Hermione didn't know what unnerved her more: the hazy images of what she had expected the castle to look like post-repair, or the fact that it looked almost exactly the same as how she remembered. As she stepped onto the train platform into the mild September air, she saw the silhouette of the castle jagged against a deep indigo backdrop studded through with stars. Once a beacon of excitement and eventually comfort, it now filled her with a sense of dread. She wondered not for the first time whether the decision to return to finish her studies had been the sensible one.
"Alright, H?" Ginny asked, shooting her a look. She could see a wobble in her eyes, too, as most of the other students ricocheted towards the platform gate. She replied with a small grimace.
Over her shoulder, she saw Malfoy stepping off the train, trunk in hand as he put his book away in his coat pocket. He put his trunk on the platform and slung his broom over his back on its straps, before crouching to fiddle with the clasps. In the moonlight, his hair gleamed white gold.
"Keep up, Hermione, we need to get a coach!" Ginny called from the gate, snapping her out of her reverie, and she followed hastily.
When she caught up to the others, they were standing warily behind the last free coach that had pulled up beside them. Hermione wondered what had them so on edge until she saw them for herself: the Thestrals, black winged horses huffing white puffs of air through their skeletal snouts. She remembered the first time she had seen one, partway through the Battle as she and Ron had run hand in hand through the courtyard. She couldn't recall seeing somebody die - her only explanation was that perhaps she had witnessed death all around her simply in passing - but the sight of the huge, skeletal horse rearing on its back legs, spreading wide its horrifyingly large wingspan, had filled her with a leaden sadness. A resounding, irrefutable 'oh'; a realisation that, amidst all the fantastical, unbelievable events that had led up to the Battle, it was actually happening. People - friends, classmates, people whose faces she'd known for the past seven years - were dying. Would die. And she might have seen them die in passing, no time to grieve before moving onto blocking the next curse, casting the next hex, hopefully saving the next life.
The Thestrals were not new to Luna, of course, and she gave the horse a familial pet on its snout before climbing into the carriage. Ginny next, shaking the thoughts from her head before boarding, followed by Neville, who looked a little clammy, and finally Hermione. She sat next to Neville and gave his hand a squeeze. He squeezed back gratefully as the carriage began to pull away.
Hermione took a deep breath, rolled her shoulders to force relaxation on her body. She felt so tense she could almost feel every movement of the roots of her hair bristling on her scalp. She ran a hand through it, scraping it off her face and unclenching her jaw, before looking to the rear of the carriage. In the distance, she could see a lone figure, tall and slender with a gleam of blonde hair.
"Oh," she said quietly. Ginny crooked an eyebrow. "Can we stop? Can we - stop! Stop?"
The carriage rolled to a stop, the Thestral pawing at the ground with its hooves.
"What's wrong?" Ginny asked.
"Are you alright, Hermione?" said Neville. "Yes, I'm fine, it's just… it's…"
"She wants to wait for Draco Malfoy," Luna finished for her in her airy tone.
"Malfoy?" Ginny and Neville asked in unison. Ginny followed her gaze and registered the shock of blonde hair that was now halfway to where their carriage had pulled to stop.
"Hermione, you can't be serious," Ginny said gravely.
"Well, I just thought-" she began but Luna again came to her rescue.
"He'll be late to the feast if he walks all that way," she said.
"Who cares!" Ginny hissed. "Mr Bloody Death Eater Prince can slum it for a change!"
"Gin, that's not fair-"
Ginny rounded on Hermione with fury blazed across her face. "Fair?" she scoffed. "Fair! My brother's dead because of him" - she pointed a quivering finger at Malfoy who was now passing the rear of the carriage on the footpath beside the track - "and his mates. How's that for fair?"
For a fraction of a second, Hermione could have sworn that he had faltered. Just for the briefest of moments, a nerve jumped in his temple, his shoulders stiffened. So brief that maybe she had imagined it. He continued striding forwards as though deaf to their conversation. Hermione's eyes followed his figure, feeling Ginny's glare burning into the back of her head. When she turned to meet her eyes, they were wet with tears that had not escaped.
"You're right," Hermione said quietly. "You're right, Ginny, I'm sorry."
Ginny said nothing but set her jaw resolutely forwards as though grinding her teeth. Luna leaned forward and patted the Thestral's bony flank, and they climbed the journey up the hill in silence.
Malfoy was not late to the feast because he didn't show up at all. Hermione tried to focus on McGonagall's speech and on the Sorting but her eyes kept sliding towards the doors to the Entrance Hall of their own accord. When the Sorting concluded and the food began to materialise on the platters in front of them, she had little appetite and, in an odd sort of way, she saw she wasn't the only one. The other Eighth Years, and some Seventh Years whom she recognised, picked at their food somewhat morosely, mirroring her own anxious queasiness. Ginny, who hadn't said another word to her but had at least sat next to her at the table, sullenly stabbed at a chicken breast and poor Dennis Creevey had only managed two roast potatoes before quietly setting his cutlery on his plate.
The main course was replaced with desserts. Hermione would have normally helped herself to a generous portion of apple crumble and custard but not today. When the plates magically cleared of the remaining food and McGonagall stepped forward to address the students, Hermione's eyes darted first to the doors and then to the Slytherin table, searching for that head of white blond hair. He still hadn't arrived and, for some reason even Hermione couldn't put her finger on, that didn't sit right with her. Worse, nobody else seemed to care or even notice, not even the professors.
The other students around her all started getting up and Hermione realised they had been dismissed. Hermione climbed awkwardly from the benches, wrapping her cloak around herself as she followed Ginny and Luna's voices musing about living arrangements this year. McGonagall had mentioned in her speech something about 'private quarters' for the Eighth Years but - she gave herself a mental slap on the wrists - she hadn't been listening. What was the point in returning to Hogwarts, making herself go through all of this to finish her studies, if she wasn't going to pay attention? She endeavoured to focus more acutely from now on.
The crowd of students pulsed steadily through the doors to the Entrance Hall and thinned as each House went their separate ways. Luna bid them all goodnight and followed the rest of the Ravenclaws in the direction of their common room. Hermione was ready to ascend the staircase with Ginny and Neville when she felt a thin hand on her shoulder and whipped around, startled at the unexpected contact.
It was McGonagall, looking at her with a tight-lipped but patient smile. She folded her hands in front of her, clasping the tattered folds of the Sorting Hat, the billowing sleeves of her emerald green robes falling past her wrists.
"Miss Granger," she said. "I wonder if you would accompany me to the Headma - my office."
"Oh," Hermione said, surprised. "Why, Professor?"
McGonagall's eyebrows raised in amusement. "I suppose you'll find out when we get there, won't you?" she asked. Hermione didn't miss that familiar mischievous glint in her expression.
She looked over at Ginny and Neville, who had paused a couple of steps up next to the bannister upon realising she'd been collared.
"I'll…see you later, I suppose," she said.
"I'll wait for you in the common room," Ginny said. Hermione turned back to McGonagall, who smiled that familiar twinkling smile again.
"Shall we?"
Hermione nodded and met her pace, robes billowing behind them as they crossed the Entrance Hall against the flow of students to climb the staircase on the other side. They walked quietly together for the first few minutes. Hermione wondered what on earth could have happened already, within hours of the school year starting, to warrant this disruption. This year wasn't supposed to be like this, she thought. It was always Harry who attracted trouble, not her.
The silence between them was perturbing. She glanced furtively up at McGonagall who, awkwardly, caught her eye and gave her a taut smile before looking away. If she didn't know better, Hermione would have guessed McGonagall felt as off-kilter as she did.
"Congratulations on being appointed Head, Professor," Hermione ventured. McGonagall glanced down at her again and smiled, more warmly this time.
"Thank you, Miss Granger. I can't say the circumstances are how I'd imagined my career would progress, but it's certainly an honour nonetheless."
"My feelings exactly," Hermione replied.
"Are you… happy to be back at Hogwarts?"
Hermione considered this. It echoed a question she had anguished over in the months preceding the reopening of the castle. She had never, even as a child before she'd known she was magic, imagined that she wouldn't finish her studies. Even at primary school, she pictured herself at university somewhere scenic and prestigious, and every year at Hogwarts she'd spent actively preparing for her NEWTs which was ironic, given the circumstances she found herself in during her seventh year. And yet… did she really want to go back to Hogwarts? Back to the place that was ravaged by evil, the place where so many of her friends - Fred, Tonks, Remus - had been killed?
"Happy… isn't exactly the word I'd use, Professor," she said eventually, "but I do not take for granted how fortunate I am to have this opportunity at all. I'm not about to waste it."
They'd reached the stone gargoyle that marked the entrance to the Head's office and, when they halted beside it, McGonagall turned to study her.
"No, I should think not," she said. "You've been through a great deal to get here. Give yourself the credit you have earned."
Hermione swallowed thickly as her heartbeat thrummed in her temples. "Professor, what's this about?" she asked. McGonagall seemed to twinkle again.
"Now, now," she said, looking just shy of tapping Hermione impishly on the nose. "I'd better not explain until you both are present.Liquorice Allsorts!"
The stone gargoyle sprang to life and leapt sideways, revealing a spiralling staircase which seemed to grumble in complaint at being woken as it began to wind itself upwards. At the top, they crossed the landing to the great oak door which swung open at McGonagall's touch, leading into the large circular Head's office.
Hermione had seen the Head's office a handful of times when Dumbledore was in the post and fondly remembered the magical feeling of the room, strewn with ticking, whirring, twinkling ornaments, some of which could fit in your palm and some of which towered over the Headmaster himself. She remembered the Fawkes the phoenix's stead at the foot of the wrought staircase to the sleeping quarters and the Pensieve that glowed enticingly from inside its cabinet.
She had loved the office under Dumbledore's Headship but McGonagall's stamp on the room was much more her style. Books - good heavens, the books - they were everywhere: slotted snugly into innumerable shelves, piled on the little table between two velveteen armchairs, arranged in stacks on the large oak desk at the very apex of the room; not scattered or out of place, no, but decorating the room as features. Increasing amounts of plants and flowers appeared to materialise the more she looked around the room - springs of lavender and baby's breath, large fern fronds, pretty cream-coloured tulips in an old pewter jug on the windowsill. The portraits of the historic Headmasters remained on the walls, with the two new additions of Dumbledore and - yes - Snape taking front and centre, both of whom were snoozing in their armchairs either genuinely or out of politeness. There were two sturdy looking chairs arranged before McGonagall's desk, one of which was occupied by-
"Malfoy!" Hermione exclaimed in spite of herself. He looked over his shoulder at her and raised his eyebrows in greeting.
"I would stand," he said, and it felt as though his voice echoed through her entire body, "but I don't think I would be forgiven."
When she looked at him questioningly, he gestured to his lap, where Hermione saw the long, bushy tail of a large ginger cat swinging languidly over his leg, clearly very comfortable.
"Crooks?" she whispered, rushing over, hardly daring to believe that her sweet old cat was here before her, never mind still actually alive. He opened one green eye at the sound of her voice and, on confirming that it was her, stumbled to his big paws and began to let out loud, chirrupy yowls. Hermione fell into the second chair and had barely patted her knee before he had sprang into her lap, curling his tail around her face and knocking his head into her chin and hands.
"That's one clever cat you've got there, Miss Granger," McGonagall said, setting down a tray of two large mugs of tea, a milk jug and a bowl of sugar cubes on the desk in front of them. "After the Battle, when everybody had gone, I came up here to… well, I came up here and there he was, fast asleep in the Headmaster's chair, safe and tucked away from all the action."
Hermione laughed for the first time in what felt like months, blinking away the tears that had sprang to her eyes. All those years ago, back at the Burrow before Bill and Fleur's wedding, she'd left Crookshanks in Ginny's room and told him to be good. She knew from Ginny that she had taken him back to the castle despite his protestations and left food out for him every night which, every night, was left untouched. She'd assumed he'd made a new home in the wild and she hadn't realised until now how much she'd missed him.
"Now," McGonagall said, her tone turned businesslike, "let's get straight to the point." Hermione shushed the cat, who curled up happily on her lap, and Malfoy ceased attempting to brush ginger fur from his trouser legs to look up and listen. "I expect you are wondering why you are both here. Perhaps you wouldn't be if this were a normal school year, if you were two normal Seventh Year students returning for your NEWTs."
Hermione chanced a look at Malfoy. He was sat low in his chair, his angular legs spread and his arms crossed tightly across his chest, glowering at the sugar bowl. He, it seemed, understood what was happening more than she did.
"Professor?" she asked uncertainly, and McGonagall fixed them with a resolute stare.
"You both bring exceptional merit, skill and intelligence to this school, albeit you have previously chosen to exhibit these traits in very different ways. Miss Granger, you have always been extraordinarily bright, but your courage, resilience and practicality have made me very proud to have you in my House. And Mr Malfoy-"
He looked up to meet McGonagall's eye, chewing the inside of his lip.
"Mr Malfoy, I knew your father once. I knew your mother. And I have known you since you were an eleven year old boy, stepping into this castle for the very first time, polite, well-spoken and eager to learn and do well. Merlin knows you have been misguided, but the very fact that you are here tells me all I need to know about your future, Draco, not your past."
She paused, fire in her fixed expression.
"Drink your tea, it's getting cold."
They did as they were told. Hermione added a splash of milk to hers, while Malfoy added as many as four sugar cubes to his, much to Hermione's horror. They each took a sip, and McGonagall seized her chance.
"I'm making you both Head Boy and Head Girl respectively and there isn't anything you can do about it."
Crookshanks hadn't missed Hermione enough to tolerate lukewarm, mouth-swilled tea spilling into his fur when she spluttered rather ungracefully at this proclamation; he flounced off her knee with a hiss and a twitch of his bottle-brush tail. Malfoy, having hurriedly swallowed his mouthful, had apparently chivvied it down the wrong hole and was now intermittently gasping and coughing as he tried to right himself.
McGonagall put up with this for all of thirty seconds before losing her patience.
"For Heaven's sakes, Mr Malfoy, pull yourself together."
He reappeared from where he'd been bent double in his chair, still rather pink in the face and wheezing a little.
"Professor, have you-"
"Miss Granger, you can't honestly be surprised? Maybe I ought to reconsider, given that this decision has been made in part due to your intelligence." McGonagall's nostrils were flared, but there was also that amused twinkle present in her expression once more.
Malfoy had regained his ability to vocalise.
"Professor McGonagall, I really don't think-"
"It's not your decision to make, Mr Malfoy," McGonagall said. "I anticipated that at least one of you would be unhappy about this but my decision is final."
She looked from Hermione to Malfoy sternly and a rare twitch of the corner of her mouth signalled a smile trying to sneak through her icy exterior. Hermione chanced a look at Malfoy; he was holding his mug in his lap, blinking morosely at the dregs of tea that hadn't spilled onto the carpet during his coughing fit.
"Professor," Hermione ventured, leaning forwards to return her mug to the tea tray on the desk, "I wonder if you've considered the… reaction from the rest of the students at this news." She cast a significant glance at Malfoy hoping to convey her meaning.Who will take orders fromhim?
McGonagall's lips tightened into a hard line and something in her expression turned stony. Hermione felt a sick swoop in her stomach at being looked at in such a way by a teacher.
"Believe me, I have considered it, Miss Granger," she said, "perhaps even more deeply than you have in the five minutes since you learned about my decision."
Hermione looked at her shoes.
"Professor, I didn't mean to question-"
"I know, Miss Granger. In turn, I ask you to consider that there may be reasoning beyond your reckoning as to why Mr Malfoy and yourself have been selected to fulfil these roles."
"Yes, Professor," she nodded.
"Good. Duties will commence with classes on Monday. I should also let you know that, due to the abnormal number of this year's student population, the Prefects and Heads now have their own designated common area and dormitories located in the unused Divination corridor on the Seventh Floor. The password is 'Fizzing Whizbee'."
"Professor, can we still go in our old common rooms?"
"Of course, Miss Granger. You may have tonight to relax but I expect to see you both back here tomorrow morning at 10:30 to meet with the Prefects."
"Professor, who are the new Prefects, if I might ask?" Hermione asked, resisting the urge to raise her hand. She couldn't recall any mention of Prefects - or, indeed, Head Boy and Girl - in McGonagall's welcome speech.
"You will find out in due course," McGonagall answered, that small tug at the corner of her mouth reappearing. "Now, if there are no more objections, I would encourage you to return to your classmates or indeed turn in for the night." She rose from her chair and Hermione and Malfoy stood with her.
"Thank you, Professor," Hermione said at the doorway. Malfoy bowed his head mutely and followed her through. McGonagall bid them goodnight and closed the door softly, leaving them standing inches apart in the hallway. Hermione glanced at Malfoy; he held his shoulders straight and his hands clasped behind his back, but his head was ducked as if his shoes were the most interesting thing in the room. As if sensing her gaze, he looked up at her, his stormy grey eyes peering questioningly through his lashes.Can I help you?
Hermione looked away quickly and cleared her throat, but her curiosity got the better of her.
"Where were you?" she asked. "Just now. During the feast," she clarified, as he had crooked that infuriating eyebrow at her again.
"Just now, Granger? I had thought I was in McGonagall's office with you but I must have been mistaken," he drawled, inspecting his fingernails.
Hermione scoffed.
"Something funny?" he asked.
"Not at all," she replied smoothly. "I just remembered that Ginny is always right."
"Hmm," is all he said, but he held his hand out in front of them both. "After you."
"Gladly."
Hermione stormed down the spiral staircase and along the corridor ahead of him, sure he would be tracing her footsteps to the Divination corridor rather than stepping foot in Slytherin quarters, but she didn't look back to check if he was following. She reached the seventh floor in record time, her footsteps echoing in the empty corridor, and barked the password at the tapestry, which rolled up with a clatter to reveal a stone archway.
The archway led to the new Prefects' common room, a large square space which Hermione could tell from a cursory glance was dressed neutrally with each corner adorned with a colourful banner from each House and furnished with a number of squashy-looking armchairs and sofas. There was a hearth which came to life with invitingly warm flames when she entered, and full bookshelves, candelabras and a prestigious-looking suit of armour stood between two other archways on the far wall, beyond which two stone staircases curled upwards and out of sight.
She didn't linger to appreciate the surroundings, however, very aware of who would likely accompany her soon if she stopped to explore. She took the left staircase, which turned out to be a lucky guess as a door with an ornate 'Head Girl' plaque soon materialised on her left and swung open at her touch. Only when she'd shut the door behind her, her forehead resting against the wood, did she release the breath she had been holding. She made a mental note to kick the exercise regime up a notch, because the way her heart was hammering in her chest had absolutelynothingto do with Malfoy.
A quiet yowl made her turn and spot her clever Crookshanks stretching on her four-poster with his big ginger tail in the air. On the floor, most likely kicked away from the spot where the cat was now curling up to sleep, was an envelope lying face down. She picked up; she recognised the writing and sighed. No use putting it off, she thought and opened it, sitting on the edge of her bed to read, chewing on her thumbnail.
Hermione,
Hope the journey was alright. Look, I know things have been weird between us but I want you to know how amazing I think you are. You know I'm not good with words but you're brilliant, Hermione. I know you're worried about this year but you'll do great. Remember to ask McGonagall about me coming to see you for a weekend soon. Miss you already.
Love, Ron xxx