On the bustling street of Diagon Alley, Hermione Granger was trying to squeeze through a crowd of excited witches and wizards.
The sunlight was blinding, and the summer heat dampened her forehead. She tucked a strand of damp hair behind her ear and squeezed out through a narrow gap between two girls.
Not far away, a young boy was shouting at the top of his lungs, "Is this the fastest broom in the world, Dad?"
"Son, I don't think you need this just yet—" the father said awkwardly.
"Firebolts! Sample models only—" the Quidditch shop owner bellowed to the crowd of potential customers.
Draco would be very interested. She glanced sideways and caught sight of a broom in the corner of the display. Its twigs were neat and even, the craftsmanship exquisite — more refined than any broom she had ever seen. He would definitely like it.
Though a thousand thoughts raced through her mind, her steps did not falter. Her gaze swept hurriedly over baskets of bat spleens and eel eyes, past a general store piled high with spellbooks, quills, rolls of parchment, potion bottles, and Lunascopes, before finally pressing her nose to the window of Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions.
A pale-faced boy with a pointed chin was standing on a footstool, waiting for the seamstress to take his measurements.
"Draco!" Hermione smiled radiantly, calling his name and skipping lightly into the shop.
"Hermione." His eyes lit up, and he jumped off the footstool to greet her.
"Ron wasn't lying to me! He said he thought he'd spotted you nearby, so I came to try my luck." She beamed. "I didn't think you'd be allowed into Diagon Alley. Aren't your parents worried about your safety? They even banned you from sending letters."
"They're making a fuss over nothing. But today's alright — my father said nearly all the Aurors have been deployed to Diagon Alley. It's probably the safest place in all of England right now," Draco explained.
"That makes sense. I've always felt there were suspicious types lurking around the Leaky Cauldron, always looking over their shoulders," Hermione said, suddenly understanding.
"Are you staying at the Leaky Cauldron tonight?" Draco asked.
"Yes — Harry and Ron are there too. Mr. Weasley was terribly kind and offered me a ride to King's Cross tomorrow. I haven't seen Harry yet, but I expect he'll turn up soon..." she said brightly.
"Very good," Draco said dryly.
It seemed she'd had a perfectly full month without him — she felt no emptiness at all.
"Are you staying at the Leaky Cauldron as well?" Hermione asked, studying him with curiosity. He looked rather pale; hadn't he been sleeping? He was a completely different person from the boy she'd seen in Bath.
"No, my family keeps a property in London," Draco said, his tone quiet.
"So — you came by yourself today?" Hermione glanced around.
"My mother is buying books, and my father is after potion ingredients and the like," Draco said casually, his eyes drifting to the shop window. "Where are Mr. and Mrs. Granger?"
"Oh, they dropped me off at the Leaky Cauldron and headed back. Well — once you've finished your fitting, shall we go for ice cream? Ron and I have already agreed to meet there," Hermione said cheerfully.
"I'm afraid there won't be time. I'll have to leave as soon as I'm done." He looked faintly disappointed. "Enjoy yourselves."
He didn't know what was causing the sudden hollow feeling in his chest. He wanted to smile at her, but something caught in his throat and he couldn't quite manage it.
Hermione gave him a sympathetic look.
Just as she was about to say something more, a thin seamstress appeared with a measuring tape and pins, ready to get to work.
"Those who aren't purchasing robes, please wait outside. It's far too crowded in here!" the seamstress snapped.
"What sort of attitude is that?" Draco fixed her with an icy look. "Is this how you treat customers?"
The seamstress was about to retort when Hermione cut in.
"It's alright, Draco — I'm off." She gave him a small, firm shake of her head, signalling him to let it go. "See you on the train tomorrow!"
She apologised briefly to the seamstress and slipped out of Madam Malkin's.
Draco watched Hermione's departing figure — her long, wavy brown hair standing out in the crowd. She came and went like the wind, gone after only a handful of words. She seemed perfectly happy, whether he was there or not.
He stepped back onto the footstool and stood in silence as the seamstress draped a dark green robe over his shoulders.
Through the shop window, he saw Harry coming down the street from the other direction. Hermione's face lit up, and she rushed forward to hug him. They held each other for a few seconds, then spoke, laughed, and walked together toward Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour.
She hadn't hugged him. She had only smiled. Draco stared straight ahead, feeling as though something heavy had settled over his chest.
He stood rigidly as the seamstress worked around him, jabbing pins with little care.
"Watch where you're sticking that," he said sharply.
"Excuse me — there's no need to be rude!" the seamstress said, startled.
"Then be more careful," he said curtly, watching until Hermione and Harry disappeared into the crowd.
The seamstress gave the short-tempered young customer a withering look behind his back and said nothing more.
---
The very people responsible for Draco's dark mood were at that moment sitting in the sunshine outside Florean Fortescue's, admiring Ron's new wand.
"Willow with a unicorn hair core." Ron turned it over with great care before tucking it safely away. "Loads better than Charlie's old one."
"It's lovely! Willow is particularly well-suited for Silencing Charms and advanced non-verbal spells, I've read," Hermione said.
"My mother had a willow wand," Harry said. "Ollivander once told me that willow is especially good for Charms work."
Ron looked very pleased to hear it.
They sat in the sunshine with large portions of ice cream, catching each other up on the summer. Conversation shifted from the twins nearly locking Percy inside a Pharaoh's tomb to the strange dark objects at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. Eventually, Hermione frowned and said, "I think Draco must be terribly bored at home. I just bumped into him and he looked so flat and miserable."
She had been a little worried since they parted; he hadn't looked well.
"I can understand that, I think. When Uncle Vernon locked me up and you were all completely out of contact — it was a dreadful feeling," Harry said sympathetically.
"He'll be free soon enough. He can go back to Hogwarts tomorrow," Ron said, comfortingly, taking a large, happy bite of ice cream. "Let's see that golden Gobstone set," he said to Harry. "I've been wanting to have a go for ages."
Harry, temporarily forgetting Draco's frustrations, pulled out his birthday present and set it gleaming in the sun. Before long, the two of them were locked in a fierce game of Gobstones.
Hermione's attention had drifted elsewhere. She thought for a moment, opened her purse to check her allowance, then called to the boys mid-game: "I need to pop off for a bit. I want to buy myself a birthday present."
"Books, is it?" Ron asked, wearing an expression of exaggerated kindness.
"A pet, actually." She glared at him. "I want an owl too — Harry has Hedwig, you have Scabbers. I want one of my own, to send letters with..."
Rather than waiting for someone else's owl to carry her correspondence back and forth.
"There's a Magical Menagerie just over there," Harry said, ducking a spray of Gobstone slime. "Do you want us to come?"
"No, carry on." She glanced disapprovingly at the trail of slime and hurried off toward the shop.
---
Hermione returned just as Harry and Ron finished their first round.
She was not carrying an owl. Instead, she was cradling a large, ginger cat.
"What happened to the owl?" Harry asked, eyeing the cat with suspicion. It had an extraordinarily flat, grumpy face, as though it had once run headlong into a wall. It had been purring contentedly in Hermione's arms, but at Harry's scrutiny it snapped awake and fixed him with a sharp, imperious stare.
"I bought this one instead. Isn't he beautiful?" Hermione stroked his thick, fluffy fur with delight. "I'm going to call him Crookshanks."
Harry and Ron exchanged a glance and wisely chose not to discuss with Hermione her definition of the word "beautiful."
They gathered up the Gobstones and made their way back toward the Leaky Cauldron along the cobblestone street.
As they passed Flourish and Blotts, they could see through the glass a large iron cage inside containing what looked like a hundred copies of The Monster Book of Monsters, all tangled together in a vicious, writhing heap. Behind the cage, a sweating shop assistant was pulling on a pair of thick dragon-hide gloves, preparing to retrieve copies for a row of impatient customers.
"That book is a menace. What kind of professor assigns something like that?" Ron said, shaking his head. They could hear muffled thumping even through the window.
"Do you know how to calm them?" Hermione asked, grimacing. Her own copy was bound shut with a leather belt and still managed to bang against her trunk at all hours.
"Sirius told me — stroke the spine firmly. It actually works," Harry said, grinning.
"Truly?"
"Absolutely."
"Wait here a moment," Hermione said.
She ducked straight into Flourish and Blotts and said something to the harried assistant, whose arm bore the clear marks of a book's recent bite. The assistant blinked, stroked the spine of the nearest copy, and watched it go limp and docile at once. Relief flooded the assistant's face. Hermione gave a small wave and was back on the street before they had time to miss her.
"Is she planning to solve every problem in Diagon Alley?" Ron murmured to Harry.
Hermione pretended not to hear him and kept walking.
They passed the Firebolt display once more. Harry and Ron slowed instinctively, craning their necks.
"Harry — do you like it?"
Sirius Black's voice came from just behind them. Harry spun around.
"Sirius!" He greeted his godfather with a wide grin, then asked, almost shyly, "How did you know?"
The Blacks were all tall, and Sirius stood out easily in the crowd. Even as he spoke, his eyes moved carefully over the bustling street, alert for anyone familiar in the wrong way. His expression carried a trace of old arrogance, but his grey eyes were soft when they rested on Harry.
"I gave you your first toy broomstick when you were barely walking. Of course I know." He smiled faintly. "Your mother wrote to me — said you wouldn't let it out of your sight. The look on your face just now was exactly your father's."
For a brief moment, it seemed as though he were seeing an old friend through Harry.
"I had no idea I'd ridden a broomstick as a child—" Harry said, astonished.
Before Harry could say more, Sirius noticed Ron and Hermione watching him with open curiosity. He refocused easily and gave them a warm smile. "You must be Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger. Mrs. Weasley sent me to round you all up — dinner's waiting at the Leaky Cauldron."
---
They joined the Weasleys for a lively supper and afterward settled comfortably into a cluster of armchairs in the corner of the Leaky Cauldron.
In the course of conversation, Hermione described what she'd witnessed at the Magical Menagerie.
"When I went in, there was an Auror checking the cage of mice — making absolutely certain each one still had all its toes. Can you imagine?" She shook her head in disbelief.
"They're worried Peter Pettigrew is back to his old trick, pretending to be someone's pet again," Ron said. "There were loads of Aurors all over Diagon Alley today — I spotted several of Dad's Ministry colleagues. I'd thought they were all out hunting Pettigrew."
"In a way, some of it's because of me," Harry said quietly. He turned to look at them both. "Draco told me — ages ago, now. Peter Pettigrew may be looking for one of us."
"How on earth would Draco know that? Even my dad didn't tell us, and he works at the Ministry!" Ron said, startled.
"I think your father probably did know. He likely didn't want you to worry," Harry said.
He pulled Draco's letter from his pocket and passed it across. Ron read it with growing shock. Hermione held it for a long time in silence before pressing her hand to her mouth.
She had known Pettigrew had escaped from Azkaban — but she hadn't known the rest. The things the prisoner had reportedly said sounded deliberate. Targeted. Both Draco and Harry were in real danger. No wonder Draco had come home when he did.
"You must be careful, Harry. Please don't go looking for trouble," she said at last, her voice unsteady.
"Do you genuinely think he's coming after you?" Ron asked.
"Maybe it's me. Maybe it's Draco. Maybe it's someone else entirely." Harry looked between them, frustration flickering across his face. "Why are you both looking at me like that?"
"Nobody has ever escaped from Azkaban before. Nobody knows how he managed it," Ron said.
Harry opened his mouth, then closed it again.
He wanted to share Draco's theory — but Sirius had seemed reluctant to discuss it.
"The Aurors will catch him, won't they?" Hermione said, with more conviction than she felt.
"Don't forget — he can turn into a rat. Aurors can check a pet shop, but they can't search every rat in every sewer in Diagon Alley," Harry said flatly. "There's no shortage of rats down there."
"But what does he actually want? To capture you, or to kill you? Does he think that by going after you, he can help — help Voldemort make a comeback?"
"It's Voldemort," Harry said firmly, when Ron flinched.
The three of them fell quiet.
Crookshanks gave a soft mew from Hermione's lap, his bristling ginger tail sweeping back and forth and nearly catching Harry across the face. Harry leaned back slightly, paying the cat no particular attention.
"You're all forgetting who holds the most powerful magic in the wizarding world today," Hermione said after a moment, rallying herself. "Professor Dumbledore. As long as he's at Hogwarts, no one would dare."
"That's true," Ron said, brightening. "Besides — maybe Pettigrew's after me." He laughed, then seemed to actually consider it and shrank back into his chair.
"Have you told Sirius about any of this?" Hermione asked.
"Sirius doesn't seem frightened at all — he's even been teaching me a few nasty jinxes," Harry said, smiling a little.
"Has he been with you the whole holiday?" Hermione asked with interest.
"Most of the time. He keeps mostly to his room, but I've seen him slip out of Grimmauld Place a few times in the middle of the night." Harry paused. "He keeps a close eye on everything. Azkaban must have left its mark."
"That place sounds absolutely dreadful," Ron agreed.
"I found some old photographs of him. He looks completely different now." Harry was quiet for a moment. "He's still not quite himself — a bit thin, a bit quiet — but he's much better than he was a month ago. He's been very kind to me."
"What's the Black family house like? The Blacks are an ancient wizarding family — I imagine there's a house-elf?" Ron asked, curiosity getting the better of him. His mother had been complaining about the lack of one again only recently.
"There is one — very old, and quite mad. He's not particularly fond of us." Harry smiled faintly. "The house itself is enormous, but it hasn't been touched in years. Dobby — the Malfoys' elf — actually came and stayed with us for a few days and helped us clean it out. They found all manner of Dark objects that had to be disposed of."
"Oh, Dobby!" Hermione said warmly, remembering how he had always been quick to open doors for her in Bath. "He's a wonderful elf. Very clever and warm."
"That does sound brilliant," Ron said, with a trace of envy.
They might have kept talking, but Mrs. Weasley appeared, hands on her hips, and informed them in a tone that brooked no argument that it was time for bed.
They yawned their way up the creaking stairs of the Leaky Cauldron, drifted off to their rooms, and were soon fast asleep.