Vita Labyrinthae Similis In Quo Umbrae Vagamus

CHAPTER 15

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

(Shakespeare)

There was always a sense of hushed importance in the air on test days. Granted, the exams were staggered over a period of four days, but it still seemed to most of the Hogwarts population that the first day was always the worst.

Draco and Hermione didn't see each other until that evening. All day the castle had rung with explosions, melodies and yells as, two floors below, McGonagall's Transfiguration classes had attempted to turn a number of things into other things, with varying levels of success.

"God, I'm glad that's over," said Draco out of the evening shadows beside Hermione's bed. She jumped. "What did you think of that foul Herbology essay?"

"It was pretty rough," agreed Hermione, her eyes adjusting. He was wearing the Slytherin dressing gown again, and leaning elegantly against the wall. "What did you say about the reproductive cycle of the Venomous Tentacula in latitudes exceeding 35?"

"Can't remember," said Draco mildly, "but I pulled it directly out of my arse. I think I said something like the periods of reproductive maturity are retarded by a factor of one-fifth the decrease in the length of growing seasons. Or something."

"Sounds good to me," she said. He looked at her, held out a hand.

"Shall we repair to my room? It's a lot nicer than the ward."

She noticed, as they walked back to his chamber, that he was a lot steadier on his feet than he had been, and she thought in the half-light that he had a little more colour. "How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Exhausted," Draco sighed, collapsing back on his bed, languidly. "But glad it's a quarter over. We've only got Potions, Care of Magical Creatures, Ancient Runes, Magical Lit, and Charms left. I'm glad Transfiguration and DaDA are out of the way."

"Me too," said Hermione decidedly. "But...Draco....I think we're going to make it. All that studying must've paid off."

"This from Granger the Brain," he said lightly. "Of course we're going to make it. You never actually thought we'd fail anything, did you?"

She smacked him with a pillow. "Of course not. You were the one suggesting that we study together."

"Oh yes, that's right," said Draco thoughtfully. "How clever of me." He produced the cigarette case from the nightstand, brushing off the residue of the cloaking spell that had hidden it from Madame Pomfrey, and offered it to Hermione. She shook her head.

"I don't smoke," she said. He raised an eyebrow, but merely selected a cigarette and lit it with his wand. He had progressed now to the point at which he could smoke his own cigarettes, all by himself. He found himself rather regretting this.

"Good for you," he said, smoke wreathing around him like an Eastern oracle. "Filthy habit."

She pulled herself up onto the bed beside him, hugged her knees. The scent of his cigarette brought back recent memories with rather more force than she expected. He slid an arm around her shoulders, and she leaned her head against his neck. It was utterly comforting just to lie there with him, and think of nothing. Now, some of the adrenaline and urgency that had got her through the day's tests were leaching from her bloodstream, and she realized just how tired she really was. She was aware, as was he, that this little hospital-wing idyll would have to end soon, and both of them would have to return to their respective dormitories and be unable to visit one another without incurring a great deal of publicity. She rather wanted to savor this closeness while she could.

"Draco?"

"Mmmm?"

"What are we going to do over Christmas break? I've already sent off a letter telling my parents I'm staying here. Are you..." She let the sentence hang. He laughed a little.

"Where would I go, Hermione? Remember, my enormous manor house has been occupied by the Ministry, and I've no relatives in Britain. Besides," and he raised a limp hand and let it drop, "I'm still convalescing."

"Right," she said comfortably. "That's settled then."

"What is?"

"You and I are staying right here at Hogwarts," she informed him, "and doing exactly what we want to do. It's going to be a long time before we get another opportunity to be alone together without anybody making sarky comments. The teachers will leave us alone, I think. There's an entire castle to explore and the Forbidden Woods to get lost in and the kitchen to raid and so on, and I honestly think, Draco, that you and I are due some fun."

He laughed softly into her hair. "Hermione Granger, you are just full of surprises."

"You think?"

"I'll wait and see."

Some time later, sitting by the window and working on Charms IDs, Hermione looked up as someone knocked on the door. "Come in," said Draco shortly.

Professor Snape swirled into the room and closed the door behind him. Hermione thought vaguely that he looked better; less exhausted and wrung-out than he had last time she'd seen him. He was carrying a box.

"Good evening, Draco, Miss Granger," he said quietly. "Draco, the Ministry's finished with some of your things. They wanted us to return this to you." He held out the box. Puzzled, Draco took it, opened the lid. His eyes widened.

"Naga!" he cried, happily. The python rose fluidly out of her box, weaving from side to side, her little amber eyes fixed on Draco's. With ineffable dignity, she leaned forward, tongue flickering, and sniffed him. Then, having apparently decided he was a worthy specimen, she coiled herself neatly around his neck and laid her head on his shoulder.

Both Snape and Hermione were staring at him. "You...recognize her?" Snape asked.

"Of course I do," Draco told them, stroking Naga's head with a forefinger. "I remember when we got her. She was about eleven inches long. Lucius set her up in a silver cage over the mantelpiece and pointed her out to his Death Eater buddies as a mark of rank. Mother wouldn't go anywhere near her. I used to sneak down to the parlour and let her out at night so she could hunt." His face had taken on a surprisingly soft expression when he looked at the snake. "She and I spent a lot of time together. Lucius didn't like it, but there wasn't much he could do. When she coils herself around someone, she doesn't come off until she wants to."

Snape sighed ruefully. "I know. She was doing her best imitation of a scarf on me, too."

Draco looked up. "I'm surprised she's still alive," he said. "Lucius never liked her. Neither of my parents were big on snakes, which is sort of ironic, given who they followed. Naga was always nice to me. Weren't you?" he asked the snake, who flickered her tongue at him. "What else did they find when they stormed the castle?"

"They didn't say. Apparently those items of the Malfoy estate that the Ministry is done with are being shipped to Hogwarts. They were rather anxious to get Naga off their hands, I think." He smiled tightly. "Well, I shall leave you to your studies. Good luck on the rest of the tests."

After he had gone, Hermione turned to Draco, astonishment wide in her eyes. "I didn't know you had a snake," she said.

"Neither did I," he sighed. "I thought they'd have killed her. She's one of Nagini's daughters."

Hermione recoiled. "You mean Voldemort's snake?"

"The same. Only she hasn't had the enhancements done on her that Nagini had. She's just a python. No poisonous fangs, no bloodthirst. Voldemort gave her to Lucius as a sort of pat on the head after he'd managed a particularly bloody incident involving...sod it...Longbottom, I think. Frank Longbottom."

Hermione shook her head sadly. "Neville's dad."

"Yeah." Draco looked away. She nudged him, and he moved over to make space for her on the bed.

"Don't feel guilty for your father's crimes," she said simply. "You're not him."

"Damn right I'm not," said Draco, regaining his composure. "Naga likes me. She hated Lucius."

The week ground by on iron cogwheels. Finally, at long last, everybody's exams were over, and there was one more week before break in which the entire population of Hogwarts acted like complete morons and enjoyed their sweet freedom before exam results were posted. From the hospital wing windows, Hermione and Draco watched most of the rest of the school disporting themselves in the snowfields of the castle grounds, engaging in epic snowbattles and skating on the mostly-frozen surface of the lake. The giant squid had left itself an area of open water in which to surface and watch, and the children had been assured by Hagrid that there was next to no probability of their getting sucked under the ice by giant tentacles, so the ice rink was a popular attraction. The week went by much faster than exams had.

On Friday, Harry came to see Hermione.

"My God," he said involuntarily, almost dropping the box of Chocolate Frogs he had brought her. "Hermione?"

She looked up from the illustrated copy of Medical Magic for Beginners that sprawled open on the counterpane. "Harry! How are you?"

"I should ask you that," he said a little breathlessly, "but you look fantastic. Wow. Last time I saw you, you were doing a credible impression of a refugee. Damn."

He fell into the chair beside her bed. "What happened? I mean, clearly you got better, but this is kind of a sudden turnaround."

Hermione looked at him seriously. He tried to ignore the tumbled fall of her chocolate hair, the brilliance of her cinnamon eyes, the flush in her cheeks. "Harry, I don't know if I should tell you this," she said. "I don't know how much of it is mine to tell."

"Sod it," he muttered. "That's just what Serenskaya said when I asked her."

"You asked Professor Serenskaya about me?" Hermione's eyes narrowed.

"Well...." he said. "Look, I was worried. First we find Malfoy dying in the dungeons, then you disappear at the same time he does, and every time I see you you look thinner and thinner and more worried, and then I find out about this whole spell thing that gave you strange powers, and then Malfoy does something so completely out of character that I am still wondering if he's a Polyjuice replacement...." He trailed off. "Yeah. Worried."

"Oh, Harry," said his friend, and he found that her voice was doing odd things to his stomach. "You needn't have worried. I'm fine. Draco's also fine, though he's still weak. Look...are you going to be here over break?"

"Yeah," he said. "Otherwise it's Christmas with the Dursleys."

Both of them shuddered. "Okay," said Hermione. "Come to me over the break. It'll be easier to tell you, and better, if the rest of the school isn't around to start rumors and make you feel like a traitor for listening to me. It's mostly Draco's story, and you'll have to ask him. I think he'll tell you. I really think he will."

"You're calling him Draco," said Harry, feeling rather lost. "Not Malfoy."

"I know," said Hermione, dropping her gaze to the book. "I tend to think of his father as Malfoy, you know, and the Malfoy we knew for five years is...dead, Harry, along with his father. The boy I've gotten to know isn't that Malfoy. He's Draco. There's a difference."

Harry looked at her miserably. "Do you..."

There was silence between them. Hermione felt rather as if somebody had squashed her.

"Yes," she said. "I think I do. I'm sorry, Harry. I didn't know, until all this happened. I doubt I even felt this way until after we found him." That was a lie, but he didn't need to know that. "I'm really sorry."

More silence. Then Harry did something that would forever endear him to Hermione, no matter what infuriating acts he would later be responsible for. He looked her straight in the eyes, and said "I'm happy for you."

She looked at him for a moment, those enormous cinnamon-coloured eyes fixed on his emerald ones, searching, and then threw her arms around him and hugged him so tightly he could feel his ribs creaking. "Thank you, Harry," she murmured in his ear. "Thank you ever so much."

"And," Harry gasped, squeezing her back, "if he ever, ever, ever hurts you in any way I am going to rip his entrails out and beat him to death with them. You can tell him that from me."

"You could tell me yourself," said Draco, who had been leaning on the end of the bed. Hermione jumped, and released Harry. "Don't worry," he added. "I've only been here a minute or so. Nice imagery, Potter."

Harry straightened up and looked his old enemy in the eyes. Silver-grey met bright green for a long moment, and neither of them backed down. "No point putting this off any longer. I think you'd both better come to my room," Draco said mildly. "It looks like we're going to need a long private discussion, doesn't it?"

Harry helped Hermione up and followed her and Draco to a private room on the other side of the ward. His emotions were in such a turmoil that he barely felt surprised at being invited in his enemy's room, sitting on his enemy's bed. All three of them had chosen the bed over the rather cold and angular chairs. Harry noticed vaguely that Draco had a plastic snake wrapped around one of the bedposts. Cute, he thought.

"Okay," said Draco simply. "Where should we start?"

Harry looked down at his clasped hands. "How about you start with what was really going on that night in the dungeon bathroom? My scar was feeling weird the whole time we were there. It was Dark, wasn't it?"

Draco sighed, leaning back against the pillows. "Very well," he said. He told Harry the whole story, all the bits of it, about how he'd found Crabbe's Pensieve and seen his father's antics, and how he'd been cursed, and how Snape, Serenskaya and Hermione had saved him. "Then there's a sort of blank," he said, staring up at the ceiling. "All I remember is wishing it would all go away. Wishing it would end, so I could be at peace. Then Dumbledore and Snape and Serenskaya came to me, and some of the things they said made me so angry, so horribly miserable and angry, that when Madame Pomfrey had gone to bed I snuck into her office and found myself a scalpel. I was done with one wrist and starting on the other when Hermione found me." He removed his gaze from the ceiling and pointed it at Harry. "She stopped me."

Hermione's hand was firmly grasped in Draco's. "That was when I first started to become aware of the new abilities I had," she said to her knees.

Harry looked at them, hardly able to take it in. He had known misery, of course, he had grown up with it all his life. But even at the worst times of his life he could not remember pain strong enough to make him want to die. Malfoy...no, Draco, he corrected mentally, was looking at him levelly. "I don't want your pity, Harry," he said, very quietly.

"I know. It's not exactly pity. It's more sort of an amazed compassion." Harry passed a hand over his face. He had never known exactly how evil Draco's family was, despite his conviction that they had to be pretty nasty pieces of work. The truth staggered him. "Go on. Please. I need to hear this."

Draco shrugged. "Hermione found me, like I said. She yelled at me for some time, and finally what she was yelling started to make sense, and I realized that what I was doing was both stupid and cowardly. She fixed my wrists."

"Wandless," said Hermione in a tiny voice. "I didn't even know the charm I used. It just came into my head." She slid her hand out of Draco's, turned his wrist so Harry could see the faint silvery trace of the Curatio scar. Harry swallowed hard.

"And she listened," said Draco. "Really listened. I'd never really been able to talk about it before. Look, Potter....I'm not very different now from what you knew me as. I don't much like you, or Weasley, or the rest of them. But it's not because you associate with Muggle-borns..." Harry wondered exactly what Draco thought of the term mudblood now...."or Muggle-lovers. That doesn't seem to matter to me anymore. I dislike Weasley because he's very dislikeable, not because he's poor. I don't have any money myself, anyway. The Ministry snaffled it all when my parents died."

Harry stared at the pale boy. "Malfoy....Draco....why did you save Ginny's life, the other day?"

"Because she was about to die," said Draco, very simply. "She had done nothing to me, and it cost me nothing to save her."

Harry heard the mercenary behind the smooth tones, and was oddly comforted. This was still Malfoy, then. But a changed Malfoy. A Malfoy whose world had just become very, very complicated.

"I see," he said.

Hermione sighed. "I know it's a lot to take in, Harry."

"It's more than a lot," said Harry. "Fuck. Look, Ron would probably thank you for saving his sister, and I thank you, I suppose, for turning Hermione back into this..." he gestured at her...."from a scarecrow. I'm sorry. I think I just need some time to take all this in."

He got up. Malfoy nodded at him, as between equals. "Thanks for listening to it, Potter."

Harry fled.

Draco looked up at Hermione, and she wasn't entirely surprised to see a glimmer of sadness in the depths of those mercury eyes. "Well?" he demanded. "What was I supposed to do?"

"Exactly what you did," she said, simply. "Tell him the truth, and let him muddle through it on his own. None of us get much more than that."

Draco sighed, folding his arms. Naga unwrapped herself from the bedpost and took up position around his neck. "He took it better than I expected," he said. "Although the comment regarding my internal organs was a little uncalled-for." Absentmindedly he stroked Naga's head.

"He'd do it, too," said Hermione. "I don't think either of us knew how important we were to one another before all of this happened. Harry's used to being the center of attention, albeit in a rather resentful and bitter sort of way. This must have come as something of a shock."

"What, you mean great secret conspiracies going on behind the scenes of Hogwarts that didn't involve Harry Potter?" said Draco, sardonically. "Yes, it certainly must have."

"Be nice." Hermione scowled at the floor. "I wish I could make it easier on him. On all of us. And I still do owe Ron an explanation."

"Well," said Draco, "the spotty little git can wait until after Christmas break to get it. I doubt he's very interested, to tell you the truth. I heard he and his family are heading off to Egypt to go rootling around in pyramids, or something. I bet you he's not thinking about you, or Harry, or me, or anyone this side of Abydos."

In this, Draco Malfoy was completely wrong.

"Where have you been?" Ron demanded as Harry came trudging up the steps into the dorm. Ron's trunk was mostly packed, and he was jumping up and down on it to get it to shut. Harry recognized the orange sleeve of a Chudley Cannons robe sticking out of the trunk, and what looked like a library copy of Quidditch Through the Ages. Harry joined him on the trunk lid, and with their combined weight, the catches snicked shut.

"Nowhere," said Harry. He was thinking desperately of a good way to tell Ron what he'd just heard, and was coming up completely blank. Ron had to know. That much was certain. Just how he had to find out...well, that was up to Harry.

"You look sort of peaky," said Ron. "Anything the matter?"

"No, no," he assured his friend. "Maybe I ate too much at breakfast. When are you leaving?"

"There's a train tonight. Most of the kids are catching the Express tomorrow morning, but I managed to wangle a ticket on the sleeper train some of the professors take back to London."

"How'd you do that?" said Harry, interested despite himself.

"Weeeelll, having a brother and father in the Ministry has its uses," said Ron. "Good old Percy. Never thought he'd do me any favours."

"What's he doing these days?" asked Harry, desperate to keep the conversation going.

"Oh, Perce? Well, after that thing where he had to be Acting Minister, he sort of gave up most of his ambitions and is quite happily mouldering away as Head of the Department for Mandating and Regulating Magical Standards and Measurements."

"More cauldron thicknesses?" inquired Harry, who was surprisingly good at translating bureaucratese.

"Exactly. Eh, it keeps him happy." Ron suddenly stared at his dresser. "Oh, bugger."

"What?"

"I've forgotten to pack my knickers."

When Harry had finished laughing like an idiot, he helped Ron re-pack the trunk and jump on it a second time. They sat side by side on the bed, flushed with exertion. Finally, Harry had run out of excuses to himself not to tell his friend, and sighed gustily. "Ron?"

"Yeah?"

"D'you fancy a Butterbeer? I've got something to talk to you about."

"Yeah, all right," said Ron, not catching the undertone of dread in Harry's voice. They extracted themselves from Ron's bed and found their winter cloaks before heading off down to Hogsmeade.

In the warm dimness of the Three Broomsticks, Harry's nerve was a little stronger; in this light, it was difficult to see the expression on Ron's face. "Look," he began. "You know how Malfoy saved Ginny's life?"

"How could I forget? I'm still wondering exactly what the slimy little bastard was thinking."

Harry winced. "Um. Yeah. Well, you also know how I was saying I thought there was some real change in Malfoy, that something pretty earth-shaking had happened to him? Turns out I was right."

He told Ron the story Malfoy had told him, as simply and as quickly as he could. Ron stared at him, looking more and more horrified, until he wound down.

"...so it's true that Malfoy's dad was a Death Eater, and that he was supposed to be one too, only he didn't want to. So Lucius cursed him. He almost died, Ron. I've never seen anyone so sick in my life. Hermione said that later, when he was in Snape's dungeon, he was throwing up blood."

Ron looked white. "And he really tried to commit suicide?"

"Yeah."

"God," said Ron. "Really?"

"Yeah."

Ron swallowed his drink. "I mean, I thought I had it bad, with the no money and the persecution by the Slytherins and the never being able to do anything that wasn't overshadowed by my family or my friends...but damn, Harry, I never wanted to die."

"I know. I was horrified when I heard it." Harry nodded at the waiter. "And what made it worse was the terribly matter-of-fact way that he told the whole story, as if it was nothing particularly surprising. He seemed used to that sort of thing."

Ron looked up gratefully as the waiter refilled his glass. "I don't know what to say," he muttered. "I really don't. Makes you feel like a bit of a prat, doesn't it, all those times we plotted to turn his hair green or make him fall in love with Professor Trelawney. When all that was going on at home. I mean..."

"We didn't know. And honestly, he was a horrible little twerp until he saw what was in Crabbe's Pensieve, and realized exactly what he was being bred to become, and what he was becoming. He said that he saved Ginny because she needed saving. Because she was going to die. That was it."

Ron rubbed at his eyes. "Well, God help me, because I think I believe him."

They drank in silence for a while.

"What about Hermione?" said Ron.

"Um." Harry stared into the dregs of his Butterbeer. "That's another thing you're not going to want to hear, Ron."

"Don't tell me she's fallen for Malfoy," said Ron, swigging. Harry continued to stare moodily into his glass.

"Harry?"

"You said not to tell you."

Ron gave him the long cool look of someone who has just had a girder dropped in front of his train of thought. Then he blinked a few times.

"Malfoy and Hermione," he muttered.

Harry looked at him, concerned.

"Hermione and bloody Malfoy," said Ron. "Well, thank God you've got me drunk, Harry, because I'm not sure I would be able to stop myself marching up there right now and kicking his teeth in, sick or not, if I was sober. Hermione and Malfoy."

"Ron," said Harry. "It's not as bad as that. He has changed. And she's not all stupid and googly-eyed over him, not by a long shot. It's odd. They both seem a great deal older than they should be." He paused, shaking his head. "Like they've had to grow up a lot in the past month or so. I was pretty floored when I heard about it, too, but I don't really think anything we can say will change it. Hermione doesn't need us to yell at her. She needs us to accept what she's doing and what she's become."

"I can't believe this," said Ron, draining his glass again. "Sod it. I have to talk to her."

"Not in that state you're not," said Harry. "Nor am I." He pulled out his wand. "Mens sana in corpore sano," he muttered, and drew a little circle in the air around them. Both boys winced as the alcohol left their bloodstreams. Ron straightened his school tie.

"Right," he said. "I do have to talk to her."

"Tell me you're not going to do anything stupid and yell at her like an overprotective dad," said Harry tiredly. "Please."

"Of course I'm not," said Ron. "I'm going to have a perfectly civil conversation with her." He rubbed at his temples. "Harry...I always thought, you know, that if she was going to end up with any of us it would be you or me. Not Malfoy."

"I know," Harry agreed. "I think the thing to do is to get it through our heads that the Malfoy we knew is no more. The Draco who's even now sitting up there in the hospital wing is not that Malfoy. Not entirely, anyway."

Ron shrugged. "Right. I'll do my best."

"What the bloody hell do you think you're doing, Hermione?" he hissed, some time later. He had found her in the hospital wing's solar, perched on cushions in the window, looking out over the distant mountains. "It's....it's....fraternizing with the enemy, or something!"

She turned to look at him, her hands still clasped easily in her lap, and he was struck by how very old her eyes seemed. Harry had been right. It was as if she'd had to grow up entirely of a sudden. "Ron," she said in a quiet voice. "I can't ask you to change your preconceptions of Draco. No one can. All I'm asking is that you give him a chance. He really has changed, you know. Nearly dying twice will do that to people."

Ron looked at the floor, a bit shamefacedly. "Harry told me he tried to commit suicide."

"Yes," Hermione said simply. "He did. He would have died if I hadn't found him. I think he's forgiven me for that."

"Forgiven you? He ought to thank you on bended knee!"

"You don't understand, Ron. Imagine, if you will, a child growing up in a cold and distant household, under the control of a power-hungry father. All his life he's been told that Voldemort is the true ruler, that his cause is just, and that the world around him is full of Mudblood scum who want to oppose that cause. He has been trained to spurn and mock all who are different or unlike his father's ideal. And suddenly, on the eve of his becoming a Death Eater, he happens to find evidence that all of this ideology and worship is based on bloody murder and inhuman acts. He sees his sainted father performing deeds out of nightmares. All of the things he's always believed in, that he's been brought up to believe, are nothing more than lies. He's running out of time."

Hermione paused, flicked her hair out of her eyes. "And when he stands up to his father, for the first time in his life thinking on his own, his father throws him away. That's what it was, Ron. Lucius threw him away, as a broken tool. Something that no longer is capable of serving its purpose. And, being Lucius, he came up with an extremely unpleasant way of killing him." Hermione's voice was soft and even and relentless. Ron knew he'd be able to ignore this, to forget it, if she had yelled at him; but she spoke quietly and simply, and he had no choice but to hear and to believe.

"You know I snuck down to Snape's dungeon and found them trying to save him. He was mostly unconscious, drifting in and out. But he apologized to me, Ron. Even through all that pain, he came back to apologize. He thought he was going to die, you see, and there was no reason left to keep pretending he was still Lucius's creature. He apologized to me for all the things he'd ever done to me. To us. He was trying to make his peace." She leaned back against the sun-warmed stones and looked at him, her direct cinnamon-coloured eyes not letting his gaze falter.

"We found the spell, and we performed it. None of us knew whether it would work. When I came to, the next morning, Draco was alive. But, Ron, you've got to understand that he was forced into living. Nothing he had ever believed in was true, and the things that had supported him...the Malfoy name, his father's power and influence, his mother's brand of love...they were all gone. All gone, with the spell that saved his life. He didn't want to come back to a world without those supports. Didn't want to try and live on his own terms. Sit down, Ron, and stop looking like a schoolboy waiting to be punished. I'm almost done."

"Go on," he said, simply.

"He....started to fade. He wouldn't see anybody, wouldn't eat...even if he could have kept anything down....he had turned his face to the wall, and given up. When the professors came to talk to him, to try and snap him out of it, something must have brought it all back to him...all the misery and the humiliation and the pain....and he tried to end that."

She sighed. "But I think, like I said, he's forgiven me for stopping that end. I think he's come to see that there are some good things left in this world, if you know where to look for them."

He looked at her steadily. All the righteous anger that had propelled him up here to demand why she was dating the enemy seemed to have cooled and solidified and fallen to the floor like ice. He could still hear her mild voice describing horrors. "Hermione," he said weakly. "I...didn't know."

"That's why I told you, idiot," she said kindly, and leaned over to give him a hug. "It's all right. Just...I think you needed to hear that."

"Is he around?" Ron asked, looking a bit askance at the rows of beds.

"In his room." Hermione pointed. "That one, by the desk."

Ron got up. "This is just my day for meaningful conversations, isn't it?"

Hermione watched him go. He had reacted better than she had expected. Perhaps he, too, had done a bit of growing up. She thought she saw Harry's influence behind that. Presumably he had spoken to Ron.

She watched as a red hawk circled high over the Forest, seeming to enjoy itself. She suddenly wished that she, too, could fly. It must be so exhilarating to leave the weight and worries of the world behind.

Hermione laughed a little at herself, and went to help Madame Pomfrey make the beds.

The red hawk tumbled like a blown leaf on the whim of the wind, her wings spread to catch the fleeting updraft over the Castle before bulleting down towards the glassy lake, shooting through the gaps in the crenellated battlements like an arrow. She could not remember when she had felt so light and free. For months now, worry and work and care had wrapped themselves around her in muffling folds. It was as if, with the end of the term, all the things that had been dragging at her were ended too. As if she had finished worrying about everything when she had finished grading the last DaDA essay, and was now utterly free.

At long last she swooped down from the winter-blue sky and transformed on the steps of Hogwarts. All around her the students were engaged in energetic snowball fights. For one brief moment, she considered joining in, but there was a cup of coffee in the staff lounge that was calling her name.

"Hello," said Lupin, sounding a bit surprised. "You look exquisite, by the way."

She grinned, undoing the clasp of her winter cloak. "Thanks. It's the healthy exercise, you know." Her cheeks were tingling with the cold and wind, and her hair had done its best to come out of its braid. She poured herself a cup of coffee from the urn that always stood in the teachers' lounge and sat down in a chair by the fire. Lupin was wearing his usual tatty robes, but his yellow eyes were bright and clear, and he looked a lot stronger than usual. "You're looking well yourself."

"I always did love the winter," he said, getting up and going over to the cupboard. "Can I tempt you to a drink?" He waved a bottle of Courvoisier at her.

"What a beautiful idea." Lupin grinned over his shoulder and poured two glasses of brandy, handed her one.

"It's kind of surprising to see you here," he said, resuming his seat. "I mean, nobody has seen much of you for over a month, outside of classes. You've been busy?"

"Dreadfully." She sipped her brandy, smiling. "You have excellent taste, Remus."

"I know." He leaned back in the chair. "It's going to be nice having the castle to ourselves," he added. "A lot more of the staff is going home for the holidays. As far as I can tell, it's just Dumbledore, McGonagall, you, me, Severus and Filch staying on. And Hagrid, of course. I've heard he's actually got hold of some firedrakes for next term."

"Oh dear," said Nadezhda. "Are you sure?"

"It's a rumor. And we've only got a few students staying this Christmas. Should be a nice quiet rest for us all."

"Well, that's something to look forward to," said Nadezhda, and meant it. She intended to spend most of the break in bed. Not, perhaps, resting. "How've you been?"

"Oh, the usual, the usual," Lupin said airily. "I must say, it's a relief teaching Magical Lit instead of DaDA. You're welcome to it."

"Are the Weasleys giving you any trouble?"

"Not more than they give anybody else," said Lupin. "I mean, I've had my fair share of Dungbombs and fireworks and Auto-Quills, but I don't feel particularly persecuted. I don't envy you, though. It took me forever to come up with non-dangerous ways to keep those two interested."

"Oh, I don't know," said Nadezhda. "I've found that threatening to report them to their mother generally makes them shut up." She swirled the brandy in her glass. "You know, Remus, I think we might actually have a happy Christmas after all."