"Ron, tell me what it was actually like at the bottom of the lake?" Lavender Brown asked with a grin, leaning forward in her corner of the Gryffindor common room.
"We were brought to Professor McGonagall's office, and Professor Dumbledore put us under a Sleeping Charm. He assured us there was absolutely no danger — that we'd wake up the moment we came out of the water..." Ron said, opting for the factual version rather than the embellished one.
"But I want to hear the other version — the one you told Parvati, about fighting the fully-armed merfolk with your bare hands—" Lavender said hopefully.
"Everyone says I exaggerated," Ron said, touching his nose.
"How could they?" Lavender's eyes went wide with theatrical outrage. "I love that version! It's so much more exciting than a Sleeping Charm!"
"All right," Ron coughed impressively, puffing out his chest. "Obviously, the merfolk had to subdue me before they could tie me up—"
"How terrifying!" Lavender said, sounding absolutely delighted.
"It was tense," Ron allowed, with great dignity. "But I'd hidden my wand in my sleeve. I could have taken the lot of them if I'd wanted to..."
Under normal circumstances, Ginny Weasley would have appeared at this exact moment to mercilessly expose her brother. Today, however, she let him have his glory — she had something far more pressing to attend to. Namely, extracting from Hermione every last detail of how Professor McGonagall had walked in on the young couple in the Transfiguration classroom.
"Merlin's garters, that has to be the single most mortifying thing that has ever happened in this school!" Ginny exclaimed, clutching her hair.
"It was absolutely terrible." Hermione was lying rigidly on the Gryffindor common room sofa, face covered by a Gryffindor-patterned scarf. "We fled like wanted criminals."
"Hermione, what are wanted criminals?" Ginny asked, puzzled.
"Think Aurors and Death Eaters. Aurors being Professor McGonagall."
"Right. Truly terrifying metaphor." Ginny shuddered. "I sincerely hope nothing like that ever happens to me. Hermione, you really need to be more careful. You got lucky this time — but what about next time? Just think what would happen if it were Professor Snape. If he was in a particularly foul mood, he might slip something unpleasant into both your goblets..."
---
As it happened, Severus Snape was indeed not in a good mood. "Foul" was, if anything, an understatement.
He had suffered a string of misfortunes since the start of term.
First, Mad-Eye Moody had buzzed around him like a persistent Flobberworm, apparently convinced that the Dark Lord was hiding somewhere in his office.
Then, he had begun losing potion ingredients.
African Tree Snake skin. His own private collection — the kind you couldn't find in any shop in Diagon Alley, even if you spent a year looking.
A Two-Horned beast horn! Did the miserable thief have any idea what it had cost him to acquire these things? Severus ground his teeth. Potter. It had to be Potter — the boy was as shameless as his father, no matter how many times he'd been reprimanded in Potions, he always had that look of perfect innocence.
It was, therefore, a genuine humiliation to discover later that the incident had nothing whatsoever to do with Potter — and even more galling that Potter had grown to resent him further as a result of the unjust scolding.
Good. Excellent, in fact.
Let Potter hate him, absolutely. The more the better.
That was infinitely preferable to Potter walking into the staffroom wearing that accursed face — the face of James Potter — and smiling at him.
Severus was in the middle of mentally rehearsing this line of thought, attempting to make himself a cup of hot tea, when Minerva McGonagall stormed into the staffroom with an armful of lesson plans and accused him — at considerable volume — of failing to manage his students properly.
"I don't see that anything is particularly wrong with him. His grades are adequate across all subjects," Severus said, rubbing his temples, which were still ringing, and set his scalding cup down with more force than intended. He burned the back of his hand on the splash of tea, ignored it, and continued to hold Minerva's glare with studied neutrality.
Professor Sprout, witnessing all of this from her armchair, pressed her lips together very carefully.
Adequate. Top of his year across every subject, and Severus Snape called it "adequate."
She had never met anyone more spectacularly backhanded in their praise.
Minerva was not remotely satisfied. Her eyes narrowed, and her voice increased in volume. "Academic performance is not the only measure! The moral and ethical development of your students is your responsibility! Severus, I have told you this before—"
These long-standing arguments drifted in through Severus's left ear and, entirely predictably, floated straight out through his right.
"Enough," he said flatly, surfacing from a private train of thought about an unresolved potion problem, approximately fifteen minutes later. "Tell me plainly, Minerva — what exactly is it you want me to do?"
"You are going to speak with Draco Malfoy," Minerva McGonagall announced, in a tone that brooked no argument.
Severus, who had quietly adopted a policy of deliberate ignorance regarding all rumours about Draco and Hermione Granger, found his peaceful afternoon entirely derailed. He would have to sit the boy down and have a serious talk about the sacred sanctity of Transfiguration classrooms.
---
"Professor McGonagall has asked me to speak with you about the appropriate use of a classroom." The Slytherin Head of House repeated this with a suitably grave expression, accompanied by a scrutinising look. "I confess I find myself mildly curious about precisely what manner of sacrilege you committed in there to provoke such a reaction from her."
"I'm sorry, Professor. It won't happen again," Draco said promptly, offering no further detail.
He was privately grateful for one thing — Professor McGonagall had, in the heat of her shock, completely forgotten to deduct house points.
Given the depth of offence on her face at the time, fifty points off Gryffindor and fifty off Slytherin would not have been unreasonable.
By the following morning, every student in Hogwarts would have known exactly why.
He allowed himself a small, private smile at the thought.
"So, tell me," Severus said, narrowing his eyes at the boy who appeared to be suppressing amusement. "What exactly is going on between you and Granger? And don't tell me you're genuinely fond of that insufferable know-it-all who raises her hand before the question is finished." He paused for emphasis. "Since when have the Malfoys developed such peculiar taste?"
He had counselled Draco for years to keep well away from Potter and his associates — away from all their messy, dangerous entanglements.
The boy was unfailingly respectful in his presence, nodded along to everything he said, and then went right back to associating with Potter's circle the moment he left the room.
It was giving Severus a headache.
"I do like her. She's the best person I know," Draco said, with calm finality.
"Your sentimental declarations almost move me to tears," Severus said, with a withering look at his favourite student.
"And your excessive concern for my private life moves me equally," Draco replied, in the same mild tone.
Severus glared at the infuriating young man before him. The infuriating young man looked back, expression open and composed, showing no particular sign of fear, guilt, or arrogance.
For a moment, a deeply unsettling question crossed Severus's mind: had his ability to intimidate people diminished?
"Perhaps I should summon her here myself," he said, a quiet threat in his voice. "Ask her personally what she's done to you. Or perhaps assign her a series of detentions and give her the opportunity to reconsider her choices."
"None of that is necessary. The responsibility is entirely mine — she has nothing to answer for. I pursued her relentlessly. If you want to punish someone, punish me. The one thing you cannot do," Draco said, meeting his headmaster's "disappointed" expression without blinking, "is make me stop caring about her."
He smiled, a hint of something calculated in his expression. "Though, while we're on the subject — I have noticed that several boys from other houses have been paying her a great deal of unwanted attention. If you're ever short of candidates for detention or voluntary brewing work, I'd be happy to provide a list. Plenty of idle individuals who could use the occupation—"
"Don't you dare joke with me like that!" Severus's face had gone entirely dark. "You have no idea what I actually mean, do you?"
He fixed the boy with a look he usually reserved for students who had melted their sixth cauldron of the term.
"A sensible Slytherin does not get entangled with Gryffindors. You should keep your distance, from all of them, whoever they may be—"
"That is advice from the same man who quietly provided me with the gillyweed," Draco said, his gaze settling on a specific point on the potion ingredient shelf. "Is that what you call keeping your distance? That quiet concern for Harry?"
Severus inhaled slowly.
After a pause, he said, in a colder tone, "We are discussing Miss Granger. Do not change the subject. To become emotionally entangled with a Gryffindor is to play with fire — and fire burns. Before choosing any path, consider what it looks like at the end, rather than losing yourself in the scenery along the way."
There was more sincerity in those words than in anything that had come before them.
"I can only point out," Draco said, his gaze moving deliberately to his headmaster's face, "that I am not the first Slytherin boy to fall for a Gryffindor girl. Not every path ends well. Not every dreaming Slytherin gets the ending he deserves. I know that. I'm prepared for it. But I hope — when I walk this path — I might find some recognition from my own house, rather than contempt."
"Recognition is earned, not given," Severus said, looking away.
"Which is why I'm working for it," Draco said quietly.
"Your verbal sparring is quite useless!" Severus said, with the air of someone who finds naivety genuinely baffling. "What makes you think I would support you in this? It's more absurd than sending a wizard against an Acromantula with his bare hands. Do you expect me to summon Lucius Malfoy to my office and blow my entire ingredient stores in the process?" He gave a short, humourless laugh at his own ridiculous hypothetical.
He pulled open his desk drawer, removed a bundle of letters, and dropped them onto the desk with a sharp thud. Several slid off the edge and drifted to the floor. "Even if nothing happened at school, your parents have been writing to me regularly, asking after your progress."
"Have they?" Draco bent to retrieve the crisp white envelopes and looked at them with a slight smile.
"I have had to spend considerable portions of my time responding to them!" Severus's expression was taut with impatience. "Your father asks cautious questions about your academic standing. Your mother frets about your health. And now your father has begun enquiring about your social circle — specifically whether you've been cultivating any useful connections!"
"Can you imagine his reaction when he learns what you've actually been doing lately? How long do you expect me to manage this on your behalf?" he asked coldly.
"Everyone speaks of my father," Draco said, setting the letters down as the smile faded from his face. "No one ever asks what I want. As though the only valid life for me is the one he's already designed." His voice was quiet. "But is his design necessarily right?"
"Draco, what you're saying is deeply disrespectful—your parents have given you every advantage, a distinguished name, and extraordinary prospects. Is the honour of the Malfoy family, the regard of your peers, and your entire future truly worth so little to you?"
Draco moved his lips, looked at him, and said nothing.
"These are things others spend their whole lives pursuing without ever obtaining them — handed to you without effort. And you're prepared to throw them away? Because a girl turned your head?" The Slytherin Head of House, who had seen far more of life than any boy should have to, continued with cold precision, his expression complex. "Utterly foolish. Naive. Shallow. I have very little reason to support this."
Draco let out a slow breath.
He understood what Professor Snape meant.
In his previous life, he had held those very same beliefs — that the Malfoy name was the highest purpose, that his parents' expectations were the defining weight on which everything else must be measured.
He had believed, without doubt, that they loved him and wanted only the best for him, and that he must not fail them.
As it turned out, the path his father had charted was entirely wrong. The pure-blood ideology the Malfoys had clung to so fiercely had led to nothing but ruin and shame.
He did not want to repeat those mistakes.
But he could not explain any of this to Professor Snape without revealing far too much. Some secrets were better left buried. Since his rebirth, Draco had been careful — he did not want to make a single careless move.
He took a breath and decided to try a different approach — one that Professor Snape might actually understand.
"You want a reason to support me. I think — no one in Slytherin understands what I feel better than you do." Draco looked directly into those dark eyes, where something — a flicker of pain, carefully suppressed — moved like a shadow beneath still water. He spoke plainly, with more boldness than usual, the way Hermione would. "Is this the first time a Slytherin has fallen in love with a Gryffindor?"
"What exactly are you saying? What do you think you know?" Snape's expression didn't change, but something shifted underneath it.
"Nothing certain. Only this — in your very first Potions lesson, you asked Harry: 'What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?'" Draco's voice was soft and steady, each word falling precisely, like spring rain on a hibernating creature. "Not long ago, I was reading a book — the Victorian Dictionary of Flower Language. It says asphodel is not a daffodil but a type of lily that resembles one. Its flower meaning is 'my regret follows you to the grave.' As for wormwood — it means absence, and bitter sorrow."
He had Pansy to thank for that, in an indirect way. Her recommendation of the Dictionary had turned out to be unexpectedly illuminating.
While reading it, he thought he had finally understood the coded meaning in Professor Snape's long-ago question — and caught a trace of the regret that still lived in him, all these years later.
Professor Snape's face moved, just slightly.
"What exactly are you implying?" he asked, his voice quiet as a snake's tongue.
"It isn't an implication. It's an observation," Draco said steadily.
"That was a coincidence! Nothing more than coincidence!" An edge had crept into his voice. "It proves absolutely nothing!"
"A coincidence? A heartbreaking coincidence?" Draco pressed, with a quiet audacity that surprised even himself. "Can you honestly say you feel no regret whatsoever?"
"You are being extraordinarily impertinent, Draco Malfoy!" Severus fixed him with a glare of genuine fury, his dark eyes blazing. "Ten days of detention — if you say another word about this!"
Draco closed his mouth.
After a long silence, he looked into those dark, shifting eyes — grief and anger both etched into them — and softened his tone. "Professor, if I've offended you, I apologise. I have no desire to pry into your past. I only want to understand my own present. Nothing more."
Severus stared at him for a long moment with a gaze that would have driven most students to stammer an immediate retreat. Draco met it, steadily, suppressing his nervousness, until the Slytherin Head of House felt, quite suddenly, something give way inside him.
This was a thoroughly difficult boy.
He had tried sharp words and bleak realities to frighten him off, and the boy had remained unmoved.
He looked at the student before him — the fervour and fragile hope in his eyes — and felt something uncomfortably familiar stir in his chest. He had seen that same expression once, years ago, in his own reflection.
How alike they were.
A Slytherin boy, exerting every ounce of his strength for a Muggle-born Gryffindor girl — chasing every slim hope, seizing every remotely plausible thread, as desperate and as foolish as a moth circling a candle.
In those days, Severus's blood had not yet run cold.
Merlin.
History, it seemed, could not resist repeating itself. And yet another Slytherin's love would be marked by suffering.
Severus looked at the stubborn boy and felt, unexpectedly, that he had lost the will to mock him — because every sharp word began to sound like a mockery of himself.
"You were unwise," he said at last, from nowhere. "You shouldn't have jumped into the Black Lake. You certainly shouldn't have laid your weakness bare in front of the entire school."
"I know," Draco said. "But I couldn't leave her there."
He was genuinely surprised by the words. Was this the Slytherin Serpent King offering him unsolicited advice on love? The suggestion was so thoroughly out of character that he wasn't entirely sure he'd heard it correctly.
Not that Draco was dismissive of him. It was simply that — well — was the counsel of a confirmed and perpetually solitary middle-aged man on matters of the heart truly sound?
"You've spent too much time around those Gryffindors," Severus said, his voice sharpening. "You're becoming reckless. Always charging in, always making yourself a target."
"Some risks are worth taking. The risk of losing her is the one I refuse to accept," Draco said. "I can't bear the consequences of having not jumped."
"You don't understand — it was Dumbledore himself who arranged the choice of Warrior's Treasure. Do you realise what that means?" Severus frowned, his expression suddenly more taut. "He is a master at moving people. He has been — he has had his eye on you for some time."
His slightly worn face showed more unease than Draco had ever seen there. "He will find your weakness and put you to work, and you will do it willingly. He has always operated this way."
"That sounds remarkably like an accusation that the Headmaster of Hogwarts uses people's attachments against them," Draco said, keeping his tone measured, though something cold had settled in his chest.
"It was never only people's attachments. It was love. He uses this intangible thing — love — to move anyone he believes can be moved." The urgency in Professor Snape's voice was unmistakable.
In that moment, Draco caught it clearly — the vulnerability in his face when he said those words.
And in that same moment, Draco understood something he had never quite pieced together before: that Professor Snape's quiet, covert protection of Harry was not simply a matter of obligation. It was the product of something much more painful — some private agreement, made in the name of love.
A terrible kind of love.
But it seemed there was no escaping it. He was already too far in.
He had fallen in love with Hermione.
This was the first time Draco had named it so plainly — not "like," but "love" — and the realisation arrived with rather uncomfortable timing, in the middle of a conversation about being manipulated by love with Severus Snape, the most solitary man at Hogwarts.
"If what you feel is only a passing fancy, I have nothing to say," Severus said, composing himself and reassuming the expressionless mask of the Slytherin Head of House. "But if you are serious, this path will not be smooth or pleasant. It will be difficult, and it will resist you at every turn. The only promise I can offer you is this — I have no interest in being an obstacle in your way. That is not enough. It is far from enough. You must be vigilant. Do not allow yourself to be manipulated, do not allow yourself to be used, and do not allow yourself to be broken by the opposition around you."
"Thank you," Draco said. "I'll be careful." He bowed respectfully to Professor Snape and withdrew from the office.
---
Standing on the other side of the closed door, the boy thought that the warning about Dumbledore was the most genuine thing Professor Snape had offered — the closest to honesty that perpetually guarded man was capable of. He had spoken from experience, trying to spare Draco from something he himself had not been spared.
The one comfort Draco had was this: Hermione loved him. Not someone else. Him.
Because if she were ever to love someone else — Merlin — he might become just as twisted and desperate as Professor Snape.
He didn't want to think about it. But the thought arrived anyway, fully formed and ruthless.
If she fell in love with someone else, and that man was taken from her, and only a crying, bewildered child was left behind, looking up at him with her eyes but another man's face —
What would Severus Snape's feelings have been when he first looked at Harry?
Draco could begin to imagine it. A terrible tangle of grief, love, resentment, hatred. That child had his enemy's face, but her eyes.
He might have wanted to look at those eyes. He might have wanted to see that curious, open expression — the one that looked so much like hers.
And when those eyes weren't enough — when the rest of the face kept intruding — he would have despised himself for his own bitterness, mocked the child, pushed him away, wanting to erase the face he couldn't bear to see. Hating himself for it all the while.
Merlin, Draco thought. He was a genuinely wicked person for even imagining it.
He had, for just a moment, understood how a person could lash out at an innocent child — not out of cruelty, but out of unbearable pain.
So Professor Snape's harshness seemed, perhaps, more comprehensible than before.
When suffering past a certain point, you want the source of your suffering to suffer with you. It is not noble. It is not rational. It is not gentlemanly. It is simply human.
Draco had done something similar, in his previous life, to Hermione. And he had deserved every bit of her hatred for it.
He was still working through all of this when his thoughts shifted to a different question — one that had never fully left him:
What had turned Professor Snape so bitterly against Dumbledore?
He had never forgotten what he had witnessed in the Astronomy Tower, all those years ago. The scene was still sharp in his memory, and it disturbed him every time he turned it over.
Dumbledore had even pleaded with Snape at the end — and the latter had looked at his benefactor, the man who had trusted him to the last, with an expression of pure revulsion before casting the killing curse.
Draco did not believe Snape was a loyal Death Eater at heart. That reasoning had dissolved entirely the moment he understood who Lily Evans had been, and what Snape's Patronus was.
The Dark Lord had killed the person Snape loved. He would have hated the Dark Lord with every part of himself.
So whatever had driven him to kill Dumbledore — it had to have been something else. Some unbearable truth revealed, or some unforgivable deception uncovered.
What could Dumbledore possibly have deceived Snape about, badly enough to break him?
Snape had almost no personal ambitions beyond his work. He lived an ascetic life at Hogwarts, his only real pleasures being the sharpness of his own wit in the classroom and his long-standing desire for the Defence Against the Dark Arts post.
None of those trivial things could account for the fury Draco had seen on his face.
Perhaps it had something to do with Harry — with something Dumbledore was planning to do, or allow, that Snape could not stomach.
But Dumbledore had always placed Harry at the absolute centre of everything. He would never deliberately harm the boy he regarded as his greatest hope for defeating the Dark Lord.
Unless Harry carried a secret so powerful that it necessitated some sacrifice from Harry himself—
No. That was absurd. In his previous life, Harry had been entirely healthy and alive until the very end. He hadn't seemed to carry any hidden cost.
Draco shook his head. He was probably overthinking it.
And yet.
The question wouldn't entirely leave him.
One thing, however, he was nearly certain of: Professor Snape's shift in attitude toward Dumbledore was the turning point. The missing piece in the whole puzzle. Without understanding that, too many other things could not be explained.
And today, for the first time, Professor Snape had let something slip — a faint, involuntary glimpse of his dissatisfaction with Dumbledore. He had concealed it carefully before now; most people simply assumed Snape felt gratitude toward Dumbledore for giving him a second chance.
But Draco preferred this version — the one with cracks in it. It felt more real.
He was deeply, personally furious with Dumbledore himself, in any case.
No Slytherin appreciated being manoeuvred. And Dumbledore's decision to place Hermione as Krum's Treasure had been a direct blow to the one person Draco would never willingly let be hurt.