Within seconds, Ron Weasley's worldview had been thoroughly dismantled, and his hair was standing on end.
He had witnessed things that were, to him, completely inexplicable.
A few moments earlier: Hermione had pulled a long, thin golden chain from inside her robes, looped it around herself, Draco, and Harry, twisted the small glittering hourglass at the end three times, and all three of them had vanished from the spot.
A few moments later: he watched Harry, Hermione, and Draco fly in through the window of the hospital wing on broomsticks and land lightly in the centre of the ward — the exact spot where they had been standing before they disappeared.
"How did you do that?" Ron's voice cracked. "How did you go from there to there? Did you just — fly in through the window?"
"I honestly don't know what you're talking about, Ron," Harry said, with enormous innocence.
"Yes, how could someone be in two places at once?" Draco added, with the particular tone of someone quoting a phrase back at its owner. He turned to Hermione as he said it, and held out his arm quite naturally so she could steady herself stepping down from the broom.
Ron opened his mouth. His expression suggested he was reconsidering everything.
The three of them looked at each other. Then they all laughed, and Ron, despite himself, started laughing too, which immediately reminded him of his injured leg — he slapped his thigh in exasperation, hissed sharply, and fell back against his pillow.
"All right, don't aggravate it—" Harry rushed over, checking on him. "We'll explain everything. Here—" He pulled the enormous chocolate cake Madam Pomfrey had left on the side table into the centre of the group. "Start eating."
And so they told Ron everything:
How Hermione's Time-Turner had taken them back three hours. How they had tracked another version of themselves through the night. How Crookshanks had quietly dispatched Pettigrew when no one was looking, accomplishing what Sirius had not been able to manage. And how Harry had cast the Patronus Charm on his own, saving himself on the far side of the Black Lake.
"You saved yourself?" Ron stared at Harry, a piece of cake halfway to his mouth. "That's — wait — and Professor Snape's Patronus is the same as your mum's? But doesn't that mean — stags and does, that's a matched pair — what does that mean about him and your dad? My head is going to come apart." He took an enormous bite, eyes wide. "Harry, tell me again from the beginning — how many things did I miss while I was lying here with a broken leg—"
Draco shook his head, pulled the hospital wing door gently shut behind him, and walked with Hermione out into the quiet corridor.
The castle was dark and still. Their footsteps were the only sound.
"Ron's going to be awake until morning," Draco said.
"Harry will keep talking as long as Ron keeps asking," Hermione agreed. She walked beside him, her voice low. "Today was — there was rather a lot of it."
"Mm." He was quiet for a moment. "Professor Snape's Patronus, though. I didn't see that coming."
"I think I nearly did," Hermione said. "Do you remember the Quidditch match, when the Dementors attacked you and Harry on the pitch? I thought I saw a doe that night. I couldn't work out who could have cast it."
"Now we know."
"Now we know," she agreed.
They passed a sleeping portrait. The candles in the wall sconces guttered in the draught.
She found herself thinking back to the conversation they'd had by the Black Lake, after Harry had seen who had conjured the second Patronus.
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Harry had buried his face in his hands. "I don't understand. He was my mother's friend — but he's never once spoken to me about her the way Professor Lupin did. All year I tried to be decent to him, tried to understand him, put up with everything in Potions — and all I got back was more of the same. He's never been kind to me. He puts me down, he mocks me, he blocks every good thing he can find to block. He hates me." His voice rose. "So why does he keep saving me?"
"Because he hated your father, and you look like your father," Draco said. "That's not about you. That's his unresolved quarrel with James."
"Fine — then hate him! Hate him forever! But then why save me at all? First year, and now tonight — why?" Harry's expression was a tangle of confusion and something rawer. "Why would he save the son of his enemy?"
"Because of your mother," Draco said simply. "He loved her. Clearly still does. The Patronus is the most direct evidence of that imaginable."
"Maybe it's a coincidence. Patronus forms can match between people who aren't — Sirius said they were enemies for years. And Fred and George have the same Patronus, don't they? They're not—"
"They're blood brothers with an exceptionally strong bond," Draco said. "For wizards who aren't related by blood, a matched Patronus means something considerably deeper. A Patronus comes from what matters most to a person — it can't be forced or faked. For two people to produce the same form, there has to be a real resonance between them. Twin brothers can sometimes achieve it. Between mere acquaintances, it's essentially impossible."
Harry stared at the water for a long moment. "So you're saying they were more alike than anyone knew. More alike than my father and mother, even — because the stag and the doe aren't the same form, they're just—"
"A pair," Draco said. "Your parents were soulmates; their Patronus forms reflect that. But I don't think the doe was always Professor Snape's natural form." He paused. "I asked my father. Apparently, during his school days, Professor Snape's Patronus was something else entirely. The doe came later — it changed."
Harry looked at him. "What was it before?"
"A bat," Draco said.
Harry blinked. Then, despite everything, the corner of his mouth moved.
"That's — that's why Sirius calls him a greasy little bat."
"Almost certainly, yes."
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"A bat," Hermione said, coming back to the present. She walked in silence for a moment. "I didn't expect that."
"Nobody expects Professor Snape to have been a bat," Draco said.
She laughed softly, then caught herself, then laughed again.
She'd been walking for a while before she noticed where they were heading — upward, toward Gryffindor Tower. She stopped and turned to look at him.
"You don't have to walk me back," she said, slightly awkward. "I know the way."
"I know you do." He kept walking. "Come on."
She fell into step beside him again, telling herself she was only doing it because her feet were tired.
There was something different about him tonight that she couldn't quite locate. He'd been different ever since she punched him — she was aware of that, had been turning it over in her mind, and couldn't make the pieces fit. Draco Malfoy was one of the most stubbornly proud people at Hogwarts, a fact that was practically institutional knowledge. She had heard Fred say to Lee Jordan, with genuine respect, that Draco Malfoy was absolutely at the top of the list of people you did not want to have a problem with. No one at Hogwarts seriously provoked him. And she had punched him in the face.
He hadn't been angry. He hadn't been cold. He hadn't retaliated or withdrawn or cut her off. Instead he had been — gentle. Careful. He'd protected her and held her and put medicine on her knee and given her chocolate and was currently walking her back to her dormitory at — she checked the position of the moonlight through the windows — somewhere well past midnight.
That didn't make sense as a response to being punched. She genuinely could not explain it.
The more she thought about it, the worse it made her feel, because she was becoming increasingly attached to a kindness she wasn't sure she understood, and that seemed dangerous.
"Draco." She stopped on the stairs. "Could you — not be so kind to me?"
He looked at her.
"Could you not hold my hand?" She tried to pull her fingers free.
He didn't let go.
He stopped walking. He turned to look at her properly, in the flickering candlelight, and his expression was — not stern, not guarded, not the face he showed to most people. Something considerably more unguarded than that.
"No," he said quietly.
She stared at him.
"I'm sorry," he said. He held her gaze. The candlelight moved across his face. "I want to be good to you. I want to hold your hand."
The staircase was very quiet.
She had fully intended to argue with this. She had the argument ready. It was a reasonable argument. But his expression — certain and uncertain at once, steady and slightly afraid — was exactly the one she didn't know how to answer.
She let him lead her up the last flight of stairs.
Her heart was making itself very loudly known.
"I have to admit something," she said, as the Fat Lady's portrait came into view.
"What?"
"I borrowed a rather Slytherin approach tonight." She glanced sideways at him. "I have to concede — it can be effective."
He smiled at her. A real smile, no armour in it. "First you admitted that not all the Slytherin professors are irredeemable. Now you're crediting Slytherin methods. What's next? Are you going to transfer houses and throw yourself into Slytherin's arms?"
"I am a Gryffindor," Hermione said firmly, her face warm, "and I would like you to be less ambiguous when you say things like that." She let go of his hand, stepped up to the portrait, and gave the password without looking back at him.
Behind her she heard him say, very quietly, "You heartless little rascal."
"Oh, they're always like that," said the Fat Lady sleepily. "And you'll still like her."
"That's quite perceptive." He shrugged at the portrait, turned, and walked back down the stairs.
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The following morning, Hagrid found Pettigrew's body while watering his vegetable garden.
The body had reverted to human form overnight — as an Animagus's does when they die, the magic that sustains the transformation simply ceasing. He was no longer an easily overlooked rat. He was unmistakably Peter Pettigrew, lying in the vegetable patch beside the pumpkins, his face bearing an expression of mixed fear and blankness.
When Harry, Hermione, and Draco arrived, Draco stepped in front of Hermione before she had a chance to look.
"Don't," he said. "Crookshanks was thorough. I'd also suggest brushing his teeth at your earliest convenience."
Hermione pursed her lips, considered the pumpkins, and turned to face them instead.
"Hermione," Hagrid said, setting down his bucket with a clang, "what's going on with you and that Malfoy?" He bent down with the particular effort of someone very large trying to be discreet. "He upset you yesterday, didn't he? How come you're both fine again this morning? And how'd he turn up next to you last night? You all right? He won't say anything, will he?"
"He was passing nearby and helped us considerably. He'll keep last night to himself." Hermione lifted a shoulder. "As for yesterday — he apologised. I may have been slightly unreasonable."
"He's a Slytherin," Hagrid said, with the air of someone stating something self-evident. "The Malfoys were You-Know-Who's supporters. Be careful you're not letting yourself be taken in."
"He's a friend from another house," Hermione said, with a composure she was mostly feeling. "I know what I'm doing, Hagrid."
She glanced across at Draco, who was talking quietly with Harry by the pumpkin patch, and looked away before her expression could say anything her words hadn't.
Let it stay where it is, she told herself. That was the sensible position. She had papers to write. She had examination preparation schedules. She had considerably better things to do than destabilise herself any further.
"Hagrid," she said briskly, looking up at him. "I've been wanting to ask for ages — how exactly did you get those pumpkins so large? Is it the Engorgement Charm? You used your umbrella, didn't you?"
Hagrid went a spectacular shade of red and knocked his bucket over.
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Harry stood beside Draco near the fence, staring at the place where Pettigrew had been.
"He died too quickly," Harry said, his voice flat. "Too easily."
"It was unexpected," Draco said.
He was thinking about Crookshanks.
An ordinary cat could not kill an Animagus — not cleanly, not completely. But a half-Kneazle was another matter. Kneazles could detect deception in ways wizards could not. They could sense what something truly was beneath what it appeared to be. And Crookshanks had clearly known, for some time, exactly what Pettigrew was.
The cat had moved freely between both timelines they had created tonight, appearing precisely when needed. It had done something that none of them — not Sirius, not Dumbledore, not any wizard in twelve years — had managed.
This didn't feel like instinct. This felt like a grudge.
Draco glanced toward Hermione, who was laughing at something Hagrid had said. She had always been fond of that cat.
What was done was done.
"Cats catch mice," he said to Harry.
Harry looked at him sideways. He seemed to consider this for a moment, then turned back to the pumpkins.
"I know," Draco said, without being asked. "I know."
He looked at Hermione again, at the way the morning light caught her hair.
He left it there.
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"Harry, I have to say — I've watched you develop considerably over three years." Draco turned to look at him.
"What do you mean?" Harry asked.
"You've learned to use your wand before resorting to hand-to-hand combat. That Patronus last night was genuinely well cast."
Harry grinned. "High praise. Though I can hear the other thing underneath it."
"I would have been somewhat more impressed," Draco admitted, "if you hadn't also tried to crawl into the Whomping Willow using nothing but your hands, and attempted to go toe-to-toe with a fully transformed werewolf."
"That's rich," Harry said, "coming from the boy who stepped in front of the werewolf to shield someone with his body. Where was your wand then? What happened to all that famous Slytherin caution?"
Draco was quiet for a moment.
"I don't know," he said.
Harry looked at him. He followed Draco's gaze across the garden to where Hermione stood laughing with Hagrid in the morning sun. He looked back at Draco, and said nothing, but a small smile crossed his face.
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Minister Fudge arrived shortly afterwards, as hastily as ever, in his lime-green bowler hat. He examined the body, made a sound of profound distaste, and declared it definitively to be Peter Pettigrew.
"Some large creature from the Forbidden Forest, by the look of those wounds." He straightened up, shaking his head. "Remarkable."
"In that case," Professor Dumbledore said pleasantly, from beside him, "there's presumably no longer any need for the Dementors to remain stationed at the school?"
"Quite right, quite right. I'll have them removed immediately. Lucius Malfoy has been writing to me about those Dementors every other week." Fudge brightened visibly. "And now Pettigrew's matter is resolved — I can finally sleep again." He checked his pocket watch, shook Dumbledore's hand warmly, and was gone.
"I received Hagrid's owl as soon as I arrived in London, so I came straight back." Dumbledore turned to the three of them, his half-moon spectacles catching the morning sun. "It sounds as though you managed rather well without me. Quite a night."
Harry, Hermione, and Draco smiled back at him somewhat guiltily. They had told him everything, or nearly everything; the Time-Turner had somehow remained unmentioned in all versions of the account they had given.
Dumbledore's expression suggested this omission had not gone unnoticed. He chose, with characteristic gentleness, not to raise it.
"Professor Snape indicated he may recommend our expulsion to the Board of Governors," Hermione said carefully.
"Were I in your position," Dumbledore said, "I would not lose sleep over it. You confronted Peter Pettigrew and removed a long-standing threat to the wizarding world. That is a courageous act and deserves recognition." He paused. "You did also violate a considerable number of school rules in the process."
Hermione's expression said she had been expecting this.
"I won't deduct points, given the circumstances. But some form of consequence seems appropriate. How does this sound: you assist Hagrid in the Forbidden Forest for the remainder of the term? The hippogriffs had rather a difficult night and several are injured. He can't manage them all himself."
Draco met Hermione's eyes for a fraction of a second. They both looked away.
"That's completely fair," Draco said.
Harry and Hermione agreed.
"Wonderful!" Dumbledore's eyes brightened. "Now — the Great Hall will be serving breakfast shortly, and I cannot recommend hot pumpkin juice highly enough on a morning like this."
"Will you join us, Professor?" Harry asked.
"Shortly. I must first write to Mr Scamander — he's very good with injured magical creatures — and ask him to come and assess the hippogriffs." He smiled at them. "Go on. You've earned your breakfast."
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As they made their way up to the castle, a different figure was making his way down.
Severus Snape, carrying the untouched bottle of Wolfsbane Potion in his pocket, limped toward his office with the set expression of a man who has spent an entire year shepherding catastrophe and has run out of patience with all of it.
He had watched over Potter all year like a shepherd over a particularly accident-prone sheep, and this was what it had produced: Dementors, a transformed werewolf, a confrontation with Peter Pettigrew, and Snape himself casting a Patronus on the lakeshore until he collapsed. An entirely unreasonable amount of effort for one school year.
Potter was a clueless troublemaker. His father had been a clueless troublemaker. The tradition was clearly unbroken.
Although — he paused in the corridor, pressing his lips together — he had seemed to vaguely see two Patronuses, before losing consciousness. A stag and a doe, both at once, driving the Dementors back from two directions.
That was impossible. Everyone on the lakeshore had been incapacitated at that point.
It must have been the light reflecting off the water. He turned the corner.
He nearly walked past the cellar door.
He stopped.
It was ajar. It was never ajar.
He pushed it open.
He navigated through the protective enchantments at speed, and arrived at the deepest chamber.
Quirrell's body was gone. The dark presence that had been contained within it — the fragment of the Dark Lord's soul — was gone with it.
All that remained was a wand on the floor, and the unconscious figure of Neville Longbottom.
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When Neville woke in the hospital wing and Dumbledore came to speak with him, the story that emerged was the following:
His wand had been vanishing and reappearing near the underground classrooms for weeks. He'd assumed he was simply losing it. On the previous night, following a trail of its disappearances, he'd found a door ajar in the corridor — gone inside — and found someone standing in the dark, holding his wand.
Professor Quirrell.
Neville had tried to get his wand back. Quirrell had used it to blast him into the wall. Neville had hit his head and remembered nothing after that.
"The wand was still there when we found you," Dumbledore said gently, holding it out. "I believe this is yours."
Neville seized it with both hands and checked it over front and back, looking enormously relieved.
The portraits filled in the rest.
Sir Cadogan had spotted Quirrell briefly in the passageway to the cellars on the day of the Gryffindor versus Hufflepuff match. A portrait in the corridor beyond had followed him out of idle curiosity, watching him walk through the empty hallways until he disappeared through an exit to the grounds.
He had chosen his moment carefully.
That afternoon, every professor had been on the Quidditch pitch: the match had gone on and on, the score had reached 149–150 with the Golden Snitch still unfound, and the entire school had been in the stands. There was no one to notice Quirrell moving through the building.
For two years, Dumbledore had kept the truth of Quirrell's condition from the students. They knew only that he had been caught harming unicorns in the Forbidden Forest. No one had known about the Dark Lord's soul, lodged at the back of his head like a lodger who refused to leave.
Now Dumbledore understood what Pettigrew had actually been doing at Hogwarts.
He had never been there to harm Harry. He had come back again and again, quietly, in rat form, not for revenge but for his master. He had explored the castle systematically until he found what he was looking for: Quirrell's confined body, and Voldemort's soul trapped within it.
He had stolen Neville Longbottom's wand — the least-missed wand in all of Hogwarts, belonging to the most forgetful student, in a way that would raise no suspicions whatsoever — brought it to the cellar, and used it to break the enchantments holding Quirrell in place.
Then he had turned back into a rat and gone to ground, leaving his master the wand.
He had only been discovered because Crookshanks had been hunting him.
Otherwise he would have been long gone before anyone thought to look.
Dumbledore sat with this for some time.
Sirius had been right. This was not a scheme Pettigrew could have devised alone. He was capable and cunning in his way, but not this way — not patient manipulation that kept everyone focused on Pettigrew as the threat while Voldemort, operating through him, quietly worked toward his own escape.
Someone had planned this. Someone who saw three clever, capable young people and a notorious escaped prisoner as pieces to move on a board, and who had moved them without any of them noticing.
The question of who that someone was, Dumbledore kept entirely to himself.