"Dinner's over." In the dim entrance hall, Hermione Granger sneezed softly, peering through the doorway into the Great Hall. It was empty save for the floating candles, and the disappointment in her voice was plain.
They had simply lingered too long at the Black Lake.
By the time they came hurrying back through the rain, the students had already gone; even devoted trenchermen like Crabbe and Goyle, who could reliably be found at the table from first course to last, were nowhere to be seen. The long tables had been cleared completely — even the plate of Muggle mint humbugs that usually sat untouched had been taken away.
"It's alright. I know a way," Draco said, unbothered.
"What way?" she asked, looking up at him curiously.
"Wait." His voice was quiet. At that moment he was busy working on her — wand in hand, carefully casting drying and warming spells on her soaked clothes, then turning his attention to her damp, tangled hair.
He was very close. Close enough to reach out and hold her, if he chose to. Hermione's thoughts scattered; she blinked rapidly, trying to collect herself.
The rain had sharpened everything. She could smell the cold damp of it, feel the wet breeze against her cheek. Her body trembled — whether from the chill or from the chaos inside her chest, she genuinely couldn't say.
Slowly, the tip of his wand traced across the front and sides of her robes, and she felt the dampness lift, just as she felt the tiny shiver that followed wherever the wand moved. He was casting the most ordinary household spells. And yet it felt as though this perfectly composed boy was quietly burning her alive, point by point, with the faint scent of cedar hanging between them.
Her lips parted slightly. Her whole body was too warm — particularly wherever his wand had passed.
The boy responsible for all of it continued with a perfectly natural expression, seemingly unaware of the tension wound tight inside her.
Then he shifted, extending his arm around her without quite touching, wand gliding delicately across the back of her robes. His face was calm, focused — tracing her outline with the wand tip, his gaze on her hair rather than her eyes.
Hermione stared at the slight flush creeping up the edge of his ear. Her breathing had gone uneven. She bit her lip, thoroughly dazed. She felt rather like a rabbit that had wandered into a snare, only to discover that the snare itself was the problem.
At last, he moved on to her hair. One kind of torment ended; another began.
For one fleeting moment his cool fingertips grazed her cheek as he lifted a small damp curl away from her face. The spot blazed where he touched it, bringing back the memory of his grip on her wrist out in the rain.
She clutched the front of her robes with both hands, terribly nervous, and completely unable to move away.
She knew her imagination had gone entirely haywire. She knew she was helpless against him — against this boy who treated her as a younger sister, and yet managed to make every small, ordinary gesture feel like something else entirely. She could only stand there, lost, wrapped in the cedar scent of him, letting him do as he pleased.
*This is bad,* she thought. *This is very bad.* She felt feverish.
By the candlelight drifting in from the entrance, she stole a glance at him and caught the few strands of wet hair still clinging to his forehead — and beneath them, his grey eyes, sincere and entirely unguarded.
*So sincere. So utterly oblivious.*
Amid the restless hammering of her heart, she murmured to herself, "I can never take care of myself, and yet I'm always worrying about everyone else."
"Sorry?" He paused, wand hovering, and raised his eyes. "I didn't catch that."
"Nothing." Hermione shook her head and exhaled.
She could not keep standing here like this. She took out her own wand, and, mimicking him, cast drying and warming spells on his robes. Then she fixed him with her most authoritative expression and said, "Head down."
Draco had just finished what he privately considered the very satisfying project of getting Hermione properly dried and de-tangled. Hearing her small command, he lowered his wand, tilted his head obligingly, and let her work on him, his grey eyes following her wherever she darted.
"Done!" After a few minutes, Hermione stepped back and surveyed his clean, platinum-blond hair with a quiet sense of accomplishment. She reached out and touched it once, almost without thinking, then raised her eyes to his. "All done."
"Thank you." He smiled at her again — a slightly silly smile, with something genuinely happy in it.
It was nothing like the reserved, guarded boy he usually was. He looked rather like a child who had just been given a favourite sweet. But a child's smile, however bright, does not make one's ears burn like this.
Hermione looked at him and felt the heat spreading to her face. Before her heart could climb any further up her throat, she said quickly, "Draco — what was this method you mentioned?"
"Come with me." His smile widened, and something faintly devious crept in. He tentatively offered her his arm and, when she didn't pull away, looked deeply satisfied. "I'll take you somewhere good."
His uncharacteristic air of mystery sharpened her curiosity considerably. She swallowed her embarrassment and took his arm, letting him lead her up the staircase past the Hufflepuff corridor, down through a passage beneath the Great Hall, and into a spacious, well-lit underground corridor decorated along every wall with cheerful paintings of food.
He brought her to a stop in front of a painting of a large fruit bowl, gave her a brief mysterious look, then reached out and tickled one of the painted pears.
Hermione stared as the pear began to wriggle, let out a small giggle, and slowly transformed into a green door handle.
"Well," she said, unable to help herself. "That's new."
Draco opened the door, visibly suppressing a laugh, and gestured with impeccable courtesy toward the bewildered Hermione. "Ladies first. Welcome to the Hogwarts kitchens."
She stepped inside and was immediately brought to a complete halt by the sight: at least a hundred house-elves in tea towels bearing the Hogwarts crest filled an underground hall that mirrored the Great Hall directly above it. They all turned at once, smiled, and began bowing and curtsying toward the door.
She glanced at Draco and found him entirely at ease, as though he were in his own sitting room. He bent down and said something quietly to a nearby female house-elf, who curtsied, took two steps back, and bustled off. A moment later, seven or eight elves came hurrying up with large silver trays:
One was laden with pies, sausages, baked potatoes, puddings, and curiously shaped spring rolls. Another held cakes — Hermione spotted her favourite Avalanche Strawberry Cake and what she had come to recognise as Draco's Chocolate Cake. A third tray carried a fat teapot trailing the smell of black tea, along with glasses of milk, juice, and a jug of pumpkin juice.
"Thank you, Winky," Draco said pleasantly. The house-elf — Winky — beamed, curtsied several times, and retreated; the others bowed and followed her back toward the adjoining kitchen.
"Sit," Draco said. He waited for Hermione to sit before taking his own chair. He speared one of the oddly shaped spring rolls with his fork, examined it at leisure, and finally took a small bite.
"This is extraordinary," Hermione said, taking a long sip of pumpkin juice and feeling warmth spread through her immediately. She looked at Draco sideways. "This explains a great deal about you, actually."
"Such as?"
"Why you always seem to have something to eat in your pocket." She shook her head, laughing. "I could never work out where those green apples kept coming from. And Fred and George — I'll wager they know this place perfectly well. We always thought they were simply very resourceful..."
"House-elves are remarkably generous hosts," Draco said, with an air of comfortable authority. "Asking for food here is the easiest thing in the world. Your hands are full before you've even finished asking."
They ate quickly and well. Hermione took a sip of tea, set it down, and said, with some hesitation, "I've wondered for a while about how the house-elves are actually treated here. Would it be possible to ask them?"
Draco raised an eyebrow — a very Hermione Granger sort of inquiry; she never missed an opportunity to investigate.
"You may. But choose your words carefully — I'd rather not be turned away from the kitchens because you've given offence," he said.
"I'll be careful," she said, entirely seriously.
He beckoned Winky back and explained that the young lady had a question. Winky looked immediately anxious and asked, "Sir, is something unsatisfactory?"
The other elves peered out from the kitchen doorway with expressions of quiet unease.
"Nothing at all. This young lady would simply like to ask you something," Draco said, nodding toward Hermione.
Winky turned and looked at Hermione with wide, uncertain eyes.
"You've looked after us wonderfully, Winky," Hermione said, giving her a warm smile. "I was only wondering — do the elves here receive wages? Or days off? Things like that."
Winky did not relax.
At the words wages and compensation, her face changed entirely. Her great round eyes — the size of tennis balls — went very wide, and she gave a shrill cry: "Miss, we don't need compensation! We are good elves — we have not sunk so low as that!"
Hermione blinked, startled. Then a flash of indignation lit her eyes. "You mean to say that you cook and clean for the entire castle without any pay whatsoever?"
Winky drew herself up, puffing out the tea-towel wrapped around her small chest, and nodded with unmistakable pride. "That is what it means to be a good house-elf!"
Hermione could see that the little elf before her was genuinely proud of her work.
"But this is wrong," she murmured, the warmth of everything she'd just eaten suddenly sitting heavily in her stomach. "This is slave labour."
Draco glanced at Hermione, and before the house-elf's distress could worsen, he quietly dismissed Winky with a gentle wave.
Winky went, but not happily. She maintained her curtsy with great dignity, retreating with careful steps, muttering under her breath, "Sir, Madam has put Winky in a very difficult position! First, an elf dismissed! Then wages, wages! This fine place has been corrupted by wicked ideas—"
"Who has been dismissed?" Hermione called after her before she could stop herself.
"Oh, miss — a disgraceful elf! Winky strongly advises sir and miss not to go to the kitchen to see her!" the elf squeaked, and scurried away.
This, of course, only sharpened Hermione's curiosity at once. She turned to Draco. "I want to go and see."
"Very well. We're already here." Draco stifled a yawn and stood to follow her.
They crossed the length of the underground hall to the kitchen where the elves were gathered. The dismissed elf was not difficult to find — she was sitting in the only corner that had been left completely empty, as though an invisible Bubble-Head Charm had cleared every elf from a ten-foot radius. Two familiar figures sat in the silence.
"Dobby?" Draco said, surprised.
"Winky?" said Hermione at the same moment.
Both elves turned. It was, indeed, Dobby and Winky.
Dobby wore a tea-cosy on his head — embroidered with a golden Snitch — and something resembling a child's Quidditch jersey, and was doing his best to look cheerful. Winky, in a small neat skirt and short-sleeved top, sat on a stool by the fire with tear-tracks down her cheeks and her hands pressed over her face.
"Winky — are you working at Hogwarts now?" Hermione asked, going straight to the point.
At the reminder of her dismissal, Winky's lips began to tremble. She then burst into fresh, gulping sobs, great tears rolling from her enormous brown eyes.
"Oh, goodness—" Hermione knelt beside her. "Winky, don't cry — please tell me what's happened—"
"Dobby." Draco spoke across the sound of weeping, his tone measured. "I'll need an explanation. You took extended leave for this? To settle your friends into employment?"
Dobby's joyful expression disappeared. He bowed to Draco with a great deal of uncertainty, glancing up at his former master, seemingly unable to judge whether what he had done was right — and equally uncertain whether he ought to punish himself immediately by striking his head against the fireplace.
"Don't," Draco said quickly, before Dobby could move. "I want to know why you didn't come to me directly. Why didn't you tell me, or bring her to me yourself?"
The still-weeping Winky looked up at that and said in a small, offended shriek, "Mr Crouch said all Malfoys are bad wizards! Very bad wizards!"
Dobby looked at Draco with wide, guilty eyes, caught between apologising for Winky and hurting himself in penance.
Hermione glanced at Draco with some concern, and was surprised to find him not angry at all — only giving a short, cold laugh. "Well. That's a reasonable enough explanation. Go on then, Dobby. The full story."
"It was Dobby who found Winky the job!" Dobby said earnestly. "You know, little master, it is very, very hard for a dismissed elf to find a new position—"
At this, Winky only wept harder.
"Winky didn't want to come to little master's household. She is — prejudiced against him!" Dobby confided in a pained, shrill voice. "Dobby explained that she could have pay, and holidays, and even a raise if she worked well — but that only made things worse!" The elves in the kitchen collectively turned their faces away at the words pay and raise, as though something deeply improper had been said aloud.
"Winky has not fallen so far as to take wages!" Winky's wet face twisted with sudden indignation.
Hermione let out a slow breath and glanced at Draco with a complicated look — something she hadn't quite expected surfacing in her expression.
*He's a genuinely good employer. Better than most.*
Draco met her gaze with an expression of innocent puzzlement. *What?*
But Hermione said nothing. She turned back to Dobby.
"Dobby thought and thought — where could an elf who has been dismissed possibly go? And then Dobby thought of Hogwarts! Professor Dumbledore even said he would pay her a wage — but Winky didn't want that either..." Dobby finished breathlessly. Winky let out another heaving sob.
"Winky, you should be glad!" Hermione said gently but urgently. "Professor Dumbledore is a far kinder master than Mr Crouch. You didn't do anything wrong — he was dreadfully unfair to you—"
"Don't speak ill of Mr Crouch, Miss!" Winky pressed her fingers to the hole in her tea towel. "Poor Mr Crouch — what will he do without Winky? He needs Winky's help—"
"What sort of help?" Draco asked, his voice sharpening slightly. He was thinking of something Dobby had mentioned over the summer holidays. "Help with his son?"
"The young master needs to be properly — no, there is no young master!" Winky let out a sudden scream, fixing Draco with the look of someone confronted by a venomous serpent. "You are all bad wizards! Dark wizards, trying to frame Mr Crouch!"
"He isn't—" Hermione began.
"Leave it," Draco said, with a slight gesture toward her. "House-elves are remarkably stubborn when they've made up their minds. There's no reasoning with her."
"That is the worst thing about you," she said hotly. "Why do you assume they're being unreasonable? You simply don't have the patience to make any real effort with them."
"Fine. As you like." Draco sat down unhurriedly to one side, caught Winky's eye, and asked her quietly to brew a fresh pot — Keemun black tea, specifically.
The little elf's face lit up at once; the offence from half an hour ago vanished entirely. She curtsied with great enthusiasm and hurried off.
"Slave labour," Hermione muttered, glaring at him.
"Did you see Winky's expression just then?" he said, raising an eyebrow at her. "Tell me honestly — was she happier when you were encouraging her to demand rights, or just now when I asked her for tea?"
"Even if she seems happier while she's working, that doesn't make it right," Hermione said, her voice firm. "Unpaid labour is slave labour, full stop."
"I respect your view," Draco said, making a small gesture of surrender and wisely letting the subject drop.
He had learned, at some point, that going directly against Hermione Granger on the topic of house-elf rights was a thoroughly unwinnable enterprise. He had a healthy respect for outraged Hermione.
Hermione, taking his silence for capitulation, turned back to Winky with renewed determination and spent the next quarter of an hour trying to convince the grief-stricken elf that leaving Mr Crouch's service was, in fact, a mercy.
She gained nothing for her trouble but a dry throat. Winky sat exactly as she had before — face buried in her skirt, weeping steadily — murmuring, "Poor Mr Crouch... no Winky to help him anymore..."
"Hermione. Come and sit down for a moment," Draco said, quietly.
Hermione set her jaw, then sighed. She was forced to admit, however grudgingly, that he had been right. He seemed to understand house-elves rather better than she did. She turned away from Winky and dropped into the chair beside him, staring at the floor.
"The tea's ready. Have a sip — your throat must be dry." He poured without waiting for an answer, a hint of something almost gentle in his manner.
"I don't want any," she said, glancing at the steam rising from the pot. "That tea was brewed with the labour of oppressed elves. It tastes of injustice."
"Actually, I made it myself in the end. I didn't let Winky do it," Draco said, tilting the cup toward her. "No house-elf blood or tears in there, I promise. And as for me — I don't personally find making tea for you oppressive."
Hermione looked at him sideways. He was smiling, with a look in his eyes that saw straight through her — straight through the thirst, and the sulking, and the private disappointment.
"All right," she said, somewhat stiffly. "Thank you." She picked up the cup.
"While you're calming down — why not speak to an elf who's actually willing to talk?" Draco said, watching her drink. "Dobby, for instance. I think he's probably the only house-elf in this kitchen who won't take offence at your questions."
"Yes — of course!" Her expression lifted at once. She turned to Dobby, who had been hovering hopefully nearby, ears perked. "You mentioned getting a salary — can you tell me the details? How much? How many holidays?"
The other elves, who had been eavesdropping on the conversation with enormous interest, all immediately looked the other way and edged discreetly backward at the renewed mention of salaries and holidays, as if afraid of contracting some contagious disease.
Dobby paid them no attention whatsoever. "Dobby started on one Galleon a month, and one day off a month—"
"That's far too little!" Hermione did the arithmetic quickly and gave Draco a reproachful look.
Draco, lost in thought about Winky's near-slip — *The young master needs to be properly—* — didn't notice.
"No, no — the master wanted to give Dobby more from the start! But Dobby couldn't allow it!" Dobby cried, jumping in alarm. "Later, the master gave Dobby a raise anyway — it was terrible! Now Dobby gets ten Galleons a week and one day off a week!"
"Oh!" Hermione sat up in surprise. She hadn't expected the rise to be so steep.
"Dobby doesn't need all that salary and holiday!" Dobby shuddered. "The master must stop this dreadful practice of giving raises at once!"
"Dobby, ten Galleons a week is still nowhere near a fair Muggle wage—"
"Enough, enough — Dobby must go and check on Winky—" The little elf, plainly afraid that this conversation would somehow prompt another raise, gave them a hasty bow and bolted for the far end of the kitchen.
Draco shrugged. "You heard him. It isn't that I haven't tried."
"I know," Hermione admitted, looking after Dobby with a worried frown. "Dobby's thinking really does need examining — who complains about being paid too much? But more than that — I was so focused on Dobby that I hadn't considered how badly most house-elves are treated. No pay. No days off. No rights at all." She glanced around at the other elves, who were watching them warily from a distance. "This is wrong."
"It has always been this way," Draco said, with the calm of someone stating a fact rather than defending it. "There is no fairness in the wizarding world, Hermione — only order. House-elves serve wizards. It is the rule, and it has been the rule for a very long time."
Hermione glared at him and set her cup down on the table with a sharp click that made several nearby elves flinch. Something in her expression hardened into something she rarely let fully show — not anger exactly, but the particular stubbornness of someone who has decided that a thing is wrong and intends to do something about it.
"I'm going." She stood and walked briskly down the length of the underground hall, her voice carrying cleanly in the empty space. "Draco — this is wrong. I'm going to do something to change it."
"Yes, you will," he murmured. He waved off the elves who had been approaching with a fresh plate of pastries, said a quiet thank you, and went after her.
"I won't pretend I'm optimistic," he said, holding the portrait-door open for her. "A tradition thousands of years old isn't undone overnight by one person."
"You changed," Hermione said, stepping out and turning to face him. "Why are you willing to pay Dobby a salary? Tell me that."
Draco paused. He found he couldn't quite answer immediately.
He was an exception. He knew that. What he had become — after everything — was the result of a great deal of time and no small amount of difficulty. And his reasons for treating Dobby as he did were not purely noble: they were tangled up with gratitude, and obligation, and something closer to a private guilt he'd never quite name.
"Tell me," Hermione pressed. "If you can do it, why can't others?"
"You can't judge a thousand years of tradition by one case," Draco said, with a slight edge of frustration. "And besides — there are only one or two house-elves in the entire wizarding world who actually want a salary. The rest consider it an insult. You've seen that for yourself."
Hermione's frown deepened.
He was, in his way, telling her something true — a dark and uncomfortable truth about the world as it actually was. And she didn't want to hear it. Not because she thought he was wrong, but because she had expected him, of all people, to be on her side.
"Do you support it, then?" she asked quietly. "The enslavement of house-elves — do you support it?"
"I'm not taking a side," he said.
"Then what side are you on?"
"I told you — I'm not taking one." He looked at her steadily. "But I'll ask you the same question. You say you're on the house-elves' side. Do the house-elves want you there?"
She opened her mouth and closed it again. For a moment she reminded him very much of Professor McGonagall confronted with one of Neville Longbottom's essays — that expression of being absolutely determined not to yield while privately unable to find the counter-argument.
They climbed in silence for a moment.
"You're being sophistical," she said at last, her voice firm. "They think the way they do because they don't understand that they're being oppressed. That's exactly the point."
He said nothing.
She was right, in a way. That was the cruellest part of it — not the wizards who benefited from the system, but the elves who had been taught to love their chains. Who was born superior, and who was born to serve? Why should a creature's birth determine the whole of its life? Hermione had grown up believing in equality, in freedom, in dignity for every thinking being — and the more she saw of the wizarding world, the more she found that its foundations did not share her convictions.
What should she do? She climbed the remaining stairs in troubled silence, her thoughts turning steadily inward, already beginning — without quite realising it — to plan.