Draco had been sitting in Kevin's workroom for forty minutes with the expression of a man contemplating the fundamental injustice of the universe.
Kevin had tried twice to ask what was wrong and both times received a silence that communicated a great deal without specifying any of it.
The situation, as Kevin eventually reconstructed from context clues, was this: Ron Weasley had, in the aftermath of a triumphant Quidditch performance, been kissed by Lavender Brown in front of the entire celebrating Gryffindor dormitory. They were now, in the most enthusiastic interpretation of the term, a couple. They had been functionally inseparable for the past seventy-two hours.
Harry was delighted for his friend.
Draco was experiencing something he would have violently denied was bereavement.
Kevin looked at him sitting on the sofa like a deflated balloon and made a decision.
"Hagrid mentioned Norbert's been in a difficult phase," Kevin said. "Moody, snapping at everyone, won't settle. You know her better than most. Feel like checking on her?"
Draco was on his feet in approximately one second. "Let's go."
They crossed the grounds in the late afternoon, snow crunching underfoot, the castle behind them bright against the grey sky. Hagrid's hut was warm and slightly smoky from the fire, Fang asleep across the doorstep with a dedication that refused to acknowledge the cold.
Hagrid was out front with a shovel, which he set aside when he saw them coming.
"Kevin! Draco! Perfect timing."
He jerked his thumb toward the window. Norbert was there — her considerable head resting on the sill, her eyes fixed on the sky with the expression of an animal that has been told the sky is unavailable and has decided not to accept this.
"She's been like this all week," Hagrid said. "Indoors, outdoors, nothing's right. Keeps wanting to fly, but I can't take her out much with everything going on."
"We'll take her," Kevin said.
Hagrid brightened. "Oh, wonderful. Just — careful, yeah? Stay low."
Kevin accepted this as the theoretical instruction it was, collected a few materials he needed from Hagrid's supply cupboard, and went inside to get Norbert.
She recognised him. She also recognised Draco, which produced a more complicated reaction — a lower of the head, an assessing look, and then the cautious approach of someone deciding that a familiar face was probably safe.
Draco held out his hand. Norbert sniffed it with the seriousness of a dragon taking the matter under advisement, then butted her head against his palm.
"There we go," he said quietly, and something in his face settled.
They took her out to the edge of the forest, far enough from the school that the cold air hit properly and the open sky above the treeline was unobstructed. Kevin shrank Norbert to travel size, tucked her in his sleeve, and they walked into the trees.
In the deeper forest, he returned her to full size.
The transformation from depressed cabin-dragon to herself happened almost instantly. She stretched, shook from nose to tail-tip, opened her wings to their full span — which was by now considerable — and produced a fire blast straight up that turned twenty feet of falling snow into a brief and brilliant cloud of steam.
Draco laughed, the first genuine sound of it in days, and stepped back just in time to avoid the peripheral heat.
Norbert looked at him with the expression of a dragon waiting to see what happened next.
"Up?" Draco asked.
She lowered herself.
They climbed. She lifted.
The forest fell away beneath them and then the castle appeared, and beyond the castle the lake and the hills and the darkening sky, and Norbert beat her wings with the long, powerful rhythm of something returning to where it belonged.
They hadn't meant to go beyond the school's protective boundary. It happened gradually — Norbert angling toward open sky, the castle growing smaller, the edge of the grounds passing beneath them almost without Kevin noticing. He registered it when he felt the subtle shift of the wards dropping away.
The cold deepened. The sky was fully grey now, the sun gone.
Then Draco pointed.
Black smears against the clouds. Moving too deliberately to be weather.
Death Eaters.
Kevin counted quickly. Twelve, possibly more — strung in a loose cordon, the kind of formation that said we've been watching, we've been waiting. Norbert's fire display had been visible for miles. So had her size.
They'd been spotted.
"Norbert," Kevin said, low and clear. "They're hostile."
She already knew. Her scales had risen slightly along her spine, her head tracking the nearest movement with the flat attention of a predator.
"Stay close," Draco said. "Don't let them get behind us."
The first green lights came from the front of the group — two Killing Curses, aimed at Kevin and Draco rather than Norbert. They wanted the dragon.
Kevin had the buttons off his shirt and transfigured into conjured shields before the spells were halfway across the gap. The curses hit them and scattered. Draco had already raised an Ironclad Charm on Norbert's flanks.
The flanking Death Eaters switched tactics — Impediment Jinxes and binding spells aimed at Norbert's wings, trying to ground her.
"Norbert." Kevin turned to her. "You know what's happening. We'll cover you. When you're ready."
She looked at him. Then she looked at the scattered black shapes in the clouds.
She banked hard, tucked her wings, and fell toward the treeline.
The Death Eaters followed. That was the mistake.