached himself to Draco's circle, hovering instead in some undefined space between childhood acquaintance and friend.
Nott Senior was a Death Eater, more senior than Lucius, and one of the first to follow Voldemort. Like Lucius, he was an ardent believer in pure-blood supremacy; the two families had maintained contact for generations, both names on the Sacred Twenty-Eight. Which side Theodore would stand on when the moment came was not in question.
And yet, in his previous life, Draco had never once seen Theodore show any fanaticism about the Dark Lord. Had never heard him speak of becoming a Death Eater with anything but reluctance.
In fact, he had advised Draco to stay out of it entirely.
*"We shouldn't get involved,"* Theodore had said, with characteristic coldness. *"A family shouldn't have every member marked. The risk is too great."*
*"Coward,"* Draco had scoffed. *"This is a matter of honour. Haven't you ever wanted to earn your father's respect?"*
*"Is there genuinely nothing else in your head besides your father's approval?"* Theodore had given him the particular look one reserves for someone being profoundly foolish. *"Because from where I'm standing, that's all there is."*
Draco had walked away furious, and had not thought to understand what Theodore meant for a very long time.
Looking back now, it seemed obvious that this taciturn boy — this childhood friend who kept his distance and yet stepped forward in the moments that counted — had seen things far more clearly than most.
Draco looked at him now, and noticed, past the carefully indifferent expression, the damp stain running along the hem of Theodore's robes — a stain he'd earned pulling Draco away from that water tank.
"I'll think carefully about what you've said," Draco said quietly. "Thank you, Theodore. I owe you."
Theodore gave a small nod, tucked his Potions book under his arm, and left as quietly as he'd arrived, as though he'd never been there at all.
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Draco lay back and stared at the ceiling, trying to think clearly. But his mind kept wandering.
Theodore hadn't been his only rescuer. Where were the others? What were they doing?
Harry, Ron, and Hermione managed a brief visit before Astronomy.
"We each lost twenty points and got detention feeding Hagrid's Flobberworms," Ron reported mournfully, holding up his sore, blistered fingers. "Professor Moody said we had no right to disobey his instructions, interrupt his lesson, or cause a disturbance."
"I'm very sorry," Draco said. He had noticed, with faint surprise, that he was becoming increasingly practised at apologies.
"It's not your fault," Harry said. "I've always thought he was slightly unhinged, for all that he's a brilliant Auror. He told Professor McGonagall he had no idea you couldn't swim, and thought it was a harmless bit of fun."
"Paranoid," Ron muttered, with real indignation. "No wonder the Ministry was so keen to be rid of him."
Hermione said nothing. She sat looking at Draco with worried, reddened eyes and kept making small, barely suppressed sounds, as though she was doing everything in her power not to cry outright.
"I'm perfectly fine, aren't I?" Draco said, affecting his most languid tone. "Thank you all for saving my life, truly. Consider it hardly any harm done at all — I simply fancied a day off to rest." He paused. "The one thing I can say with certainty is that I have absolutely no interest in learning to swim ever again. Merlin be thanked that Quidditch isn't played on the Black Lake."
Harry and Ron managed a faint smile.
Hermione did not. She was still looking at him with that expression, listless and slightly damp around the eyes.
"Hermione. Go to class," Draco said, softening his voice. "Take notes for me in Astronomy, would you?"
She pressed her lips together, nodded once, and followed Harry and Ron out.
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The following morning, before Draco was discharged, Professor McGonagall paid him a visit.
"I owe you an apology. I don't ask you to forgive Professor Moody — he went far beyond any acceptable limit." She stood beside the bed with her characteristic rigid posture, and attempted a gentle expression, which sat somewhat awkwardly on her face. "This should not have happened."
Draco studied her in silence.
He could read the situation clearly enough. He was the son of a school governor, and he had suffered a life-threatening incident at the hands of a professor. That was the sort of thing that prompted governors to call emergency meetings, and McGonagall — as Acting Headmistress in Dumbledore's absence — had every reason to want it contained quietly.
The position of Defence Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts changed more frequently than the robes at a Quidditch victory party. It was practically a cursed post, and finding anyone suitable was a perennial difficulty. Even if Moody were dismissed tomorrow, there was no guarantee of finding anyone better.
"Professor McGonagall," Draco said, choosing his words with care, "I understand the situation. I don't intend to write to my father. What I do hope — what I think is reasonable — is that Professor Moody ceases targeting me in class. If we can manage to coexist without incident for the remainder of the year, that would satisfy me."
"I'll see to it." Professor McGonagall's expression eased into something that Draco thought, if he were being generous, could be called relief. "Consider it done."
He was reasonably satisfied. Through a carefully angled approach, he had obtained what he needed — breathing room — without escalating the matter into something that would draw his father's involvement and all the complications that came with it.
Theodore had been correct. The leverage was enough. Wielded quietly, it was more effective than a formal complaint to the Board.
Under McGonagall's oversight, Moody never singled Draco out in class again. He chose instead to ignore him entirely — as though Draco simply ceased to exist as a student. Homework submitted on time came back ungraded.
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"How can he do this?" It was a sunny Saturday afternoon. Hermione sat across from Draco in their study corner, shaking a length of unmarked parchment in the air with visible indignation. "Your work is flawless. You deserve an O more than I do!"
"I genuinely don't care," Draco said, turning a page.
"Well, you should! Draco, we ought to expect professors to be better, not worse." Hermione set the parchment down with a sigh. "Honestly, I find myself missing Professor Lupin."
"Missing him?" Draco raised his eyes, a glint of amusement in them, and let out a short howl.
"Draco, that is not funny! We nearly died! You know perfectly well what I mean!" Hermione rolled up his parchment and brandished it threateningly. "Stop that immediately."
"Missed!" He was already on the other side of the table, having stepped back with the particular nimbleness of someone who had provoked this exact response before. He raised an eyebrow at her from his safe distance.
"If you're so quick, stay over there!" She glared at him, still tapping the rolled parchment against her palm. "Sometimes your sense of humour is genuinely impossible to appreciate."
"Alright, I'll stop." He leaned his chin on his hand and looked at her — flushed, still cross, entirely compelling. "But I've been meaning to say something, Hermione. You're remarkably bold, you know that? After everything that happened — you don't seem to hate him, or resent him, or even particularly fear him. You almost died. And yet to you it was merely another small problem to be solved."
"Of course I was frightened. Terrified, if you want the truth." She smoothed out the parchment with careful hands, then looked up at him with clear, serious eyes. "But have you stopped to think — who was the most frightened person in that forest that night? Was it really us?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean — if anyone was more afraid than you and I were, it was Professor Lupin himself." She held Draco's gaze steadily. "He must have been terrified of hurting us. He's a gentle person. When he came back to himself and understood what had happened, he must have been devastated. That's why he resigned — not because he was asked to. Because he values the safety of others more than his own position. So yes, I was frightened, but I don't blame him."
Draco was quiet for a moment.
He had never once considered that Lupin might have been afraid. He had never thought to look at that night from Lupin's perspective. And he had certainly never imagined that someone who had nearly been the victim of it could think first of the perpetrator's suffering.
"Is this how you think about everyone?" he said, with a slight frown. "Hermione, there are people in this world who will bring harm regardless of circumstance, regardless of their intentions. Does understanding them make it less dangerous?"
"I'm not naive about that," she said. "But I'd rather start from a generous position than a suspicious one. Is that wrong?" Her eyes were bright, earnest. "He had the capacity to hurt people. He didn't want to. He gave up his career because of it. To me, that makes him someone worth respecting — someone worth giving a second chance, rather than shutting out the moment things became difficult."
Draco looked at her and found he couldn't say what he'd been about to say.
He was suddenly thinking of everything she had done for him. The same quality of it — that uncomplicated, unflinching kindness, extended to people others would have turned away from first.
"Professor Moody's approach is not better than Professor Lupin's," he said, at last.
"Obviously not," she said. "So perhaps I'm right."
"Perhaps you are," he said, quietly.
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On the question of Moody, Slytherin had closed ranks with an efficiency that outsiders tended to underestimate.
"We're all behind you," Graham Montague told him one afternoon in the common room, several older students arranged around him in casual solidarity. "Marcus says his family has people on the Board. The word is ready to be given."
"I'm glad to hear it," Draco said pleasantly. "I'll let you know if anything is needed."
Montague gave a satisfied nod and moved off.
Draco had no intention of acting rashly. Some of these Slytherins were less interested in protecting their housemates than in being seen to act, hoping to use him as a convenient opening move. He understood that dynamic perfectly well. And besides — his memories of the previous timeline told him that Moody would be gone by the end of the year regardless. There was no reason to create a conflict that would outlast the cause of it.
What he was more curious about was why Moody had been in Snape's office in the first place.
His increased hostility in class had almost certainly been a reaction to Snape raising the matter with him — a warning to Draco not to meddle in things that didn't concern him. Which strongly implied that Moody was guilty of something, and knew it.
Professor Snape, for his part, appeared equally preoccupied. His temper in Potions had been shorter than usual, and he had been anything but pleasant to Harry and the others — which suggested that whatever he'd said to Moody had not produced the desired result.
The confirmation came one evening when Draco had the misfortune of arriving outside Snape's office at the precise moment Moody swaggered up and announced, loudly, that he was conducting a routine inspection.
Draco watched from the corridor as the temperature in Snape's expression dropped several degrees.
"You are no longer an Auror of the Ministry of Magic," Snape said, with the particular quiet of someone controlling a very powerful impulse. "You are a teacher at this school. We are colleagues, and you have no authority over me whatsoever." He held the office door open. "Get out."
Moody left, muttering.
The door shut with considerable force.
A brief silence.
"What was your question, Draco?" Snape said, from within.
"The Strengthening Solution," Draco said, stepping carefully inside and choosing not to comment on anything he'd just witnessed. "I've been trying to eliminate the side effect that causes the ears to smoke for several hours after use. I thought there might be a way to alter the base without affecting the potency."
"Potion modification." Professor Snape repeated this with an expression that, in a different man, might have suggested his thoughts were elsewhere. His gaze drifted to the potions cabinet. "Interesting. Let me think."
Draco had the distinct impression that Professor Snape was not, at that particular moment, thinking about Strengthening Solutions.
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"Focus, Draco!" Hermione jabbed his shoulder with the blunt end of her quill. "Professor Sinistra said the Astronomy class you missed will almost certainly appear on the O.W.L."
He was reviewing the missed lesson under Hermione's supervision. October had brought the full weight of the academic year down on them — every professor invoking the O.W.L.s as justification for their escalating workloads, despite the fact that fifth year was still twelve months away.
Draco had already finished the essay on the eighteenth-century goblin rebellions for Professor Binns ahead of schedule. Hagrid's fortnightly Blast-Ended Skrewt observation reports were still outstanding, which he could not pretend to feel urgency about. The three books Flitwick had assigned on Summoning Charms he had no need to open — he had mastered the Summoning Charm years before ever setting foot in Hogwarts.
"Oh, that's right — you were using *Accio* before your first year even started," Hermione said, with the tone of someone who has just remembered something that irritates them. She had managed to get a ink stain on her cheek with the quill, which she hadn't noticed. "I remember — you summoned Neville's toad on the train. That's always made me feel a little inadequate, if I'm honest. No matter how hard I study, there are things you already know that I'm still working toward."
"If you put the house-elf books down occasionally, you might cover more ground," Draco said, sketching the seven planets for his Astronomy chart.
"Absolutely not," Hermione said, with complete conviction. "After seeing the Hogwarts kitchens, I've been researching the history of house-elf labour in the library. It goes back centuries, and *Hogwarts: A History* — over a thousand pages — contains not one word about the elves who maintain this castle. Not one!"
"And?"
"And I'm going to start an organisation." She announced this with clear pride, ink spot and all. "The Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare. S.P.E.W."
*S.P.E.W.*
The acronym that had baffled him in his previous life had finally revealed itself.
Completely, thoroughly, unmistakably Hermione Granger. Draco's mouth twitched dangerously and he looked back down at his star chart.
"What are the aims of — this organisation?" he asked, with great solemnity.
"In the short term: fair wages and decent working conditions for all house-elves. Long term: the reform of legislation barring elves from carrying wands, and proper representation in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. The fact that no elf has a voice in the body that governs their rights is genuinely shocking." She was glowing with the energy of a well-formed plan.
She also still had ink on her face. The combination was, in all honesty, somewhat disarming.
Without entirely deciding to, Draco leaned forward and raised his hand toward her cheek.
"What are you—" She leaned back sharply, swatting his hand away, her face going pink. "Stop that. What are you doing?"
"You have something on your face." He showed her the ink on his fingers with an expression of complete innocence. "Have a look in the mirror."
"Oh—!" She scrambled for her hand mirror, checked her reflection, and made a noise of profound exasperation. "Did you make it worse?"
"Completely accidental," Draco said, which was almost entirely true. He grabbed a quill and returned to Mercury with a degree of focus he didn't quite feel, waiting for the heat in his ears to subside.
"Right." She was scrubbing at her cheek with a handkerchief. "You'll join SPEW, then? I'll put you down as a founding member."
"I want you to hear what I'm going to say without getting angry at me." Draco set the quill down. "Can you agree to that first?"
"I'll try." She watched him with one eye still on the mirror.
"I don't think the organisation is a good idea." He said it plainly. "From everything I understand, what you're describing amounts to a campaign to free house-elves. And I have to be honest with you about where I actually stand on that."
Hermione's expression went still.
"I won't free Dobby," Draco said, holding her gaze. "He knows things about the Malfoy family that cannot leave the household. Freedom for him creates a security problem I can't accept."
"But you pay him a salary — you give him holidays—"
"Yes. That's the limit of what I'm willing to do." He looked back at his star chart. "I'm not asking you to agree with me. But I won't pretend I'm something I'm not."
"They think and speak and feel," Hermione said, her voice heating. "They aren't objects. They deserve basic dignity."
"I offer what dignity I can. I can't dictate what a thousand other wizards do." He sketched Mercury's orbit with deliberate care. "And if you walked into that kitchen right now and asked who wanted to be freed, not one elf would raise their hand. Have you considered what it means to insist you know what's good for someone better than they do themselves?"
"That's exactly the point!" she said, leaning forward. "They don't understand that they're being oppressed. That's what oppression does — it teaches people to be grateful for their chains. It doesn't make the chains right."
"You're not wrong about that," Draco said quietly.
The concession visibly surprised her.
"But," he went on, "you're also proposing to upend a structure that has existed for centuries, built an organisation with a name that is genuinely quite unfortunate, and expect to recruit members from a population of wizards who largely see no problem to solve. The question isn't whether your principles are sound. The question is what, practically, you intend to do with them."
"That's why I need members." She looked at him. "People who understand."
"I'll make you a wager," he said. "If you can find ten wizards willing to join SPEW — genuinely, not just to be polite to you — I'll add my name to the list. And if you can't, you'll acknowledge that this isn't about individual selfishness. It's a consensus in the wizarding world, which is a considerably larger problem than me."
"I'll find them," she said, with absolute certainty. "Draco Malfoy, I suggest you get your membership dues ready."
"I look forward to being proved wrong." He picked his quill back up. "In the meantime — finish your star chart. It's due Monday."
Hermione snatched up her books and parchment in a pointed manner that suggested the conversation was concluded. She paused at the edge of the study corner.
"Yours too," she said, with a look, and strode out — head up, brown curls trailing behind her like a battle standard.