Draco had always kept a careful distance from Lupin.
He had no intention of exposing him. Professor Dumbledore had hired the man, and Professor Snape was willing to brew his Wolfsbane Potion—what business was it of Draco Malfoy's to interfere? A proper Slytherin observes from a distance, stays clear of other people's complications, and avoids trouble wherever possible.
What had changed was this: Hermione Granger, using her considerable mind and a meticulous attention to seemingly minor details, had worked it out for herself.
"So what will you do?" He asked her again on the snowy road back from Hogsmeade to the castle. "Report him, or keep silent?"
He was genuinely curious what a girl who considered herself brave would decide.
She tugged deliberately at the back of his robes, slowing her pace until Harry and Ron were well ahead of them, then whispered, "What do you think would happen if I told everyone?"
"Oh, it wouldn't affect Hogwarts much." He kept his tone casual. "As for Lupin—he'd lose his position. Every owl in the country would descend on Dumbledore's office, demanding a replacement."
"Why?" Her face had gone as white as the snow around them. "Just because he's a werewolf?"
"That's exactly why."
"But he hasn't done anything wrong," she said, with the anxious edge of someone who knows the answer won't be what she wants to hear.
"When you first found out, weren't you frightened?" He glanced at her. "You're defending him now?"
"I was startled—not frightened. There's a difference." She widened her eyes and stood her ground. "When I think about it calmly, he's talented. He's responsible. He's already promised to give Harry private Patronus lessons. He's a good professor."
"He's a 'good professor' now," Draco said, his boots crunching steadily through the snow. "Once he transforms, he becomes something considerably more dangerous than you can imagine. Wizards have a very hard time against werewolves in their transformed state—they are highly resistant to magic. If you encountered one, you could be killed."
"I know. I've read about it. Professor Snape made us write papers on it." She looked puzzled by the gravity of his expression. "I'm not planning to walk up to a transformed werewolf."
You didn't plan to the last time either, he thought—you simply shouted the Dark Lord's name out loud and practically called Greyback to you. But he kept that thought to himself.
"The best protection from a werewolf is never to be in the same place as one," he said seriously. "Stay well away. I mean that."
"I know," she said, with a flash of impatience. Then, more quietly: "So—should we expose him?"
This was the third time he had asked her, and she still hadn't answered directly.
Hermione was silent for a long moment. When she finally spoke, it was with a question: "What kind of professor does Hogwarts actually need? By character, talent, teaching ability—who is more qualified, Lupin or Quirrell or Lockhart?"
"He's talented," Draco said. "But having a werewolf teach young students is objectively dangerous. No parent wants their child living in close proximity to one. The risk is too high."
"The risk is being managed, though, isn't it? He takes Wolfsbane every month."
"Wolfsbane minimises the risk. It doesn't eliminate the underlying problem." He kept his voice steady. "Being born a werewolf, in the eyes of the wizarding world, is the original sin. Once the truth is out, there is only one outcome: dismissal."
"That's what makes me hesitate." Her voice had gone quiet, and a note of vulnerability had crept into it that he didn't usually hear from her. "A talented person who has never hurt anyone—who teaches responsibly and manages his condition as carefully as he can—shouldn't have to lose everything because people fear something he may never, in his whole life, do wrong. It seems wrong to deprive him of his work and his purpose just because of what he is."
He glanced at her. She was trembling faintly in a gust of cold wind, but she held his gaze with a directness that didn't waver.
"Does that mean talent counts for nothing?" she said. "That his efforts and knowledge and years of work mean nothing, and just because he is a werewolf, he deserves to be cast out?"
He understood exactly what she was thinking—and felt a sudden, strange tenderness toward her for it.
"Hermione," he said, not unkindly. "Sometimes I think you're remarkable, but also that you're naive. There are two options here: expose him and lose him, or keep the secret. The world you're imagining—where everyone knows and simply accepts him—doesn't exist."
Hermione stopped.
She released his robes.
She stood in the snow, not moving. Her expression shifted through something complicated—a kind of sharp, bright pain, as though something she had been carefully holding together had been punctured.
He felt the sudden lightness at the hem of his robes.
He stopped, turned, and looked at her.
That stubborn face. The small, pursed lips. The furrowed brows and the reddening tip of her nose from the cold. Snowflakes beginning, again, to catch in her hair. And—he noticed now—her bare neck, without a scarf.
"Where's your scarf?" he asked, softening his voice.
"I forgot it," she said quietly. A slight tremor was in her voice that had nothing to do with the cold.
He unwound his own scarf and wrapped it around her neck, once, twice, three times, until not a breath of cold air could reach her skin.
She looked at him.
She had been feeling raw and exhausted from the conversation, wrung out by the weight of it—and she had thought, in that state, it would be impossible for her heart to behave foolishly. But it did anyway. It beat steadily, stubbornly, because of his hands at her throat, tucking the wool snugly under her chin.
She was angry with him—she had been, in some shifting way, angry with him all evening. For his secrecy, for his calm, for the hard truth he'd just told her. But then he'd stood there in the cold without his scarf and wrapped her in it as if it were nothing. As if keeping her warm were simply obvious.
He looked at her with those quiet grey eyes, not saying anything comforting, but somehow communicating it anyway.
"Draco," she said, her eyes bright with tears she was holding back, "I've just realised I'm not brave at all. I can't fix any of this. I don't want either of the paths you're describing. The path I want doesn't exist."
Merlin, she was about to cry. He panicked.
"That's not true," he said quickly, brushing the snowflakes from her hair. "You're very brave. You found out the truth, you understood the problem, and you're still trying to think of a better way forward. That is courage—that's exactly what it is."
"Is it?" She bit her lip, the tears threatening at the edges of her eyes.
"Someone as cowardly as me, my first instinct upon learning a difficult truth is to cover my ears and walk away," he said, making a face at himself to try and coax a smile out of her. "I never think about solving problems. That makes me a coward, doesn't it?"
She managed a small, reluctant smile and forced the tears back.
"You're always doing this," she said, shaking her head. "You always put yourself down." She buried her face briefly in his scarf—it carried something clean and faint, like cold air and something more pleasant beneath it—and took a breath. "I don't think you're a coward. I think seeing through a cruel reality, accepting it, and still being honest enough to explain it to someone else—that takes its own kind of courage."
He raised an eyebrow, a slight smile returning. He was pleased, but still felt the need to disagree on principle. "No. I'm still that cowardly Slytherin. Don't confuse me with a Gryffindor."
She looked at him with a searching expression that made him want to find something to do with his hands.
"Your hands are cold," he said, noting they were trembling. "Why aren't they in your pockets?"
She lowered her eyes without answering.
He remembered, then, that she'd been holding his robes. So, on a small, ungovernable impulse, he took one of her hands and slipped it into his own coat pocket. "Warmer?"
She buried her face in the silver-green scarf, and said a muffled "Mm."
"Come on, then," he said. "It's getting late."
They walked on through the snow—avoiding the icy patches and muddy puddles, both of them quiet. They walked in the particular silence of people who have said something true to one another and are still settling into it, finding, between the words about courage, some small and private comfort.
Only when they reached the entrance hall—the warmth of the castle closing around them—did Hermione remove her hand from his pocket and look up at him.
"I'm not angry anymore," she said, in a tone of someone who has worked something out. "I'm not even annoyed at you for keeping the werewolf secret from me. Because I've just realised something."
"What?" he asked, with a faint sense of foreboding. Something in her eyes looked like a trap being very patiently set.
In the torchlight of the entrance hall, a gleam of triumph crossed her face. "You haven't told anyone. Not a single person. You've been keeping his secret this whole time—haven't you? You say cold, heartless things, you talk about risk and dismissal, you seem to want him gone as quickly as possible—but you haven't said a word to anyone. You're protecting his secret because you don't actually want to hurt him."
Draco looked at her in alarm. There was indeed a trap in her eyes, and underneath it a very quiet, very precise blade.
"I just—I don't want to get involved—"
"Yes, of course," she said warmly, echoing him with an expression that did not suggest she believed a word of it. "Not brave, not kind, not gentle. Absolutely none of those things."
He opened his mouth to say something sharp and deflecting. She got there first.
She unwound his scarf from her neck, placed it back in his hands, and said, brightly and with considerable satisfaction:
"I also worked out something today that's been bothering me for three years. A silver-green scarf and a gold-red scarf are exactly the same. They're both equally warm." She paused. "Both very lovely. Thank you, Draco."
She gave him a small, shy smile, and walked into the hall.
What remained in the entrance hall was Draco Malfoy—stunned, bewildered, and unable to move—clutching the silver-green scarf, still warm from her neck. His palms, for once, did not feel empty.
Hermione, Hermione.
It's as though you don't dislike me at all.
It's as though you actually find me—
He stood in the doorway for a long time, gripping the scarf, as motionless as a suit of armour that had stood in one corner of a castle for several centuries and had forgotten how to do anything but stand.
---
When he returned home for Christmas, Draco sat in an armchair by the fireplace in the Malfoy library, staring at the pages of a book called *A Study of the Development of Modern Wizardry* without reading a single word.
He was still thinking about Hermione.
He didn't notice when his mother appeared in the doorway, or how long she had been watching him before she finally spoke.
"Little Dragon—"
"Oh—Mother?" He startled, and answered instinctively, in a voice that was a little too composed—the voice of a seventeen-year-old, not a thirteen-year-old—before catching himself.
Narcissa paused, something briefly uncertain crossing her expression.
"You've grown up so much without my noticing," she said at last, composing herself, a gentle smile returning to her face. She came and settled in the armchair opposite him. "You're nothing like that little boy who begged for bedtime stories and stole my sweets anymore. Those enormous books, those complicated potions, Quidditch—one of the school board members' wives was praising you to me at the last tea party. She says you always catch the Snitch for Slytherin."
Draco set his book aside and smiled at her. "You seem a little sad today, Mum. What's the matter?"
"It's nothing." For just a moment, something shone in Narcissa's blue eyes before it disappeared. "I—I heard about the Dementor attack at the Quidditch match. You never mentioned it in your letters."
He had chosen not to. She had enough to worry about; he hadn't wanted to add to it.
"I'm perfectly fine. Dumbledore and the others intervened," he said, keeping his voice easy. "There was nothing to worry about."
"Little Dragon, I know you don't want me to fret," she said softly, trying to maintain her smile. "But I don't want to be the last to know when something happens to you. Some of the other mothers seem to know everything that goes on at Hogwarts. They talk about it at parties. I heard about the Dementors from the school board member's wife before I heard it from you—or from your father." She looked at him with a kind of careful, almost humble hope. "You don't have to tell me everything. I know you're busy. But—occasionally—something that matters? Something you're worried about? You could tell me. Let me give you some advice sometimes, even if you don't need it."
Draco looked at his mother.
In his past life, he had told her almost everything—the Potter trio, his grievances, his grudges, in relentless repetitive detail. She had listened with increasingly perfunctory interest, her eyes glazing over somewhere around the five hundredth mention of Potter and Granger, her responses gentle but hollow.
In this life, he had adjusted. He told her the good things: his marks, his honours, his Quidditch record. He had thought that was what she wanted.
But here she was, asking for the rest.
He sat with it for a moment. The question of whether to confide in her—really confide in her—moved through him and he let it pass. He knew her. He knew the limits of her loyalties, the direction her allegiances would move when it mattered. Her love for him was absolutely genuine, and it was not enough. Not for what he was doing.
He brightened, and put on the most convincingly childish expression he could manage.
"Actually, there is something troubling me, Mum." He leaned forward. "I spent my entire allowance on Christmas presents, and I'm completely out of Galleons, and I want sweets—"
Narcissa burst out laughing, the careful, melancholy atmosphere she had been cultivating dissolving instantly.
How could she have thought her Little Dragon had grown up? He was still exactly the same—a child who was excellent at wheedling and utterly devoted to sweets.
"Is that all? I'll transfer twenty thousand Galleons into your Gringotts account this afternoon," she said, relieved and affectionate. "And from now on, fifty thousand a month. Buy whatever you want. Don't ever go short."
"Thank you, Mother."
---
On Christmas morning, Narcissa assessed her son in the entrance hall of Malfoy Manor with the pleased expression of someone checking a particularly fine piece of work.
"Little Dragon, I'm certain you've grown taller again." She watched him turn in front of the large gilded mirror in the drawing room, trying on the new winter robes she had had made for him. "How does it fit?"
"Perfectly." He smiled at his reflection. "Thank you, Mum."
"Lucius, what do you think?" Narcissa called.
Lucius Malfoy, seated with a newspaper across the room, glanced at his son briefly over the top of the page. "Acceptable."
"He's clearly very handsome," Narcissa said to her husband with mild indignation. "What do you mean, 'acceptable'?"
Lucius could not bring himself to offer direct praise. He had particular views on the matter—praise given too freely produced arrogance—and so he folded the page neatly and said instead, "I heard you beat Potter in the last Quidditch match?"
"It wasn't quite a defeat on his part. He was attacked by the Dementors. I was fortunate." Draco said.
"Don't underestimate yourself." Lucius said this very quickly, then appeared to find it embarrassing, and retreated immediately behind the newspaper. A pause. Then, from behind the pages: "You should work more on the Patronus Charm. Try to give it form." Another pause. "Those Dementors were completely out of order. I've already filed a formal complaint with the Ministry."
"You'll get there, Little Dragon," Narcissa added gently, her blue eyes warm. "The fact that you can already cast it at all means your spellwork is sound. Perhaps you simply need to find more happiness—or perhaps you haven't yet settled on what form you want it to take. I spent a long time deciding, before I finally settled on a robin."
Draco smiled and nodded at her.
But he knew, privately, that it was not that simple.
---
The Christmas holidays ended. Not long after Draco returned to Hogwarts, word spread through the school that Harry had received a Firebolt from his anonymous godfather.
"I wish I had a godfather like that," Seamus Finnigan said wistfully.
"Who wouldn't," Ron agreed, with feeling.
It was a damp, cold January morning, and they were standing near the edge of the Forbidden Forest for Care of Magical Creatures.
Dreadful weather. Dreadful lesson, Draco thought. He had never seen the appeal of Hagrid's subject—it reliably involved some form of creature that was either foul, dangerous, or both.
Today, however, in what appeared to be a genuine attempt to warm the students up, Hagrid had built a large bonfire and populated it with salamanders. The students were tasked with keeping the fire supplied with fresh wood and leaves so the fire-loving lizards could romp about in the flames.
While Draco and Hermione went to search for dry branches in the nearby undergrowth, he noticed the glint of silver on her finger.
A small ring—a Kneazle familiar enough with silver not to disturb it at all, a serpent with its tail in its mouth, with tiny ruby eyes that caught the winter light in flashes. It was the Christmas gift he had given her.
Hermione caught him looking and held out her hand for him to see properly. "It's beautiful, isn't it?"
"Very." His lips curved slightly.
"I love it." Her eyes had that warm, pleased glow they got when something genuinely satisfied her. "And there's a defensive enchantment on it—that's unusual, isn't it? Where did you find it?"
"Special commission," he said. "But you only get one use. It will deflect a single attack or reflect a minor curse once. After that, it's spent." He paused. "It won't hold against anything in the Unforgivable class—that much is clear."
The ring had been his own idea, inspired by the concept behind one of the Weasley twins' prototype products. He had spent an embarrassing amount of time consulting Fred about the enchantment, during which he had been thoroughly mocked, and had ultimately agreed to loan the twins the Marauder's Map for a period in exchange for their help—apparently they were interested in researching some variety of Tethering Charm for a new product. It had been a terrible bargain from a purely financial standpoint.
He had also, while the ring was being made, added a Tracking Charm to it.
He knew it was not entirely proper. But with Pettigrew still at large, Dementors patrolling the grounds, and a werewolf teaching in the castle, he found he simply couldn't bring himself not to.
He told himself he would only check it in a genuine emergency. This was true, in the sense that he checked her location on the Marauder's Map every night before he went to sleep and had never yet decided that none of those nights constituted an emergency.
"The galaxy model you gave me is beautiful," he said, changing the subject before his guilt could show on his face. "I feel as though I could retire from Astronomy entirely."
Hermione gave him a smug look. "I knew you'd like it. Now you can finish your star charts faster and spend the extra time on Quidditch training."
He nodded. This was accurate. Marcus had returned to his usual state of manic urgency, and the training schedule was brutal.
---
A week into term, Slytherin played Ravenclaw.
Slytherin won—but only just. In the final minutes, Draco pulled off a sharp last-second feint to throw off Cho Chang and closed his hand around the Snitch.
Marcus, in the tactics room afterward, was simultaneously elated and anxious.
"Told you he doesn't believe in going easy on anyone," Derrick said, clapping Marcus on the shoulder.
"I don't think Diggory was going easy on Chang, for what it's worth," Draco said, examining the Snitch. "She was genuinely difficult."
"That's the attitude. No underestimating anyone." Marcus pointed at the blackboard. "But don't be complacent—the margin was too narrow. Gryffindor now have the Firebolt. If Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff get crushed by Gryffindor before we face them, the points differential could hurt us. We need to train harder."
No one complained. They were all, by this point, intent on winning.
Marcus gave everyone the afternoon off after Gryffindor defeated Ravenclaw in a later match—something about a headache, which no one questioned.
Draco, finally with an hour to himself, went to the library to catch up on overdue assignments and help Crabbe and Goyle with their star charts for Astronomy.
"How does anyone confuse these constellations?" he muttered, tapping Goyle's parchment with the wrong end of his quill. "Use your eyes. You've drawn this entire galaxy upside down."
Goyle produced an expression of deep-seated regret.
"Very good, Crabbe," Draco said, bending to examine the second parchment. "You've drawn Andromeda perfectly. It's just that Professor Sinistra requested Orion."
Crabbe's satisfied smile vanished.
"Redo them. I'll check when I get back." Draco set down his quill and glanced along the bookshelf beside him, frowning.
He had caught a glimpse of a familiar figure as he'd come in.
He slipped away from his two unfortunate companions and made his way between the stacks.
He had something for Hermione. Mr. Slughorn had sent two small vials by owl that morning—Felix Felicis, at last fully matured after six months. A thank-you, the accompanying note explained, for the Christmas gift of candied Amazonian pineapple.
*"I haven't tasted pineapple preserves from the Amazon basin in decades!"* Slughorn had written, with his customary enthusiasm.
Draco held one of the vials up to the light now as he walked. The liquid was a deep, brilliant gold, shimmering as though lit from within.
He had wanted this in his past life and never had it. He was still mildly astonished to be holding it so easily.
He found her at the window seat—her favourite spot, the white gauze curtains shifting softly in a draught from the stone wall. A thin shaft of winter sunlight fell across the table and caught the edge of her hair.
He said her name quietly.
She didn't stir.
He moved closer and looked. She had put her head down on her arm, turned her face to the side, and fallen entirely asleep on a fresh sheet of parchment. Her quill was still loosely held in her fingers. In front of her sat a large open volume: *Domestic Life and Social Customs of British Muggles*.
"What on earth is so interesting about that," Draco murmured to himself, glancing at the illustrations. He carefully removed the quill from between her fingers and set it upright in the ink bottle.
She made an indignant sound through her nose at the loss of the quill—a small, unconsciously spoiled sound—without waking.
He sat down beside her, moved his bag out of the way, and, following an impulse he didn't particularly examine, mirrored her posture: head resting on his arm, face turned toward hers.
He brought himself close enough to see her clearly in the slant of afternoon light.
It had been a while since he'd had the opportunity to simply look at her without either of them being in the middle of something.
Her skin was pale—that particular pallor he recognised from his own reflection after too many late nights. He frowned at it. He preferred to see her with colour in her face.
He was still looking when she opened her eyes.
She wasn't fully awake. She looked at him with that drowsy, unfocused expression of someone not yet sure where they are, and smiled—a small, soft smile entirely unguarded by habit—and reached out and smoothed the crease from between his brows with her thumb.
"That's better," she said, in a low, sweet, half-asleep voice utterly unlike her usual one. Like a cat stretching in the sun.
Draco went completely still.
She closed her eyes again briefly, then opened them and leaned forward, and in a gesture so natural it barely registered as anything—rubbed her nose lightly against his. She stroked his platinum hair, murmuring in the gentle, completely unselfconscious tone she reserved for Crookshanks: "Oh, you poor little thing… you're here… you're so sweet… I like you so much…"
She was talking to him as if he were the cat.
He was absolutely certain she did not know what she was doing.
His face was faintly warm. A tingling, absurd, shivery happiness was spreading through his chest—small and ridiculous and inexplicably wonderful, like something lodged between his ribs.
And she had said *I like you.*
Even if she'd meant it for Crookshanks. Even if she'd looked at him with still-sleeping eyes and thought he was an orange cat. She had still said it, and he had heard it.
He shut his eyes.
Hermione yawned, and the hand wearing the silver ring came to rest gently on top of his head, patting once, twice, murmuring, "Don't go to the Forbidden Forest—stay here—sleep a little longer…"
Draco did not know whether to be moved or offended. He settled somewhere in the middle, too pleased to be the latter.
He had always found being touched unexpectedly unpleasant—there were too many Slytherins who had learned this to their cost. But her hand was different. It always had been. He leaned into it slightly, finding a better angle, and let his eyes stay closed.
The winter sunlight lay across both of them. Somewhere in the library, a clock ticked. He didn't check the time.
He finally understood why Crookshanks was always lying in front of her, demanding to be stroked.
---
By the time Draco returned to Crabbe and Goyle, both of them had finished not only their star charts but also their History of Magic and Defence Against the Dark Arts essays—apparently out of sheer bewilderment at the length of his absence.
He looked over their work by the library lamplight, smiled—genuinely, openly, in a way that made both of them stare at him—and patted them each on the shoulder.
"The astronomical drawings are excellent," he said warmly. "Keep it up. I'm going."
Crabbe and Goyle watched his retreating figure in silence.
"Where's his robe?" Goyle said at last.
Crabbe blinked. "I don't know."
"Should we tell him..." Goyle scratched his head slowly. "That what he just looked at was our Defence homework? Not the star charts?"
Crabbe's eyes moved back and forth. Then he showed a rare flash of strategic thinking. "No. I don't want to draw it again."
---
Behind the bookshelves, the white gauze curtains swayed in the draught and woke Hermione.
She blinked at the window, slightly confused.
There was a small golden vial sitting in her palm. She hadn't put it there.
She touched, with some puzzlement, the robe that had been draped over her shoulders—Slytherin colours, silver-green—and leaned slightly forward to smell the collar.
A faint, clean scent. Something cool and faintly warm underneath.
She sat up properly and looked around at the empty window seat beside her, and at the quill standing neatly in its ink bottle.