This work is complete at 31 chapters and ~127,000 words. I'll be submitting a chapter a day through March until it's all up.
Chapter 1: The Hesitant Slytherin
The late June sun streamed in through the History of Magic classroom windows, where a Hogwarts student named Dagmar Ramstad wrote her 6th year final exam. Despite the smothering heat and vague smell of body odour in the fellow teenagers surrounding her, she focused intently on her cramped, minuscule writing that crept ever-closer to the bottom of her parchment. Students had been slowly filing out for the past half-hour, handing their scrolls in to Professor Binns on their way past. At the end, the only student left other than Dagmar was Hermione Granger.
"Time is up," Professor Binns said in his usual droning voice at the front of the classroom. "I'll take those."
Dagmar's scroll rolled up by its own accord on her desk and flew to the front, along with Hermione's. There was nothing else to do for it, now. Feeling as though she'd probably done all that she could, Dagmar gathered up her quill and ink well. The quill ended up in the classroom bin, spent.
Hermione stood out in the hallway, exam questions still in her hand.
"So what did you write down for fourteen B?" she asked, falling into step beside Dagmar. "I feel like I forgot something about Griphook and his fight for goblins to possess wands."
"Griphook?" Dagmar repeated, looking over at her while slowing her step. "That was Urg."
Hermione's mouth feel open, her eyes wide with panic. "Are you sure?"
"I think so." Dagmar doubted herself now, since Hermione, as top in their year, was most likely right. "Still, messing up one name won't affect your mark too much, right?"
Those words were little comfort to Hermione, who looked with pressed lips in direction of the library. Curious herself, Dagmar started them that way.
A strange feeling came over Dagmar that she was being watched. She heard the echo of footsteps stop when she turned around to face the way she and Hermione had come from. The end of a robe disappeared behind a corner. Frowning, Dagmar carried on. Since Hermione didn't seem to notice, Dagmar didn't say anything about it. It was most likely just someone passing by, or perhaps one of the ghosts.
Something jabbed Dagmar in the back of the head when she and Hermione reached the other end of the corridor. Her hand shot up. Dagmar looked around the air before her gaze dropped to the floor. A piece of parchment folded up like an airplane laid at her feet.
Hermione stopped too. "What's that?"
"Dunno. Just hit me."
Dagmar picked it up and unfolded it. It only had two words: Common room.
"Hm." Dagmar slipped it into a pocket. "I guess I'll see you later. Find me, if you figure out which goblin was in about the wand rights, ja?"
"Oh—yeah." With reminder of her initial goal, Hermione took a step on and raised a hand. "See you around."
Dagmar headed back in the direction she'd come from. She had a feeling that whoever had sent her this note would be the same person she'd spotted hiding behind the corridor corner. She took it wide, and stopped when she saw a boy from her year leaned back against the wall with his arms crossed. He studied her with pale grey eyes.
"Your note, or were you passing on a message?" Dagmar asked.
"Mine," Draco replied. "I was waiting outside the classroom to catch you. You took the entire time?"
"Didn't realize I should rush."
Draco nodded. A silence fell between them, in which Dagmar twirled her fingers around a pleat in her skirt. She and Draco were the same age, in the same house, and their families were quite close—but they never had been.
"You wanted me in the common room?" Dagmar asked. "Why?"
"Need to talk to you." Draco unfolded his arms and jerked his head in direction of the front of the castle.
That he was so subdued put Dagmar on edge. Draco tended to sulk and turn into a recluse on his own, and he was cordial with her in passing out of respect for their parents. His pathetic sliminess still usually emerged, but not at the moment. His head, while held as high as usual, was used more to keep an eye out for anybody that might approach this section of the castle.
Dagmar assumed they were heading for the Slytherin common room, so stumbled to a halt when Draco put out an arm to stop her.
"Over here should be fine." He pointed at a nook.
Dagmar followed him with waning enthusiasm.
"I don't like how you're acting." She stood at the mouth of the nook. "You're making me nervous."
Draco resumed the same practiced lean that he'd employed back when Dagmar first found him. He crossed his arms again.
"My mother passed along a message from yours," Draco said. "She was going to meet you at Platform nine-and-three-quarters?"
Dagmar nodded warily.
"Change of plans." Draco cleared his throat. "You're coming with me, instead."
Dagmar's face scrunched up by its own accord. "Where?"
"My manor, I assume." Draco shrugged. "That's where I was going."
"Why?"
"My mother didn't say."
"So. . .we get off the train, and then what?"
"Apparate," Draco said. "I passed my test earlier this month."
Dagmar eyed him with renewed wariness. "Have you apparated since your test?"
Draco smirked. "Nope."
"My parents must be desperate, then. I wonder what's going on that they can't be there themselves?"
Draco didn't say anything when Dagmar turned to leave. She came to a halt, head bowed, then faced him again. Sure enough, Draco's lips worked in thought. When he noticed her looking, they came to rest and he reassumed a passive expression.
Dagmar stepped into the nook and lowered her voice. "What do you know?"
"I don't know anything." One of his eyebrows rose. "My mum only said—"
"Bollocks. Your parents always tell you everything."
Draco pursed his lips, a rare habit but one Dagmar witnessed only on the sparse occasion that he had a smirk to hide. "I don't think you want to spend your last day at Hogwarts worrying about it."
"My last—?"
"I don't mean ever," Draco hastily said with a roll of his eyes when Dagmar's widened in alarm. "Just relax."
"Tell me what you know," Dagmar demanded. "If you know, then I have a right to, too. If they didn't want me to worry—or you didn't—you would've told me this tomorrow right before we pulled into London."
"I wasn't sure if I'd catch you on the train." Draco raised his chin, looking down at her. "You have a tendency to sit with people I wouldn't be caught dead mingling with, and I didn't think you'd take to me pulling you away from them. Based on what's going on, you wouldn't want to be too closely associated with me. Or maybe, I wouldn't want to be too closely associated with you."
A lurch of annoyance pulled like a hook in Dagmar's stomach. She narrowed her eyes. "Okay, you've lorded enough. Tell me what's happened."
"The Ministry raided your manor."
Dagmar twitched, as if her nerves had been strung like a bow.
She lowered her voice to a whisper. "They can't have found anything?"
"Not what, but who."
For all his arrogance, no hint of it showed on Draco right now. He'd turned properly solemn to match this news, with a hint of relief underneath it. Surely he was glad it wasn't his family caught up in this.
"You mean. . .?"
Draco gave a small nod that Dagmar would've missed, had they not been standing within a few feet of each other. "The Dark Lord was there."
"So, what now?" Dagmar's eyes grew heavy. "Are my parents okay? Did the Ministry take them?"
"No," Draco quickly said. "They're fine. Mother said that they're both at our manor."
"Then. . .what? What do they do?"
"Mother mentioned something about a clean-up job." Draco shrugged. "That's really all I know."
Dagmar was grateful that Draco at least waited until after her last exam to pass along this information. She wouldn't be able to study with it on her mind, and she certainly wouldn't have been able to focus while sitting through another one. The idea of leaving this conversation and being able to return to her previous occupation—scouring a book in the library with Hermione Granger—was out of the question. Hermione was in with the people that most prominently opposed the Dark Lord. Would she somehow learn about this through them? Had Dagmar's family's quiet support of the Dark Lord—and perhaps even their presence in his inner circle—suddenly been exposed?
"Right." Draco pushed off the wall. "I suppose you want to get back to the mudblood. I'm sure there'll be something in the library to take your mind off things."
He stepped past Dagmar, leaving her alone in the nook. Draco wasn't much for company, but he at least understood what Dagmar was currently dealing with. Nobody that she associated with would. Such was the pitfall of not keeping many friends within the children of her parents' social circle. Reaching out to Draco—or someone like Crabbe, Goyle, or even Theodore—was about as impossible as any of the people from other houses Dagmar socialized with.
Nausea tickled the back of her throat. Despite the beyond-bright and stiflingly-warm day outside, the world seemed colder, and darker. Somewhere in all this mess, as Dagmar looked out over Hogwarts' grounds through a nearby window, she could be glad that the Dark Lord had been forced to leave her family's manor.