HP: Redemption Chapter 118 118: The Trembling Ferret

We return to the night the Hogsade open day ca to a close.

Lying on his four-poster bed in his private dormitory at the bottom of the Black Lake, Draco Malfoy was, as usual, wide awake.

He told everyone he was perfectly fine. That was a lie. The insomnia had crept in ever since he nearly drowned in the water tank during Defence Against the Dark Arts, and it had not left him since.

The lake outside his window drove him mad at every hour.

He couldn't stare at the water for too long without the hallucinations starting—the black water bursting through the French windows, flooding the room, snuffing out the fireplace, washing the silver-green walls bare, tearing him apart with the furniture in a freezing current until he drowned. He had learned to stop looking.

He was beginning to understand sothing he hadn't before: the sa sight could beco entirely different depending on the mind that received it.

The tiny silver fish drifting past the glass—once a soothing presence—now only reminded him of how much water surrounded him.

The Grindylows drifting by in the gloom—once rely a curiosity, like pets on a lead—now recalled the tank that had nearly killed him.

Even the giant squid had lost its appeal. The sight of its bubbles rising to the surface brought back the sensation of his own breath leaving his body, of cold water forcing its way into his lungs. Suffocation, even as a mory, was enough.

Draco sighed, pulled the heavy curtains shut against the French windows, and tried to convince himself—with the help of the solitary wall sconces swaying on either side of the room—that he was in his warm bedroom at Malfoy Manor, not at the cold and lightless bottom of the Black Lake.

It didn't work. He was exhausted down to his bones, yawning without cease, yet his mind remained irritatingly clear. The sound of the lake pressed through the curtains no matter how tightly he drew them.

He sighed, reached under his pillow, and pulled out the Marauder's Map—one of his preferred activities during these wakeful hours—and began to leaf through it without any particular aim.

When he spotted Hermione Granger's na in the Gryffindor common room, the knot behind his sternum eased a little.

rlin help him. If she were to follow Harry and the others into the Forbidden Forest at this hour, in the dark, and run into a werewolf or worse—the thought alone sent a cold ripple down his spine. Fortunately, she showed no sign of any such plans tonight.

He watched his personal reassurance—Hermione's na drifting away from Harry's and Ron's, moving steadily toward the girls' dormitory—and felt the nightly return of peace.

Then, with nothing better to do, he turned to tracing the seven secret passages of Hogwarts, wondering idly if any undiscovered ones still existed, until his eye snagged on the most unlikely na in the most unlikely place.

Barty Crouch.

He had no business being at Hogwarts at this hour.

This rigid, humourless man—this prejudiced Head of the Departnt of International Magical Cooperation who held Death Eaters in nothing but contempt—was standing alone outside Professor Snape's office as curfew approached.

A routine inspection? That was Auror work; it would never require soone of Crouch's rank.

The whole thing was as senseless and furtive as Professor Moody's nocturnal wanderings.

rlin's beard. Could soone kindly explain what treasure Snape kept in his office that had half the wizarding world circling it like vultures? Draco pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation.

Should he get involved?

He owed Professor Snape a great deal. Now that he'd seen it, he couldn't simply roll over and go to sleep.

He hesitated—then took another look at the map. Barty Crouch was still there.

Draco threw a robe over his pyjamas, pulled his Invisibility Cloak from the bottom of his bag—it had been a while since he'd needed it—and strode out of the dormitory.

---

Despite the cover of the Invisibility Cloak, Draco moved carefully, keeping to the shadow of an ugly stone statue in the corridor.

The hallway outside Professor Snape's office was quiet. Barty Crouch had already gone inside.

Draco rolled up the Marauder's Map and tucked it away, then stepped out from behind the statue—intending to peer through the office door and see what this apparently respectable Ministry official was up to—

He stopped dead.

Mad-Eye Moody was standing in the doorway of Professor Snape's office. His enormous magical eye was fixed, unblinking, directly on Draco.

In that instant, Draco understood sothing with cold clarity: the magical eye could see through an Invisibility Cloak.

Moody could see him perfectly. His ravaged face split into a grotesque grin. "Don't make any rash moves, Malfoy."

Draco stood frozen, his wand still in his pocket.

"I should have realised sooner there was a nasty little rat following ," Moody said softly, with a terrible undercurrent of pleasure. "You never learn, do you? No manners at all. Let give you a proper lesson in how a good student ought to behave."

A flash of white light. The Invisibility Cloak was blasted aside, and Draco Malfoy was Transfigured into a weasel on the spot.

A complete repeat of yesterday.

The weasel's instincts scread at him to run. He bolted—and was lifted off the ground by an invisible force before being slamd hard into the flagstones.

"I despise sneaks," Moody said, lifting him again with a lazy flick of his wand. "Trying to run to Snape again? Dirty, despicable, cowardly behaviour. You even had Minerva co at —I even had to make promises to Dumbledore about leaving you alone in class—The Malfoys certainly know how to pull strings, don't they? Even getting Dumbledore himself involved. And now here you are, prowling the corridors after curfew, and you've walked straight into my hands."

He was thrown to the ground again. The weasel lay winded, sides heaving.

"I seem to recall," Moody said, watching him with the patient cruelty of soone who has all the ti in the world, "that you're quite frightened of the Cruciatus Curse. The very na makes you tremble, doesn't it, boy?" He clicked his tongue. "Tell —should I give you a taste of it? A little extra instruction?"

No. Draco clenched everything he had left. You have no idea what happened. You have no idea at all.

There was no point in fighting it. Under Moody's wand, controlled and helpless, he stopped trying to run. He let Moody lift him and throw him down again, and again, because there was nothing else to do.

No one was coming. It was the middle of the night. This wasn't the Great Hall in front of the whole school—there were no spectators this ti, no one to witness the humiliation. And Professor McGonagall was not going to appear in the dungeons at this hour to put a stop to it.

The corridor was silent except for the sound of the weasel being flung repeatedly against the stone floor.

"Let's try the Cruciatus Curse, then," Moody said, with a kind of relish. "You ought to have the full educational experience."

The Cruciatus Curse. The sa curse that had left Hermione writhing in agony.

The weasel was thrown down one last ti. Moody's wand levelled at him. Draco closed his eyes.

There was no point in hoping.

Co on, then. Let the coward find out what "heart-piercing, bone-scraping" feels like. Get it over with.

"Expelliarmus!"

Hermione's voice.

The sound of it was so clear and so imdiate that his first thought was that he'd imagined it—a hallucination, the kind his exhausted mind kept manufacturing when it reached its limit. She should be safely in her dormitory. She couldn't be here.

But then a small, decisive hand closed around the scruff of his neck, and he was lifted—gently—and pressed against the warmth of soone's chest. He opened his eyes.

Professor Moody sat across from him, empty-handed, staring. His wand had been knocked clear across the corridor to the far wall. He looked, for once, genuinely startled.

He seed not to have fully absorbed that a student had just disard him.

Hermione stood in front of them both, her wand levelled at Moody, her face flushed crimson. She held the weasel tucked firmly in the crook of one arm. "How dare you! Using Transfiguration to punish students is a direct violation of Hogwarts rules!"

"Violating curfew," Moody said, recovering, his magical eye spinning as it fixed on her. "Casting a Disarming Charm on a professor. That is not what a good student does. You'll be expelled for this."

The weasel clung to her. He could feel the slight tremor running through her—steady hands, trembling arms—but the wand did not waver.

"Oh, so lurking at a professor's office door in the middle of the night is perfectly acceptable?" she said, her voice shaking but firm. "Cursing students—is that how Hogwarts professors are ant to conduct themselves? If you'd like to report , I'll be going straight to Professor McGonagall. And whether or not I'm expelled is not, I believe, your decision to make."

Moody's magical eye darted over her—assessing, calculating. Whatever he found there was apparently enough. He made no move.

Hermione backed away one careful step at a ti, wand still raised, until they reached the corner of the corridor. Then she ran.

---

The weasel was pressed against her chest, hidden inside her robes. He could hear her heart—rapid, strong, a little wild—hamring against her ribs.

She must be terrified, he thought, his own head swimming.

As the shock of what Moody had done began to recede, other details made themselves known.

Such as: she had tucked him inside her outer robe. Such as: she was wearing only a thin nightgown underneath. Such as: the weasel's nose was pressed directly against her chest through that thin nightgown.

It was very soft.

Draco was aware, distantly, that this was entirely the wrong thing to be thinking about. Monts ago he had been on the receiving end of sothing genuinely horrific. He ought to be furious, or humiliated, or in pain.

He was, in fact, all three of those things.

He was also shafully, irreparably distracted by the word soft.

The movent of running. The warmth radiating through the thin fabric. The impossible-to-ignore reality of what was pressed against him.

The humiliation and fear were still there—but they had been overtaken entirely by sothing warm and sweet and overwhelming. Sothing he had absolutely no business feeling right now.

In the grip of these contradictions, the ferret nad Draco Malfoy realised he was trembling for reasons that had nothing whatsoever to do with terror.

He clung tighter to her pyjamas, appalled at himself.

---

Hermione Granger had planned to go to bed early.

After returning from Hogsade, she had stayed up to practise Summoning Charms with Harry and Ron in the common room—Harry had successfully summoned books, quills, an old Gobstones set, Neville's toad Trevor, and eventually several chairs—until she was genuinely tired. The Butterbeer Draco had bought them at the Three Broomsticks had left her pleasantly drowsy, which had seed like a good sign.

But then she had lain down and started thinking about SPEW again.

mbership recruitnt was going nowhere. She was nowhere near the ten mbers she needed to make Draco concede defeat. The thought nagged at her like a stone in a shoe.

He was different from Ron, she thought. Ron didn't care about house-elf rights at all and showed no sign of reconsidering. Draco at least paid Dobby a wage and gave him holidays. She didn't think his position was as fixed as he let on. He was worth the effort.

She was still turning this over when a different sort of unease settled over her—vague and persistent, the feeling that sothing needed checking on.

It was still quarter of an hour before curfew. She could easily slip down to the kitchens, look in on the house-elves, and be back before anyone noticed. She thought of her first year self, who had given Harry a thorough scolding for being out after dark, and laughed quietly at the irony. She wondered, not for the first ti, who exactly had started making her so bold.

She threw on a robe over her nightgown, said the password to the Fat Lady's portrait, and set off.

---

A staircase that kept obstinately rearranging itself cost her several minutes, and by the ti she neared the Great Hall, she had taken at least one wrong turning. She followed what she thought was a familiar set of stairs down to the next level—and found herself in a cold, dark corridor that was emphatically not the bright underground passage she had been aiming for.

She had gone the wrong way. This was the route down toward the Slytherin dungeons. Around the corner—if she was right—was Professor Snape's office.

rlin, please don't let Professor Snape choose this exact mont to step outside, Hermione prayed silently, already turning to leave.

Then she heard Professor Moody's voice—low, but unmistakable. She recognised it from that afternoon at the Three Broomsticks.

"I should have realised sooner there was a nasty little rat following . You never learn, do you? No manners at all. Let give you a proper lesson in how a good student ought to behave."

Hermione went still.

She edged to the corner and peered around it.

Moody stood with his back to her, wand raised. A flash of white light—and Draco Malfoy, who must have been standing under an Invisibility Cloak, appeared in the corridor an instant before being Transfigured into a weasel.

The weasel bolted. An invisible force snatched it up and threw it to the ground.

Hermione pressed herself against the wall and clamped a hand over her mouth. Her mind was very clear and very cold.

She listened to Moody's voice echoing in the empty corridor—the reprimands, the relish in them—and heard, beneath them, the small sounds of the weasel being thrown again and again against the flagstones. Sothing ignited in her chest.

Transfiguring a student as punishnt was a serious violation of Hogwarts rules. Serious enough. But what Moody was now suggesting—

"I seem to recall you're quite frightened of the Cruciatus Curse. The very na makes you tremble, doesn't it, boy? Tell —should I give you a taste of it? A little extra instruction? Let's try the Cruciatus Curse. You ought to have the full educational experience."

The Cruciatus Curse.

She thought of Draco standing in front of her when he didn't have to. Of him saying it's okay after nearly drowning. Of him—always present, always insisting he wasn't—

The last of her hesitation burned away.

Hermione stepped around the corner and cast the only spell she could think of. "Expelliarmus!"

It worked. Moody's wand spun away across the corridor. He sat empty-handed, staring at her with an expression she had never seen on a professor's face before: genuine surprise.

She picked up the weasel—it was shaking—tucked it firmly against her, and faced Moody.

She did not entirely rember what she said. She was aware of her voice coming out steadier than she felt, of pointing her wand at a seasoned forr Auror who could probably end her academically with a word to Dumbledore. She was aware of backing away one step at a ti, of Moody watching her with that spinning magical eye, calculating.

He didn't move.

She reached the corner, and ran.

---

By the ti she reached the eighth floor and the portrait of the Fat Lady—sound asleep and snoring faintly—Hermione had only begun to understand what she had done.

"I don't think he followed," she whispered to the trembling weasel against her chest.

She couldn't take him into the Gryffindor common room. He would be mortified. And the last thing he needed was an audience.

She thought of the Room of Requirent. Sa floor. Perfect.

She paced the stretch of blank wall three tis, thinking of what she needed: sowhere warm, sowhere safe, sowhere private. A fire. Soft things. Enough light to see clearly.

The door appeared.

Inside was a small, low-lit room—armchairs and a sofa arranged around a fireplace that crackled with real warmth, a thick wool rug underfoot, and cushions piled everywhere, as though the room had anticipated soone who needed to sit on the floor and think.

Hermione sat down on the sofa and carefully lifted the weasel from inside her robe—he seed, briefly, reluctant to be moved—and set him gently in front of her.

"Draco?"

The weasel nodded. He sat in a slumped, hollow kind of way on the sofa cushion—simultaneously pathetic and, she could not quite help thinking, rather small and endearing.

She reached out and stroked the top of his head. He didn't flinch.

Emboldened, she shifted closer. He moved suddenly—quick and nimble in a way that no longer looked like Draco at all—climbing up from her hand to her arm to her shoulder, where he settled and pressed his small wet nose against her cheek.

"rlin, you sll wonderful," Draco thought, entirely helpless, as the weasel's senses overwheld him.

Hermione had been half-forgetting, in the warmth and relief of the room, that the small creature fidgeting against her neck and ear was a boy she knew. It was very difficult to rember, because the weasel bore absolutely no resemblance to the composed, slightly guarded person Draco usually was.

It was tickling her. She laughed before she could stop herself, and tried to grab the wriggling creature—and overbalanced, falling back onto the sofa with him pressed flat against her chest.

"Draco—stop—stop it—"

The weasel stilled.

He lay flat on her, tiny paws curled in the fabric of her robe, and stayed there with what she could only describe as a deeply satisfied expression.

She stared at the ceiling, catching her breath. "Why are you so clingy all of a sudden?"

The weasel offered no reply. He nuzzled her chin with his small head in a way that conveyed, unmistakably, that he had no intention of explaining himself and was perfectly content as he was.

She couldn't understand why she could read his expressions. It made no rational sense. And yet she could feel the contentnt in him as clearly as she could feel the warmth of the fire.

Perhaps being Transfigured against one's will was frightening enough that even Draco would want to be held for a while. Hermione thought this with a small, worried pang.

"Draco," she said softly, "are you all right?"

The weasel's grey eyes—the sa pale grey as Draco's—were fixed on her with an expression she couldn't quite na.

She stroked the soft white fur again. He trembled at the touch.

—It was, he admitted silently, considerably less about fear than about sothing else entirely. After Transfiguration, a ferret's senses were, it turned out, rather acute. The faint green-apple scent from her wrist. The warmth of her. The way even the softest touch seed to travel through every nerve he possessed.

He was going quietly mad.

"It's all right," Hermione murmured, rubbing his ears in the careful way one does with small animals. "He won't touch you again."

He was experiencing sothing she would almost certainly not appreciate him experiencing, and he had the decency, at least, to feel guilty about it.

---

"I think we should try to reverse the Transfiguration," Hermione said at last, with the brisk resolution of soone who has decided to be practical. "We practised the counterspell in Professor McGonagall's class not long ago." She frowned. "Hopefully I can manage it without having to bring her in—otherwise we'll have to explain tonight to her, and we'll probably lose a great many house points on top of everything else."

She set the weasel on the carpet in front of her, crouched down, and raised her wand.

Then she lowered it again.

"No," she said. "I'm not confident enough. I don't want to get it wrong."

She was honest with herself: she was fifteen, her Transfiguration was not yet at the level where she would trust it against a spell cast by a fully trained, highly experienced Auror. Moody, whatever else he was, had been casting Transfiguration spells for decades.

Only soone of equal skill—Professor McGonagall—could reliably undo it.

"Draco," she said carefully. "I think we need to go to Professor McGonagall."

The weasel began shaking its head so violently that it nearly fell over, which was undeniably ridiculous. Hermione pressed her lips together very hard.

"You don't trust to do it myself?" she asked.

The weasel went perfectly still. Then it lay down on the carpet in front of her, flat on its belly, chin resting on the rug, and looked at her.

It was, without question, the most absurdly trusting thing she had ever seen.

She took a slow breath, steadied her wand hand, and cast the counterspell.

The crack of reversed Transfiguration echoed in the small room. The weasel vanished, and Draco Malfoy reappeared.

He was dishevelled in a way she had never seen—platinum hair loose across his flushed face, robe thrown crookedly over silver-grey pyjamas, eyes slightly unfocused as he lay on the carpet getting his bearings.

"Hermione," he said softly.

Relief hit her like a wave. She crossed the room and wrapped her arms around him before she had quite decided to.

She pressed her cheek to his, touched his face, breathed in the cedar scent of his hair, needing to confirm through every sense available that he was solid and warm and back. He was. The warmth of his cheek, the steady rise and fall of his breathing—it was all there.

She hugged him, and felt sothing crack open in her chest that she hadn't realised she'd been holding shut. The short breaths turned to sobs.

"If you couldn't have co back," she managed between them, "I think I would have gone mad."

She hadn't allowed herself to cry until he was safely himself again. She had needed to be the composed one, the steady one, until there was nothing left to be steady for.

She didn't entirely know why she was crying. The fear of having faced Moody—real fear, the kind that only arrives after the fact. The unfairness of what Draco had endured; the image of that small creature being thrown against stone, again and again, belonging to soone who had too much pride to ever ask for help. And the dreadful sliding thought: if she hadn't felt that restless urge to check on the house-elves tonight, if the staircase hadn't taken her the wrong way—

"How could he," she sobbed against his shoulder. "He's a professor. How could he do that to you—"

Draco Malfoy was holding a crying girl on a carpet in the Room of Requirent.

She had fallen into his arms the way he might have imagined—in other circumstances, in different versions of things—and he was in absolutely no condition to deal with it properly.

The physical pain from Moody's wand was still real. What he had been experiencing as a weasel was still uncomfortably vivid. And now she was pressed against him, her arms around his neck, her face in his shoulder, utterly unaware of what she was doing to him—and she was so warm, and she slled like green apples and sothing faintly floral, and every one of his nerve endings was still inexplicably, humiliatingly heightened from the Transfiguration.

He was, in short, going to lose his mind completely if he didn't do sothing.

He placed one hand carefully on her back—she wasn't wearing anything under the pyjama top, he registered, and imdiately tried very hard not to register it—and kept perfectly still.

He wanted to bury his face in her hair.

He wanted to taste the corner of her mouth and find out if she was as sweet as the scent of her suggested.

She was crying because of what had happened to him. Her voice had broken on the word professor like it was a personal betrayal.

He sat up, firmly, and with so effort, collected himself.

"Co here," he said, in what he hoped was a normal voice, and guided her to sit beside him on the sofa, her head against his shoulder. He kept one arm around her and rested the other hand safely in his own lap.

"Thanks to you," he said, with deliberate lightness, "I've now been rescued from Moody's clutches twice."

"He doesn't deserve to be here!" she said into his shoulder, still hiccuping. "I'd actually started to think better of him, and all this ti—sothing is wrong with him, I'm sure of it. He has no instinct to protect students. Professor Snape does a better job than he does, and that's saying sothing."

If Snape ever learned that Hermione Granger considered him the floor-level standard by which all professors were judged, Draco wasn't sure whether the man would be grimly gratified or simply appalled. He patted her shoulder.

"He caught out of bounds tonight. He wouldn't touch in class—he's already promised Dumbledore as much," Draco said, trying to organise his thoughts. "What I can't work out is why he was there at that hour. Outside Snape's office."

"What do you an?" Hermione sniffed. His hand against her shoulder sent a small shiver through her that she chose to ignore.

"I saw Barty Crouch on the Marauder's Map. But when I arrived, it was Moody who was there," Draco said.

Hermione sat up slightly. "I only saw Barty Crouch once at Hogwarts. He was there for the Goblet of Fire selection, then went straight back to the Ministry. He only cos when he's officiating. He has no reason to be here between events."

"Precisely what I've been wondering."

She looked at him properly. "Show the map."

---

He confessed about it first—admitted that he'd had it for so ti, that she needed to not be angry with him before he produced it, and then spread the Marauder's Map across the carpet between them.

Half an hour later, they were lying on opposite sides of the unfolded map, chins propped in their hands, studying it in the low firelight.

Hermione was barely blinking. "Draco. You can see what everyone in the castle is doing at any given mont."

"You could put it that way. I don't have ti to open it every day, given the quantity of howork we're assigned."

"You've had it this whole ti and never told !"

"I hadn't found the right mont," Draco said, with the careful air of soone who knows that answer is not quite sufficient. "When I acquired it, there was still rather a lot I hadn't told you."

Hermione was quiet for a mont. She stole a glance at his expression—genuinely contrite, grey eyes steady—then at the handkerchief he'd pressed into her hands at so point without her noticing. She had accumulated quite a few of his handkerchiefs. She decided to forgive him.

"I understand now how you found Peter Pettigrew," she said, smoothing the corner of the map.

"When a full-grown rat answers to that na on a magical map, it does rather stand out," Draco said.

She turned her head. "But why can't I see us on it?"

"The cartographers didn't know about the Room of Requirent. Anyone inside it disappears from the map entirely." He paused. "Sa for the Shrieking Shack. That's why I didn't notice anything unusual about it last year."

"It's not a Dark object, is it?" she asked.

"No. Made by Sirius Black, Jas Potter, and Remus Lupin—and probably Pettigrew, which is why he knew he was hidden sowhere that wouldn't show up." Draco looked thoughtful. "Though I still can't work out what exactly his contribution was."

"They were extraordinary," Hermione said, with genuine admiration. "I knew Harry's father was a talented Quidditch player and skilled with a Patronus Charm—but cartographic magic at this level is sothing else entirely."

"Talent like that doesn't confine itself to one area," Draco said, matter-of-factly. "Rather like you." He noticed the slight colour that rose in her face and continued, "Look at Sirius Black. Whatever Azkaban did to him, you can't deny the quality of his mind. He sees past surfaces. Most people can't do that."

"You admire him," she said astutely. "You do, don't you?"

"I wouldn't quite say that. He can be reckless—particularly where Jas Potter was concerned—but he has genuine foresight." Draco shrugged. "That's rarer than most people realise."

"What lies beneath the surface," Hermione repeated softly, half to herself. Sothing flickered at the edge of her thoughts, catching briefly like a spark before the wind took it.

Her gaze drifted back to the map.

"So you spotted Barty Crouch," she said, "and when you went to investigate, you found Moody there instead."

"Yes."

"There was a great deal of noise in that corridor," she said slowly. "If Barty Crouch was already inside Snape's office when all of it started, he would have heard. But perhaps coming out to investigate wasn't an option."

"Go on," Draco said.

"If soone of his standing—soone who values his reputation above almost everything—were doing sothing clandestine inside a professor's office, the very last thing he would do is step out and let himself be seen. He'd stay put. Pretend the whole thing wasn't happening."

"Yes," Draco said. "Exactly." He studied her. "You're remarkably good at this, you know. Putting yourself inside another person's thinking."

"You do it too," she said.

"I had a great deal of practice, growing up." He didn't elaborate.

He looked back at the map. "The part that still bothers is that Moody wasn't on it when I first checked. He appeared out of nowhere. The Invisibility Cloak doesn't hide a person from this map—so it's as though he was carrying his own concealnt around with him."

"Like a Room of Requirent in his pocket," Hermione murmured.

A sudden, strange thought crossed her face. She turned to look at him. "Unless Barty Crouch is a tamorphmagus," she said slowly. "One capable of taking a very specific form. Wooden leg. Magical eye. The voice—" She shuddered. "The transformation required for sothing like that—I don't even want to think about it."

"Possibly," Draco said. "But I've never heard of him having that ability, and I've read a great deal about everyone involved in that era." He lay back on the carpet, pressing his fingertips to his temples. "I always feel like the answer is right there—one more piece away from being complete—and then it isn't. There's always one gap I can't fill."

"Sa," Hermione sighed. She lay down on her side of the map, facing him. "Still. It's not often I see the great Draco Malfoy looking properly stumped."

"Oh, spare . I've already humiliated myself thoroughly tonight. You've seen as a weasel. That ought to count for sothing."

"I won't tell anyone," she said, and the smile that crossed her face was soft rather than teasing. "I've kept far stranger things for you. What's one more?" A beat. "Besides—you were rather sweet as a weasel, actually—"

"Sweet?" Draco turned his head to look at her.

In the low, shifting candlelight of the room, his eyes were very still.

"Very," Hermione said, eting them—then felt her face go warm. "Very sweet," she added, sowhat less certainly.