A few days after the Easter holidays ended, Harry's scar began hurting again.
"He was yelling in the night," Hermione said, as they walked toward Hagrid's hut. Her voice was low, troubled. "Ron told . When Harry woke up, he kept describing a vision — a large snake."
"That explains his state at breakfast," Draco said, keeping his tone level. "He looked like he hadn't slept."
"I tried to suggest it might be stress from the Tournant." She frowned at the path. "I knew that probably wasn't it."
"It wasn't."
"Professor Dumbledore said not to tell Harry the specifics until we had more to go on," she said. "I suppose he was trying to protect Harry's focus before the third Task."
"I know." Draco felt the cold settling sowhere behind his ribs, but kept walking. "Nobody can stay ignorant forever. Harry will work it out eventually, just as we will eventually have to stop pretending we don't know what we know."
"I keep hoping we're wrong," she said quietly. "Right up until we're not."
"So do I."
He didn't say anything else. The warm spring light made everything look deceptively peaceful: the green slope down to the lake, the castle behind them, Hagrid's enormous hut ahead. It was a very beautiful morning for very bad news.
---
A week or so later, Sirius found him after a Defence Against the Dark Arts class, standing at a window watching the lake.
"Draco. Walk with ."
Draco said sothing quiet to Hermione — she nodded, let him go — and followed Sirius down to the lakeside.
It was a bright afternoon. The Beauxbatons students were sunbathing on the grass nearby. As Draco and Sirius passed, one of the girls murmured sothing to Fleur Delacour; Fleur glanced at them, then away, with the expression of soone who was not going to admit to looking.
"Harry's scar," Sirius said, once they were clear of the others.
"Yes."
"Whenever it hurts, he's active sowhere." Sirius ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know the exact nature of the connection between them, but I know what the pain ans. Voldemort isn't gone."
"I know," Draco said.
"Please don't say that na in the open," Draco added, more quietly.
"You're paranoid," Sirius said.
"I'm cautious. There's a difference." He kept his voice even. "Death Eaters use protective charms tied to the na. If you say it carelessly, you eventually lead soone to wherever you're standing. I'd prefer they not find you."
Sirius looked at him for a mont. "Narcissa really did a number on your head."
"My mother kept alive," Draco said. "I'll accept paranoid."
Sirius didn't push further.
"We were too hopeful," he said instead, bending to pick up a flat stone. "After Crouch's house — I let myself think it was over. I wanted it to be over."
"We all did."
"Hermione was right to push us to keep looking. She was more clear-headed than the rest of us on this."
"She was." Draco looked at the water. "She usually is."
He told Sirius what had co of their Easter research — the hidden book, Tom Riddle's library card, the theory about Slughorn. Sirius listened carefully, and Draco could see him filing it all away.
"Good," Sirius said, when he'd finished. "That's a real lead."
"The black ring," Draco said. "We need to find it. That has to be one of them."
"I know." Sirius turned the stone over in his hand. "We're back to hunting. That's where we are."
"Yes."
"I put my energy in the wrong place," Sirius said. "Too much ti watching Karkaroff and Maxi, not enough on the actual threat. I should have checked more consistently, the way you have."
"You were protecting Harry," Draco said. "That was never wasted."
"I put the cart before the horse." Sirius threw the stone. It skipped a dozen tis across the mirror-flat surface of the Black Lake, sending out rings that spread and overlapped. "We're not done. We go again."
He said it like *again* was the most natural thing in the world, like fighting the Dark Lord was the kind of repetitive task you simply got on with. Draco found it simultaneously admirable and baffling.
"There's sothing else," Sirius said. He reached into his robes and produced a folded newspaper. "I found this at Crouch's house — it was on the coffee table. Read the marked section."
Draco opened it.
It was the issue with Rita Skeeter's article on Hagrid — the one that had caused the quarrel with Hermione that felt like a different era now. He found the passage Sirius ant:
*"...the school's Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, Alastor Moody, was even admitted to St. Mungo's for treatnt of severe injuries caused by the creature..."*
Draco stared at it for a mont.
*Moody. Injured by Hagrid's creature. Hospitalised.*
He understood.
"He thought it was genuine," Draco said. "He read this and assud Barty Crouch Jr. had been genuinely injured — an accident, in the chaos after the article. He didn't know it was us."
"That's what I think," Sirius said. "Hagrid's fondness for dangerous creatures is well-docunted. Voldemort knew Hagrid from his own school years — he was the one who got Hagrid expelled, after all. He's never taken Hagrid seriously. It wouldn't have occurred to him to suspect a deliberate act."
Draco thought about this. About what it ant. "So he believed his lieutenant was incapacitated. And he found himself in need of another way to ensure Harry got to the Goblet of Fire." He looked up. "So he activated Barty Crouch Sr. under the Imperius Curse."
"That's the shape of it," Sirius said. "He had to ensure Harry scored highly enough in the second Task to enter the maze first in the third. He had Crouch attack Krum. Accelerated the plan."
"Our interference — accidentally — forced him to show his hand earlier than he intended."
"Yes." Sirius skipped another stone. "Which ans we've rattled him. Which ans he's going to be watching."
A pause.
"The trophy," Draco said. "The Triwizard Cup. In his original plan—"
"A Portkey," Sirius said. "Made to transport whoever touched it. We've known about this since Crouch's confession."
"Who is controlling the trophy's placent in the maze?"
"I am," Sirius said. "Personally. From now until the night of the Task. No one touches it without my knowledge."
Draco breathed out.
"Good," he said.
They walked along the bank in silence for a mont.
"Karkaroff," Draco said. "If he's sufficiently frightened, he might turn to the other side to protect himself. He's done it before."
"I know." Sirius's expression darkened. "He gave the Ministry a list of Death Eaters' nas after he was arrested. Bought his own freedom. Every Death Eater in Azkaban knew it and despised him for it." He paused. "He's been staying on that ship, als delivered, very little contact with anyone. He's terrified."
"If he's approached and threatened, he might cooperate with whoever frightens him most," Draco said. "And if he does, any action we take against the Dark Lord suddenly becos an international incident. The Departnt of International Magical Cooperation gets involved, the Ministry starts demanding procedures—"
"We'd be hampered at every turn," Sirius agreed. "Which is why—" He stopped, and glanced at Draco. "We're going to have to bring Moody back early."
"His condition—"
"Is not good. But leaving him at St. Mungo's is a risk we can't keep taking." Sirius's expression was carefully neutral. "He's been moved already. A few days ago. To the Black house. Kreacher is managing."
Draco raised his eyebrows slightly. The thought of Kreacher *managing* anything with competence required so adjustnt.
"And you," Draco said.
"I'll go back in," Sirius said, with a slow, wicked smile. "For a bit. For appearances."
"You're going to pretend to be Moody again."
"Briefly. Enough to make it convincing." The smile widened. "If I can't find a place in the wizarding world, I can always look for work in Muggle theatre."
"Wonderful. Please do not target specifically."
"I make no promises," Sirius said. "You're a Malfoy. It's thematically appropriate."
Draco shook his head.
"Will you tell Harry?" he asked, after a mont. "About what the scar ans. About you — the full story."
"After the Tournant," Sirius said, and his tone lost the lightness. "He deserves to know everything. He will know everything. But right now the third Task is six weeks away, and he has enough weight on him already." He looked at the lake. "Dumbledore agreed. After June twenty-fourth."
Draco turned it over. "Harry's sharper than people give him credit for. If he starts looking into things himself—"
"I know. I'll watch for it." Sirius looked at him sidelong. "You really have changed, haven't you. A year ago you'd have called this none of your concern."
"It's still none of my concern," Draco said, and walked back toward the castle.
Behind him, he heard Sirius laugh.
---
He took a longer route back, along the south path past the greenhouses, without entirely aning to.
He was thinking about what had changed.
Four years of rebuilding, piece by careful piece, in the knowledge of what was coming. He had arrived at this year with a plan — protect Harry, eliminate the Horcruxes, prevent the catastrophe — and then Hermione had happened, which hadn't been in any version of the plan.
He hadn't anticipated how much she would change the texture of the world around him.
He passed a cluster of younger students — Gryffindors, second-year by the look of them, running and laughing at sothing. Colin Creevey was sowhere in the middle of it, cara raised, grinning. His brother Dennis ran beside him.
Draco had, in another life, treated Colin Creevey with contempt at best and casual cruelty at worst. He looked at the boy laughing at a picture he'd just taken, showed it to Dennis, and felt sothing that sat uncomfortably in the region of remorse.
Cedric Diggory passed him further along the path, surrounded as he usually was, and gave Draco the sa easy, unguarded nod he always gave everyone. His Quidditch opponent. A boy who would be dead before the end of term, if things went the way they had before.
*Not if I can help it.*
He crossed paths with two professors near the entrance hall — Professor Vector and Professor Burbage. Vector stopped him.
"Mr. Malfoy, you look pale. Are you quite well?"
"Yes, Professor. Thank you." He kept his eyes low, as he always did near Professor Burbage.
"Oh, is this the Mr. Malfoy you ntion?" Burbage said, with the warm curiosity she brought to every interaction. "I've been aning to et him properly. He always gives the right of way in the corridor — very polite." She smiled at Draco. "And Miss Granger — such a loss to my subject when she dropped it. Always exceptional."
"Yes," Draco said carefully. "She is."
"Rest when you can, Mr. Malfoy," Vector said, and steered Burbage away.
He heard Burbage still talking as they turned the corner: *"...been researching for years, the natural compatibility between pure-blood and Muggle-born wizards, the benefits of such unions — look at Harry Potter, a pure-blood father and a Muggle-born mother, and the magical power he displayed as an infant..."*
Her voice faded.
Draco stood in the corridor and stared at the floor.
He had been there.
In another life, in a room at Malfoy Manor, he had been there when the Dark Lord made an example of Professor Burbage. She had written an article in the Daily Prophet arguing for equal treatnt of Muggle-born witches and wizards. She had suggested that declining pure-blood numbers were not a cause for alarm, that intermarriage was natural and good.
For this, she had been tortured in front of the assembled Death Eaters, and then killed. And then fed to Nagini. And Draco had sat at that table and looked at the wall.
She had called out to Snape. *Severus. Please.*
Snape had looked at the wall too.
Draco moved, deliberately, away from the mory. He made his feet keep going.
The corridor ahead of him was bright with afternoon light. Students passed, talking about nothing in particular. The ordinary noise of Hogwarts closed around him.
He thought: *If the Dark Lord returns, what happens to Professor Burbage?*
He thought: *If the Dark Lord returns, what happens to Hermione?*
He thought about the question for five or six steps, and then made himself stop thinking about it, because following the thought to its end led sowhere he couldn't afford to go right now.
What he could afford was this: the present. The third Task, six weeks away. A cup that had to be kept clean. A Horcrux they hadn't found yet. A professor who needed to be persuaded to talk.
He could afford to do each of these things as well as possible.
He would worry about the rest when it arrived.
He hoped, very sincerely, that when it arrived, he would be faster than it was.
He turned the last corner toward the library.
She would be there. She was always there.
*Hermione, Hermione. What am I going to do with you.*
He pushed open the door.
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