A/N:Well, hello there. How are you all doing?
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Thank you for reading!
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Draco hadn't planned to attend that Quidditch match.
Since his rebirth, he had gradually come to understand that no amount of noise or excitement could stir his withered heart — it could only fill it with a deeper desolation.
The cheering and laughter all around him brought him no joy whatsoever. If anything, they only reminded him of the cruelty and horror of the Battle of Hogwarts.
Sometimes he would watch the brightly smiling students around him, his own eyes hollow and lost.
Their smiles were everywhere — at the dining tables, in the corridors, in the classrooms.
Occasionally he would pass someone whose happiness was almost blinding.
Don't be naïve enough to think that Draco Malfoy could be touched by such smiles, that he might catch their joy like an infection. He couldn't.
All he could picture was those same faces lying still in the rubble, blank and lifeless.
He thought only of how easily death came, of how fragile life was, of how unpredictable the world could be.
He was unsettled even by images of withering things — oak leaves falling, poppies decaying, hedgerows drying to husks.
He was often afraid of extinguished candles, of the mournful wind, of the darkness of the night.
He feared the smiles of the innocent.
When he remembered that certain people were fated to die, he found it impossible to treat them with any semblance of normalcy, impossible to want to know them at all. Their carefree smiles in the present moment felt like something shocking — something obscene.
And Draco Malfoy was powerless to do anything about it.
He was cowardly. He was timid. He was selfish.
He could barely take care of himself — how could he hope to save others? He couldn't be responsible for anyone. He was terrified he wouldn't be able to save them when it mattered.
He feared, even more deeply, the harm and grief that the dead leave behind in the living. So he kept his distance. Perhaps that way, when those people faded from the world, he could preserve some inner stillness — suffer a little less.
For some people, he was the danger itself.
Maintaining a safe distance might be the best way to protect her, Draco thought, weary to his bones.
But he came anyway, standing reluctantly in the Quidditch stands. He already knew how the match would end — Slytherin would lose, and badly. So what was there to see?
There was no subtle, inconspicuous way to prevent Slytherin's crushing defeat at Gryffindor's hands. The only sensible course seemed to be ignoring it entirely and steering clear of the fallout.
But he had to be here. This was a golden opportunity to demonstrate to the Potters that Quirrell was the problem.
Ever since their conversation in the library about Quirrell's strange behaviour, a seed of suspicion had been planted in Hermione's mind. But suspicion without evidence was merely speculation, and she remained sceptical.
Draco needed to add fuel to the fire — to make her believe it completely.
Hermione Granger was always difficult to convince. But once convinced, she became the most tireless person in the world, and she would do everything in her power to bring Potter and Weasley along with her — those two reckless, arrogant boys who never thought before they leapt.
In the life Draco remembered, she had been exactly like this — guiding the fortunate Potter step by step out of danger and onto the right path, armed with her voluminous books and formidable idealism.
As the brains of the Potter trio, she excelled at reasoning and was an extraordinary problem-solver.
As for Potter and Weasley — they had always, habitually, overlooked her intelligence and taken her wisdom for granted.
Draco shook his head slightly at the thought, quietly lamenting the staggering waste of her gifts.
Her brilliance deserved a far wider audience. Yet people always credited those hard-won achievements entirely to Potter.
Most people would feel bitter and resentful about that. She claimed she didn't care.
How could a person like her even exist? He had wondered about that in his previous life too — often.
The one and only Hermione Granger had always cared more about the safety of her friends than about her own recognition. Specifically, the safety of Potter.
And so, just as in his previous life, about five minutes into the match, Potter's broom went out of control.
From the moment Potter's Nimbus began to tremble unnaturally, Draco rose from his seat as though nothing were amiss, strolled leisurely away from the stands, and headed straight to the section behind where Quirrell and Professor Snape were seated.
There, he raised the binoculars hanging around his neck to watch Potter in the sky, while quietly waiting for the petite girl in the Gryffindor scarf.
She would come.
In his previous life, he had witnessed what she had done — racing along the row behind Professor Snape, brushing past him in the guise of squeezing through — and oddly enough, he had never reported her. He had simply thought she was extraordinarily bold.
Not many people would dare provoke the Slytherin's Serpent King. Whether she had been fearless or merely reckless, he had never been able to decide.
Afterward, she had slipped away along that row of seats, gone in a moment — like a squirrel that had pilfered someone's acorn and vanished into the underbrush.
He had inexplicably burst out laughing. Crabbe and Goyle had asked him what was so funny — was it Potter, teetering in the sky? His gaze had followed the girl with the gold and red scarf and he had said, lazily, "Obviously. Can't even keep his broomstick steady, can he?"
She would always come running whenever Potter was in danger, Draco thought with certainty.
Sure enough, a moment later Hermione came charging over in a panic — this little Gryffindor lion cub, so desperate to roar when she hadn't yet grown her claws — and she nearly pitched headfirst into his arms before he caught her by the wrist.
Hermione was in a state of complete shock. She had been shattered by the cruel reality of it — she simply could not believe that a professor, someone entrusted to look after his students, would curse an innocent one.
But it had happened. There was evidence. It was irrefutable.
"Draco, I just saw it through the binoculars!" she said breathlessly. "Quirrell and Professor Snape — they're both muttering to themselves, both staring straight at Harry. But I can't tell which one it is — I don't know who I need to stop—"
Her brown eyes blazed with fury. Her hands trembled around her vine wood wand, and she looked ready to unleash a barrage of hexes at the professors' section — accuracy be damned.
She was on the verge of tears, Draco thought. Her frantic state was only making things worse.
"Hermione Granger, have you lost your senses? Calm down!" He placed both hands on her shoulders and held her firmly in place before she could do anything reckless.
Hermione knew she was in a terrible state. The hand holding her wand was shaking.
But he held her steady, and there seemed to be something almost magical in his calm, pale grey eyes — something that slowly drew her back from the edge of her fury and restored her reason.
The stands were deafening around them, so Draco dared not raise his voice. He leaned close to her face — close enough to see her thick, trembling lashes — and spoke quickly and clearly.
"Listen to me. The curse will break the moment eye contact is cut. Listen — snap out of it, Hermione." He frowned slightly and laid out his plan. "We need to split up. One of us goes to Quirrell first. If that doesn't work, the other goes for Professor Snape on his side. This is our only chance to tell which one of them is responsible, so please — trust me."
A faint, cool scent drifted toward Hermione — both unsettling and clarifying.
She took a deep breath and tried to steady herself. The boy's hands on her shoulders were an anchor, a reminder that she wasn't facing this alone.
He was here. He would help her.
He gripped her shoulders, utterly composed. He was setting out the plan for her word by word, each step perfectly clear.
His approach was methodical, efficient. She understood precisely what he meant.
Their goal was the same.
He intended to use the simplest time difference to identify the culprit — a direct method, a clean one — which, as it happened, was exactly what she wanted. It required their cooperation.
"You actually intend to go after Professor Snape?" Her eyes went wide. "You'd target him too?"
That was the Serpent King himself — the formidable Head of Slytherin House, the last professor any student at Hogwarts would dare to cross. No Slytherin would dream of provoking Professor Snape, just as no Gryffindor would dare challenge Professor McGonagall.
"Are you sure?" she pressed, needing to know he wasn't joking.
"If it's necessary, I will," he said without inflection, his lips pressed into a firm, resolute line.
That steadied her.
They had to move quickly. Hermione glanced up anxiously at Harry in the air. He seemed to be clinging to his violently bucking broom with only one hand.
Almost every student in the stands had risen to their feet, watching the chaos above with horror. The Weasley twins had taken off on their own brooms, trying to pull Harry safely across to one of theirs, but it was useless — every time they drew near, the Nimbus lurched higher. The two brothers fell back slightly and began circling below Harry, clearly positioning themselves to catch him if he fell.
We have to act now. Hermione's thoughts were screaming.
"I'll go first — I'll handle Quirrell!" she whispered close to his ear.
Without hesitation, she moved. She shot toward the aisle behind Quirrell, pretending to squeeze through the row, but delivering a sharp, deliberate kick to his back in the process, sending him lurching headlong into the seat in front of him.
At the same moment, a cluster of bright blue flames leapt silently from the tip of her wand, catching the fringe of Quirrell's turban.
Ten seconds later, Quirrell — turban ablaze — scrambled out of the stands and fled toward the lower level, patting frantically at his head.
On the far side of the stand, Professor Snape sat motionless, eyes fixed on Harry, lips moving in a silent incantation. Hermione sprinted back to Draco's side and grabbed a fistful of his robes with one hand, still taut with nerves from what she had just done to a professor.
"Well? Did it work?" she asked urgently, looking at the composed boy who had raised his binoculars and was already scanning the sky.
She had forgotten her own binoculars entirely — she'd left them back in the Gryffindor section, with Ron. Harry's broom had carried him so far from the stands by now that she could barely make out his shape with the naked eye.
"He's climbed back onto the broom. Do you want to see?" Draco asked, his tone perfectly level, his expression saying plainly: I told you so.
"Yes!" she said eagerly.
She really does go to extraordinary lengths for her friends, Draco thought, pressing his lips together. He moved to lift the binoculars over his head and hand them to her — but she was already in motion. Without a second's hesitation, she ducked beneath his raised arm and pressed close to look through the eyepieces herself.
"Thank you!" she said impatiently, utterly oblivious to the fact that Draco was now standing there with his arms practically wrapped around her.
It was a thoroughly extraordinary feeling. Hermione Granger had actually nestled into the circle of his arms and was peering through his binoculars. Draco thought this with complete astonishment.
That would have been absolutely unimaginable in his previous life.
And yet — in this life — she always seemed to find new ways to defy his imagination.
She was growing bolder and more audacious by the day, yet remained perfectly, infuriatingly guileless.
She harboured not a single drop of suspicion toward him. She was simply blocking his view with her small head and its great cloud of thick brown hair. Her hair was warm, and a few rogue strands seemed almost defiant — tickling his cheek.
And she had — quite naturally, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world — simply expected him to hold the binoculars for her.
Merlin's beard. He was the young master of the Malfoy family. Who on earth dared trouble his hand for their own convenience?
Did she have any idea?
And that time on the fourth floor — in the restricted corridor — she had rested her head on his shoulder without so much as blinking!
Did she ever stop to consider whether what she was doing was entirely reasonable?
Clearly not. Hermione was completely oblivious to the storm she had set off in the boy standing behind her. Her entire focus was Harry. When the binoculars finally confirmed that he had regained control of his broom, a wide, genuine smile of relief broke across her anxious face.
She could breathe again.
A surge of indignation followed almost immediately.
Draco had been right — it was Professor Snape who had been trying to protect Harry, not curse him.
The real villain was Quirrell. That stuttering, inoffensive-looking, completely undeserving excuse for a professor! Hermione thought furiously — and as she thought it, she absently reached back and took hold of Draco's hand, adjusting the angle of the binoculars to follow Harry's movements.
She was still desperately worried about him and kept the lenses trained on that small, distant figure, afraid something else might happen.
She was utterly unaware of the sudden stiffness in the boy behind her.
Then — all at once — people in the crowd saw the young Gryffindor Seeker dive sharply toward the earth, clap a hand to his mouth as though he was about to be sick, and open his palm to reveal something small and glinting.
He had caught the Golden Snitch.
"That's wonderful!" Hermione breathed, her eyes filling with tears.
She spun around — and threw her arms around the silent boy behind her in a tight, joyful embrace.
Draco's pupils dilated. An emotion he hadn't expected surfaced in his grey eyes.
Amid the roar of cheers from near and far, she was holding him.
It felt as though her warmth and boundless vitality had seeped directly into his rigid, cold body.
She was... testing the very limits of his composure. Her sudden embrace left him completely bewildered. She seemed to genuinely enjoy being close to him. She didn't dislike him. She wasn't afraid of his cold, aloof face.
How could she hug him like that? How? Something inside him was twisting or perhaps screaming.
And then — as if from somewhere very far away — his long-dormant heart seemed to give a single, tentative beat.
It was very faint. Very shallow.
Perhaps it wasn't a true heartbeat at all, but only a bird passing close — the ghost of a feather drifting down to rest upon something that had been still for a very long time.
Light as an illusion.
"Thank you, Draco! We won!" She released him just as quickly and beamed up at him with unguarded joy.
He stood still, his grey eyes fixed blankly on her.
What could he possibly say? His thoughts were in chaos.
His frozen heart was not supposed to be beating.
At this moment, things were getting a little out of control.
Hermione noticed his rigid expression with a flicker of confusion. Harry was safe, the Golden Snitch was caught — so why wasn't he smiling?
She looked around and suddenly realised that she was standing squarely in the middle of the Slytherin section. Her gold and red Gryffindor scarf was conspicuous beyond all reason against the backdrop of silver and green.
He must be devastated that Slytherin lost, she thought, a pang of guilt shooting through her.
"Oh — I'm so sorry! I have to go!" Hermione said hurriedly.
Before his lips could form a single sardonic word, she caught a glimpse of his unfamiliar, questioning grey eyes — and fled.
So she didn't see his expression soften in the next instant. She didn't see the faint light that came, quietly, into his eyes.
"Congratulations," Draco said softly, to the retreating, lively figure that was already disappearing into the crowd. His chest was full of something he couldn't name.
Don't think about it. She's already gone.
Think of something else, he told himself, watching the bright brown hair vanish from view.
Think about Potter's safety. Think about Snape's name being temporarily cleared. Think about Slytherin's loss.
The House Cup is in serious trouble this year...
And Potter! Catching the Snitch by swallowing it — what kind of Seeking was that? he thought indignantly.
Draco had always loved Quidditch. He loved the feeling of soaring freely through open sky.
He had once sacrificed several Quidditch seasons to complete the Dark Lord's daunting task — a decision that still left a bitter taste. At the time, personal passions had counted for nothing against matters of life and death.
In his previous life as in this one, he had always envied how smoothly everything seemed to fall into Potter's lap.
What an honour it would be to take to the pitch for Slytherin and face him in a fair match, he thought despite himself. To really fly against him, and win.
He had once believed he would never be moved again.
He had once believed he could face everything with perfect indifference.
And yet —
Draco's cool grey eyes drifted back to the jubilant crowd below, and he realised, with a quiet shock, that the roar of cheering no longer evoked only loneliness.
Somewhere in this corner of the stadium, on this particular afternoon, something in his long-dormant heart had stirred.
It trembled slightly. A faint itch. As though some unseen feather had brushed against it.
For one fleeting moment, he was seized by a sudden desire — to represent Slytherin on that pitch, to fly against Potter in a fair, clean match, and to win it outright.
If he won, would people cheer, and leap to their feet, and be glad for him?
The way Hermione had been glad for Harry today?
He kept his face perfectly impassive — but he couldn't quite stop the thought.
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After the Quidditch match, Potter and Weasley finally understood that they had misjudged the entire situation through the lens of their own prejudice.
"Who would ever suspect Professor Quirrell?" Potter told him, when he and Weasley sought Draco out in the now-emptying stands. "He seems so approachable — so harmless."
"It's not entirely our fault," Weasley said, not quite managing to sound contrite. "Who told Professor Snape to swoop around the castle like a great black bat, taking aim at every non-Slytherin student with that cutting tongue of his?"
"If you applied yourselves in Potions instead of providing him with so many reasons to comment, he might not have so much to say about you," Draco returned smoothly, snapping out of his reverie. He turned to face the two boys who had come — ostensibly — to make amends, and felt his composure settle back into place.
Weasley went red and opened his mouth. No rebuttal came out.
"Anyway," Weasley muttered, after a long and painful pause, "we won. So I'm not going to lower myself to arguing with you."
That one landed. Weasley did have a gift for that particular kind of jab.
Draco gave them both a withering look, turned on his heel, and walked away.
That red-haired menace. A brain is a marvellous thing — pity he only seems to have a mouth.
Rolling his eyes, Draco headed back toward the castle in a thoroughly foul mood. He was quite certain that his opinion of the Weasley boy remained as unfavourable as ever.
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Side Story Two: The Awkward Slytherin (Harry's Perspective)
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Harry had owed Draco a Chocolate Frog for a while now.
When he had first met Draco, he had taken Hagrid's lesson — never judge a person by appearances — and then proceeded to do exactly that. Because of Professor Snape's sharp tongue and cold manner, Harry had pinned every ounce of blame on him without a second thought.
He was deeply ashamed of himself for that.
As it turned out, according to Hermione, it had most likely been Professor Snape's counter-curse that kept Harry from being thrown off that wildly thrashing broom — while Quirrell was the one casting the jinx in the first place.
They owed that understanding entirely to Draco's tip.
Speaking of Draco — for all his arrogant, mysterious, stand-offish ways, the boy had an uncanny habit of being useful precisely when it mattered.
He always seemed embarrassed to admit he'd done something decent. He kept it buried, like it was something to be ashamed of. Harry genuinely didn't understand it.
Slytherins were all hopelessly awkward like that.
Professor Snape might simply be what Draco looked like in twenty years' time. The thought sent a proper chill down Harry's spine.
Merlin, he hoped Draco didn't end up with that hair.
Still — even if Professor Snape continued to make his Potions lessons a misery, Harry found it difficult to stay properly furious about it.
It wasn't that he'd suddenly developed any great affection for Professor Snape. He still couldn't stomach the man's blatant favouritism toward Slytherin.
But the fact remained: this harsh, sarcastic, deeply unpleasant professor had tried to save him.
Somewhere under all that spite, Professor Snape did have at least a small piece of a conscience.
Didn't he?