"It doesn't matter that they won!" Ron was shouting. "We put our best foot forward and we almost had them!"

"Yeah!" came the cheers of agreement.

"And if that cheater Malfoy hadn't pushed Harry aside, the best Seeker to set foot in Hogwarts would have caught the snitch!"

"Yeah!"

"Draco didn't cheat," Hermione whispered to Harry.

"I know," Harry admitted, "but Ron's on a roll."

Hermione just crossed her arms and huffed. "And you're not the best Seeker," she muttered to herself.

"So why should we let this loss get us down?" Row continued. "We deserve a celebration too!"

"YEAH!"

As the Gryffindors began their partying, Hermione found a nice pillar to lean against while rolling her eyes at her peers. To her surprise, Harry came to join her.

"Looks like this one's all about Ron," he said, shrugging.

"I still can't believe you used the liquid luck on him, Harry!" Hermione told him. She turned to see Ron jumping up and down like some sort of orangutan. Then she turned back to Harry and voiced this.

"Orangutan?" He seemed to think about this for a bit before saying, "Yeah I can see that. The hair and all. But I didn't actually use it on him." He pulled out the vial Slughorn had given him and held it up to the light.

Coming to a realization, Hermione said, "You only made him think that you put it in."

"That's right."

"So he was doing well all on his own."

"Looks like he is," Harry commented as he watched Lavender Brown jump Ron and kiss him full on the mouth.

Hermione was first confused but then she realized what Harry was talking about. She scoffed and marched away with what Harry could have sworn were tears in her eyes. He was about to follow her, to console her about Ron, but Ginny approached him, so he let his best friend go.

Good thing he did, too. Hermione was hungry and went down to the Great Hall in order to get into the kitchens. To her second surprise of the evening, Draco Malfoy was hunched over the table and it looked like he was asleep.

Draco opened his eyes at the sound of the Great Hall doors closing. He saw a figure walking up to him from a distance but couldn't make it out right away.

"What are you doing here?"

That was Hermione's voice. Draco lifted his head and answered with, "Food." Then he saw the drops running down her face.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

Hermione told him that she had just seen Lavender Brown and Weasley snogging and it angered her to no end.

Good, Draco thought. Maybe she doesn't like me like that anymore.

"I can't believe that Lavender would go for someone so arrogant and prejudiced!" she continued.

Suppose not.

"He just got done making this huge speech about how you cheated and that Harry was the best Seeker, but the whole school knows that neither of those things is true. It was so frustrating to see everyone cheer for Ronald while he was badmouthing you. As if Gryffindors are all so perfect and pure!"

Draco, though taken aback by Hermione's outburst, couldn't help but laugh at that.

"What?" she demanded, furrowing her eyebrows.

"I never thought I'd see the day you say something like that about Gryffindors."

"Well, it's true! I can't believe they all think Slytherins are all pure evil and they're so bloody brilliant when they're the ones who are stereotyping!" Hermione looked like she was about to go on, but she was interrupted by the grumble of her stomach.

Just then, plates of enough food for both of them appeared.

Shocked, Hermione asked, "How did you do that?"

"I came in here and I was hungry and Dobby instantly appeared to me."

"Doesn't he only come if you can call him? Especially since you freed him."

"I thought so too, but he says that he's still bonded to me because I freed him so he can sense whenever I'm in need of help and there's no one around that could help me." Draco explained to Hermione what Dobby had explained to him earlier, hoping that she made better sense of it than he did.

"I can't believe that the Wizarding World has a loophole like that!" Hermione seemed even more irritated than before.

"Calm down!" Draco commanded. "I don't think you realize that house-elves actually enjoy serving us."

Hermione groaned. "Of course you would think that. Wizards have been brainwashing house-elves into thinking that."

Draco knew he had just entered an argument he couldn't win so he changed the subject. "About my summer. I never got a chance to tell you."

It seemed like those words had done the trick—Hermione cheered up and started to eat, as if she had completely forgotten who made the food.

"So what happened?"

"The second I got home, I was initiated." He paused to think about how he would phrase what he was about to say next. "I got marked, but then there was more. He, um, he had me torture Sirius."

Hermione dropped her fork and gasped. "Oh my goodness! How terrible of him!"

"Well, what did you think? He'd let me off without a 'taste' of the dark side of the world?" Draco said. "It was painful. For me, I mean. I mean, I'm sure it was painful for Sirius, but I hated doing it. That man is my mother's cousin, for crying out loud! He taught me to be an Animagus and-"

"Wait, what did you just say?" Hermione looked like she was having the most surprising and shocking day ever. "You're an Animagus?"

Draco got up from the bench he was sitting on and concentrated. Soon, there was an Arctic wolf in his place.

Hermione bounced up and clapped. "That's incredible! How did you do it?"

Draco turned back into a human and said, "He had me go through a series of steps that I can't remember. If you would like, I could have him teach you."

The Gryffindor looked like she could burst with delight. "What do you think I'd be?" she asked as they both sat back down.

"Not sure," Draco told her honestly. "I mean, an owl is wise, but there are already so many owls in the Wizarding World. And you're just not Gryffindor enough to be a lion."

Hermione wasn't sure what he meant by that. "Excuse me?"

"What? Oh, no! I didn't mean it offensively. I meant that you're actually smart and you're not reckless. When you tricked Umbridge into the forest, I was very impressed with your inner Slytherin."

Hermione blushed as she muttered a thanks. Straightening back up, she said, "That's the thing, though. There's a little bit of each house in all of us. I mean, you're Ravenclaw smart, Gryffindor brave, and Hufflepuff hard-working."

Draco scoffed. "Please do not compare me to a Hufflepuff." Hermione rolled her eyes at this and asked him to finish his thought from earlier, about Sirius.

"Well, I'm the one who freed him during our third year. We bonded over family and becoming an Animagus, and then I freed him with myself."

"Sorry, what was that? With yourself?"

Draco explained the situation with the time turner and how disorienting the whole thing was.

"That's confusing," Hermione said. "But it all makes so much sense. So what else happened this summer?"

"Old Voldy gave me a task."

"Don't call him that," Hermione snapped. "He could-"

"Kill me? I doubt he tabooed his name or any possible nicknames people might have for him." That being said, Voldemort was certainly capable of doing so. "Anyway, he wants me to kill Dumbledore by the end of this year."

"What?! You can't do that!"

"And I won't. Besides, thanks to Snape, Dumbledore already knows everything that's going to happen and he's going to try to make a plan to stop it." Draco thought back to fourth year, when Dumbledore had a chance to stop Moody but he didn't listen.

Hermione caught the uncertain look on Draco's face. "You don't seem too confident in all this."

Taking a deep breath, Draco explained the situation at the third Triwizard Tournament task and that Cedric Diggory's life could have been spared.

"Wow," was all Hermione managed to say. "Is there anything else I should know about everything you've done?"

So Draco told her everything she didn't already know, from the beginning of year one up until the last thing he remembered before passing out. After Hermione got over the shock of all the reveals (including the one where Draco admitted he knew she liked him), Draco asked what had happened at the end of the Quidditch match.

"You were knocked unconscious for some reason just as you caught the snitch," she told him, glad that they weren't talking about her crush.

"We won?" Draco realized out loud. "So that's why they were cheering for me as they passed me around the room."

"Slytherin celebration?" Hermione asked.

"That's why I'm down here."

"Same, except I'm in Gryffindor."

After a moment of silence, Draco spoke his mind: "I'm glad I finally told someone everything I've been through. It was actually getting kind of difficult to handle."

"I bet it caused you a lot of stress, huh?"

"Stress..." Draco thought back to his internal discussion about what was making him aggressive. He told Hermione what he had come up with, that the stress of everything was weighing him down.

"Well, perhaps now that you've told me, you'll feel better," she suggested. "If you don't lash out at anyone tomorrow, we'll know your telling me everything worked."

As they finished their dessert, the empty dinnerware vanished and they began walking out of the Great Hall.

Hermione started, "You know, I can't believe you've saved so many people. Especially Harry in the tournament's second task. I'd always thought that he used Ascendio to propel himself out of the water."

"Nope, that was me," Draco proudly stated.

"Don't tell me you're going to get a big head now," Hermione said.

"Don't tell me I don't already have one," Draco playfully shot back.

When they reached the stairs to the Gryffindor tower, they parted ways.

"Good night, Draco," Hermione called.

"Night."

Walking back to the dungeons, Draco realized that maybe he didn't have to be alone in his struggles. Maybe it was good that Hermione was there for him.