A/N: I'm reworking the chapters. I'm not a professional writer, and English is not my first language, so please understand that it may not be perfect.
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Draco woke in his four-poster bed, the green silk curtains drawn around him, before the rest of the
dormitory was stirring.
He lay still for a while, staring at the medieval tapestry on the opposite wall—Slytherin's
adventures, rendered in faded thread, familiar and indifferent.
Since acquiring these nightmarish memories, he had barely slept well once.
Malfoy Manor had stopped feeling like home. It was peaceful enough on the surface, and yet it was
impossible to move through those rooms without the weight of what they had been—a murder scene, a
prison, a cage. He had spent all of August tightly wound in that house, carefully performing the
role of an ordinary child, trying not to let his parents see the cracks. By the end, it had slowly
ground him down.
Coming to Hogwarts, he finally had a space of his own. A place where he could stop performing and
simply be what he was: exhausted, scarred, and wary.
He had slept well last night, for the first time in a long while. The gentle motion of the lake
against the windows, the shifting light and shadow—it had emptied his head for a few hours. He felt
marginally more human.
This was a single dormitory room, a small privilege that came with being the son of a school board
member. Emerald green and silver dominated every surface—very Slytherin.
Both colours had a calming effect on him.
Good.
Draco liked the silver and green.
The brash Gryffindor combination—gold and scarlet, loud and combative—was objectively far less
pleasing to look at. No wizard with any sense of taste would hang those colours in a bedroom. He
stood at the full-length mirror straightening his collar, frowning faintly at his own reflection,
and mentally composed a brief critique of Gryffindor's colour scheme.
Although—he allowed the thought in without quite meaning to—certain girls did look rather well in
red and gold scarves.
He wiped the slight upward twitch from his mouth before it could become anything, composed his
expression into its proper Draco Malfoy arrangement, and walked out to face another day.
He couldn't afford to lower his guard, or let warmth bleed into his manner too freely. Like a
cautious clam, he kept himself closed off, watching the world around him with careful attention.
He had already run one small experiment on the possibility of change—Longbottom's toad, lost and
found, the time and place both shifted. But he still hadn't found the boundaries of it. The only
certainty was that change was possible.
What about the larger things? What about the people?
After a month of observation, the Malfoy household appeared identical to his previous life. But that
didn't mean his classmates would be the same.
If he had been given a second chance—could others have been, too?
He would need to watch carefully. Potter especially. Sitting at the Slytherin table, popping fried
eggs into his mouth with a distant expression, he studied the boy across the hall, who was grinning
at Weasley over something and clinking pumpkin juice glasses with cheerful obliviousness.
He needed to determine whether this Potter—this seemingly identical Potter—was the same one he had
known, or something subtly different.
Before he had a clear enough picture of the world, Draco thought he had better simply behave like
a model first-year student.
In this strange, familiar-yet-unknown world, drawing attention to himself would be dangerous.
Playing an eleven-year-old wasn't difficult, technically. It was simply exhausting.
It required him to approach everything from a child's angle—to respond with the right amount of
surprise, the right kind of enthusiasm—when in fact he saw everything through the eyes of a
seventeen-year-old and felt none of the genuine excitement a child would feel.
The moving staircases, the suits of armour, the ghosts that wandered through walls without
warning—he had to fake astonishment at these things at least three times a day. He managed it,
but it cost him.
Beyond that, he focused on the small experiments.
For instance: since antagonising Potter was currently pointless, he had deliberately dismantled the
tension that had once existed between them. He had even, while Potter and Weasley were dashing
around the castle in their characteristically chaotic fashion, pointed out two shortcuts that saved
them from being late. The alternative was listening to the professors' exasperated sighs for the
next week.
He had been mildly surprised to see Weasley—freckled face going somewhat pink—actually say thank
you.
He was revising his assessment of the Weasley family's upbringing upward, slightly.
Though let the record show: they were still running down the corridor like it was on fire.
Will Gryffindors ever learn to walk?
Half a minute before the bell, Draco reached the Transfiguration classroom on the second floor,
unhurried.
The room was nearly full. The teacher's desk stood empty, though a severe-looking tabby cat occupied
the top of it, watching the noisy students below with an expression of considerable disapproval.
Draco did not look at the cat for more than a fraction of a second. That was Professor Minerva
McGonagall—the most formidable professor in the school—and he had no interest in being the person
she was looking at when she decided to restore herself to human form.
Almost all the seats were taken. Potter and Weasley, who had arrived just before him, were
grudgingly making peace with front-row seats, pulling books from their bags and whispering
something relieved to each other. It seemed they had been afraid of being late.
So the small matter of "Potter being late to his first Transfiguration class" had been quietly,
cleanly changed—with no visible side effects.
Draco scanned the remaining seats. Two options: sit with Crabbe and Goyle and spend the entire
lesson with his brain actively deteriorating, or take the empty seat beside Miss Know-It-All.
To be entirely honest, he had completely run out of patience for his former study partners.
If the world could accommodate small changes—and it seemed it could—then something as trivial as
changing who he sat next to should be well within tolerance.
Let's find out.
"May I sit?" He stopped at her desk as the bell rang, addressing the girl who was bent over
A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration with her hair in her eyes.
Hermione looked up and found the boy named Draco standing over her—polished black robes, platinum-
blonde hair immaculately combed, Slytherin tie sitting rather accusingly at his collar.
He was watching her with a gaze she couldn't quite interpret. Something between composed and uneasy.
"Of course." She was a little startled, and gave him a slightly awkward smile. "No one's sitting
there."
Hermione wasn't entirely sure what to make of him.
The received wisdom in Gryffindor was that Slytherin produced dark wizards—the books said as much,
and the older students confirmed it. But Draco, so far, hadn't matched that description in any
obvious way. He was reserved, and his expression ran toward the cool side, but he had been perfectly
civil to her.
Could he really be destined for dark magic? Hermione wasn't sure. She watched him through the
curtain of her curls as he pulled out his chair.
He sat very upright—unlike the general standard of eleven-year-old posture in the room. His face
was a little pale, his eyes set deep, his expression becoming still and focused.
As though sensing her inspection, he turned his head slightly. His grey eyes moved from the book to
her hair, and caught her glance.
"Something wrong?" he asked.
"Nothing," Hermione said quickly, turning to accept the matchsticks Professor McGonagall was
distributing.
She's friendly enough, Draco noted, with mild surprise, as he finished his own needle. Didn't write me
off outright for the tie.
"Your needle looks sharper than mine," Hermione said during the practice, picking up his finished
needle and examining it with undisguised envy. "I still have work to do..."
"Yours is quite good," Draco said, glancing across at the needle on her side of the desk. It looked
entirely decent. He couldn't imagine what she was finding to criticise.
Then again, this was Hermione Granger's particular version of discipline at work. They were the only
two students in the room who had successfully completed the Transfiguration at all, and even
Professor McGonagall—who found fault with everyone—hadn't pointed at her needle. And still she was
finding it insufficient.
Draco turned his wand in his fingers and watched her, faintly amused.
The lesson was very simple, too simple—he had done this a hundred times before. The only genuinely
interesting thing was the approval emanating from Miss Know-It-All. She couldn't quite contain it.
It was, he had to admit, considerably nicer than contempt.
Who would have guessed that those brown eyes could look at him like that? In his past life, they
had mostly held disdain, wariness, and a fairly undisguised wish for him to be somewhere else.
Draco allowed himself a brief, sardonic smile, and firmly pushed the replaying memories back down
where they belonged.
Stop it. Watch her torture the needle instead. It's more entertaining.
Friday's Potions class followed its familiar shape. The first-years brewed a Cure for Boils and were
given their first thorough taste of what it meant to have the Serpent of Slytherin as a teacher.
It was a long lesson, and it began and ended with Snape suppressing Harry Potter.
Just as in his previous life, Potter and his friends were taken apart with methodical, unflinching
contempt, while Draco was praised lavishly.
Any student would struggle not to be pleased by that kind of open, unambiguous favour—especially
from a professor as difficult to satisfy as Snape, who had spent the lesson dissecting the potion-
making efforts of the entire class with surgical precision, and then, in the same breath, described
Draco's handling of the tentacula leaves as "flawless."
That kind of direct, public praise was hard to resist. Draco was aware of that even now.
Snape was Draco's favourite professor—or had been—and remained, objectively, the most capable
teacher at Hogwarts. The student body generally considered Draco to be Snape's favourite student in
return, and the rumour mill had concluded, without much evidence but with considerable enthusiasm,
that Snape was Draco's godfather.
He was not.
A pure-blood wizard of Lucius's convictions would never have permitted a half-blood to hold that
role, regardless of how much he respected the man. Lucius admired Snape's abilities, certainly;
but the idea of him as a formal guardian of the Malfoy heir would have been quietly, firmly
rejected.
What was undeniable was that Snape did have an unusually close relationship with the Malfoy family.
Beyond the personal connection, the Slytherin tradition of venerating genuine talent meant that
Snape had earned real standing in the house—even the parents of most Slytherin students respected
him. Lucius had always felt, with a certain private relief, that leaving Draco in Snape's orbit at
school was the closest thing to a reassurance he was willing to admit needing.
Snape's credentials were beyond dispute: youngest Head of Slytherin in history, Potions professor,
holder of the Order of Merlin, Second Class, and accomplished across a remarkable range of
disciplines—Dark Magic and its Defence, Charms, Potions, Occlumency. That a half-blood wizard had
won this degree of recognition in a community as prejudiced as the wizarding world was, in itself,
proof of extraordinary ability. Draco ground snake fangs into fine powder and thought about this.
The Malfoys' fall had changed things. When Lucius was taken to Azkaban, many Slytherins began
quietly creating distance between themselves and the family—which was understandable. Self-
preservation was a Slytherin value, not a moral failing.
But what had truly puzzled Draco was Snape's wavering.
Snape had never once interceded on Lucius's behalf before the Dark Lord. He had watched the Malfoy
family bear the full weight of the Dark Lord's displeasure without comment. And yet he had not
pulled away from Draco—had instead moved closer, begun actively probing what Draco's mission was,
what he planned to do.
What a terrible position to put a sixteen-year-old boy in. Kill Dumbledore, or your family pays
the price.
Draco had known, theoretically, that Snape's involvement would have made things easier. But to
prove the Malfoys' value to the Dark Lord, to rebuild the family's standing—he had needed to do
it himself, without letting anyone else take credit or gain leverage over him. He hadn't been able
to trust Snape. The more Snape enquired, the more alert Draco became, reading motives into every
question.
And darker still: how much of Snape's long history of favouring Draco was rooted in genuine
appreciation—and how much was connected to whatever arrangement existed between Snape and Lucius,
built on mutual usefulness rather than genuine care? A man who had watched the Malfoys be
humiliated before the Dark Lord and said nothing could not easily be trusted to suddenly become
their true ally.
Yet it was Snape who had stepped in when Potter's Sectumsempra had nearly killed Draco.
He could have done nothing.
He wasn't that kind of man.
By the end, Draco had been full of questions and had no answer that satisfied him.
He pulled his mind back at the crucial moment—focused, added the porcupine quills to the
extinguished cauldron, and watched the faint wisp of pink smoke rise—and Snape's expression
flickered into something that, on anyone else, might be called approval.
Perhaps all that experience had taught Draco something useful: he had learned to read faces.
He could see the faint shift in Snape's expression when a potion pleased him. He could also see the
way Snape's composure became less than total when Potter walked into the room.
Snape was usually glacially controlled. A master of Occlumency didn't, as a rule, lose their
temper in class. And yet with Potter—with Potter, Weasley, Hermione, Longbottom—the contempt and
the fury were excessive in a way that Occlumency clearly wasn't containing.
Draco didn't believe that academic failure alone explained it.
Goyle and Crabbe were perfectly capable of destroying a cauldron, and Seamus Finnigan of Gryffindor
had already managed it once—but Snape responded to them with cold amusement and the occasional acid
remark, not with fury. He ignored the truly hopeless students and reserved his genuine heat for
Potter.
That was personal. Too personal for a first class.
"Have you done something to offend Professor Snape?" Draco asked Potter quietly, while the potion
was being decanted.
He had been sitting on the question since the lesson began.
"No," Potter said, looking rather deflated. "This is the first time I've ever met Professor Snape."
"He seems to have some particular feeling about you," Draco said, watching him carefully.
"'Some feeling'? I think he actively hates me," Potter said, with the resigned candour of someone
too discouraged to dissemble.
Interesting.
No hate without a cause. There was a history there.
Of course, compared to the quiet, fathomless complexity of Snape, what worried Draco most right now
was the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor—Quirrell.
If nothing intervened, then at this moment, no one in the school knew—except Draco—that beneath
Quirrell's garlic-reeking turban sat the Dark Lord's shrunken, parasitic face.
Telling Snape was out. If Snape was ultimately in the Dark Lord's camp, that confession would be a
significant gift to Voldemort's cause. Draco wasn't going to hand him that.
Telling Dumbledore was the obvious answer—but a first-year student didn't simply bypass his Head of
House and walk into the Headmaster's office with a claim like that. And more to the point: if Draco
went to Dumbledore, he would have to explain how he knew. The question of how would expose more
than he was ready to expose.
Doing any of it without Snape's knowledge also risked turning an asset into an enemy—a man who
currently admired Draco into a man who watched him with suspicion.
Draco added the last measure to his vial and said nothing else.
On Friday afternoon, he was sitting in the library on the second floor, pressing through his Charms
homework with focused efficiency, lines of neat cursive filling the parchment. And beneath that,
turning the Quirrell problem over and over.
The timing mattered. Quirrell had to slip up first—leave some visible trail—before a student's
suspicion of him would seem credible to anyone.
He finished the last line, set down the quill, rubbed his temples, and pushed his chair back. He
had other things to find besides coursework.
Diligent first-years were rare at Hogwarts—in Draco's experience, the only reliable exception to
this rule was currently sitting on the other side of a nearby bookshelf, invisible behind the
stacks.
That unmistakable mass of brown curls was impossible to miss, even through shelving.
Where are Potter and Weasley? Draco gave a small, lazy hum and reached for a book on the
Disillusionment Charm. As he pulled it from the shelf, a gap opened, and a pair of bright, curious
brown eyes appeared through the space.
"Draco!" The eyes widened. "I didn't notice you were here."
Of course you didn't, Draco thought, with a kind of exhausted fondness. You were busy thinking about
Potter and Weasley.
Among his Slytherin classmates, few people were aware that Draco—who had consistently placed in the
top ten of his year in his previous life—had spent a significant amount of time in this library. He
had never discussed his habits, and no one had thought to ask. His results didn't fall from the sky;
he had worked for them. He had simply worked quietly.
"I thought after Potions class, you might not want to talk to a Slytherin anymore," Draco said. His
pale grey eyes held something through the gap in the shelves that Hermione couldn't quite read.
He had seen the way the Gryffindors had looked at him during class—the hardening of expressions
after Snape's performance. It would have been unsurprising if Hermione had decided to add him to
that general feeling.
After all, she had not been spared Snape's sharp tongue either.
"I was angry at the time," Hermione said, straightening to her full height and lifting her chin
slightly. "I didn't approve of what Professor Snape did. But—" And here her tone became honestly
pragmatic. "—it wasn't your fault. He was right to praise you. I was watching your technique, and
it was genuinely very good."
In Hermione's view, the conflict between Gryffindor and Slytherin had put Draco in an awkward
position simply for being competent. She saw no reason to project her frustration with Snape onto
a talented, uninvolved person.
She has quite a fair mind, when it suits her, Draco thought, looking at her sidelong. Different from
the grudge-holder I knew.
"Speaking of which—I wanted to ask about one of the ingredients from last class. There's a grinding
step that I—" She stopped mid-sentence. She had come around the end of the bookshelf to continue
talking to him, and found herself looking at a study space she had never known existed.
A quiet, tucked-away alcove with the feel of a private library: an antique mahogany desk in the
centre, covered with ornate quill pens, carved storage boxes, bundles of scrolls, and a three-
dimensional model of the night sky. The star model was extraordinary—individual points of light
moving along slow, intricate orbits, hypnotic to watch.
Nearer to the corner, a small fireplace carved with tiny figures cast a warm, shifting light across
the room. On a low caramel-coloured leather sofa sat the evidence of Draco's current work.
Any reader who saw this space would want to stay in it.
"Since you're here, sit down." Draco led her to the sofa and took the stack of books from her arms,
setting them on the solid wood coffee table with brass fittings. Hermione noticed, as she sat, that
the table's surface held a single piece of polished agate as decoration.
"Tea?" Draco asked, turning to the gilded silver tea service and a rosewood tea box inlaid with
mother-of-pearl at the side.
Hermione's first instinct was to decline—she didn't want to be a bother, and she wasn't entirely
sure what the protocol was for a Gryffindor accepting tea from a Slytherin in a hidden library
alcove.
But there was a pumpkin-shaped teapot covered in half-relief roses and daisies, every petal
distinct, every leaf vein traced with remarkable delicacy—and Hermione was, despite herself,
enchanted by it.
And Draco was treating her with the manner of someone who expected to be a host, and found the role
entirely natural. He was serious, but not cold. There was something approachable about him in this
space, in a way that differed from how he had seemed on the train or in class.
"Just a little," she said, and was pleased to note that her face only went very slightly pink.
Draco used a small gold key to open the tea box, extracted a pure silver caddy embossed with a
fairy-and-floral pattern, and used silver tea tongs to measure out dark, tightly rolled leaves into
the teapot. Hermione watched every step without pretending not to.
He caught her looking. "Keemun black tea," he said, adding hot water.
A soft, warm fragrance spread through the alcove—bread, faintly sweet, with something almost like
roses underneath.
"That smells wonderful," Hermione said.
Draco's mouth curved—just barely, and very briefly.
Good taste, Miss Granger.
This was his preferred tea. Brewing it was a peculiar habit he had developed since his rebirth—one
he hadn't anticipated but had come to rely on. There was something about the small, deliberate
sequence of actions—the measuring, the waiting, the careful pouring—that quieted the constant low
noise in his head. He could have produced a perfect pot of tea with a flick of his wand, but that
wasn't the point.
"Try some." He handed her a cup.
Hermione took a cautious sip and was immediately surprised. Not bitter at all—mellow and smooth,
with a fruity, honeyed warmth.
A smile broke across her face without her deciding to let it. "Thank you. I don't usually drink
black tea, but I think I might start."
"Pleasure," Draco said, his expression unchanged.
"Why haven't I ever found this place?" Hermione asked, holding the cup in both hands and looking
around with undisguised pleasure.
Draco didn't answer directly. The Hogwarts Board of Governors retained the right to reserve a quiet
study space in the library—separated from the general noise of the student population. He had used
it since he could remember. When he occasionally had to drag himself into the public study area to
help Crabbe and Goyle through their homework, it felt like a kind of exile.
This was his. The one place at Hogwarts where he could stop performing.
He had also, as a precaution, placed a subtle Disillusionment Charm over the entrance—students
walking past would typically see a pile of broken furniture and a sign bearing a Hogwarts motto or
"Danger, Do Not Touch." That explained the persistent mystery of why the Gryffindor trio had never
once spotted Draco Malfoy in the library.
He wasn't certain how much of this to tell Hermione.
They were not yet well enough acquainted.
He gave her a composed, faintly amused smile and made a small silencing gesture. "I'll have to ask
you to keep it a secret—again."
"You're very good at keeping secrets," Hermione said, scrunching her face slightly.
She thought of him as a pearl in a closed shell—cold and opaque on the surface, difficult to see
through. And yet he had quietly refilled her teacup while she was still thinking about it, without
comment, and the warmth of that small gesture did more to win her over than she was entirely
prepared to admit.
Perhaps he was simply private. Everyone had their corners, didn't they? Demanding full transparency
from someone she'd just met was unreasonable. Hermione decided to let it go.
"What's that one?" Draco asked, pulling a volume from her stack and turning it over. His tone
shifted—casual, but sharper underneath. "Quidditch?"
Hermione's face went immediately pink.
"Worried about next week's flying lesson?" he asked, watching her.
"...Yes," she admitted, after a moment. She took a sip of tea for cover. He saw right through it.
She lowered her voice. "I've never been on a flying broomstick before. It seems like everyone else
has. Seamus has been flying since he was small, and so has Ron—they're both quite good. I thought
if I read about it beforehand I might be less behind..."
"No," Draco said, shaking his head.
"Flying isn't something books can prepare you for. You have to actually do it." He didn't say it
unkindly.
She really has never mastered this, he thought. Even in the Room of Requirement—even with everything
on the line—she had looked uncertain on a broom. A fundamental skill that most wizarding children
could manage on instinct, and somehow Hermione Granger had never quite found her footing on one.
You couldn't afford to be weak at something you might need your life to depend on.
Without quite planning to, Draco reached over and tugged her sleeve. "Come with me."
"Wait—I still need that book—" Hermione turned back, reaching for it.
"You don't need it." He kept walking.
Draco led her directly to the broomstick shed. The door was locked; the path was empty.
He happened to know that Madam Hooch—Hogwarts' flying instructor and Quidditch referee—also edited
The Complete Guide to Flying Broomsticks in her spare time. The magazine published on Saturdays,
which made Fridays her most frantic day. She would not be anywhere near this shed for the next
several hours.
Draco took out his wand, tapped the lock, and said, "Alohomora." The lock yielded.
"Isn't that against the rules?" Hermione looked horrified in the way of someone whose entire sense
of order had just been mildly violated.
"The school rules prohibit first-years from bringing personal broomsticks," Draco said calmly.
"There is no rule against students borrowing school brooms from the shed to practise."
"But—"
"At Hogwarts, only fools break the rules. For everyone else, the rules are a sieve—full of holes,
if you know where to look." He stepped inside. "This is a Slytherin observation. Some people find it
excessive. I find it practical."
He found two well-maintained school brooms and brought them out.
"Right. Try it while the field is empty." He picked up one broom with easy familiarity.
Hermione didn't move.
He read her expression without difficulty. This was going to require persuasion.
"What better preparation is there than actual practice?" he said. "You don't want to be the only one
struggling in front of the whole class, do you?"
The word struggling—which implied public embarrassment—landed precisely where he'd intended.
Hermione's self-respect was, practically speaking, a lever.
"Fine." She picked up the other broom and followed him out.
"Stand beside the broom." On a flat patch of grass at the edge of the grounds, Draco demonstrated
with unhurried seriousness—the posture, the grip, the distance of the hand. "Extend your right hand,
hold it above the broom, and say 'Up!'"
"Up!" Hermione called, with slightly uncertain conviction.
The broomstick rolled once on the grass and went still.
Draco's broom was already in his hand.
"The broom can sense whether you believe in it," he said. "If you don't trust yourself to control
it, it won't trust you either."
"But I'm not sure I do believe in it," Hermione said, with the frustrated candour of someone used
to believing in things only when she understood them. "I don't understand how it works. What's the
actual principle? It doesn't make physical sense."
Draco looked at her.
Ah. This was the difficulty, then. He probably should have seen it sooner. He had worked alongside
her twice in Transfiguration, and he had already noticed that she was someone who needed to
understand the mechanism before she could engage with the outcome. If she couldn't explain why a
broomstick flew, she couldn't fully commit to the idea that it would.
"You've come to the right person," Draco said, and began picking through what he knew in terms she
would find accessible. "Look at it this way—it isn't an ordinary broom. The handle is made from a
specific wood selected for its magical properties." Hermione turned it over in her hands, tracing
the grain. "Inside the handle, there are propulsion and steering mechanisms—I'd have to risk Madam
Hooch's considerable wrath and take it apart to show you the full detail—"
"Don't do that," Hermione said quickly.
"I won't." He shrugged. "The point is that the wizard's own confidence and magical ability also
contribute to flight—they're part of the mechanism. So while it looks like a simple household broom,
it's an integrated system. It's more than it appears. You don't need to distrust it."
Hermione's expression shifted—the frozen quality eased, replaced by something more thoughtful.
"Up!" she said again, more firmly this time.
The broomstick drifted upward and settled in her palm.
"Much better," Draco said. "You adapt quickly." Hermione gave him a slightly tentative smile, still
clearly not entirely at ease.
Draco worked through the mechanics with her methodically—the mounting posture, the grip on the
handle, the balance points, the way weight should be distributed. He had had Madam Hooch drill all
of this into him with considerable thoroughness in his first life, and bad habits formed on the
ground were hard to correct in the air; better to build the right ones now.
Hermione watched him demonstrate with the concentrated attention of someone taking mental notes, and
—despite herself, in a quiet corner of her mind—found herself thinking that he really must love
flying. This was the most animated she had seen him. The careful, distant expression he wore most
of the time had softened; he was focused and easy and genuinely engaged with what he was explaining,
and the effect was unexpectedly striking.
"Right—that's the grip. Now: push off with both legs, rise a few feet, hold steady, and then lean
forward just slightly and come back down." He made it sound entirely reasonable.
"That I can probably not do," Hermione said, at a polite remove from the broomstick. "I think I'd
like to stay on the ground. How do two first-year students fly without supervision, anyway?"
"Fairly enough," Draco said. He didn't press it. "If you can do everything else—mount properly, hold
the grip correctly, and get the broom into your hand on command—that's more than enough for the
first lesson. Let's run through it once more."
He found, as he worked through it again, that this was a surprisingly effective distraction. His
usual undertow of anxious thought had gone quiet. Right now, the only thing in his head was the
possibly awkward angles of Hermione Granger attempting to mount a school broomstick.
When they slipped back into the shed and returned the brooms, the last of the sunset was burning out
at the edge of the sky. The lesson was a success—everything up to the actual flying—and Hermione
had it.
He was right, Hermione thought, as they walked back. You really can't get this from books. The fear
hadn't disappeared entirely, but it had a different quality now—less like dread, more like
manageable uncertainty. Something had shifted.
"Draco." She stopped before they diverged toward their respective tables. "You're a good teacher."
A pause. "Thank you."
"Pleasure." Draco flicked a gesture in her direction, effortlessly resuming his customary air of
aloof indifference, and headed for the Slytherin table.