"But I don't wanna leave Dave behind, Draco," Eva whined.

Draco rolled his eyes as he tugged her along by the sleeve of her coat through the Hogwarts Express. It was almost laughable to him, though, the way the tables had turned. Just a few weeks prior, it had been her dragging him everywhere, not the other way around.

"Dave will be fine, especially with mother spoiling him." He pushed open a door to an empty compartment and stepped back to allow her in first. "Dave," he muttered bitterly. The door slid closed with unnecessary aggression. "You could've chosen any name, any in the history of names—hell, I would've rathered it if you'd made up a name—but you chose Dave?"

Eva propped her feet up on his lap the moment he sat down beside her. "What would you've called him then, if you're so smart?"

He shrugged. "I can't think of any name worse than Dave. It's just so generic, and muggle-like. Do you really want that dog to be raised like a muggle? Is that what you want for it?

"That dog is your son," she retorted, enjoying the way his eyes widened, almost in horror, at her reply. "Anyway, you should've seen this coming. Did you really expect me to be sensible about this? In fact, when have I ever, even once, been sensible about anything?" She momentarily glanced up at the ceiling in thought. "Huh. I don't think I've ever made a truly sensible decision in my life, now that I think about it."

"No, surely you have," Draco responded, but his tone was becoming increasingly unsure the more he thought back. "What about . . . that time when you restrained yourself from losing your temper at Umbridge?"

She sighed. "You told me to."

There was an awkward silence. "You have just raised a point so valid that it'll forever concern me."

"What, my inability to make a single sensible decision on my own accord?" She snorted a laugh. "Yeah, but you love it really, ferret boy," she teased, resting her head on his shoulder.

Eva had somewhat been anticipating school to be livelier than it was when they all returned. But, in fact, that wasn't the case at all, and what didn't help was that there was the looming possibility of mock exams just around the corner, as well as predicted OWL grades being released for the fifth years. To put it simply, half of the school felt miserable, which just reflected onto everybody else's moods.

She dropped her spoon into her bowl of strawberry jelly in pure irritation. Every single person across the entire Slytherin table at lunch was either reading, studying, staring half asleep into the distance, or crying. Actually, she was just a little concerned about that sixth year boy that had tears in his eyes as he read over revision material.

"I can't do this anymore," she huffed, standing up again.

Draco, whose eyes had been fluttering closed in front of his Transfiguration textbook, looked up at her. "What?" he grunted.

"This place is miserable," she exclaimed. She noticed that, while her voice wasn't that loud compared to the volume it was usually at, it was still noisy enough for someone to shush her in anyway. "Since when did people come to school to study? For fucks sake, if I knew that this entire place would be like a library where people shush you for talking," she glared at the Hufflepuff girl that had attempted to silence her rant, "then I would've just stayed at home with Dave."

"Who's Dave?" Blaise asked. Typical Blaise, he wasn't even trying to study. Instead, he was spinning an empty book around on the table and placing the tip of his quill on the page to make swirl patterns.

"Her puppy," Draco grumbled. He rubbed his face tiredly. "She named him-"

"Dave," she sighed happily. "And he's so fluffy, and soft, and cute, and he has this little teddy bear he carries around the manor with him."

Draco pinched the bridge of his nose. "If you're going to leave this hellhole, can you at least wait until the morning? I didn't write this stupid essay for Slughorn, and another for you since you screwed yours up, just to not hand it in."

She rolled her eyes. "Relax, you school-loving kiss-ass, you'll get to hand in your precious essays."

Before he could say anything further, she was already half way across the room. Eva didn't even bother trying to be quiet as she strolled past the house tables towards the Gryffindor table, which had been recently relocated to the table at the far end of the room.

Eva sat down opposite Hermione, but frowned when she didn't react. "Hey-"

Hermione suddenly jolted, sending her revision material across the entire table. "Eva!" she snapped as she began to gather her things back up. "Sorry, my bad, I apologise, thanks Neville . . ." Hermione placed her things back down in front of her and then sent a venomous glare at Eva. "What do you want?" she hissed.

Eva held her hands up in mock surrender. "Merlin, Hermy-Mione, don't bite my head off. What's gotten your knickers in a twist?"

Hermione sighed heavily and gestured to the items she'd previously lost thanks to her red-haired friend. "There's a Defence Against the Dark Arts exam in exactly . . ." She glanced at her wristwatch, "2 hours and 13 minutes, and I still have yet to cover all of the content in chapters 5-17 in the syllabus." She glanced up at Eva and shook her head. "You don't have the faintest idea of what I'm talking about, do you?"

Eva shrugged. "Not a clue." She picked up a piece of paper with revision notes on it which had clearly been written by Hermione, judging by the neat handwriting. "Looks important though. Do you suppose we need to know all this?"

"Considering that paper 1 is solely questions based on chapters 5-15, yes I'd say we do," she replied sarcastically. "How do you pass anything, Eva? How did you actually get into sixth year? I've never seen you genuinely pick up a book and read it for longer than 15 minutes."

Eva laughed and stole Ginny's glass of lemonade, ignoring the whack she received from the ginger girl for that. "I owe it all to the fact that my boyfriend happens to be the smartest—fine, second smartest—person in this school. He's not even trying and he gets double the test scores I get."

"That's not exactly something to be proud of, is it?" Hermione scolded her. "Look at Ginny." She nodded to the girl, who'd gotten straight back to writing an essay for her History of Magic class with a fresh glass of lemonade in her free hand. "She's just finished writing 4 rolls of parchment for Astrology, and now she's writing yet another essay. As for me, I've compiled an entire binder," she reached underneath the table and pulled out what would be an A3 sized project folder, "of notes, and this is all just for Ancient Runes alone, and Neville and Seamus have been studying that same Polyjuice Potion for so long that they can answer questions on it without a second thought. For how many days must Lacewing Flies be stewed before beginning the brewing process of a Polyjuice Potion?"

"21," both Neville and Seamus mumbled in unison, each continuing with their own independent studying.

"Well, it's not my fault that you have nothing better to do with your life than study," Eva snarked. "You know what I did in the Christmas holidays, other than celebrating Christmas? Nothing, nothing except learning how to make an omelette so easily that I could do it in my sleep. No revision, nothing."

"And that's why you'll fail," Hermione muttered under her breath as she got back to her revision.

"You have no faith in me. Truly, I'm wounded. Trust the process, Hermy." She stood up and stole some of her friend's notes to read over later on. Hermione didn't seem bothered or surprised. "Trust the process."

"So, did you fail like the mudblood said you would?"

Eva arrived back in Draco's dorm much later that evening. After the exam, Tracey had invited her out for a drink at the Three Broomsticks now that they were both of age to do so, and the eighth years were technically allowed to leave whenever they so desired now that they were adults.

She shrugged. "Fail is such a subjective term," she replied, removing her denim jacket to place it over the back of his chair. "I mean, did I fail, or did I open a door to a new opportunity that I never knew existed?"

Draco stared at her agape. "How much did you drink?"

"No, I'm serious," she laughed, crawling into bed beside him once she was dressed in her pyjamas. "Maybe I failed, maybe I didn't, but I guess we'll never know-"

"What were your answers for the multiple choice questions that were worth most of the marks?" he questioned.

She hummed in thought. "I wasn't sure, but I got a lot of Bs as my answers."

Draco rolled his eyes. "You do realise that not a single one of my answers was B, right? That was the trick of the entire question—none of the answers would ever be B."

"Whatever." She waved her hand dismissively. "The point is that failure might not be failure after all." She climbed under the duvet. "I mean, what even is considered failure these days?"

"Getting below an acceptable grade in an exam?" He raised an eyebrow and closed the book he'd been reading.

Eva groaned and turned over, Hecate automatically putting out the candle on her bedside table. "You're so horrible, Draco," she grumbled. "Try sleeping without me cuddling you, watch me care."

She felt his arm wrap around her waist regardless. "How do I put up with you?" he muttered. "One last thing before you pass out on me."

"What?" she sighed tiredly, rolling over to face him. Her eyelids already felt heavy and were barely staying open. She let out a long and deep yawn.

He went quiet for a moment. "I have a favour to do for my father, this weekend-"

Eva groaned. "Draco, Jesus, you're like a little house elf running errands for him." She noticed the way his expression twisted into a resentful sneer. "Just say no and let me sleep . . ."

"He asked me for something different this time, not just some other errand." She glanced up at him, but barely. Her eyes were still resisting being forced open. "He wants me to deliver a message to one of his old accomplices on his behalf. It won't take long and-"

"Where are they then?" she asked.

He seemed to internally debate answering her question. "Azkaban—but," he continued to talk through her complaints, "it won't take long, it's just one quick letter, we'll be in and out in less than 15 minutes-"

"Draco," she sighed exasperatedly. "Do you really think a friendly visit to prison is a good idea? Even if it's for your father? And anyway, what do I have to do with this?" She turned back over again. "Just go by yourself, you'll survive for 15 minutes."

"No," He yanked her by the arm until she was on her back, while she whined and covered her eyes with her arm, "that's the whole point. Merlin, you don't listen, do you? They're more likely to let me in if you're there than if I go alone. Some new security policy Shacklebolt's enforcing." He was clearly disgruntled about that.

Eva lowered her arm and looked up at him. "Fine," she relented with a dramatic eye roll, turning over again. "We'll go to stupid Azkaban and deliver that stupid message for your stupid father-"

"Finished yet?" Draco questioned unimpressedly.

"You're so annoying," she complained.

His voice took on a smug tone. "It's one of my best attributes."

Even with the Dementors gone, Azkaban still had the remnants of their presence that sent shivers down Eva's spine, the building akin to an abandoned wasp nest. It was almost as if she could still feel the cold and empty sensation enveloping her as every remotely negative moment from her life was replayed back to her like some sick and twisted broken record.

"You said you can perform a Patronus?" Draco clarified. Eva nodded. "Yeah, you might need that."

She almost completely stopped in her tracks as they entered the prison. "Why? I thought you said there were-"

"No Dementors." She jumped, realising that the voice hadn't come from her boyfriend, but rather a man sitting behind a reception desk boredly. His Patronus, a bird of sorts, hovered around the room near his head. "However the aura of the Dementors still lingers within the air. Visits for longer than 5 minutes require a Patronus." He glanced up from his paperwork, his gaze turning to Draco. "Malfoy."

There was an incredibly awkward silence which consisted of a deep and angry stare-down between the man and Draco. Just from looking at them, they were acting as if they killed each other's families. Now that she thought about it further, she realised that that was highly possible.

Eva cleared her throat. "Um, yes, we're here to see, er . . ." She turned back to him, "who are we seeing again?"

"Crabbe Snr," Draco responded. The man placed a clipboard down on the desk. Draco instantly picked up the quill on the side and automatically seemed to know exactly which boxes to tick, sign, and date. He'd done this many times before, after all. "Patronus?"

Eva, meanwhile, had gotten herself too distracted with the fading walls which had black mould growing from the corners. She jumped in fright but instantly settled down again. "Oh, right," she murmured, raising her wand in front of her.

"Expecto Patronum."

A little wisp of silver spiralled out from the tip of her wand, quickly taking the form of a white ferret which proceeded to excitedly hop around her head and then Draco's. "Yeah, you'll be far less excited when you find out where we're going, little dude," Eva muttered to her Patronus.

The long halls and endless levels that made up Azkaban were nothing but bleak and depressing. Criminal witches and wizards from across the world were being held inside, behind enchanted bars that couldn't possibly be broken by any spells.

"Do you actually know where we're supposed to be going?" Eva murmured. She was only attempting to be quiet because she didn't want to get on the bad side on a single one of the potential psychopaths and murderers in the room.

Draco sighed. "I told you, it was either floor 6, 16, 23, or 26. It was definitely a positive number . . ." He trailed off his sentence as he glanced over their shoulder.

She groaned. "We're never gonna find it. Knowing your poor memory and my impossible navigation skills, we'll repeat this floor another few hundred times at this rate."

While Draco continued to mutter on about how outrageous it was that the blame was always forced onto him rather than her, the girl who had absolutely no sense of direction in the slightest, Eva began to peer into a few of the cells from a distance, just out of curiosity. Maybe just under half of the cells were occupied, but those prisoners inside acted like they weren't there at all.

Most of them she didn't recognise. Though a few she knew to be affiliated with the Death Eaters, which definitely put her at an unease, the others she presumed to be locked up for smaller and less significant crimes such as petty theft and vandalism. Yep, the wizarding world threw people in Azkaban for that kind of thing.

Eva suddenly froze. Draco, who had been walking ahead, glanced down to his side to find her missing. He sighed and hung his head as he turned around and started back the way he came.

He grabbed her arm. "This isn't some tourist attraction you can waste your time on . . ." Draco hissed, but then went quiet.

Tugging her arm free, Eva started towards the cell, dodging every attempt Draco made at pulling her back. "Er . . . Umbridge?"

The toad-faced woman only briefly side-glanced at her and sighed, turning a page in the book she was reading. "Here we go."

That was . . . uncharacteristic. Now that Eva noticed it, Umbitch had changed a fair bit since, well, a year ago. Maybe Azkaban really had worn her down, since she'd not only lost weight and her pink sense of style, but she'd also lost that sickly condescending tone that drove her up the wall.

"Well, no need to be such a—you know what? You're not even my teacher anymore—bitch," Umbridge barely flinched, "I didn't even say anything yet," Eva snapped. Oh, everything was coming straight back to her now. It was as if she was in fifth year all over again. "Hang on, is that . . . you're reading the book Skeeter wrote on me, aren't you?"

Umbridge hummed in confirmation. Maybe it was due to the return of her least favourite student, but the woman's mockingly sweet voice was slowly creeping back to life. "A rather fascinating read, I must admit. I was gifted a copy by Miss. Skeeter when she visited two months ago. Of course, I skipped through several chapters." Umbridge narrowed her eyes at both of them, surprisingly. "Children," she scoffed. "They disgust me with their lack of order and generally shocking behaviour."

Eva, however, wasn't remotely bothered by the woman's opinions on her, not at all. "Jealous that I got more action in school than you ever did, eh?" Draco smirked slightly at that comment.

Umbridge slammed her book closed yet the action was somehow calm. She pushed it to the side, leaving Eva's smiling face on the cover. "I'll have you know that, unlike you, I had—no, have—ambition. I did not waste my time with such inappropriate things."

"Wha—I have ambition!" Eva ended up shouting. Someone yelled 'shut up!' from the other end of the hall. "I successfully balanced a love life that's still going decently," Draco frowned in the corner of her eye at her wording, "pass grades in the vast majority of my subjects, and I don't know if you've read in the Daily Prophet yet but I'm the-"

"First female Slytherin Quidditch team Captain, yes, I am aware," she interjected coldly. "A terrible misjudgement on Slughorn's part, if you ask me."

"Well, no one did." Eva gasped. This time, it was Draco who had replied.

Umbridge subtly sneered at the pair of them. "I don't understand old Dumbledore's favouritism towards you, Eva. You earned what you in no way deserved. You show no intelligence, nor responsibility, yet you single-handedly accepted every role of responsibility possible. Minus Head Girl, of course. That was that mudblood friend of yours, Miss. Granger."

"Why do you hate muggle-borns so much? And, as you so wonderfully put it, 'half-breeds,' like me?" Eva interrogated her. "I'm serious, I'm all ears. What genuine reason do you have? Just pure prejudice and bigotry? I mean, you went out of your way just to purge society of them."

"They are a waste of space," Umbridge spat. Eva glared at her. "What, did you expect me to have some kind of grand eye-opening moment where I go to prison and realise the wrongfulness of my ways?" she mocked. She sighed. "The only regret I have is allowing my actions to get ahead of myself rather than watching my back. That was what got me here in the first place."

Eva rolled her eyes. She couldn't exactly say she was expecting anything more to come from that question. From what she'd seen, even with Draco, most will almost never change their ways.

Eva nodded towards a book on the floor near the entrance to the cell: 'The Making of Adolf Hitler—the Birth and Rise of Nazism'. "Reading up on Hitler, then? Thoughts?"

"For a muggle, I applaud his approach to the purification of his country," Umbridge replied.

Eva had been staring, her jaw completely dropped, for so long that Draco had to forcefully drag her away from the cell and towards Crabbe Snr's cell. In the time the conversation between the polar opposites had taken, he'd already figured out exactly where it was located, and why he didn't usually bring Eva to Azkaban.

Could he say he was surprised that she was picking fights with the prisoners? Honestly, at this point, no, no he really couldn't.

⊱ ────── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ────── ⊰

Author's note: Oi, months later and I'm back! This update felt very forced, and is probably full of typos, but at this point I just want to reach the end. After this, there's only one more chapter, so I hope you're ready!

Anyway, thank you so much for reading, stay safe, and ily lots!