A/N:
Hello there! I hope you're all doing well. If you've made it this far into the fanfic, thank you so much for reading. I'd really appreciate any comments, reviews, or Power Stones you'd like to leave—it truly helps and means a lot!
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What kind of person was Draco Malfoy?
This question had become the reason Hermione Granger had been unable to sleep properly for the better part of a week.
He had always been an enigma to her.
She had assumed his coldness was the whole of him, until she found his hidden tenderness surfacing in a hundred small details. She had suspected his capacity for cruelty, until she discovered he had set his compass toward the light at the top of the Astronomy Tower. She had called him a coward once, and then a full-moon night came along and he stepped in front of a werewolf to protect her.
And now, with the same composure he wore for everything, he had told her plainly that yes — he was a selfish Slytherin who acted only in his own interest.
Yet when he'd actually said it, she'd found she didn't believe him at all. Thinking about it calmly, he simply wasn't that kind of person.
Draco was always doing this — describing himself in the worst possible terms. He was remarkably skilled at saying one thing while meaning another, and he had a particular habit of reaching for the harshest available description of himself and planting his flag there. It was as though he genuinely lacked the ability to see the better parts of his own character. Not because those parts didn't exist, but because he seemed almost ashamed to acknowledge them, burying them somewhere deep and hoping no one would think to look.
It was hardly a healthy way to live. Hermione watched him across the study corner, turning her quill between her fingers.
She had decided to play her favourite game.
She was going to observe him closely, and find out whether Draco Malfoy was truly the self-serving person he claimed to be — and more importantly, what he actually meant by the word "benefit."
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"I've noticed you go to the Quidditch pitch every evening," she murmured to him during Transfiguration, while they waited for Professor McGonagall to work her way along the rows. "There's no house Quidditch this year."
"Special training." Draco stifled a yawn. "Crabbe and Goyle want to try out for the team next year. I've put together a year-long programme. Early preparation."
"And what do you get out of it?" Hermione gave him her best appraising look. "You — Slytherin, best deal only."
He paused for a fraction of a second, then recovered his languid air. "Training better players for the Slytherin team — is that not a benefit?"
"I suppose it could be argued," Hermione said, with enough remaining doubt in her voice to make him glance at her sideways.
"How is SPEW progressing?" he asked, twirling his wand in his fingers with elaborate disinterest.
"I'm working on it," she said shortly, and closed that avenue of conversation.
He had guessed correctly, she could tell — things were not going well on the membership front. She had only been genuinely angry with him for three days before his persistent, unannoying attempts at conversation had worn her down to mere coolness, and then from coolness back to something approaching normal.
"Harry's seemed distracted lately," Draco said, with a sidelong glance at her expression. He was tactfully changing the subject.
"He thinks he's being needlessly dramatic." Hermione shook her head. "Ever since he wrote to Sirius on your suggestion — he's been going back and forth, wondering if he's making too much of it." She turned her attention to the porcelain plate in front of her, raised her wand, and with a neat flick transformed it into a perfect small mushroom.
"That was excellent," Draco said, with an appreciative nod.
"Obviously," she said — and then caught herself smiling despite her residual frustration about SPEW. She looked at the clean lines of the mushroom and felt a small but genuine warmth.
What exactly was he gaining by complimenting her? She studied the profile of the boy beside her with renewed puzzlement. A self-interested person would not bother.
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This was a Thursday Transfiguration lesson in mid-October, in which Professor McGonagall was covering cross-species Transfiguration: hedgehog to pincushion, guinea fowl to guinea pig. She was working steadily through the rows with that precise, assessing gaze that made even fourth-years straighten their backs and check their wand grip.
Draco was already fluent in these Transfiguration techniques. He and Hermione had, between them, produced work so far ahead of the curriculum that Professor McGonagall had assigned them supplementary reading from the advanced Transfiguration course instead.
"I could simply let you follow the standard syllabus. Your time in my class would be very comfortable." Her usually stern eyes had taken on an unusually hopeful expression, reminiscent, Hermione had thought privately, of a particularly motivated Muggle parent. "But I don't believe either of you would be satisfied with comfortable. Preparation now will serve you in your O.W.L. year, and in your N.E.W.T. courses after that. I expect you're both planning to continue with Transfiguration to N.E.W.T. level?"
"Of course," they had said, in unison, and exchanged a brief glance.
"Then I expect your utmost effort." Professor McGonagall allowed herself a small, satisfied smile. "I shall be very strict with you."
Working their way through the supplementary material — plates into mushrooms, non-corporeal Summoning Charms, owls into opera glasses, Vanishing Spells, and the early stages of Switching Spells — Draco leaned toward Hermione and said quietly, "Harry isn't being entirely dramatic, you know. The timing of his scar hurting is genuinely strange. And that dream — he saw a large snake, didn't he?"
As he spoke, he reached across to Ron's side, turned Pigwidgeon — Ron's Scops owl — into a compact brass telescope, and passed it to Ron with a mildly wicked expression.
"Brilliant!" Ron pressed it to one eye with enormous enthusiasm. "Harry, I can see a beetle sitting on Seamus's head — it's just flown off, gone across to Dean, and now it's on Lavender's hair—"
Harry was staring at his hedgehog in silence, apparently entirely uninterested in either pincushions or beetles.
He does look rather preoccupied, Draco thought.
"Now Lavender's noticed it—and Parvati's got involved—" Ron continued his commentary with the solemnity of a Quidditch announcer, until Professor McGonagall's profile appeared in the lens. He lowered the telescope with speed.
"Mr Weasley, if you find beetles more interesting than transfiguration, I am quite willing to provide you with a firsthand perspective." Professor McGonagall fixed him with a look of supreme patience, then glanced at the pincushion on his desk, which was visibly trembling and still had several hedgehog spines protruding from it.
"She doesn't actually mean it," Hermione told Ron, in a reassuring undertone, leaning slightly past Draco. "Professors can't Transfigure students without cause — it's a serious breach."
Ron pulled a face and went back to prodding his shivering pincushion.
"Ron, you might actually find it helpful to—" Hermione began.
"There's a particular approach that works well for that," Draco said, smoothly turning so that his shoulder intercepted her line of sight toward Ron. He proceeded to explain the technique to Ron himself, in a measured, straightforward manner.
Hermione looked at the back of his platinum-blond head for a long moment.
What possible benefit was there in helping Ron Weasley improve his Transfiguration?
The bell rang before she'd worked out an answer. She began gathering her books, shoving everything into her bag — and then the bag was lifted out of her hands.
"Let's go," Draco said.
"I can carry it myself." She felt the colour rise in her face.
"I've noticed," Draco said, with an air of mild injury, "that you're genuinely uncomfortable letting anyone help you with anything. Even the smallest thing." He looked at her. "Don't you consider me a friend?"
"Of course I do," she said quickly.
"Just a regular friend from the neighbouring college," he said, with a sideways smile.
Hermione opened her mouth. Closed it again.
*How does he know?* She felt a rush of guilt.
"I'm not asking you to deny it," Draco said, with a trace of something that was not quite a pout. "I just heard it. It sounded rather — impersonal, wouldn't you say?"
"I meant — a good friend. A very good friend. Who lives next door." This was coming out considerably worse than intended. "You can carry it if you want!"
She turned away and walked out of the classroom with nothing in her hands and a great deal of confusion in her mind.
What possible benefit was there in carrying her schoolbag? She glared at nothing in particular as she walked. This allegedly selfish boy was thoroughly impossible to understand.
Draco followed her with a quiet, private expression of satisfaction.
Ron watched from across the aisle with a furrowed brow. "A schoolbag," he said to Harry. "What's the fuss about? It's not the Quidditch Cup."
Harry had finally emerged from his thoughts. He glanced around at the various mystified faces in the corridor and said, with unexpected authority, "Territorial claim."
Ron continued to look baffled.
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The girl whose territory had apparently been claimed was entirely unaware of this interpretation. She was walking beside the claimant on the way to Ancient Runes, working through a more pressing problem.
"Harry thinks Sirius has finally built a life for himself and deserves to enjoy it properly," Hermione said. "He doesn't want to become a weight around Sirius's neck."
"That's nonsense. Sirius Black is Harry's godfather," Draco said, with a slight frown.
"Harry worries the title puts too much obligation on Sirius. He thinks Sirius shouldn't be confined to Grimmauld Place — that he should be free to travel, to live."
"He doesn't understand his godfather, and he doesn't understand what Azkaban does to a person." Draco's gaze went briefly distant. "The only reason Sirius Black survived those years without breaking entirely was sheer force of will. And Harry was that will — Harry was the thing he held onto. If anything happened to Harry, I don't think Sirius would recover."
Hermione looked at him.
Neither Harry nor Ron had ever framed it that way. Their understanding of Sirius's suffering, however well-intentioned, was somewhat surface-level. Draco had looked directly at the thing that lay underneath and named it — the dependence, the grief, the fragility that a decade in Azkaban would leave behind.
He always said he was a selfish Slytherin. But could a purely self-interested person think this precisely about someone else's pain?
"You're right," she said. "I've tried to say something similar to Harry, but he's not ready to hear it yet. He tends to want to carry good news to Sirius rather than worry him — I imagine that's not an uncommon impulse."
"You do the same thing with your parents," Draco said simply.
"Well — yes." She hesitated. "I only told them the broad outline of what happened with Professor Lupin, and my father still went into a panic. I can't imagine telling them everything. But I feel dreadful for it, because I value honesty, and—"
"Would your parents tell you everything that worried them?" Draco asked.
She thought about it. "...No. Probably not."
"Then hiding something isn't the same as not trusting someone. Protecting someone from information isn't the same as loving them less." He said it in the same tone he used for everything — slightly offhand, as though it were obvious. "You don't need to feel guilty about it."
"I understand that." She glanced at him sideways. "Though I still hope you'll be more honest with me than you are with most people."
"On some things, I already am," he said. "More honest with you than with my parents, for instance."
She looked at him, startled. He met her eyes briefly, then looked ahead.
"Which is why I can tell you — Harry isn't being paranoid. And Sirius Black's travels have nothing to do with wanderlust." He lowered his voice as a cluster of third-years passed in the opposite direction. "He left London to follow a lead. He and I — we're working toward the same thing."
"Oh," Hermione said, and was quiet for a moment, fitting pieces together. "That's why he missed the World Cup."
"Exactly. Don't mention it to Harry yet. Sirius wants it kept quiet until he has something to report, and the last thing Harry needs is one more thing to worry about in the middle of the tournament."
"Of course." She felt the warmth of being trusted with this. A small, pleasant tingle moved through her ear as he leaned back — he had been very close to be heard over the corridor noise. She kept her eyes straight ahead.
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Ancient Runes followed Transfiguration, which placed it among Draco's quietly favoured lessons. The subject matter was obscure and demanding, but it was also extraordinarily practical — particularly in the older branches of enchantment, the kind that had been used to construct things like Vanishing Cabinets, which he had reason to know well.
He had repaired the cabinet in the Room of Requirement through self-teaching in his previous life. Now he was learning its foundations properly, and finding the experience rather like being given a map for a place he had already stumbled through in the dark.
Today's lesson: the symbolic representation of numbers in ancient runic script.
Professor Bathsheda Babbling had the reliable enthusiasm of someone who found her subject genuinely and endlessly interesting. "In the early Middle Ages, many Old English inscriptions were rendered in runes, which led to their widespread use in medieval British wizarding circles. Among the most important systems was numerical symbolism — each number assigned to a creature or concept of significance..."
She looked around at her students with satisfaction. "Work with your partner. Find the runic animal symbols for zero through nine in your textbooks, record the associations, and hand in your work before the end of class."
Hermione flipped through pages with the focused speed of someone who had already located the right section. "Zero is the Lethifold — invisible, undetectable. One is the unicorn's horn. Two is the horn of the Erumpent. Three is the three heads of the Runespoor..."
Draco transcribed each entry in neat, even cursive as she read.
"Four is the four-coloured plumage of the Fwooper. Five is the five-legged Quintaped. Six represents the Salamander — it survives exactly six hours outside flame. Eight comes from the eight eyes of the Acromantula. Nine is the Hydra." She paused, frowning at the page.
"And seven?" Draco said, glancing up.
"That's the peculiar thing," Hermione said. "Seven doesn't refer to a creature at all. It's simply described as the most magical number."
"Interesting." Draco set down his quill. "Divination says the same thing, more or less — seven is called the most powerful magical number, without any explanation of why. It keeps appearing without any one source claiming it."
He had his own private reason for finding the number resonant — both of their names, examined through numerological interpretation, arrived at seven — but that was not information he intended to share.
"Muggles divide the week into seven days," Hermione said, tapping her quill thoughtfully.
"So does the wizarding world," Draco pointed out. "Which only defers the question. If you want evidence from elsewhere — there are seven classical planets: the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter. I was drawing them yesterday."
"Seven is prime," Hermione said immediately. "Divisible only by one and itself. In number theory, that carries a particular significance — completeness, indivisibility. I won't be beaten on this, Draco."
"There are seven colours in a rainbow."
"In the Old Testament, creation takes seven days," Hermione said. She caught his expression and added, before he could respond, "It's a metaphor, not a biology lesson."
"The wizarding world's metaphors are less — structural," Draco said, with faint alarm.
Hermione laughed despite herself.
"Magical children typically manifest their abilities around age seven," Draco said, moving on. "It's remarkably consistent."
"Is it really seven specifically? I started showing signs at seven — I was sitting on the floor, looked up at a book on the shelf, and it came straight into my hands. My parents were quite startled." She looked curious. "Are there exceptions? What if a child shows nothing by that age?"
"Then they're most likely a Squib," Draco said. "Like Argus Filch."
"Are there many?" she asked. "I've only ever encountered Mr Filch."
"More than you might expect. Most of them leave the wizarding world quietly and integrate into Muggle society — which is easier, all things considered." He set the quill down. "Imagine every person around you can perform magic, and you cannot. You can't even cast a basic Scouring Charm. Every task that should take seconds takes hours. Filch scrubs trophies by hand that any first-year could clean with a flick of a wand."
Hermione nodded slowly.
"He uses manual punishment for students," she said, thinking it through. "He's always made them polish things by hand. I always thought he was just being deliberately unpleasant, but—"
"He was making them feel what he feels every day," Draco said. He wasn't sure whether he found that more or less troubling.
"That's rather sad," she said, after a pause. "Still — I remember losing fifty points in first year."
"As you should. Don't develop too much sympathy too quickly." He gave her a look of mild warning. "You have a tendency to run straight to compassion and forget the original injury."
"I don't forget it," she said, with dignity. "I just think that understanding why someone is unpleasant is not the same as excusing them. Not every Squib is as harsh as Filch — most of them probably aren't."
"And not every Muggle is as likable as you seem to think," Draco said, by way of experiment.
"The Muggle children I grew up with were perfectly nice," Hermione said, with a shrug.
"Boys or girls?"
"Both," she said, with complete naturalness.
"Muggle boys," Draco said, his expression darkening slightly.
"Muggles and witches and wizards are simply people," Hermione said, with a patient expression that suggested she had noticed his tone. "The ability to use magic isn't a measure of character."
"I disagree," he said, with more irritation than the argument warranted.
She had the good sense not to press it.
He looked back at the parchment. "We were counting to seven. Where were we?"
"I believe I was winning," Hermione said.
"The seven floors of Hogwarts Castle," he said.
"Hogwarts is taught over seven years," she replied.
"The one hundred and forty-two staircases," he countered. "The digits sum to seven."
"That was *my* example! You can't use my examples against me!" She jabbed her finger at him.
"You brought it into the argument. It belongs to the argument now."
"Quidditch teams," she said, with the air of someone producing a trump card. "Seven players. And the Seeker — the seventh — is the one who ends the match."
Draco looked at her. "I didn't know you followed Quidditch."
"I—" Her cheeks went faintly pink. "I have a general interest."
"In Seeking specifically?"
"In the position," she said, and held his gaze with an expression of careful composure.
She watched something shift in his eyes — a warmth that flickered there for a moment and then withdrew, replaced by something she couldn't quite name. His expression settled into a deliberately neutral look that she had learned, by now, was covering something else entirely.
"Viktor Krum plays Seeker, of course," he said, with a particular neutrality that was not neutrality at all. "Quite memorable, from what I gather."
*Viktor Krum.*
Hermione stared at him.
What on earth did Krum have to do with anything?
She looked at him for one more moment, then snapped her textbook shut as the bell rang. She reached across, pulled the parchment out from under his hand, walked to the front, and placed it on Professor Babbling's desk with more force than necessary.
She spent the walk back to her seat quietly dismantling the conversation and trying to understand exactly what had just happened.
By the time she sat down, she had not resolved the question.
She had, however, added one more piece of evidence to her ongoing observation.
A genuinely selfish person would have no reason whatsoever to keep track of which Quidditch players she might or might not find memorable.
Draco Malfoy was many things. But whatever else he was, "selfish" was, at best, a very poor description.
He was also — she was now confident — occasionally quite strange.