A/N: Hello guys! How are you all doing?
I just realised something—I can keep chapters in draft and update them daily instead of posting once in a while. So from now on, I'll try to upload every day. I might forget sometimes, but I'll do my best to stay consistent.
I think this will also be better for the fanfic overall.
Thank you all for the support! Please comment, leave a review, and send some Power Stones as well.
Also, what do you guys think about me starting a Patreon? I'm like poor and stuff not too poor tho 😂. But even if I make one, there won't be any paywalled or advance chapters—everything will still be posted here as usual. It would just be for anyone who wants to support the story.
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"Joan—you'd better hurry. Bring the reply back before dinner. Understood?"
The eagle owl shook her glossy feathers, fixed them both with a tawny, self-important gaze, let out a few cheerful chirps, and launched herself from Draco's arm into the bright blue sky.
"She's beautiful," Hermione said, watching until the brown bird became a speck and disappeared.
"A wonderful owl," Draco agreed, catching the note of envy in her voice. "Would you like one?"
"Oh—no, thank you. I have Crookshanks, and he deserves my full devotion," Hermione said with a smile. "It wouldn't be fair to him."
"Lucky cat." Something odd flickered in Draco's expression—pleased, almost—as though he were the pampered creature in question. "If he knew you thought of him that way, he'd be very happy indeed."
Talking idly, they descended the narrow spiral staircase of the west tower. Voices drifted up from below—low and earnest.
"Please ignore him," a gentle male voice was saying. "If he said anything offensive, I apologise on his behalf. My father read Rita Skeeter's report and has some misunderstandings—"
"I understand." The girl's voice was soft, slightly disappointed. "I only hoped to make a good impression—"
"My mother thinks highly of you. She never believed a word of Skeeter's column; she trusted what I told her. She'll help my father see it properly—"
The two voices and their owners—Cedric Diggory leading a somewhat deflated Cho Chang around a corner—came into full view as they reached the landing halfway down the staircase and found themselves face-to-face with Draco and Hermione.
Cedric stopped. "Shall we let them go first?" he asked Cho in a low voice.
She nodded. They stepped to the side of the landing, making way.
Draco glanced at them—said nothing—and continued walking.
He noticed, in passing, that Diggory was keeping his arm loosely around Cho Chang's shoulder, shielding her from the edge of the landing as though she might otherwise topple backwards. Even Draco had to admit, privately and with considerable reluctance, that it was difficult not to like someone as effortlessly charming as Cedric Diggory.
Poor Harry. He probably doesn't have much of a chance, Draco thought, with a flicker of genuine regret.
He tightened his grip on Hermione's arm and attempted to shepherd her past without further interaction.
She stopped.
"Thank you, Cho. And Cedric," she said lightly. Then she turned slightly and gave Draco's sleeve a deliberate tug, murmuring out of the corner of her mouth, "Say thank you, Draco."
He had intended to keep his expression perfectly blank and pretend they were invisible.
But Hermione was looking at him with those expectant, uncompromising eyes.
He raised his gaze, with the energy of someone doing something that physically pained him, and said through barely parted lips, "Thanks."
"You're welcome," Cedric said politely to Hermione, exercising visible restraint in not remarking on the eye-roll. Cho Chang smiled without speaking.
He is always like this, Hermione thought with a flash of irritation. He can't even manage basic courtesy without making it look like a personal sacrifice.
She felt obliged to compensate for the atmosphere. "Cedric—good luck tonight."
"Thank you," Cedric said warmly. "How is Harry's preparation? I've seen you both practising in the Transfiguration classroom."
"He's—" Hermione began, but Draco was already walking, her hand firmly in his grip.
She turned back with an apologetic smile, mouthing a silent sorry, and allowed herself to be towed away. She made a mental note to have a thorough conversation with Draco about basic manners as soon as possible.
But before she could organise her thoughts into the appropriate lecture, Cedric's voice came after them.
"Hey—Malfoy. Don't take what my father said at noon to heart."
Draco stopped.
He turned.
There was a brief pause—the kind that felt longer than it was. Draco studied Diggory with something that might have been surprise, though he controlled his expression carefully.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said at last, his voice as cool as ever. "It's no concern of mine."
Hermione's attention sharpened. What had Mr. Diggory said?
Cedric's frown was slight, almost reluctant. "I—want to apologise on his behalf."
"On his behalf?" Draco looked at him for a long moment. "What right do you have to apologise for him?"
He said it flatly, not unkindly—just factually. "I refuse."
Cedric's expression went through something complicated. His upbringing and natural instincts told him to maintain composure and courtesy; his actual feelings about Draco Malfoy were considerably less settled. He held the boy's gaze.
In the fall of afternoon light, he noticed something he hadn't expected: the aloof Slytherin Seeker was squinting at him, jaw set, as though calculating—weighing—making some kind of private decision.
The silence stretched.
Then Draco tilted his head, looked Cedric up and down with cool grey eyes, and said, in his most arrogant tone, "You passed your Apparition test, didn't you."
"Yes," Cedric said, confused. "But—"
"I thought so." Draco turned to Hermione as though this were perfectly natural. "Did you know that in the history of the Triwizard Tournament, the champions with the best results have always been the ones who could exit gracefully when the situation called for it?"
Hermione looked at him, baffled.
"I'm saying," Draco continued, with the particular brand of unpleasantness he seemed to reserve for Cedric Diggory specifically, "that the noble Hufflepuff house will almost certainly be left without a Seeker next year if their current one dies doing something heroic and idiotic in a maze. It'd be a shame. Then again—" he gestured vaguely, "—if the pretty-boy champion can't figure out when to cut his losses, perhaps the outcome is rather inevitable."
"Draco!" Hermione hissed, grabbing his sleeve.
Cedric straightened.
Draco pressed on, his tone carrying the particular venom that—Hermione was beginning to understand—masked something else entirely.
"The maze could lead anywhere, you know. Deserts. Swamps. Graveyards." He paused, just slightly too long. "There are precedents in the Tournament's history. Champions who entered the maze and simply—didn't come back. If you can't identify a trap that's beyond your ability to counter, the sensible response is to use every available means of exit—not to charge headlong into it for the sake of glory." He lifted his chin. "Of course, if you can't see the difference between courage and recklessness—well. Better men than you have made that mistake. It tends to end the same way."
Cedric's expression had gone from confused to tightly controlled.
"That's enough!" Hermione said under her breath, yanking Draco's arm hard.
Cho Chang, beside Cedric, frowned—not in anger, but in a sudden unease that had nothing to do with Draco's rudeness.
"Come with me. Now." Hermione abandoned subtlety entirely, grabbed the front of Draco's silver-green tie, and pulled.
He resisted for exactly two seconds, noted the expression on her face, and decided against a third.
"I haven't finished—" he began.
"Yes, you have." She had the grip of someone who'd spent the past several months developing strong opinions about where his collar should go, and she applied it effectively.
"Excuse us," she told Cedric and Cho, her own face flaming with embarrassment. "I'm sorry. Truly."
Cedric nodded, silent, jaw still set.
Hermione frog-marched her boyfriend around the bend of the staircase and out of view, using his tie as a lead, while Draco alternated between protesting and appealing for mercy in a voice significantly less dignified than usual.
"—let go—that's my collar—Hermione—"
"Stop talking."
"I'm only saying—"
"Stop. Talking."
On the landing, Cedric and Cho stood very still.
There was a long pause.
"They have…quite a relationship," Cho said carefully, watching the bend in the staircase where the couple had disappeared.
She had expected the Slytherin Seeker to be cold to everyone—she had expected Hermione Granger to be composed. Neither assumption had survived the last two minutes.
"Yes," Cedric said blankly. Then, a moment later: "He's a bit unreasonable, isn't he?"
He was frowning now in a different way—not at the insults, but at something else. Something beneath them.
Why had Draco Malfoy been trying to persuade him to give up the Tournament? Or at least—to think about escape routes? Was it for Harry's benefit? But Hermione's expression had been entirely one of mortified surprise—she clearly hadn't known what Draco was going to say.
Whatever Malfoy was planning, Harry probably had nothing to do with it.
"I genuinely don't understand what he was trying to do," Cedric said.
Cho was quiet for a moment.
"I don't care what he was trying to do," she said at last. She looked up at him, her expression unusually serious. "I care about what he said. Some of it wasn't entirely wrong, Cedric."
Cedric raised his eyebrows.
"I know you don't want to hear this," she continued, her voice gentle and steady, "and I know everyone is expecting you to fight to the last. Your father, your classmates, the whole school." She paused. "But not everyone. I'm not."
Cedric was quiet.
"I think they see the glory and not the weight of it," Cho said. "I don't care whether you win the Triwizard Cup. I never have." Her gaze was clear and direct. "What I want to tell you is—you've always been the greatest champion to me. With or without a trophy. With or without a title. Just as you are." She paused once more. "If you face something you can't overcome—please don't rush towards it. Please protect yourself first."
Cedric looked at her for a long time.
Then he nodded, and smiled.
---
Around the bend in the spiral staircase, a rather less dignified scene was concluding.
Hermione let go of the tie with a final pointed look and resumed walking at a more civilised pace.
"Tell me," she said, once they were far enough that Cedric and Cho couldn't hear. She turned to face him. "What did Mr. Diggory actually say to you?"
Draco was genuinely surprised—he'd expected the lecture first.
"Oh," he said, and looked away slightly. "Just some remarks about Slytherin. Our house has never been particularly popular."
Hermione's expression went from annoyed to indignant. "How could he say that? You're not to take it to heart."
Draco shrugged. "I wasn't."
They walked on. After a moment she asked, "Was Cedric there too? Did he agree with what his father said?"
"He was there. He didn't agree."
"Then why did you refuse his apology?" she asked, baffled. "And why were you so harsh to him?"
Draco went quiet for a beat. Around them, the sound of their shoes on the stone steps filled the silence.
"Because none of it was his fault to apologise for," he said at last, slowly. "He didn't say it. It's not his responsibility."
Hermione absorbed this.
"I—yes. You're right about that," she said. She thought for a moment. "But if you knew it wasn't his fault, why did you go after him the way you did? All of that about running away, and dying pathetically—"
"That's always how I talk to him." Draco kept his eyes forward. "We've been Quidditch opponents for two years. You expected me to be pleasant?"
Was he supposed to find Diggory on the stairs, bow politely, and say: Please be careful tonight, the maze might contain a Portkey that leads to a graveyard where the Dark Lord is waiting? He suppressed a shudder. Just the thought of it made his jaw ache.
He couldn't say any of that. Dumbledore and Sirius had made clear that the details of the evening's contingency plans were not for casual conversation. Telling Cedric the truth directly risked either being dismissed entirely or exposing information that couldn't be un-exposed.
The only way Draco Malfoy knew how to plant an idea in someone he hadn't earned the trust of was to make them want to dismiss it—and then have it stick anyway.
"But Harry is also your opponent on the pitch," Hermione said, frowning. "You manage to be perfectly civil to him."
"Harry is my friend," Draco said, without hesitation. "Diggory is just—Diggory. A charming hypocrite who goes on about fairness and then lets his father insult half the room."
Hermione stopped walking. She crossed her arms and looked at him steadily. For a long, searching moment, she said nothing.
Then: "Draco. You're worried about him, aren't you."
It wasn't a question.
He cleared his throat.
She studied him with the expression of someone who has just solved a particularly difficult arithmancy problem. "You're worried about Cedric's safety. That's what all of that was about."
"I had a dream," Draco said, a little too quickly. "Just a strange dream. Sometimes dreams feel significant. It probably means nothing."
"And that's why you specifically told him to practise Apparition? You wouldn't even suggest that to Harry—you said the age limit made it too risky."
"Harry's fourteen. There are good reasons not to attempt Apparition that young. If something goes badly wrong—"
"How do you know how to Apparate?" she demanded. "You've never mentioned it."
"I have my methods," he said, with a slight elevation of his chin.
"What methods? When did you—" She stopped, and he watched her mentally file it away for later. She always did that—stored the questions she couldn't answer yet and came back to them.
"How's your Disillusionment Charm coming along?" he asked pleasantly. "And your Silencing Charm?"
"Terribly," she said, with feeling. "I have too many things at once—the library applications, and the S.P.E.W. leaflets—"
"You'll get there," he said, with quiet certainty. "Don't rush it."
She was still half-thinking about something else, he could tell. He could always tell. But he'd deflected enough.
She was still distracted enough, in fact, that she didn't notice when they reached the bottom of the staircase—and she caught the very last step wrong, pitching forward sharply.
His arm was around her before she'd registered the stumble.
He always caught her. She had stopped being surprised by it.
Looking up at him now, she found his grey eyes clear and warm, steady and amused.
Several months. That was how long they had been together. It was not a long time, objectively—a fraction of a life, nothing in the grand scale of things. But for two teenagers whose days were so full, so fast, so charged with change, it felt like much more than that.
She had heard the older girls in the Gryffindor common room talk about the inevitability of burnout. "After a few months, any boy gets boring," Katie Bell had announced authoritatively to a small gathered audience. "Doesn't matter how handsome he is—you'll find out soon enough they're all shallow underneath."
Hermione had never managed to agree with that.
She never found him boring. She never found herself looking at him and feeling the pull of novelty replaced by indifference. If anything, every new thing she discovered about him only increased the complicated, particular warmth she felt toward him.
"Oh, Draco," she said, and sighed.
"What?" he asked, a trace of concern—and something that might have been hope—crossing his face.
She buried her face in his neck, hiding her expression. "I think I'm probably hopeless."
"Hopeless," he repeated, a little carefully. "Who said that?"
"Some people in Gryffindor." Her voice was muffled. "They think you've slipped me some kind of potion. They can't understand why I'd fall for a cold-hearted, cunning Slytherin."
His voice dropped to something colder. "Tell me their names. What else have they said to you? Have they made things difficult—"
"No, no, it's nothing like that," she said quickly, pulling back to look at him. "Please don't threaten anyone. I worked very hard to convince them you're actually a gentle and approachable person."
Draco made a sound that might have been laughter. "I doubt that worked."
"It really didn't!" Her voice tipped into something both aggrieved and fond. "They all said I've been blinded by—" she hesitated— "by, well. You know."
He let out a genuine laugh, low and startled.
"This is not funny," she informed him. "For a moment I thought they were describing some decadent historical emperor. The kind who brought down an entire dynasty."
He laughed harder. "Honestly? I'll take it. They're at least admitting I have enough charm to influence you."
"They're so wrong about you," she said, and something shifted in her voice. "I don't want them to see you that way. You're being misunderstood."
Draco held her gaze for a moment. He had known far worse than student gossip—had looked into the eyes of people who considered him a future Death Eater, or a disgraced prisoner's son. This was nothing.
"I've never much wanted to be everyone's cup of tea," he said simply. "I only want to be yours."
"You are," she said softly. "Entirely."
"Good." He stroked her hair once, satisfied.
She leaned into him. "But what about in Slytherin? Are you under much pressure there? Do people say unpleasant things to you?"
She hadn't asked him directly before—hadn't thought to, not until this afternoon at the Slytherin table, when she had felt the weight of all those eyes and realised, suddenly, that she was probably not the only one being watched.
"Some don't approve," Draco said, his hand still moving through her hair. "They wouldn't dare act on it. But my one real concern is that you might walk away because of what they say."
"I wouldn't," she said immediately. "I was with you before I understood what people would think. I'm not going to stop now." She looked up at him. "I only worry that you might stop—because of what they say."
"Never," he said, with the directness of someone stating something he has decided absolutely. "You're mine. And you are not allowed to let me go."
"Never," she echoed, and meant it. "Oh, Draco. I like you so much. The more I know you—the brave parts, the kind parts, the awkward, contradictory, secretive parts—the more I like you. Every day a little more."
She nearly choked on the last sentence, surprised by the force of her own feeling.
"I like you too," he said quietly, into her hair, with the tone of someone for whom saying so requires more effort than it looks. "More than I know how to say."
His fingers were still working gently through her curls—they had been softening lately, she'd noticed; less wild, more manageable—and she had the thought, comfortable and unhurried, that she could stay like this for a long time.
Then she felt his arm tighten slightly, and knew he'd noticed something in her face.
"Your heart aches?" he said.
She blinked, not having realised she'd said it aloud. "Sometimes. When I like someone this much—the ache is just part of it."
"From what people say?"
"That too." She paused. "I have rather a lot of silly expectations. I want people to understand you. I want them to see what I see. Not everyone—but—the people who matter." She glanced down at the step, then back up at him. "I want to tell them you're a good person, and have them believe it rather than look at me as though I've been Confounded. Is that—very unrealistic of me?"
His expression became difficult to read.
He was quiet for a moment. In the context of everything that had ever been thought or said about Draco Malfoy—in this life or the last—the idea that anyone might look at him and simply conclude good seemed not merely unrealistic, but faintly absurd.
And yet she was asking it of him as if it were within reach.
"You may be asking for something I genuinely don't know how to give," he said quietly. "I'm not easy to like. I know that. I can be cold, I can be harsh—my world has always been narrow, and the people I trust are few. These things are part of me. I can't set them aside."
"I know," she said. "I know them, and I still—" She stopped. "That's not what I'm asking you to change. I just—wonder whether we might try, a little."
He looked at her.
"I don't want to see you dismissed again by someone from the Ministry. I don't want someone like Mr. Diggory to say something cutting and have no one push back. The thought of you being misread, written off—" Her voice wavered. "That hurts me. More than being misread myself."
He stared at her.
She meant it. He could see she meant it completely, without calculation or pity—as simply and directly as she said everything else.
No one had ever cared about that. He had sealed off those old wounds so thoroughly he had half-convinced himself they didn't exist. And now she had found them—not by prying, but just by looking at him as though he deserved to be looked at clearly.
His vision blurred, briefly.
He wiped her cheeks with a careful hand. She had been crying again, he realised—he'd been so focused on keeping his own face steady he'd almost missed it.
"Don't—Hermione—"
The more he wiped, the more she cried, and for a moment he felt entirely and helplessly out of his depth.
"I failed to protect you," he said, low and unsteady. "I thought—I was so sure I'd covered everything. And I missed this."
"You didn't do anything wrong," she said. "I'm not—this isn't blame. I just want—" She exhaled. "I want a day to come when I say you're a good person and someone nods and says yes, I know. That's all. And I know it might not happen. I know it might be wishful thinking. But I can't seem to stop wanting it."
He pressed his lips together.
These were unrealistic expectations. Draco Malfoy knew this with mathematical certainty. People's first impressions did not change easily, especially not for a Slytherin with his family name and history. The labels were not the kind that washed off.
And yet.
"I don't know how to do what you're describing," he said slowly. "But you're right that—I probably don't enjoy being misunderstood. I've told myself for a long time that I don't care. I may have been wrong."
"That's enough," she said at once, soft and urgent. "That's a start."
"I can't guarantee—"
"It's fine. I can remind you."
"I say harsh things without thinking—"
"I can stop you."
"I'm contradictory—what I think and what I say and what I actually do are all different sometimes—"
"Tell me, and I'll help you sort them out."
"I—" He ran out of objections. He stood there, oddly breathless, like something dormant beginning to stir.
"Let's just take it slowly," she said, looking up at him with those warm, tear-bright eyes. "A little at a time. You once told me I'd learn my charms eventually, and you were right." She paused. "I think you have things worth learning too."
The prey gazed at the hunter. He was quite aware that she was not doing this intentionally—was not aware of the cage she was weaving, or that he was already standing in it.
He exhaled slowly.
Then nodded.
Her face transformed immediately. She laughed, kissed his chin, and grabbed his hand to tug him down the remaining steps. "There—that wasn't so terrible, was it? A tenth of the patience you show me with everyone else, and no one would misread you at all."
Draco followed, pulled along by her enthusiasm, saying under his breath, "I can't promise anything definite—"
"You don't have to. You just have to try." She was already beaming, pulling him toward the sun-drenched corridor below. "I believe in you completely. There's really no question."
He looked sideways at her bright, trusting face.
Unrealistic expectations. Completely impractical. Fundamentally at odds with fourteen years of hardwired instinct.
He almost said so.
Instead, he let her take his hand, allowed himself one private, discreet smile, and thought: he must be absolutely out of his mind.
He kept walking towards the light.