Chapter Text
The Hogwarts Express cut through the green fields with a familiar thunder.
Hermione Granger sat with her cheek against the cool glass. This year mattered. She would sit her N.E.W.Ts and, at last, begin to steer things rather than be pulled along by them. She was twenty on parchment and, if she was honest, older in the bones. Time-Turners left marks you couldn’t see in a mirror.
She could ask Professor McGonagall, her Head of House whether the device might be sanctioned again, just for a term, for the work that really mattered. But she knew it was in vain after her extensive use the past years.
She was already in her Gryffindor robes, the gold-and-scarlet trim neat despite the early hour.
A paper rustled beside her and she shifted in her seat. Ron Weasley had taken a heroic bite of a Pumpkin Pasty and was attempting, with limited success, to chew quietly. He was not in his Hogwarts robes yet, just a hand-me-down jumper in Weasley green, cuffs a bit too long and one elbow slightly worn. Crumbs freckled the front of it anyway. A Chocolate Frog card winked face-down on the seat. Dumbledore again.
“Sorry,” Ron said through a mouthful, hearing the way she’d gone still and seeing the way she was staring at him. “Nervous chewing.”
“I’d noticed,” Hermione said, but she smiled, and the tightness in her chest loosened a notch. Outside, a flock of starlings rearranged themselves into an arrow and then into nothing at all. Ron swallowed and nudged the card toward her. “Reckon this is our forty-seventh Dumbledore. You’d think they’d print someone else.”
“They do print someone else,” Hermione said. “You could at least put your robes on. We’re nearly there.”
“What, and wrinkle them?” Ron glanced down at his jumper.
“You got crumbs everywhere.”
Hermione rolled her eyes and let her head fall against the seat. The corridor rattled; a trolley clinked; somewhere two first-years argued about which House was braver in a way that would sound silly to them by spring. And even with all the noise, she could still hear the munching of Ron, and the irregular snores of her friend.
Harry Potter had slept through most of the journey, his glasses having slithered to the tip of his nose, one arm tucked under his head. Hermione didn’t blame him. Train hours had a way of stretching and thinning, especially after holidays. He’d told them, before the sleep took him, about a week in the south of France with his parents and his godfather, Sirius Black.
Hermione’s eyelids began to grow heavy, the rhythm of the wheels smoothing out her thoughts, when a frantic knock rattled the compartment window.
Neville.
He was pale. She gestured for him to open the door. When his fumbling didn’t manage the handle, she softly sighted and slid to her feet and did it herself.
“What is it, Neville?” she said, keeping her voice low so as not to wake Harry.
Neville swallowed. “Sorry. something’s wrong with one of the carriages. Third from the end. no one can get the door open, and the window keeps… frosting. And my Mimbulus mimbletonia went rigid as a rock when I walked by.”
“Show me,” she said. “Ron, stay with Harry, just for a minute. If he wakes, tell him where we’ve gone.”
Ron half-rose. “Two minutes. If he wakes, I’ll leg it back.”
They reached the carriage Neville had indicated. Half a dozen students hovered at a distance, whispering. The door’s brass handle wore a skin of hoarfrost.
Hermione’s breath clouded. “That’s not weather.” Ron nodded and muttered “Obviously”.
“It went like that when I walked past,” Neville said. “And” He held up a pot swaddled in a tea towel. The Mimbulus inside had pulled itself in tight, spikes pressed flat, the whole plant shrunken as if trying to be smaller. “It’s never done this on the train.”
Ron rubbed the handle with his sleeve. “Cold as a ruddy Dementor,” he muttered, and then, catching Hermione’s look, “Sorry.”
She drew her wand. Every instinct said fetch a professor, except there weren’t any here, just Prefects and the trolley witch. “Right. Basic first.”
“Alohomora,” she said.
Nothing.
Behind her, a pair of Slytherins did an excellent job of not-quite whispering. Of course. A stupid prank.
It wasn’t her job to handle a stupid prank, she told herself. She wasn’t Head Girl.
She knew that and it left a bittersweet taste in her mouth. She’d waited all summer for the owl that never came, telling herself it would arrive late, or that Hogwarts had changed its system, or that Professor McGonagall would say on the platform, in that brisk voice, “Oh, Miss Granger, did we not tell you?”. Hermione looked at the frost again.
“Finite incantatem.” Nothing happened. “Relashio.”
The lock answered neither. Inside the compartment, someone gave a muffled sob, the sound of a child trying very hard not to be heard. “It’s all right,” Hermione called. “We’re working on it.”
Neville hovered at her shoulder, Mimbulus mimbletonia clutched to his chest. His breathing came too shallow, too quick.
Hermione’s mind offered a thought and the immediate rebuke to it. How did he ever end up in Gryffindor? She shook her head to remove the thought. Trust the Hat.
Footsteps approached; she started despite herself and turned. Draco Malfoy, perfectly composed.
“What’s this, Granger?” he said.
Hermione tipped her wand at the frozen handle. “Door’s been hexed. First-years inside.”
Malfoy leaned, and made a small, approving sound. “Homemade Slytherin work,” he said at last. “Sloppy, but effective.”
He edged Hermione aside. “Do try not to take this personally, Granger.”
He set his wand to the latch and murmured a counter-hex she didn’t recognise. The frost drew back like breath on a window, the lock gave a tidy click, and the door slid open.
The first-years burst out in a rush of relief.
Ron pushed off the opposite wall, jaw set. “Did you do that?” he demanded. “Curse the door?”.
Malfoy didn’t bother to look offended. “If I’d done it, Weasley, we’d still be here admiring my handiwork.”
Hermione narrowed her eyes. “Then why the sudden chivalry?”
He laughed, low, surprisingly warm. The silver badge on his chest caught a ribbon of light as the train swayed. HEAD BOY.
“Because it’s my job,” he said. “I’m Head Boy. I keep things in order.” He flicked a glance at the crowd dispersing down the corridor, then back to her. “Again, don’t take it personally, Granger.”
The sky had run to orange by the time the train hissed into Hogsmeade Station. Harry had roused sometime before the last bend and now leaned to the window, glasses askew.
Hermione had dozed and woken in thin slices, mind snagging unhelpfully on Malfoy’s badge. Head Boy. The phrase felt wrong in his mouth and worse on his chest. She had perfect marks, unblemished attendance, and everyone's trust. Why wasn’t she Head Girl? And who was?
The train had juddered to a stop. Her feet had gone pins-and-needles; her eyes itched with the particular fatigue of travel. Ron brushed (again) crumbs from his jumper with the baffled expression of someone who never quite understood how crumbs worked.
They spilled onto the platform with the rest, swallowed at once by the warm reek of steam. Harry waved and then broke into a run, weaving through students with cages to where Hagrid rose like a hill at the far end, lantern in one big hand.
Hermione turned to gather the familiar thread of faces and snagged on a sharp, pale profile. Malfoy again, hair precise even in the wind off the moor, speaking low to Pansy Parkinson. Pansy’s eyes glittered with a satisfaction that could only be improved by an audience. She clocked Hermione’s stare, lifted a manicured hand, and tapped, ever so helpfully, the green badge at her lapel. HEAD GIRL. The words formed on her mouth in a silent taunt: Head. Girl.
Hermione’s jaw clicked once before she made it unclench. So that answered that.
She, Harry and Ron found the last of the carriages. As Hermione climbed in, the vehicle gave its familiar lurch.
“Hello,” said Luna Lovegood, behind her, appearing at the open door. She blinked dreamily at the empty shafts. “Their tails look like ink in water now.”
Hermione slid across the seat to make space. She did not, on principle, debate Thestrals with Luna. Harry climbed in and thumped the door shut. The carriage rolled forward at once, bumping over the rut at the start of the path.
The trees fell away. The carriage topped the last rise, and there it was: Hogwarts, window-lit, a castle shouldering the dusk. Luna leaned her head against the window, eyes pleased. “You can hear them singing, if you listen,” she murmured, meaning the castle, or the night, or the things that pulled them. Hermione didn’t ask which.
For a breath, Hermione glanced back. The boats on the lake were halfway across now.
“All right?” Harry asked, bumping her shoulder with his.
“Yes,” Hermione said. “I just don’t understand why the Headmaster made two Slytherins Head Boy and Girl this year,” she added, the words sharper than she meant them to be.
“Pansy isn’t even the best student,” she continued under her breath. “And Malfoy is… Malfoy.”
Luna turned her gaze on Hermione. “You’ve got Nargles,” she said thoughtfully, as if diagnosing a weather pattern. “They settle behind the ears when you’ve expected something for a long time and it flits away.”
Hermione’s mouth tugged despite herself. “Mm,” she said.
The Great Hall was already humming when they crossed the threshold, the long tables streaming with returning students, the ceiling a deepening vault of indigo.
Hermione slid onto the end of the Gryffindor table. Down the table, Ginny looked up and waved. Demelza Robins had squeezed in beside her, and Romilda Vane leaned forward, whispering. Hermione waved back. They’d seen each other a few times over summer, but she’d mostly avoided the Burrow. She liked Molly very much but since Hermione had told Ron no, last spring, Mrs Weasley had adopted a particularly energetic interest in changing her mind. Ron hadn’t said much about it. Privately, Hermione suspected he’d run into Lavender more than once.
She tipped her chin to take in the staff table. The familiar anchors steadied her: Dumbledore in the centre; Professor Snape unreadable; Professor Flitwick over a goblet that looked comically large in his hands; Professor Sprout with soil under her nails even now; Hagrid, and Madam Hooch; Professor Vector bent in quiet conversation with Professor Sinistra; a couple of newer faces tucked farther down the line. No Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher yet.
The side doors opened. Professor McGonagall entered with the first-years in her wake, a neat crocodile of small and stiff backs fifteen-year-olds. The Sorting Hat sat on its stool, already twitching with pre-song thought. Hermione let its opening lines blur into a comforting hum. She let her gaze drift.
Summer tugged at her in pieces while she looked: eastern France and long roads that smelled of rain on stone; nights at Twelve Grimmauld Place, the old Black house sleeping lightly around them while Harry and Sirius argued over chess. The memory of Harry’s hand finding Ginny’s. Long walks when she realised she had nothing to do with her own hands.
“RAVENCLAW!” bellowed the Hat, snapping her back as the first student all but skipped to the blue-and-bronze table.
Ron muttered about starving to death between Sortings. Harry lifted his hand every time Ginny waved and failed to look cool about it. When the Sorting ended Dumbledore rose from his high-backed chair and walked to the golden lectern with its spread-winged eagle. His beard settled against his robes; the lenses of his spectacles caught the candle-glow.
He lifted his wand in a small gesture. The banners of the four Houses unfurled along the stone walls. He waited a moment longer than habit, hands light upon the golden lectern.
“Welcome,” he finally said. “Welcome home. Whether this is your first night beneath this roof or your final first night, may it be a year of learning, of friendship, and of the sort of courage that keeps company with kindness. As is customary, I might be expected to say something brief and largely forgettable about bedtimes, broom cupboards, and the inadvisability of setting off fireworks in enclosed spaces.” A scatter of laughter. “Consider it said.” His gaze slid, just for a heartbeat, to the one empty chair at the staff table, Defence Against the Dark Arts unoccupied, and then returned to the hall.
“However,” he said, and the word seemed to straighten the candles, “there are matters this year which are neither customary nor forgettable.”
The hush was instant, thick. Hermione felt the hairs rise along her wrists. Dumbledore’s eyes travelled the tables, taking attendance.
“First,” he said, calm as a drawn line, “we have guests.”
His head turned slightly toward the great doors. “Please extend your courtesy and attention to the Dark Lord and the Dark Lady.”
Silence cracked.
Ron inhaled wrong and choked on air. On her right, Seamus Finnigan leaned. “The Dark Lord, and the Dark Lady,” he whispered. “They never come to the school. Actually, they never come anywhere. Why now?”
Hermione didn’t answer. The Ministry had been theirs for as long as she could remember, a government with a spine of iron and a shadow that reached the Muggle streets. The couple who ruled it moved like legend through every rumour and decree: tireless, unblinking, efficient. Cruel, said many. Unassailable.
She had heard stories: that the Dark Lord was handsome in the way of knives and winter; that his true name was not the one anyone dared use; that some called him Voldemort in secret. He used to be known as Tom Riddle, and had been to this very school. She saw his picture in Slughorn’s office when he was, for a short year, the Potion Professor. She had done some research on the Dark Lord afterwards, and she had read that his ideas cut cleanly to the bone.
The Dark Lady was said to be more whispered than seen, her glance a net you might step into willingly and only notice when it began to tighten. A mermaid without a tail, she remembered once reading in the Daily Prophet. Hermione knew it was not how mermaids worked, but the image had stuck, the idea of beauty adapted for land, and the price of it.
Ron nudged Harry with an elbow to the ribs. “Are we supposed to kneel?” he murmured, and Hermione could not quite figure out if he was joking.
“Do you know the Dark Lady is Malfoy’s aunt?” Seamus added, the words tumbling out in a strangled half-whisper, half-grin that looked like he couldn’t decide whether to be impressed or sick. “I’m sure he’s never met her, but that’s probably why he’s Head Boy this year.”
Hermione did not know that, but it slotted neatly into place. Draco Malfoy’s mother was Narcissa Malfoy, née Black. The Dark Lady was a Black, one of the oldest houses amongst wizards. It made sense; Lady Malfoy was in the highest circles, a pure-blood matriarch whose invitation lists drew lines through drawing rooms and careers.
Hermione’s thoughts scattered and then held fast at the scrape of the great doors. She sat at the very end of the Gryffindor table; all she had to do was turn, shoulder to bench, knees to aisle, to see what most witches and wizards would never see in a lifetime.
Heat rushed her face; her shoulders tightened of their own accord. Two silhouettes crossed the threshold.
Her mouth went dry as she realized that rumour had done them no justice. The Dark Lord was, impossibly, the most handsome man Hermione had ever seen. Maybe thirty-five by the eye, with the precise, classical beauty of Tom Riddle’s old photograph and none of the ruin his name had gathered in other tellings. Hair black as ink, combed with care, a clean part falling over a pale forehead. His eyes were dark and exacting, taking in the hall without seeming to move. The temperature seemed to dip; Hermione had the absurd thought that if she exhaled hard enough, she might fog the air.
He walked as if the floor existed for him, measured, spine like a rule. A charcoal suit sat perfectly on him, the lines subdued beneath robes of a deeper black that drank the candlelight.
Behind him came the Dark Lady.
Hermione heard, distinctly, Ron trying not to swallow. The woman’s hair fell in black curls, somehow both disciplined and disobedient as they spilled across her shoulders. A close-fitted bodice framed a sweep of pale skin above wide, tailored trousers; the ensemble looked at once archaic and modern, more assuredly professional than any Ministry suit Hermione had ever seen.
Hermione’s jaw loosened when the witch passed close, so close the hem of her robe brushed Hermione’s sleeve, a whisper of fabric and the faintest trace of something like spices and smoke.
For the briefest moment, the Dark Lady turned. A pale, fine-boned face came to an angle; the eyes black and bright, found Hermione’s. Recognition wasn’t the word; attention was. Her lips parted, then curved into a slim smile that knew exactly what it was doing.
Hermione’s mind blanked so completely she could not, for those two heartbeats, have recalled her own name.
The moment eventually snapped When Hermione came back to herself, they were already nearly at the dais, approaching Dumbledore, who watched them with a look composed of concern tempered by courtesy.
The headmaster finally inclined his head when the Dark Lord reached the lectern; the staff behind him bowed more deeply. At the edge of her vision Hermione saw the ghosts dip in mid-air, translucent heads lowered. Her own neck bent almost without her consent.
The couple came to a stillness beside the Headmaster. When Dumbledore straightened, the hall rose with him.
Hermione’s gaze clung; she traced the exactness of shoulder and sleeve, the line of a jaw, the fall of dark cloth. She wanted to etch the sight into the part of her mind that never forgot.
Dumbledore cleared his throat, softly, like a bell struck by a gloved hand. “As you will have gathered,” he said, “we are honoured this evening by distinguished guests. Hogwarts has stood a very long time, and she is not often asked to share her roof. Be good hosts. Be yourselves.”
The words were simple. Hermione’s eyes slid back to the Dark Lady’s face. Beauty was too small a word; it made a thing neat that was not neat at all. Her features called one’s better judgement to heel. The mermaid stories made sense now: not the tail, but the song. Hermione found herself absurdly certain that men would offer kingdoms for the smallest turn of those lips, that some already had and were grateful for the loss.
The Dark Lord stepped forward a half pace. When he spoke, the voice carried through the stone. “Students,” he said, “we will be your guests for two nights.”
“In that time,” he continued, “we intend to make your acquaintance. We will meet those among you whose loyalties are sure and whose ambitions are not content with the ordinary. We will invite some to serve more closely, faithfully, than ever before.”
He let the word faithfully rest where everyone could see it.
“At the conclusion of our visit,” he said, “I shall make an announcement.” A ripple went the length of the tables.
“Your lessons will proceed as usual,” he added, a final stroke laid cleanly on a page. “Your duties, likewise. We are not here to unmake your days.” He paused. Then he inclined his head, not to Dumbledore but to the woman at his side, the gesture so slight it could have been a shift of light.
He stepped back that fraction, and in doing so seemed to narrow his presence, not diminished, but deliberately edged, making a space that belonged to her. Hermione felt an unexpected pang: the quick satisfaction at a woman standing where men expected to stand, not by permission but by right.
The Dark Lady drew breath to speak. Her voice was not loud. It ran along the stone like a wire through velvet, low, precise, and edged in something that made the hairs rise at the back of Hermione’s neck. Again.
“I am told,” she said, each word clipped clean, “that Defence Against the Dark Arts has suffered a certain… inconsistency in recent years.”
Her gaze slid, unhurried, unmistakable, to the empty chair at the staff table and then, deliberately, to Dumbledore. It was slightly accusatory but the Headmaster did not move.
“I do not approve of inconsistency.”
A ripple moved through the students, chins tucked, eyes averted, no one daring a cough.
“Accordingly,” she went on, “I will take the matter in hand. I shall instruct the upper years only.” She let the phrase rest like the edge of a blade. “Your schedules will be amended. You will be informed of the days.”
This is peculiar, Hermione thought.
“You will meet a standard,” the Dark Lady said, and the word sounded like a wall. “I expect nothing but excellence.” She didn’t raise her voice on excellence, but she pressed it.
The look she cast across the tables was not a sweep; it was a weighing. When it passed over Hermione, she wished it had stayed longer.
Harry leaned forward, eyes narrowed, curiosity and calculation mixing like weather. “Sirius said” he began, then stopped, as if remembering that the inside of his head was not the place to speak. He swallowed. “She’s… related,” he murmured, pitched for Hermione and Ron alone. “Cousin, technically. Black family branch.”
The Dark Lord inclined his head the smallest fraction. “That is all.” He turned. She turned with him, not following but parallel.
As they passed the end of the Gryffindor table, the Dark Lady’s glance slipped back, as if indulging herself. It found Hermione again.
The great doors opened to their approach without touch. Once they were gone, The temperature crept back by degrees. Sound returned in tatters.
Headmaster Dumbledore remained at the lectern a moment longer, the hall’s attention trying bravely to return to him and failing. He cleared his throat. “And now,” he said, eyes kind and distant all at once, “let us dine.”
Food appeared; platters steaming, gravies glossy, roast and root and bread split to show their light insides. Conversation burst at once. Hermione felt her brain restarting slowly.
“They’re staying three nights?” Seamus said to no one in particular, already leaning across plates. “Three nights! Do we line up for interviews, or do they pick by looking into your skull?”
Dean Thomas appeared, standing next to them and shook his head. “They’ll take Slytherins. That’s what they do.”
“Not all,” Parvati said, bright and certain. “Did you hear her? Excellence. That’s not a House.”
“At least we’ll finally learn proper Defence,” someone farther down put in. “About time.”
Ron piled potatoes and then, discovering he’d built a wall, began to eat his way through it with determination. “Last years only,” he said around a mouthful. “Merlin’s beard. That’s us.” He mimed a hex. “Imagine the homework.”
Hermione, who could indeed imagine the homework and had already coloured in the shape of it in her mind, stared a little too hard at the tureen of peas.
Harry cut his meat neatly, eyes on the blade. “I’m… confused,” he admitted at last, tone careful. “Sirius might know more. He never said much about her though. Just that the Blacks could turn a room by walking into it.”
Hermione ate without tasting. She set down her goblet and forced herself to look up at the staff table, to anchor. McGonagall’s mouth had gone thin; Snape was unreadable.
Ron nudged her elbow with the handle of a spoon. “All right?”
“Yes,” Hermione said, and then, because the word wasn’t quite true, added, “Hungry.”
“Good,” Ron said, relieved to be useful, and he heaped her plate with roast carrots. Harry leaned in, voice low. “If she teaches us,” he said, “we’ll know what they know. Or some of it.” He met Hermione’s eyes. “That could be good, right?”
Hermione wasn’t sure that they would share state secrets to students. However, she did wonder about the opportunity of working close to the leaders of her world. She wondered if they were indeed as ruthless and violent as the rumors said.
“It could be,” she said eventually, when she realized Harry was still waiting for an answer.
The Lady with the Harp paused mid-pluck to murmur, “Back again, dear,” as Hermione passed. She smiled politely. She could not stop thinking and she would soon have a headache. She pitched the bridge of her nose to try to clear her head.
The Dark Lady and the Dark Lord were rarely seen outside courts and councils; their faces were for proclamations, not classrooms. Defence Against the Dark Arts had been a revolving door for years, yes, but stepping through it themselves? Surprising to say the least.
Hermione reached the portrait of the Fat Lady and murmured the new password Harry had pressed into her ear on the platform. The Fat Lady drew herself up, neckline arranged, goblet in hand as usual. “Terrible ruckus tonight. Students keep coming in and out,” she tutted, though she swung open at once. “Famous people always think they’re so - oh!” She caught herself with a hiccuping laugh. “Well. In you go.”
The common room welcomed her. Red and gold were softer here, warmed by lamplight; the fire in the grate had settled into a steady glow.
Her thoughts snagged, briefly and for the hundredth time, on Draco’s badge, Head Boy. Pansy’s matching green glint flickered across her mind, the way she’d tapped the enamel with a manicured nail. Hermione felt the reasonable frustration burn low in her belly. She’d been Prefect last year. She’d kept marks, kept order. McGonagall would have her reasons, she told herself for the thousandth time.
Eventually, she sank into the nearest sofa, the tartan cushions giving the kindly sigh of things that had known generations of Gryffindors. For a long breath she let her eyes close, a tension headache now really formed behind her eyes. Crookshanks arrived without ceremony. He kneaded the cushion twice, then installed himself half on her thigh, half on the sofa, purring.
“There’s been no war in so many years,” she whispered into the room that didn’t need her to speak. Peace had begun to feel like the default. Yet politics had climbed the stairs with them tonight and sat down at the staff table, and now it was following them into lesson plans. That meant something. She didn’t know what and it was frustrating.
Crookshanks butted her wrist, offended at the pause in attention. “All right, tyrant,” she said, stroking. The purr deepened.
She decided it was time to stop thinking. She drew a breath, counted to five, and let it go. Then she stood, lifting Crookshanks with a grunt he pretended not to hear, and turned towards the girl’s staircase.
When morning came, it felt as though she’d leapt a ditch rather than crossed a night. Her bones were the sleepy kind of heavy, but her thoughts were already awake.
Few students bothered with breakfast the first morning back; summer had trained them to late starts. The Great Hall echoed in a way it never did at supper, footsteps, clink of cutlery, the quiet murmur of professors already in their places.
Hermione sat at Gryffindor’s bench and unfolded the timetable she’d tucked into her pocket last night. First period: Transfiguration.
Toast and tea would have been sensible but she wasn’t hungry. She drank anyway, and by eight, the Hall filled in a little and the hour tugged them to class. She felt observed and when she couldn’t pinpoint why exactly, she left.
Transfiguration set her spine straight. McGonagall had new chalk; it squeaked once on the slate and then behaved itself. “Human Transfiguration,” the heading read. “We proceed by theory first.” The Professor was brisk, drier than usual, the mood of someone who had watched a speech and re-organised a lesson between courses.
“You will have heard announcements,” McGonagall said at the start, as if acknowledging the weather. “You will also have heard speculation.” Her glasses flashed as she looked over them.
“You will leave both at the door. Here, you will learn human transfiguration and will learn to change safely what you are permitted to change, and, equally important, to leave alone what you are not.” Quills moved. Hermione felt the small, reliable pleasure of notes forming into lines.
Afterwards, corridor talk rose like steam and then the stairs angled obligingly towards the dungeons.
The Potions classroom was its usual draught of cold stone. Shelves lined with ingredients gave off their dry apothecary scent, dried nettle, crushed scarab, something sweet and wrong in a stoppered jar. On the board, in Snape’s script: Elixir to Induce Euphoria.
“Open your textbook,” Snape said, without turning. Cloaks rustled. Cauldrons came to a simmer in obedient order. Hermione read twice through the recipe before striking a flame; too many students put their faith in heat and hoped to think later.
Halfway through her third clockwise stir, the door opened. Conversation didn’t stop but it thinned. Malfoy slipped in with a Head Boy’s quiet entitlement, a slip of parchment in his hand. “Late,” Snape said, voice bored rather than annoyed.
“Head Boy duties, sir.” Malfoy held out the note. Snape took it without looking and set it aside.
“See that it does not become a habit.”
“Yes, sir.”
Malfoy moved past Hermione’s bench. The old smirk flickered, she could feel it, the muscle memory of years, but something cooler sat where it usually lived. He glanced at her work, at the colour of the brew (right), at the neatness of her station (also right), and made a soft sound that might, in another boy, have been approval. But not for Malfoy, Hermione thought.
“Granger,” he said lightly, pitched not to reach Snape. “Imagine my surprise: yours is the only cauldron in the room that doesn’t look in mortal peril.”
She didn’t look up. “Imagine mine: you can't read a clock.”
It should have earned a sharper retort. Instead, the corner of his mouth moved, not a smile, exactly; the preface to one, and he slid into his seat. When Snape’s back was turned he leant across the aisle and added, lower, “Watch Parkinson today. She’s in a mood.” His eyes flicked to the door.
Hermione pretended the instruction came from nowhere and added it to her mental list anyway. Across the room, Pansy leaned into her own brew with theatrical concentration. When she caught Hermione looking she gave her the finger.
Snape drifted between benches like a particularly strict shadow, robes barely disturbing the air. He paused beside Hermione’s cauldron. “Add the scarab powder now,” he said.
By the end of the hour, the room smelled faintly of relief. Hermione decanted the requisite phial, labelled it, and cleaned fast.
Ron and Harry had Quidditch practice straight after the last class of the day, she remembered. So she let the stream carry her to the library.
She set up camp at a corner table with a view of the stacks and the window that looked towards the greenhouses. She meant to begin with Arithmancy reading. Instead she thought about Malfoy.
He’d grown into his face. The narrow point had softened into angles that made a certain sort of sense; the jaw had decided what it wanted to be. His hair sat less like a decision made for him. The pride was there, of course, it would always be there, but it had… quieted, or sharpened, she couldn’t tell which. Warmer wasn’t the word; warmer implied kindness. It was more that he’d learned where to spend his disdain and where to save it.
She was not about to be charmed. She’d punched him once, on a path to Hagrid’s, and she wasn’t sorry.
She finally opened her book and began her work, which was not due for another month anyway.