Chapter Text
The London suburbs had long since vanished out the window of their compartment on the Hogwarts Express when the reality of Draco’s forced return finally hit him. He had been numb since the letter arrived from the Wizengamot Probationary Committee, informing him he would be attending a required eighth year at Hogwarts alongside the students who had elected to return. At least some people still had choices.
By some miracle, three of those individuals were his closest friends. Pansy Parkinson, Blaise Zabini, and Theodore Nott had all submitted their forms to return for the term after hearing the news, and he was eternally grateful for their support in subjecting themselves to an extra unnecessary year of education.
It wasn’t as if their last year at Hogwarts together had been easy. Between the war raging outside the walls and the student rebellion against the Carrows inside the school, it had been impossible to focus on learning anything. Draco’s primary concern had been keeping his head down and staying out of sight of the Carrows to avoid being pulled into doing their dirty work.
Draco’s refusal to eagerly volunteer fully severed his alliance with Crabbe and Goyle after years of them following him around waiting for orders on who to bully. To his disgust, they seemed to enjoy working under the Carrow's cruel regime, boasting about punishing their fellow students with unforgivables. Crabbe may have perished in the Room of Requirement during the final battle, but Goyle hadn’t escaped unscathed when the dust settled. After the Battle of Hogwarts, Goyle was charged for his torture of other students and sentenced to seven years in Azkaban, a punishment Draco agreed with wholeheartedly.
If it hadn’t been for the testimony of Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, Draco would have likely suffered a similar fate. He understood why Potter would have testified at his mother's trial, and even vaguely suspected that Potter’s guilt at almost killing him in a bathroom duel during his sixth year contributed to his choice to speak in favour of Draco, but what he could not understand was how Hermione Granger could stand at that podium and defend him to the world.
Draco Malfoy had never been kind to Hermione Granger. There had never even been a polite word exchanged between the two, a predicament that was entirely his fault after years of bullying her over her blood status. It seemed silly that he had ever considered her inferior, recalling now how she excelled at everything, remaining one step ahead of him in all their courses while managing to keep Potter alive throughout his perilous adventures. Perhaps he could understand her willingness to help him if it were not for the fact that his own aunt tortured her in his childhood home while he stood by.
Granger unknowingly visited him in his dreams every night since the day he saw her in the courtroom. His dreams covered the entirety of the time he had known her, from their first interaction on the train to the day she testified at his trial, but the nightmares from the incident at the Manor were always the hardest to cope with.
There would always come a point each night when he would realise he was trapped in a dream, but found he was still unable to stop his aunt from hurting her, his body frozen in place while she screamed on the floor. Then, in the final moment of the nightmare, she would look over at him. There was never any hatred in her eyes, just pure determination covering her features. She never yielded, never gave in to her tormentors, despite his aunt’s best efforts to break her. But witnessing it over and over had broken him. When the dream finally came to an end, he would wake in a cold sweat, feeling those brown eyes still on him in the darkness of his room.
Did she have nightmares as well? Was he there watching her in the dreams that haunted her each night? It never made any sense why she would call for mercy for him when she had never received his.
Nevertheless, the words of Saint Potter and the Golden Girl were enough to save him from Azkaban. Still, he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t have preferred the prison over returning to a place he most certainly wouldn’t be welcomed.
He and his friends had already been given enough scathing looks on the platform before claiming sanctuary in a private compartment. They had pulled the blinds down immediately upon entering, and so far, everyone had avoided them. Not even the trolley witch stopped to offer them anything from her cart.
“Journey has to be halfway over!” Theo said cheerfully, attempting to diffuse the tension that engulfed the space.
“I think you mean we still have halfway left to go,” Blaise quipped, causing Pansy to roll her eyes from where she was filling her nails across from him.
“Always a pessimist,” Theo tutted. “At least this year, none of us have to worry about committing assassinations or avoiding being noticed by bloodthirsty professors! We get to be normal teenagers for once.”
“I don’t think we could ever be considered normal,” Pansy replied, still not looking up.
“Well, we are all incredibly attractive, smart, and rich, so I suppose you are right. What difficult lives we lead.” Theo's sarcasm dripped off every syllable.
Despite the ministry seizing a considerable portion of each of their fortunes in the name of reparations, they were all still amongst the richest witches and wizards in all of Europe. Each of them had suddenly become the head of their household upon their parents' death or incarceration.
Draco and Pansy’s fathers were serving out their multiple life sentences in Azkaban, while Theo’s father died during the Battle of Hogwarts. Blaise’s mother had fled without him during the war, remarrying a wizard in Spain. She had yet to contact him in the aftermath, not that the wizard was inclined to write his mother back after her abandonment.
“Salazar, Theo!” Draco gruffed, speaking for the first time in hours. “Don’t sugarcoat it on our behalf.”
“Apologies for offending your delicate sensibilities, Draco darling,” Theo mocked him. “Shall I continue to list our excellent qualities that contribute to the horribleness of our lives?”
“I would prefer you didn’t,” he huffed. “I think I heard enough of your voice over the summer.”
“You wound me!” His dramatics caused them all to chuckle. “What would Narcissa say?”
Rather than spend their summer alone, they had all congregated at Malfoy Manor once Draco had been placed under house arrest to wait until the term began. His mother also found herself unable to leave the Manor for a year on the terms of her own probation, but she had chosen to see it as an opportunity to begin a top-to-bottom remodel of the estate, starting with the Drawing Room. Much of the work was still in progress when they departed this morning, but his mother promised it would be complete when they returned for Christmas.
The terms of his and his mother’s probation limited their contact while he was at the school. They could send weekly letters, but they would be subject to the review of the Headmistress before being sent or received. It had been less than a few hours apart, and he already missed her terribly. He knew she would keep herself busy with the renovations, but she would likely be lonely with no one but her house elf for company. Yet another reason he had been dreading his return to the school.
As if his negative thoughts had summoned his worst-case scenario, the door to the train compartment opened, revealing another one of those dreaded reasons. Ronald Weasley sneered from the doorway, his eyes filled with a simmering rage when they landed on him sitting by the window. Behind him, he was flanked by Seamus Finnigan and Michael Corner.
“Can we help you?” Theo asked, pulling the wizard's attention. “Not lost are you, Weasley?”
“Guess it is true then,” the Weasel snapped, ignoring Theo entirely. “They really let your lot back into Hogwarts.”
Draco still said nothing, surprised to see Weasley wasn’t accompanied by Potter and Granger. It seemed the wizard had grown tired of following the pair and decided to recruit his own minions to make him feel powerful. He almost wanted to laugh at the irony of the memory from his first year when he had sought out Potter in a similar fashion.
“We were invited to enrol, just like everyone else,” Pansy stated, looking up to glare at the wizard.
“Maybe you were, pug-face, but he wasn’t,” Weasley pointed a meaty finger at Draco’s head. “Should have sent him to Azkaban like his father, not the school. No daddy to go crying to now, Malfoy.”
Finnigan and Corner chuckled at Weasley’s lame attempt to bring him down. He likely thought Draco would take the bait of insulting his father, but his words paled in comparison to his own thoughts on the man who had sold him to Voldemort at sixteen. Draco had once considered Lucius his role model, wanting to grow up to be just like him, but now the idea of anyone comparing him to his father had bile rising in his throat.
“Don’t call her that!” Theo cut in to come to Pansy’s defence, his voice lacking any of the humour he had shown in the last few minutes.
“Or what, Nott?” Weasley challenged, looking smug. “You spent years being horrible. I think you all deserve a taste for yourselves. If you think you can come back and not have to pay for what you did, you are in for a rude awakening.”
Draco already expected to be miserable this year, so what did it matter if the ginger idiot tried to make his life harder? He was already in hell, so what was one more red-headed demon?
“We don’t want any trouble, Weasley,” Blaise said, attempting to diffuse the situation, though a fight seemed all but inevitable at this point.
“Well, that is just a shame because we do,” Finnigan snarled from over Weasley’s shoulder.
The other two wizards nodded along, confirming Draco's suspicions. The snakes exchanged a glance, all their eyes flashing to Draco. The probationary board had been very clear with him that any act of violence against another student would have him expelled and spending the remainder of his sentence in a cold cell in Azkaban. A fact that Weasley seemed well aware of and was using to his advantage.
The tension in the compartment was palpable as everyone waited for the first blow, but it never came. Instead, a new voice cut through the space.
“What is going on here?” The tone was unmistakably familiar.
Draco caught a flash of brown curls before they were obstructed by the imbeciles blocking her. The Weasel’s shoulders stiffened, Draco catching a flash of fear in Finnigan and Corner’s eyes when they turned. Weasley kept his focus on Draco but addressed the newcomer.
“Nothing, Hermione.” His voice was cold, holding none of the affection he expected to hear after seven years of friendship between the pair.
Finnigan and Corner backed off from the entrance, allowing Granger to come into his view. Her eyes skimmed over the defensive stance of the compartment’s occupants before settling back on Weasley.
“It doesn’t look like nothing,” she said, crossing her arms.
The gesture brought Draco’s attention away from her face to the new shining Head Girl badge resting on her crisp school robes. That was expected. Hermione Granger was the model Hogwarts student. She certainly was among the biggest swots to ever take up residence in the library. Draco wondered who McGonagall had selected as Head Boy. It certainly wasn’t any of the idiots in front of him. He wouldn’t be surprised to learn it was Potter despite not being a prefect.
“Malfoy and his goons started it!” Weasley lied through his bared teeth.
Before the snakes could defend themselves, Granger scoffed in disbelief.
“Yes, they look like they went out of their way to summon you from your own compartment on the other end of the train,” she replied sarcastically. “We’ll be arriving in less than an hour. You should head back to change into your school robes.”
Weasley didn’t seem to appreciate the order, but something about her demeanour seemed to break through his thick skull.
“Fine,” he begrudgingly conceded, shooting a final glare at Draco before departing.
They all watched them go, but Draco was watching Granger. Her eyes were fixed on the back of Weasley’s head, a small frown darkening her features. He hadn’t been able to give her much more than a sideways glance during his trial, but there was a strange relief in seeing her now. Compared to his nightmares, she appeared healthier, no longer starved from months on the run. She still showed signs of tiredness, unable to hide the dark circles indicating a lack of sleep, but this version of her was a nice contrast to the one he had seen in his dreams each night over the summer.
She stood frozen in place until the door between the train cars finally clicked closed. When she turned back, Granger’s entire body language transformed, her shoulders relaxed, and the frown turned up into a soft smile.
“Sorry about him,” she apologised sheepishly. “I told him to leave you alone, but clearly, he decided to ignore me.”
Draco found himself bewitched by the gentle expression. He had seen her offer it to others throughout the years, but never once had it been directed at him. He couldn’t look away, drawn into her warm brown eyes.
“Erm… thanks,” Theo finally said after a long pause. “Did you have a good summer, Granger?”
“Oh…” The question seemed to take her by surprise as she broke eye contact with him. “It was… busy, I suppose. Happy to be headed back for something that feels a bit more normal after… well, everything.”
Draco didn’t fail to notice a tinge of hurt in Granger’s voice as she attempted to describe her summer. She had been in almost every issue of the Daily Prophet the last few months, quoted and photographed frequently working on the rebuilding effort, except for a few weeks in July when she vanished from the public eye. The only person mentioned more than her might have been Potter.
When none of them responded, she cleared her throat, continuing on. “Anyway, if Ronald or anyone else bothers you again, let Neville or me know. He is Head Boy.”
“Longbottom is Head Boy?” Pansy asked with a sense of disbelief.
Draco couldn’t believe it either. Why didn’t McGonagall name Potter Head Boy? He was fairly certain the Boy Wonder was back at Hogwarts this year, and it was common knowledge the Headmistress had a fondness for him.
“Yes,” Granger nodded in confirmation, “and we want everyone to feel safe this year, so find us if anyone tries to give you trouble.”
He didn’t miss her emphasis on everyone, and while a part of him thought her crazy for including him with the rest of the students, he couldn’t deny the sincerity in her tone.
“Alright, we will,” Pansy said, mirroring Granger’s friendly tone.
The witch flashed them a final smile before shutting their compartment door behind her. Once again, the friends fell into silence, lost for words on how to describe the event.
Draco wasn’t sure how to feel about Granger coming to their defence. Guilt bubbled up in his stomach. He didn’t deserve her kindness, and yet she had given it anyway. It left him feeling raw. He fought the urge to stand up, track her down, and fall to his knees to beg for her forgiveness over the role he played in her suffering. How could he allow something so horrible to happen to someone so kind? Draco vowed to apologise to her when they arrived at Hogwarts, not wanting to wait any longer to do what he should have done months ago.
“That was…” Blaise began.
“Strange,” Theo responded.
“Weird,” Pansy declared, returning to her nails with a pensive expression.
Different. Draco thought. Perhaps this year wouldn’t be as awful as he originally anticipated.