While Ron was still reeling from Draco and Hermione's sudden disappearance, the mischievous pair were already running hand in hand across the lush green grass in the scorching sun, laughter trailing behind them.
"Did you see Ron's face?" Draco looked back at her as he ran, a rare flash of genuine joy in his grey eyes.
"I saw it!" Hermione laughed so hard she could barely breathe, running after him with all the bright energy of the silver otter she had once conjured. "Should we bring him some sweets to soothe the shock?"
"Of course—absolutely—bring him a whole trunk!" He laughed, real and youthful, and pulled her hand as they raced toward the castle. "How did you think to bring the Cloak today?"
"I carry it with me practically every day!" she exclaimed. "Just in case—you know how it is!"
"I'd wager you've used it quite a lot," he said happily.
"I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about!" The cunning girl wore a thoroughly smug expression and refused to answer directly. "Hurry up—we've still got a long way to go, and I don't want to miss supper!"
In the narrow gap at the foot of a staircase they donned the Invisibility Cloak again, slipping past the armoured suits, ghosts, and portraits on their watch, and made their way up to the fourth-floor corridor.
As the Hogwarts clock tower struck three, they nimbly passed the hump-backed, one-eyed witch and descended into the deep, damp underground passage below.
"Merlin—I do hope Professor McGonagall finds it in herself to forgive my repeated violations of school rules." Hermione watched the faint glow from the tip of Draco's wand, her usual liveliness dimming as the darkness closed around them. "Am I really being led astray, just as she says?"
"I sincerely hope she'll learn to see our relationship without prejudice," Draco said. "Besides, in my personal experience—if it's not discovered, it doesn't count as breaking the rules."
"That is just fooling yourself." Hermione carefully took his hand as they walked. "Not getting caught doesn't mean we haven't broken the rules. We've done it countless times."
She sighed and continued, "The frightening part is that once you start, it gets easier. I'm finding myself increasingly competent at 'bending the rules.' Should I be concerned?"
"I think a Hermione Granger who occasionally bends the rules is considerably more endearing than one who never does," Draco said, steering her around a corner in the passage. "Look at Harry—he's broken more rules than anyone, and Dumbledore still awards him points."
"He was always given points for a reason!" Hermione said quickly. "Dumbledore never awarded points arbitrarily."
"Precisely. Which means we have to consider the purpose behind the rule-breaking. If the intentions are good and the outcome is positive, what is objectionable about it?" His confident voice echoed off the earthy walls, and she found no ready counter-argument.
"You always have a belly full of twisted logic," Hermione complained, accepting his hand to skip over a shallow dip in the path. "Whether it's matters of school rules or researching Dark magic—"
Draco chuckled quietly to himself.
He had initially thought Hermione had entirely let herself loose; in the end, she still cared deeply about rules. Yet here she was—a girl full of inner conflict—willing to defy her own moral code and walk an hour through a dark underground passage, with a pile of revision still waiting for her.
A girl who said one thing and did another. He found it endearing.
"In my view, following school rules and studying Dark magic are actually two separate questions," Draco said.
"Oh? Then by that logic, one shouldn't break the rules any more than one should study Dark magic!" she replied firmly.
Draco felt it was his duty to challenge the rigid framework in her thinking.
"Hermione, you have to understand: magic is not simply black or white. There is a great deal of grey."
"Grey magic?"
"For instance—did you know that Miranda Goshawk, who wrote your Standard Book of Spells, also knew a considerable amount of what people call Dark magic? And that her own book contains certain curses?" Draco asked.
"I know that," Hermione said confidently, reciting Goshawk's reasoning with practised fluency. "She included spells of moderate aggression to prevent students from escalating disputes to the use of more dangerous ones."
"Exactly." Draco smiled in the darkness, beginning to gently work at the foundations of her position. "And I have to point out—some of the spells on the list you compiled for Harry fall into the category of jinxes and curses. Can you honestly say those spells are Dark magic and discard them?"
"You told me about a lot of those spells yourself!" Hermione said, slightly indignant. "You were always trying to add more to that list—and that's precisely what I'm complaining about!"
"But you decided to include them rather than remove them. Isn't that because you recognised they'd be useful?" He let his argument stand without apology.
He offered a casual example: "Do you suppose Viktor Krum knows any of those minor Dark spells? He trained at Durmstrang—a school renowned for its instruction in the Dark Arts."
"Almost certainly," Hermione said quietly.
"And Fleur Delacour? I'd wager she's more than capable too—she's no mere face." He strolled on at an easy pace.
"At the very least, none of the Hogwarts champions do. Cedric doesn't, and Harry certainly doesn't," she said firmly.
"Although Diggory—like all good Hogwarts students—claims not to practise Dark magic, that's not the same as knowing nothing about it." Draco rolled his eyes lightly. "Any wizarding family with a history knows something of it, whatever their principles. I'd be very surprised if there were no books on Dark magic in the Diggory household."
"So what if there were?" Hermione redirected. "Draco, why are you always so hard on Cedric? Is it simply because he beats you at Quidditch?"
"It's less bias and more that I find him unconvincing," Draco said dismissively. "A perfect boy beloved by everyone—charming, admirable, never a fault in sight. I've never trusted perfection. There's usually something hidden beneath it."
"Draco, you dreadful cynic." Hermione leaned toward him and sniffed at his collar. "You smell perfectly pleasant, for what it's worth."
He felt a rush of complicated feeling—partly pleasure, partly mild embarrassment.
She took his hand again and said gently, "Try not to always interpret someone you don't understand through the darkest possible lens. Try a little more good faith, just sometimes."
"A mind of good faith," he muttered. "What would I know about that?"
She ignored the self-deprecation and continued, "Actually, I've run into Cedric a few times near the Hufflepuff common room when I was out with the Cloak—he's always been perfectly decent." She paused. "What struck me most was that, as prefect, he never showed any favouritism toward his own house when sorting out disputes. He'd try to get both sides to understand each other and shake hands. That's genuinely difficult to do."
Draco was quiet.
He had served as prefect himself and knew precisely how thankless it was to mediate between students who both believed they were right.
You could always use your authority to silence the argument—he had done that plenty of times—but you would never earn genuine respect that way. Judging from how Hermione spoke of Diggory, the boy seemed to be managing it rather better than that.
"That is quite difficult," she was saying. "And he does it well. Isn't that something?"
"Not bad," Draco said reluctantly, pushing Cedric Diggory's impossibly decent face from his mind and returning to the subject at hand.
"In any case—when all the other champions are familiar with minor Dark spells, if Harry refuses to master any of them out of principle, he is simply giving away the advantage. Can you deny that?"
"That's true," she admitted, her thoughts wandering as he guided her through the winding passage. "But when we use Dark spells, how are we any different from dark wizards?"
"Learning them and using them are two very different things," Draco said. "Consider Dumbledore—he once defeated the dark wizard Grindelwald. I'd wager he knows more about Dark magic than all the students at Hogwarts combined."
"I suppose he must have studied all kinds of magic—light and dark," Hermione said, somewhat muffled.
"To defeat your enemy, you must first understand your enemy. If you don't understand Dark magic, you can't find its weaknesses, can't deflect its attacks, can't construct the right counter-curse." He spoke with the quiet authority of someone who had arrived at these conclusions through hard experience. "The same applies to understanding Horcruxes. We don't wish to use them—we hope to fight them."
"To understand it, to learn it—but not necessarily to use it," Hermione said, her resistance softening.
Draco was always persuasive. Or rather—always persuasive to her specifically.
And, without quite noticing, she was already doing something similar, wasn't she? She had read carefully through Hilbo's notes. She had gone to the Restricted Section in search of Dark magic books, looking for fragments of Tom Riddle's thinking. She had added more than a few useful jinxes to Harry's spell list.
Draco was harsh, but he was describing the truth.
He pressed his advantage. "Do you remember the book I gave you—'Practical Defensive Magic and Its Counter-Spells'?"
"Of course. It was enormously useful—gave me a great deal to work with—" Hermione stopped.
She realised that in using that book to find spells for Harry, she had not limited herself to the defensive spells. She had also studied the Dark magic those defensive spells were meant to counter.
"Do you see what I mean?" A note of quiet satisfaction entered his voice. "I don't deny my interest in Dark magic. There is a logic and an unconventional perspective in certain forms of it that I find genuinely fascinating. But interest in something is not the same as intending to use it for harm."
"But your appreciative tone toward it does worry me," Hermione said. "Dark magic is ultimately dangerous."
"I try to keep the danger within manageable limits," he said carefully. "I collect Dark artefacts, but I don't use them. I collect alchemical manuscripts, but I have no intention of making anything from them. And the library at Malfoy Manor contains centuries' worth of Dark magic texts—accumulated over hundreds of years—which I believe have their own historical and scholarly value."
As soon as he finished, he heard her draw a quiet, involuntary breath.
"Centuries' worth?" she asked softly. "Accumulated over hundreds of years? Vast as the ocean?"
"Countless volumes. No Malfoy has ever come close to reading them all." He sighed with carefully calibrated drama, concealing the cunning behind the lament. "Most of the time they simply sit on the shelves, gathering dust. Tell me, Hermione—are we simply to burn them all?"
"Of course not! Burn them?" The sharpness in her voice was almost offended. "That would be barbaric."
"I knew you'd say that." His lips curled in the darkness. "That small black book about Horcruxes—Hilbo's Notebook—I found it in that same library."
"Not hard to guess," she said softly.
"If the Malfoys hadn't had their peculiar habit of collecting Dark artefacts and books—if Herpo's Notebook had never appeared in our library—I would never have known by chance what the Dark Lord had done. And I would not have ended up here with you."
"I understand the point. Things do have their uses, in certain circumstances." Hermione tried to contain her obvious longing at the thought of that library and return to the argument. "But you can't deny that the existence of an option like Dark magic increases the probability of evil."
"Otherwise, why would wizards treat it as something to be discarded? Why would Hogwarts have a Restricted Section at all?" she pressed.
"Is the Restricted Section there merely to limit access?" Draco countered. "If the wizarding world truly despised Dark magic, why not simply destroy those books? Existence is its own justification. Has it occurred to you that the Restricted Section exists because those books, however dangerous, have earned their right to be there?"
"I don't deny their necessity—and I have no intention of burning anything." Hermione could not help but let her mind drift back to the image of that vast library, saying wistfully, "I imagine there are things worth reading in quite a few of them."
"I agree entirely," he replied, with a satisfaction she immediately recognised as suspicious.
She came back to herself. She was not going to let him claim the upper hand.
She took a deliberate breath. "At the very least, Hogwarts should impose stricter controls on certain Dark magic books."
Then, her voice turned bitter. "If that wretched book about Horcruxes had been properly secured rather than sitting in the Restricted Section, young Tom Riddle would never have read it, would never have tried to create Horcruxes, and would never have become involved in any of this."
"Hermione," Draco said, his calm voice carrying clearly through the passage. "The root of evil has never been magic. It has always been the human heart."
The air fell still for a moment.
"Magic is only a tool for carrying evil. The same spell—whether classified as Dark magic or not—is made good or evil entirely by whoever uses it. Some people use spells to ward off evil. Others use them to create it." His voice was low and deliberate.
This was a philosophy distilled from painful experience.
In his previous life, Harry had used Expelliarmus against the Dark Lord in the churchyard—and Draco had used Expelliarmus on the Astronomy Tower, leaving Dumbledore disarmed and defenceless.
A simple Disarming Charm, not even a Dark spell, could have vastly different consequences.
Whether an act was evil depended entirely on the heart behind it.
And in his previous life, he had been the one behind evil acts—an accomplice to wickedness—which had nothing whatsoever to do with the nature of the spells themselves.
Hermione listened, understanding in pieces.
In the disorienting darkness, a subtle unease stirred in her. She sensed a real weight in his words, just as she felt the sudden cold stiffness in his fingers.
As though he had witnessed some evil. As though he had participated in some evil.
This possibility worried her. She broke the silence and asked, "If one day, to defeat darkness, you had to stain your soul—what would you do?"
"I won't deceive you. My soul has never been pure white," Draco said, his tone slightly strained. "You know very well that I doubt almost everyone, that my view of the world tends dark, that there is a ruthless streak in my character. To achieve my aims I'll try all sorts of methods—not all of them honourable."
As Hermione heard him say these familiar things, she felt none of the shock she had felt the first time. In its place was something she could only describe as conviction.
"But you are not wholly black either—you're definitely not," she said firmly. "There is light in you. You've always had a clear goal. You are working toward something better. You can't deny that."
Her certainty eased the bitterness in his chest.
"There seems to be a contradiction in me," he said with a self-deprecating smile, then offered, with a flicker of tentative hope, a question he couldn't answer himself: "So—am I black or white?"
Hermione did not rush.
She stopped walking and, by the faint light of his wand, looked into his eyes.
She scrutinised him—studied him—carefully.
He seemed uneasy. Expectant. Slightly confused.
He held his breath, watching her face, waiting.
After a long silence, Hermione asked, "Answer one question first. Can you promise that the magic you study—whatever kind it is—will be used for good?"
He considered this honestly, then said, "Not with absolute certainty. No one can guarantee anything absolutely. What I can say with certainty is that I am trying to steer it toward good. Whatever the classification of the magic, I want it used to resist evil."
"Then I don't think you belong to either category," Hermione said, holding his gaze. She saw a sincere gleam in the darkness. "Not pure black, not pure white." She paused. "The grey of your eyes."
Draco stared at her.
She had taken a binary choice and quietly turned it into something else entirely. If neither option suited her, she would invent a new one. Hermione Granger—what an extraordinary girl.
"Grey—that's a good answer," he said, unable to stop himself from smiling. "So I can keep my small hobby of Dark magic, can I?"
"Oh—was all of that just to get me to validate your hobby?" Hermione's tone went flat with suspicion.
She pulled her hand free and walked ahead, saying in disbelief, "I actually believed all of it!"
"Of course not—at least not entirely," Draco said quickly, catching up. "We were discussing the legitimacy of Dark magic in order to demonstrate the legitimacy of bending the rules, weren't we?"
Hermione thought seriously for a moment, then said, "I'm reminded of something—'He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself.'"
"Beyond Good and Evil?" Draco asked.
"Yes!" Hermione said, surprised. "You've read Nietzsche too?"
"Because a certain girl was interested in him," Draco said simply. "I needed to see what the man had to say."
"Oh, Draco," she said happily. "This feeling—discovering that you've read the same book I've read. It's like we stumble into the same place without planning to. That's wonderful, isn't it? Much more interesting than reading alone with no one to discuss it with."
"Yes," Draco murmured, barely audible. "These moments of coincidence are quite hard for me to come by, and you're a girl who reads a mountain of Muggle books…"
"What was that?" she asked.
"Nothing. Speaking of which—Hermione, do you consider yourself black or white? To protect the light you carry, would you one day choose to use any means necessary?"
"I'm not certain," she said hesitantly. "Once I use Dark magic—once bending the rules becomes a habit—I'm not sure I'll still be entirely myself. I don't want to fight dragons and become one."
"What if," he said, "you joined me—became a Draco?"
He used the wordplay deliberately—Draco, the constellation; Draco, the Latin word for dragon.
"Not a dragon of the abyss, not a naive little flower—but Draco. The one who walks the grey and understands the rules. How about it?"
"Walking in the grey? Understanding the rules?" She turned the words over softly, briefly caught in the unusual pull of the meaning.
"Less about manipulation and more about mastery," he said, pressing his advantage with quiet cunning. "Understanding the rules, using them, breaking them—and ultimately changing them. You have to understand: rules are made by people. Instead of the dull business of simply following them, wouldn't you rather try something more interesting? Break them. Change them. Change the world."
"Break the rules. Change the world," she said slowly, testing the weight of it. "Using any means necessary?"
"'A flexible approach,'" he said. "Hermione, have you ever considered that you're not as rigid and inflexible as you claim? In my eyes, you're precisely the kind of person who despises rules at heart."
She constantly declared herself a rule-follower—and yet the list of good things she had done by breaking rules was, by now, impressively long.
To find out who had hurt Harry, she had set fire to Quirrell's robes without hesitation. To identify who had opened the Chamber of Secrets, she had brewed Polyjuice Potion and walked into the Slytherin common room. To save an innocent prisoner and prove innocence, she had used a Time-Turner to rewrite what had already happened. To understand magical creatures better, she had spent late nights in the kitchens with the house-elves.
What an extraordinary girl.
Draco smiled to himself. She was a rose with thorns beneath her leaves—a beautiful jade with hidden fault lines. Look closely and you found that her soul was not pale white but vivid with colour.
Hermione Granger was not only quietly unruly—she could also be quietly ruthless when the moment required it.
He had noticed this from the very beginning, even when they were enemies. He had watched her ingenious little schemes catch him off guard and make him smile despite himself. She accomplished the greatest things with the least visible effort.
These kinds of methods—decisive, efficient, unostentatious—were exactly what Draco admired most.
He had never quite understood how Harry and Ron, who were her closest friends for years, had never fully seen this side of her. The irony was that he, as their declared enemy, had seen it clearly.
What's more, while her methods had ruthless elements, they were never reckless or cruel.
She always left room. She never pushed people to the point of destruction.
She seemed to understand—somehow—the violent impulses in him, and the kindness that fought against them.
She seemed to understand the pain and struggle he never articulated.
Hermione Granger. She let those who crossed her live their lives—just quietly frightened enough not to try it again.
This was precisely the level Draco had been trying to achieve his whole life.
And now that he had finally found his way close to her—now that he was beginning to truly know her—he found he was even more thoroughly unable to let go.
She was his exclusive fascination. Ninety per cent light, ten per cent darkness—whatever the combination, she exerted a pull on him that only deepened the more he resisted.
He, by contrast, was ninety per cent shadow and ten per cent scattered light—most of which she had quietly, stubbornly planted in him without his noticing. By the time he found it there, he no longer knew how to remove it.
At first the light had been sharp, uncomfortable, blinding. Now he had grown accustomed to it. It wasn't so bad.
They were each other's opposite; together, they formed something complete.
Perhaps they were always meant to be. Draco walked softly beside the girl lost in thought, something in him trembling quietly at the possibility.
---
Hermione had been silent for a long time.
His words had briefly dismantled something in her.
He had said: you're precisely the kind of person who despises rules at heart.
Was he right? Looking back—the rigid rules she was supposed to uphold, the dogmatic systems she was supposed to defend—she had been quietly breaking them all along. Sometimes the rules themselves were so rigid that even she, the most conscientious student she knew, couldn't accept them.
And he had said: break the rules. Change the world.
Wasn't that exactly what she had always wanted to do?
To change the wizarding world—to change its oppressions, its discriminations, its injustices.
Perhaps he was right. Perhaps he had seen something in her that she had only half-admitted to herself.
She was still lost in the reverberations of this thought, walking in abstracted silence, when a large root protruded across the path with what seemed like malicious intent.
She wasn't tripped—naturally. The boy who had been so thoroughly distracting her caught her at precisely the right moment. His voice came cheerfully into her ear: "Don't worry. I've got you."
"Thank you," Hermione said, and felt abruptly that the exchange was familiar.
The next moment she realised why her usually fluid speech had become temporarily difficult.
His hand was at her waist. His cedar scent wrapped around her. And his collarbone—beautiful, maddening—was right there, a single turn of the head away.
Before her central nervous system could intervene and issue a sensible veto, her lips had already done as they pleased.
She took a small bite. His collarbone.
Entirely delicious.
Draco's wand clattered to the root that had almost tripped her. The light went out.
In the sudden cool quiet, he drew a sharp breath, every muscle instantly tense.
"Hermione, what are you—" His composure was entirely gone. His voice was unsteady.
"Drawing," she said warmly against his collarbone, and then began to trace it with the tip of her nose.
Merlin, she learns fast. Draco thought, slightly staggered.
"I thought we were discussing something serious," he said hastily, noticing that her lips were now moving against his throat.
"Bending the rules? Good idea." She abandoned her train of thought entirely, her attention now devoted wholly to his neck and collarbone. "I think I am the flexible sort."
"That's a good answer," he managed, his hands unconsciously tightening at her waist.
"Your heart is beating very fast." She placed her hand against his chest for a moment, feeling it, then said indistinctly, her lips still occupied.
"Yes." There was a faint, involuntary shyness in his voice. Her warm weight in his arms was making it very difficult to think.
Merlin above—thankfully the passage was pitch black.
Her learning ability was frankly alarming. She had learned everything he'd shown her, and the consequences were now entirely his to deal with.
When she made a move on him like this, he lost all composure and simply let her do exactly as she liked.
He stood there, breathing in the fragrance of her hair, incapable of moving, thoroughly red in the face.
She was not nearly as innocent as she appeared. She lingered over him, perfectly satisfied.
After she had curled against him like a cat and taken her fill, she finally released his burning collarbone, and he found his voice again. "You're a very good painter."
"I had an excellent teacher," she said smugly.
"Oh?" he said softly. "Who called me a mediocre painter?"
"That was my nickname for you—not an assessment of your skill!" She laughed, crouched down, found his hawthorn wand among the tree roots, and pressed it into his hand. "Your wand—honestly, how can you be so careless?"
"Oh, yes—thank you." He sounded slightly drunk. He walked forward holding his wand, the soft light wobbling slightly in his grasp.
Hermione chuckled and turned the wand toward him. By its small beam, she caught his bright-pink ears and the somewhat dazed smile on his lips.
"I like you," she said, very pleased with her work.
"I love you," he mumbled, leading her on.
"What?" she asked from behind him, her voice light.
"Nothing. I—I like you too." He raised his voice.
The passage was perfectly cool, but he felt unbearably warm.
Merlin above. She had walked right into his arms—exactly as he'd hoped.
And he had fallen right into hers, without the faintest possibility of escape.
Who was catching whom, exactly?
---
Draco and Hermione arrived at the Three Broomsticks considerably too late for supper at Hogwarts.
By the time they reached the upper floor, the sun was already setting.
Sirius Black was nursing what appeared to be his final glass of Firewhisky in the room, surrounded by several empty bottles.
"Ah—you've arrived!" His face held a faint flush. "Is today a visiting day? Or did you come through the passage? I can smell Honeydukes."
"I didn't realise you were an alcoholic," Draco said with undisguised disdain. "Shouldn't you be extraordinarily busy right now?"
"You've made the trip to Hogsmeade specifically to interrupt my efforts to deplete Madam Rosmerta's stock?" Sirius said, his voice slightly slurred.
"We have absolutely no interest in your habit of drinking yourself into a stupor before dark," Draco said bluntly. "What we're interested in is your godson and the scar on his forehead."
"Yes, Harry's scar hurt again—of course he'd tell you." Sirius rubbed the back of his neck with mild irritation and gestured loosely at them. "Sit down, then. Tell me what you're thinking."
"Actually—this is Hermione's conjecture. I think she should say it herself." Draco took her hand and gave it an encouraging squeeze. "No one explains it better than you."
Hermione gave him a strained smile.
She composed herself and, over the course of about ten minutes, repeated everything she had told Draco the previous evening.
As she spoke, the drunkenness faded from Sirius's eyes and a grave expression settled in its place. By the end, Draco half suspected he had never been drunk at all.
"What do you think, Sirius?" Draco asked, his eyes carrying more worry than he could fully conceal. "Tell us we're overthinking it."
"No—I don't think you are." Sirius set down his glass. "Why do you think I've been drinking in broad daylight? Because I've been thinking about precisely this." His voice was sombre.
Draco and Hermione exchanged a glance, and what passed between them was worry.
"Do you remember those dreams Harry had? The one where he dreamt of Barty Crouch Jr.?" Sirius said grimly. "Dumbledore later used certain methods to reach into Barty Crouch Jr.'s mind, and confirmed that the scene Harry dreamt had actually occurred."
"Oh," Draco and Hermione said, in flat unison.
"There's something you may not be fully aware of," Sirius continued. "In one of Harry's visions—one where he saw through the Dark Lord's perspective—at one point, Harry felt as though he was Voldemort."
Draco stopped breathing.
He didn't even correct Sirius's use of the name.
He was too horrified by what that implied.
If Harry's detailed knowledge of Nagini's physical traits could be dismissed as coincidence, Sirius's words closed that particular door firmly.
"Has Harry already formed a… a mental link with the Dark Lord?" Hermione asked in a shaking voice.
"Although I am deeply reluctant to reach this conclusion," Sirius said, his expression twisting with rage, "since you've already arrived there yourselves—I won't hide it from you. I believe Harry is most likely one of Voldemort's Horcruxes." His handsome face contorted. "He turned James and Lily's child—a living, breathing human child—into a Horcrux. That disgusting, despicable creature."
Merlin.
Draco stopped breathing entirely.
Harry Potter—the boy who had defeated the Dark Lord again and again—was himself the Dark Lord's Horcrux.
It was absurd. It was monstrous. Was it even possible?
If it was—then the boy who had saved him from the fire. The boy who had handed him that stone from the bottom of the Black Lake. The boy who had quietly helped him with Krum, and followed Hermione into danger without a second thought—his soul was being poisoned by the Dark Lord's filth, every moment of every day.
In his previous life, even during the war, Harry had remained kind, righteous, himself. He had pulled Draco from the flames. That hadn't been the act of someone corrupted.
Draco was completely at a loss.
In the silence, Hermione was the first to speak.
Her lips trembled. "But Harry is healthy—he's fine. Draco, tell Sirius—Harry is nothing like Quirrell. Apart from the scar pain—"
"The aching scar should be obvious enough," Sirius said sharply. "The moments it hurts correspond precisely to when the Dark Mark deepens, when Voldemort grows stronger, or when he becomes emotionally agitated. Those are exactly the moments when two fragments of the same soul are most likely to resonate."
"But his body shows no sign of damage or decay. He hasn't been weakened by the presence of another soul—" Hermione pressed on, struggling.
She turned to Draco, pleading with him silently, hoping for a counter-argument.
Draco stared back at her, pale and speechless. His eyes told her he had nothing.
Hermione's face went slowly, steadily white.
"Something must have gone wrong," Sirius said, gripping his glass. "I suspect Voldemort made an error when Harry became a Horcrux—an error that caused his own body to fail. I think the process was incomplete, which is why Harry is still himself."
Sirius's certainty compelled Draco to consider the possibility seriously.
"The soul-splitting principle—maybe he split himself so many times that the fracture became involuntary," Draco said, forcing the words through gritted teeth. "He may not have intended to make Harry a Horcrux at all. It may have been an uncontrolled split, not a deliberate creation. Isn't that right, Hermione?"
Hermione nodded, frowning deeply, but did not speak.
"That's very plausible. It makes more sense than the alternative," Sirius said through clenched teeth. "If he knew Harry was a Horcrux, he presumably wouldn't want Harry dead. Yet he seems to have no such concern. I'd very much like to know how many times this fool has split himself."
"We want to know that too," Draco said, taking Hermione's hand. "We've been trying to find out."
"But it hasn't been going well," Hermione said, her eyes filling.
"Don't give up, all right? Keep going." Sirius smiled tiredly at her. "I know it isn't easy. But you've done something remarkable."
"We won't stop," Draco said, patting her hand steadily. "Sirius—I have to note that Harry seems to be under no form of mind control. His thinking has remained independent—"
"Likely because the Horcrux-making process was incomplete." Sirius's tone softened slightly. "Harry's independent mind is the only thing giving me any optimism at all. Perhaps we can somehow destroy that soul fragment without destroying Harry."
"How?" Hermione whispered, her voice catching.
"I don't imagine we can simply take the Gryffindor sword and stab Harry through the forehead," Draco said, annoyed at his own helplessness.
"Obviously not!" Sirius snapped. "Are you suggesting we kill him?"
"Of course I'm not suggesting we kill him, you unreliable excuse for a godfather," Draco shot back. "I'm trying to think about how we destroy that fragment. The Basilisk fang is no use—it hurt Harry before, but didn't destroy anything in him."
"That's exactly what worries me. The phoenix tears healed Harry, but they also protected that soul. I'm afraid the fragment is now linked to Harry's life," Sirius said grimly, taking a long drink. "If the vessel can only truly die when the soul fragment dies—"
"No!" Hermione exclaimed. "That is absolutely unacceptable."
"Could we extract the fragment?" Draco asked coldly.
"What a brilliant suggestion! So simple! Do you think I haven't considered it?" Sirius said, with a flat laugh devoid of humour. "How, exactly?"
"How would I know?" Draco said. "Aren't you the one with all the exceptional talent and experience? Think of something."
"I'm not Merlin," Sirius said darkly. "I need to seek help."
"You mean Dumbledore." Draco studied him. "Think carefully before you do."
"I have been thinking about it all day—whether to tell him, and when." Sirius paused. "Dumbledore will find out sooner or later. He may have already suspected. If so, he's chosen to keep it from me, which is its own problem."
"Have you considered the consequences of going to him rashly?" Draco asked. "What if Dumbledore is powerless? Would he simply keep Harry under lock and key—or worse?"
"Dumbledore is a principled man!" Sirius said firmly. "I believe he would never harm Harry."
"You seem to have forgotten Quirrell's fate," Draco said coolly. "Or where Barty Crouch Jr. is right now. Sirius Black—if killing Harry were the simplest solution to the Dark Lord's problem, do you think Dumbledore would hesitate? Is he a man who prioritises one life above the greater good? What makes you certain he would side entirely with Harry when the two conflict?"
He looked at Sirius's increasingly grim face and posed the cruelest question of all: "If killing Harry were the only option—what do you believe he would do?"
It was not fair to blame Draco for thinking this way.
Honestly—if Harry hadn't been his unexpected saviour, if he hadn't spent four years watching the boy he had once considered an enemy, if he hadn't come to see what Harry actually was—
Draco might have chosen the simplest, most expedient solution himself. The coldly logical one.
"Draco, please don't say that," Hermione whispered, her lips white.
Sirius said nothing.
"I need to think about this further." After a pause, he set down his glass. "Harry is my only family. I cannot take any risks."
"And yet you've told us directly," Draco said, his chest full of conflict he couldn't name. "You could have simply dismissed our conjecture today and made us think it was unfounded. You could have sent us away. I want to destroy every Horcrux I can find. You know that. How can you be certain I won't find a way to harm Harry in doing so?"
"Because you rushed all the way from Hogwarts," Sirius said, glancing at him steadily, "not to tell me you were planning to do something to Harry."
"We came to verify our hypothesis," Draco said coldly. "Telling you and targeting Harry are not mutually exclusive."
"Hermione," Sirius said, looking at her, "you won't do anything to harm Harry, will you? You said it was unacceptable."
She shook her head, tears brimming.
"You're a good girl," Sirius said gently. "A good friend. Thank you for your loyalty to him."
He turned his gaze to Draco and studied him for a long time before speaking.
"Draco—I know you've been good for Harry. You've given him advice, you've pushed him, you've trained with him. He even came to you during the second task. He trusts you a great deal." A pause. "I'm always surprised at how much he trusts a Slytherin."
"So am I," Draco muttered, silently pressing his handkerchief into Hermione's hand.
"He considers you a friend," Sirius said quietly. "He told me so last night. There aren't many people he can say that about."
Draco looked back at him without speaking.
Harry Potter trusted Draco Malfoy. Considered him a friend.
In his previous life, that sentence would have been worthy of mockery.
In this life—Draco turned it over quietly.
Harry was the one who had handed him that stone from the lakebed. Who had silently supported his relationship with Hermione. Who had helped smooth things with Krum's friends. Who had followed Hermione straight into the Black Lake's danger without hesitation.
They argued like friends. Helped each other like friends. Teased each other and made peace like friends.
Whatever had begun with calculation on Draco's part had become, somewhere along the way, something he could no longer summarise as mere strategy.
And even if Harry had not been his unexpected friend—even if the Dark Lord's soul fragment were fully awake inside him right now—could Draco actually do it?
"So," Sirius said. "Draco Malfoy—Harry's trusted friend. Would you choose to harm him?"
"No," Draco said quietly, feeling something heavy lift from his chest.
That was the truth.
"And if killing Harry were the only option?" Sirius pressed. "If that truly were the only way—what would you do?"
The only option.
Draco's lips were pale, and a strange calm—deep, settled, resolute—spread slowly across his face. Under Hermione's tearful gaze, and with a flicker of something warm in his chest, he said:
"I will not accept that as the only option. I will find another."
Just as Hermione Granger had done—turn a multiple-choice question into a fill-in-the-blank.
If no acceptable answer exists, create one.
With some inexplicable, irrational, arrogant, and entirely ridiculous confidence, Draco Malfoy declared: "I'm going to find a new way."
Sirius Black let out a short laugh.
The dark-haired man stood up from his chair, leaned across the table, and extended his hand to the slightly startled boy on the sofa.
A resolute light flashed in Sirius's grey eyes.
"Then, Draco," he said, "from this moment—we are on the same side."