In November, Hogwarts began its Quidditch season.
The news that "Harry Potter is going to play Seeker for Gryffindor" landed like a stone dropped into a calm black lake, sending ripples of discussion and waves of speculation through the entire school—some predicted he'd be brilliant, others were certain he'd crash and burn.
As for how Potter himself felt about it, Draco wasn't sure. But on one occasion, he spotted Potter sitting at the Gryffindor table, leafing through Hermione's old copy of Quidditch Through the Ages with visibly little confidence, as if trying to scrape together some reassurance.
This feeling is especially novel.
Draco was hesitant to gloat over the fact that his once confident opponent, who had defeated him several times on the Quidditch pitch, was now so genuinely displaying his anxiety in front of him.
"You have absolutely nothing to worry about." One day, he finally couldn't help but stop and stand next to Potter.
Potter looked at Draco with a puzzled expression—and, behind him, at Crabbe and Goyle, who were gloomily munching on chocolate cake.
"If I were you, I would go to the trophy room on the fourth floor. I remember there's James Potter on several of the trophies," Draco said, stopping short of elaborating.
If "family genetics" couldn't boost Potter's confidence, Draco didn't know what better way to do it.
Students who only had to watch from the stands had more time to spend on their studies.
After the initial excitement of starting school wore off, almost all students were overwhelmed by the increasing amount of homework, and more and more students were lingering in the library.
However, Hermione Granger's reasons for spending time in the library were never the same as those of ordinary people—it was never just for completing her homework.
Sometimes, she would grab Potter and Weasley by the back of their collars and forcefully order them to finish their homework, or criticize their appalling parchment and demand that they rewrite it without hesitation.
At other times, after Potter and Weasley had fled the library with their meager parchments, she would sit alone at a table by the window, engrossed in reading beside a misty white curtain, often surrounded by a mountain of yellowed books.
This piqued Draco's curiosity.
Sometimes, to satisfy his curiosity, he would pretend to bump into her and glance at the books she was reading. Then, he was surprised to find that the books she read were often completely unrelated to her studies, and the content often exceeded the level expected of a first-year student.
When it comes to ambition, you can always admire Hermione Granger.
Draco idly flipped through an old book that mentioned the dark wizard Merrick, and found himself grudgingly impressed.
Why is she working so hard? Draco wondered.
Could it be that her brush with helplessness in the face of the troll had lit some extraordinary fighting spirit in her?
Draco understood that feeling of helplessness. He had felt the same way when his father, Lucius, was imprisoned in Azkaban.
He'd been all but forced into becoming a Death Eater. He could never forget the feeling of being branded with the Dark Mark. Of course, he made a show of boasting about it to the other Slytherins—and in boasting again and again, he tried desperately to numb himself, to convince himself it was something glorious for House Malfoy.
Admittedly, the Dark Mark on his left forearm did inspire a certain awe among the Slytherins. Sometimes, to feed that awe, he'd deliberately show off his arm.
That way, perhaps some opportunistic Slytherins wouldn't take advantage of Lucius's imprisonment. His life would be a little easier.
In public, he put on a smug, boastful, arrogant front; in private, he studied desperately, even delving into forbidden, complicated Dark magic and obscure alchemy.
He desperately wanted to prove to the Dark Lord that he was a useful subordinate and someone worth winning over, so as to help his father escape the torment of Azkaban as soon as possible.
Those horrible, toxic memories relentlessly assaulted his mind. Draco rubbed his temples, pressing them back into the depths of his brain, and refocused his attention on the book and the parchment covered in dense writing in front of him.
Like Hermione, Draco spent plenty of time in the library too. Sometimes it was to polish assignments he'd already finished; other times, it was to dig up information on Ravenclaw's lost diadem.
Prying information out of the Grey Lady, tight-lipped as a clam, was no easy task. She was a ghost now, and nothing material could sway her anymore—Draco could only search the books themselves for some key that might unlock her heart.
That day, the library was packed with people, as it seemed that all the students were trying to finish some papers, given that the Hogwarts teachers were constantly increasing the difficulty of the assignments, and the demanding requirements for the length of the parchment had reached new heights.
When Hermione Granger entered the library, there were hardly any seats available. Clutching several books, she wandered around the possible seating areas several times, almost reaching the restricted section, but couldn't find a single empty table.
She sighed regretfully, frowned, and simply sat down on the floor in front of the bookshelf, intending to read for a while, completely unaware that a pair of pale gray eyes were silently watching her from behind the bookshelf.
"What are you doing?" The owner of those eyes appeared. He slowly walked around from behind the bookshelf, stood beside her, and looked down at her.
"Read a book." She turned another page, reluctantly raised her eyelids, glanced at him, and pouted, saying, "There are no seats left, I'll sit and read for a while."
"I have an extra chair, if you'd like... perhaps you'd rather sit and read there," Draco said, a little hesitant.
"Really? Is it okay?" She looked up at him, her eyes lighting up instantly, like twinkling stars.
"All right." He bent down, gathered her stack of thick books off the floor, then held out an arm to help her up. "Come with me."
Draco led her into his secret base.
Draco Malfoy never helps anyone without a reason. Yet, strangely enough, he always finds himself making an exception for Hermione Granger, the know-it-all.
Perhaps this is just a case of mutual appreciation between so-called top students.
Or maybe he simply needed a touch of a little girl's innocence and vitality—it made him feel alive, rather than like a piece of rotten wood being slowly eaten away by his own memories.
Hermione made him understand the word "vibrant" in a way he never had before.
Vibrant joy, vibrant worry, even vibrant anger—all were awakened by her.
Since his rebirth, nearly every intense emotion he'd felt had somehow been tied to her.
The girl from his memories—who'd only ever glared at him, wary and guarded—turned out to be not just smart, rigid, and foolishly kind, but lively, proud, mischievous, and even, at times, rather endearing.
He hadn't held out much hope.
He had initially thought she would hate him, just like in his past life. However, she didn't seem to hate him, nor did she reject him.
"Would you like some tea?" he asked, skillfully fiddling with his tea set.
"Okay." She sat happily on the extra chair, holding her books, swinging her legs in mid-air, and obediently waiting for him to make her tea.
"Is it better than sitting on the ground?" he asked casually as he poured tea.
"Much better! There's no better seat than this!" she exclaimed enthusiastically, sparing no praise.
So he gently placed the teacup in front of her and smiled silently.
"But I can't usually find this place." Hermione pouted in frustration. "It seems like I can only find it if you lead me."
Draco sat back down and went on polishing his essay on the dark wizard Merrick, embroidering the life of this short-lived but extremely cruel medieval figure with every scrap of legend he could find.
After so many years of teaching, Professor Binns must have grown bored too; he liked seeing something fresh in his students' essays, something that went beyond the textbook. So long as you tucked in a careful parenthetical noting that a detail was unverified legend, Binns would take real pleasure in marking the paper, and would happily reward such tireless spirit of inquiry with an "O."
As Draco corrected some grammar and wording, he slowly told her, "The Hogwarts library has many wonders; you'll have to discover them for yourself."
Hermione wrinkled her nose, half-believing his profound words. She sipped her hot tea and stole glances at his profile through the rising steam, feeling that he was just giving her a perfunctory answer.
"This might be a bit rude of me to ask... but you seemed to be crying in the bathroom on Halloween. Why?" After writing in silence for a while, Draco finally couldn't hold back the question.
For some reason, he was somewhat concerned about this matter.
He... didn't like hearing her cry.
"Honestly, I was being a bit silly back then... it wasn't really a big deal," Hermione said, a little embarrassed.
"I insist," he said, pausing to set down his quill, and looked at her with sincere gray eyes.
"Okay! I can tell you, but you can't laugh at me." Hermione peeked at him. "Back then, Ron said I was like a nightmare... that nobody could stand me..."
Draco's quill snapped in his grip, splattering ink across the nearly finished parchment.
"Oh my god!" Hermione exclaimed. She jumped up and tried to help him clean up the ink-splattered mess. "Quick, move this parchment before it gets ruined too... What's wrong with your quill? It's completely unreliable..."
However, Draco did not move.
He simply continued to look at her with those eyes, his face quickly darkening.
Hermione assumed he was just flustered by the accident, so she snatched the broken quill from his hand, tossed it in the wastebasket by the table, and grabbed a wad of tissues to wipe his ink-stained fingers. "You have to clean it up yourself too. What's wrong with you? Did the shock stun you?"
"You're not a nightmare." He ignored the ink stains on his hands and firmly grasped her hand through a pile of tissues.
He stared at her intently, his usually clear voice dropping slightly lower, but every word came out clear and certain: "You are not a nightmare, Hermione. You are the best dream anyone could ever have."
Hermione, who was busy wiping his hands, was forced to stop. At first, she was puzzled, then she realized what he meant and felt shy about his unexpected praise. Then, a feeling of joy at being recognized welled up inside her.
"Is that what you think?" she said happily, revealing an undisguised smile.
He nodded slightly, without saying anything more.
She carefully observed him and found that his gray eyes were as clear as lake water, without any flinching or avoiding her gaze.
He was serious. Her smile widened.
"Do you need me to beat up Weasley for you?" Draco said coldly, his back teeth clenched.
He didn't even know why he said it. Yet, he just couldn't control his mouth.
"No need, Draco. He's already apologized to me. It was all a misunderstanding, I have to say. I might have been showing off a bit too much when I was learning the Levitation Charm, and he probably felt a little resentful..." Hermione said cheerfully, clearly no longer holding a grudge.
"Very good," Draco said, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. Then he realized his hands were covered in ink, and the parchment he was almost finished writing on was a mess.
She pulled the ink-stained parchment away from him, glanced at it, and said in surprise, "Where did you find this information? It's much more detailed than what I found... I didn't know that Merrick's rival, the monster Egbert, had passed on his Elder Wand through a duel..."
"Just some anecdotal history," Draco said.
Here he was, angry and aching for her, and she was worried about the contents of his essay? Draco didn't know whether to laugh or sigh.
"I'm fine now, Draco." Hermione noticed his worry and, having shaken off her recent slump, said cheerfully, "Actually, it wasn't just because of Ron. I... I thought I had no friends and no one liked me. But then I realized I was completely wrong."
She didn't want to tell Draco about the strange feelings she had on the day of the flight, nor did she want to admit the inexplicable sense of closeness she felt towards him under his invisibility cloak that day.
On the day they learned the Levitation Charm, when his feather floated above the classroom along with hers, she felt a little angry, yet also subtly shy. Her feelings for him had nothing to do with "dislike."
Intuition told her that it was best to keep these perplexing things buried deep in her heart for the time being.
Perhaps it was simply because she had begun to genuinely consider him a friend, rather than just an eye-catching Slytherin classmate.
She looked at Draco, a bright smile on her face: "My friends were there for me in my most dangerous moments, risking their lives to save me. And yet I was angry with them for not following the rules. In fact, if you had followed the rules that day, I might be dead."
Draco, having just calmed down, was now refilling Hermione's tea. Hearing this, he glanced up at her, a lazy smirk playing on his lips. "I'm glad you think that way."
He'd always admired people who knew how to bend the rules when it mattered.
"Draco, you saved me twice that day. I think I can trust you," Hermione said seriously. "Harry also asked me to thank you. We found his father's trophy in the trophy room, and he's training much better than before."
She cleared her throat, sat down facing Draco, readily accepted the cup of tea, and announced triumphantly, "The three of us have discussed it and decided to tell you a big secret."
Then, to Draco's surprise, Hermione—speaking for all three of them—told him everything:
Hagrid had once been sent by Dumbledore to fetch a small, mysterious package from Gringotts. The three of them had stumbled into the forbidden area on the fourth floor and come face-to-face with a three-headed dog, beneath which lay a trapdoor. She even mentioned how Harry had noticed Professor Snape limping, injured, not long after.
"Harry and Ron suspect that Professor Snape wants to steal what the big dog is guarding!" Hermione said seriously, carefully observing his expression. "They even suspect that Professor Snape let the troll in."
Draco rubbed his temples and asked with difficulty, "Why are you telling me this?"
Are they really that reckless and gullible?
Had they really gotten to know him that well already?
Shouldn't they report this to Professor McGonagall or Professor Dumbledore?
"We believe you! You've been helping us all along." The girl in front of him had nothing but sincerity in her eyes—even a hint of trust.
Draco could only sigh.
Merlin! With such a bizarre thought process and such blind credulity, how did Harry and his friends manage to survive to the end?
Don't blame him for being so emotional.
In his past life, they had always been wary and guarded towards him; in this life, this trust came too easily, making him feel a sense of unreality.
He knew, of course, that this trust was a good thing for him. It meant that Harry and the others treated him well, or at least not with dislike.
Thanks to his memories of his past life, Draco knew exactly what was going on. It was Quirrell who had released the troll, and Quirrell who wanted to get past the three-headed dog.
Quirrell wanted to get hold of the Philosopher's Stone, which could be used to brew the Elixir of Life, for the Dark Lord hiding on the back of his head—but that was something Draco couldn't very well explain to them directly.
Moreover, as Draco re-examined the events of his entire first year, an idea gradually formed in his mind.
—All of this seems to be a test, or trial, that Dumbledore is giving to Potter, the future savior.
Stepping in might solve the immediate problem, but it would stunt Potter's growth. How was Potter supposed to grow into the role of savior if someone kept doing the saving for him?
Hermione stirred the sugar in her teacup for a moment, then said, a little hesitantly, "Actually, I don't believe any professor at Hogwarts would do anything to put a student in real danger. You're in Professor Snape's House, so you must know him better than we do. Maybe you could keep an eye on him for us, and let us know what you think?"
It seemed they'd come not just out of simple trust, but with an actual proposal of cooperation.
"You want me to be an inside man?" Draco couldn't help but ask.
"Not an inside man—just someone keeping an eye on things," Hermione said seriously. "Don't you want to know what kind of person your own Head of House really is?"
This had to be Hermione's idea—Potter and Weasley would never have thought up something so calculated. Draco studied the girl in front of him, his expression unreadable, and couldn't help but think: she's quick-witted, bold, and a bit cunning. He looked at her with admiration as she calmly drank her tea and smiled at him with a serene expression.
Draco could understand their suspicion of Professor Snape, but he did not agree with it.
Professor Snape had a terrible temper and a sharp tongue; he loved using harsh words against students outside his own House.
However, Draco trusted his professional ethics as a Hogwarts professor. In his memory over the years, he might at most make a few sarcastic remarks to students or deduct points from other Houses as much as he could, but he would never attack any student, nor did he have any interest in acquiring any mysterious treasure.
If you swapped the Philosopher's Stone out for a vial of boomslang skin, Professor Snape might actually have given it a try.
But the Philosopher's Stone? Please, please...
Poor Professor Snape—between his sinister air and eccentric habits, he made the perfect scapegoat.
Out of a secret sympathy for Professor Snape, Draco couldn't help but ask, "Don't you think Professor Quirrell is more suspicious than Professor Snape?"
Hermione froze, put down her empty teacup, and stared at Draco.
"Professor Quirrell?" she asked uncertainly.
"You might not have been there at the Halloween party and don't know the whole story," Draco said slowly, refilling her tea.
"The first thing I did when I got back to the Slytherin common room was ask the students who'd been in the Great Hall the whole time. Interestingly enough, they told me Professor Quirrell was the first one to notice the troll. He came running into the Hall, shouted his warning, and set off the whole panic."
Hermione was disturbed by his words.
She had never imagined such a possibility. In a daze, she took a big gulp of tea, so hot that she fanned her mouth with her hand, but at the same time, she really liked the taste of the tea and squinted her eyes in satisfaction.
It wasn't a very polite way to drink tea, but there was something so unguarded and full of life about it that it wasn't annoying in the least.
Draco glanced at Miss Know-It-All's amusing little battle—wanting to drink but afraid of scalding her tongue—and let out a quiet laugh. Before she noticed, he composed his expression again and picked up where he'd left off: "Under normal circumstances, Quirrell should have quietly informed Dumbledore, to avoid causing a panic among the students and risking a stampede."
Hermione opened her mouth to argue, but Draco pressed on. "What's even more interesting is that nobody actually knows where Professor Quirrell was during all of this—I mean, in the gap between the students heading back to their dorms and us hiding in that classroom, right up until we heard him show up to deal with the troll."
"Didn't he pass out?" Hermione interjected, puzzled, interrupting Draco's analysis.
"Yes—or at least, he appeared to have fainted, which conveniently meant he didn't have to join Dumbledore and the other teachers when they went searching near the dungeons. And once the students had cleared out of the Great Hall, no one could actually account for where he'd been in the meantime." Draco tapped his fingertips lightly against the table, working through it methodically.
"I agree with you. Hermione, I don't believe any professor at Hogwarts would do anything to put a student in danger." Draco rested his pointed chin on his crossed hands, staring intently at Hermione's confused and scrunched-up face.
"But if we must doubt a professor, let's speculate: is the stammering Professor Quirrell really as innocent as we originally thought?" he asked calmly.