Draco descended the Astronomy Tower cold, hungry, and carrying considerably more information than he'd had an hour ago. His legs felt heavier than they should have.
The body of an eleven-year-old, he had noted with resigned frequency since his rebirth, did not operate to the same specifications as the body of a seventeen-year-old. It was not interested in being pushed past its limits simply because its occupant remembered having done so routinely. He had spent too long on the tower, pacing with excitement after the Baron's revelation, and now he was paying for it.
The Halloween feast was still underway. He could correct all of this with a seat at the Slytherin table and a plate of something hot. He turned toward the Great Hall and made his way through the corridors.
He heard the crying before he reached the second floor.
It was coming from the direction of the girls' bathroom—muffled, intermittent, the sound of someone who had been at it for a while. Draco slowed.
A sensible Malfoy minded his own business. He had rather a lot of his own business to mind. And it was a girls' bathroom, which presented its own obvious complications.
He stood in the corridor, not moving, and the sound continued.
The Astronomy Tower had reminded him tonight what it looked like when someone had been worn down past the point of bearing. That was not an experience he had any interest in walking away from.
He was still trying to decide what to do when the smell hit him.
Earthy. Rancid. Thick.
And then the sound—heavy feet dragging on stone, the low, brainless grumble of something very large moving with the unhurried confidence of something that had no predators.
Troll.
Draco's stomach dropped.
He had forgotten. He had been so absorbed in the Baron's account of Helena, of Albania, of the diadem—he had completely forgotten. Quirrell. The dungeon troll, released from its pen to cause a diversion. First year, Halloween. He had been sitting in the Great Hall while Hermione Granger was alone in the bathroom, and he had forgotten entirely.
The troll's shadow fell across the far end of the corridor.
There was no longer any question about what to do.
He pushed open the bathroom door and went in.
Hermione was standing at the sinks, eyes red and swollen, about to turn on the tap. She heard him and turned around, and her expression moved through surprise, outrage, and confusion in rapid succession.
"How did you—"
"No time." He grabbed her hand and ran.
She stumbled after him, too startled to do anything else. His hand was cold from the tower—she registered this in some distant, observational part of her brain, the part that was still functioning normally—but his grip was firm and certain and she couldn't have pulled free if she'd tried.
"What are you—where are we—"
"Quiet."
He pulled her around the corner into the adjacent corridor, pressed her back against the wall, and held up one hand.
"Stop," she said, shaking her hand free. Her voice was thick from crying and sharp with indignation. "What do you think you're doing? You barged into the girls' bathroom—you grabbed me without asking—you can't just—"
"Look." He put a hand on her shoulder, turned her toward the corridor they'd left, and pointed.
The troll was moving toward the bathroom. Twelve feet of grey, granite-skinned bulk, bald head swaying, knuckles dragging. The wooden club it trailed behind it gouged a shallow groove in the stone floor.
Hermione did not make a sound. She reached out, without quite deciding to, and found his hand, and held it.
The troll paused at the bathroom doorway. Assessed the opening with its small, unintelligent eyes. Then, with the deliberate satisfaction of something that had found what it was looking for, it ducked inside.
For a moment neither of them breathed.
"Oh," Hermione whispered. "Oh no."
"Are you all right?" He glanced at her. Her face had gone bloodless, her eyes still red at the edges. She looked—not like the girl who was always three steps ahead of everyone else, but like someone much younger, and cold, and frightened.
"I would have been in there," she said.
"Yes."
"Without my wand."
"I know."
She looked at him for a moment. Then, with visible effort: "Thank you. I'm sorry I—I thought you were—"
"It's fine." He could see she was still shaking. He reached into his robe pocket, took out an empty jam jar, pointed his wand at it, and produced a small, steady blue flame inside it. He held it out.
She took it with both hands, cupping it against her palms, and the shaking slowed a little.
"Better?" he asked.
"A little." A pause. "Why do you carry an empty jar?"
"Habit."
She accepted this without pressing, which was not characteristic of her, and he understood that she was still more frightened than she was letting on.
He was about to suggest they move further away from the bathroom when two figures appeared at the far end of the corridor.
Small. Running. One with red hair.
Draco stared.
Potter and Weasley came pelting down the corridor with the particular expression of people who had just realised they'd made a significant error in judgement and were attempting to correct it at speed. They reached the bathroom door, and Weasley, with the quick thinking of someone operating mostly on adrenaline, yanked the key from the lock, slammed the door shut, and locked the troll inside.
Draco watched this. He felt a reluctant, involuntary appreciation. Not bad.
And then, because apparently the universe had a particular sense of structure on Halloween, they unlocked the door again and went in.
"Hermione!" Weasley's voice echoed from inside. "Are you in there?"
"They came back for me," Hermione said, and she was already moving. He caught her wrist.
"Your wand," he said. "Where is it?"
She stopped. "I didn't—I left it in the dormitory—"
"Then how exactly are you planning to help them?"
Her expression did the complicated thing it did when she knew something and didn't want to know it. "I can't just leave them. They came back for me."
"I know." He released her wrist. "I'll go. Stay here."
She grabbed his sleeve. "Please."
He was already moving.
Inside the bathroom, the scene resolved itself as follows: Weasley against the wall, wand out and shaking; Potter on top of the troll, arms locked around its neck, clinging on with the kind of determination that either indicated extraordinary courage or a complete failure to process the situation—the distinction being, Draco thought, relatively immaterial when the outcome was the same.
Potter's wand was in the troll's nostril.
Draco took this in for one full second.
In two lifetimes, he had never seen anything like it.
"Please," Hermione said again, from the doorway, and he realised she had followed him in despite his instruction, which was entirely consistent with everything else about her.
The troll heard the door. It began to turn.
"Immobulus!"
The Freezing Charm hit the troll full in the chest. The creature lurched, stiffened, and stopped mid-turn—its club frozen at an angle, its expression of dim malice suspended like a portrait.
"Brilliant!" Weasley said.
"Get out." Draco kept his wand trained on the troll, not taking his eyes from it. Trolls were resistant to magic at the best of times; he had no confidence in how long this would hold. "Now. All of you."
Potter wrenched his wand free of the troll's nostril—Draco chose not to look at what was on it—and scrambled down. Hermione caught his arm. They moved.
Behind them, the troll's eyelids twitched.
"There." Draco jerked his head toward a classroom door across the corridor. "In."
They went. He was last through the door, pulling it shut quietly behind him.
From the far end of the corridor: voices, footsteps, the particular swift stride of someone who knew these halls very well. Then McGonagall's voice, sharp with relief and urgency. Then Snape's. Then a crash, and a roar, and the heavy sound of something very large hitting the floor.
Silence.
Then Quirrell's stammering voice, offering to take charge.
The four of them sat in the dark classroom and waited, and said nothing, and the blue flame in Hermione's jar moved gently with her breathing.
Eventually she stopped fighting it and leaned her head sideways against the door, and when her eyes closed and her head began to tilt, Draco caught it before it hit the wood and let it rest on his shoulder instead. She didn't wake. The jar stayed warm in her hands.
Potter and Weasley looked at this. Then at each other. Then at the door. Their expressions had the slightly stunned quality of people reassessing several things at once.
After the corridor had been quiet for some time, Potter said, quietly: "Thank you."
"Don't do that again," Draco said. He kept his voice low and even. "Not every situation resolves itself. You were lucky tonight."
A pause.
"Your wands," he added, because it needed to be said. "A wand is the most important thing a wizard has. It is not a tool for melee combat and it is not something to be stuck in a troll's nose. If it breaks, it cannot be repaired. Carry it with you always and treat it accordingly."
Potter looked slightly embarrassed. Weasley nodded, apparently deciding that now was not the time to be contrary.
Hermione stirred on his shoulder, blinked, rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. She looked at him with hazy, still-swollen eyes and offered a small, uncertain smile. He looked back at her briefly, then returned his attention to Potter.
"One more thing. I wasn't here tonight. Whatever story you tell—and you will need to tell some story—I was not part of it. That's all I ask."
Potter and Weasley exchanged another glance. Then Potter said, with simple sincerity: "All right."
They slipped out of the classroom one by one, and dispersed into the quiet castle.
Draco walked back to the Slytherin dungeons alone.
He was cold, he was tired, he had forgotten to eat entirely, and he was now also complicit in a troll incident that he had technically helped conceal from three professors.
He thought about Potter, hauling himself up onto a twelve-foot mountain troll with no particular plan beyond get up there. He thought about Weasley pressing himself against the wall and staying, when any sensible person would have run. He thought about Hermione sitting in that bathroom crying—alone, without her wand, without any particular expectation that anyone would come.
And then two people had come for her anyway.
He walked through the dungeon entrance and past the common room and into his dormitory without stopping, sat on the edge of his bed in the dark, and stared at the faint green light moving against the window from the lake.
He had two lifetimes of experience telling him how those three ended up. He knew what grew between people who stood their ground for one another in the dark.
He thought about this for a little while, then thought about the Albanian forest and the diadem and what the Dark Lord had done with it, and eventually lay down.
He had not, he noted, regretted going into the bathroom.