This was far from Malfoy Manor.
The Dark Lord had taken the entire Malfoy household with him to wait in the place once known to all of them as the Shrieking Shack. Hogwarts was close. Potter was close. And Draco was wound tense as a spring, ready to cross the age line and infiltrate the castle.
Lucius sat quiet and beaten in the seat of a boarded up window. Narcissa had been forbidden to heal him, even if it was just with the vine wood wand of the Muggleborn girl her son had seduced. Lucius was marshaling what strength he could, raising his voice to insist that the Dark Lord not send Draco into the castle, into the thick of the coming battle, no matter what the rash boy said.
"No, we will send him," the Dark Lord said, pacing around his snake as it floated suspended in a protective golden orb in the centre of the shack's musty sitting room. "You all felt Carrow's signal in the marks of your arms. It means Potter is in the castle. He has gone there in an attempt to steal from me. His mind is weak and I have seen into its secrets. He is greedy for something of mine that was left at Hogwarts for safekeeping. Of course, it is in a place where not just anyone can go. But we can never be too careful with a beast like Potter. And young Malfoy is one of only a few people who can find and protect my hiding place."
He stopped his pacing and lay each of his cold, heavy, grey hands on Draco's shoulders. "You remember the room, the enchanted room where you hid the Vanishing Cabinet in preparation for our liberation of the school from Dumbledore."
Draco nodded, his eyes on the bare grey feet standing on either side of his. "Yes, my Lord. The Room of Hidden Things. It revealed itself to me in the hour of your need."
"Yes. Good. The time has come for you to return to it on my behalf once more," the Dark Lord said. "Watch its entrance, and if Potter finds it, stop him. Do NOT kill him. He must die by my hand alone. But bring him to me, as you promised. Whether through the trust you say he has in you or through violence, bring Potter before he robs me again."
Draco staggered as the Dark Lord shoved at his shoulders as he unhanded him. He gave a clumsy, hurried bow as his mother poured a handful of Floo powder from a sachet into his palm.
"Yes, go by Floo," the Dark Lord said. "Your age allows it. Young Crabbe and Goyle will be waiting at the hearth when you arrive."
Draco was still nodding, taking his leave as his mother threw her arms around his neck. "Be careful and wise," she said, her voice teary against his ear. "Oh, my darling boy – "
"Go? When he says he has no wand?" Bellatrix interrupted, tugging at Narcissa's arm hard enough to wrench her away from her son. Bellatrix scanned Draco from head to foot one in one last attempt to catch him in the lie of not having his mother's wand hidden on himself somewhere.
But the Dark Lord was weary of her and only waved a clawed hand to warn her to be silent. "With the Crabbe and Goyle boys' wands on his side, Young Malfoy will not need one of his own. He is not on a combat mission, but a recovery mission – "
"He'll be defenseless, my Lord," Lucius dared to protest. "Couldn't he serve you better if – "
"Enough," the Dark Lord roared. "Young Malfoy will lead the way to the hiding place and coax Potter out of it. That is all. In fact," he turned to Draco, grinning, "wandless is how I prefer this little minion to go. Off with you, young Malfoy. And remember that I have your parents here with me."
It was not reassurance. It was a threat. With a grim final nod to his mother and father, Draco disappeared through the fire.
His face set in a scowl, he burst through the green of the flames and into the Hogwarts Entrance Hall. It was noisy with the running footsteps and shouting of those who were evacuating, and noiser still with the scraping of stone and steel as those left behind prepared their fortifications. Just as the Dark Lord had promised, Crabbe and Goyle were waiting to catch Draco as he arrived, seizing him by each of his arms.
Pansy Parkinson was also there, rushing toward the Floo Draco had just stepped through. "Oi, Pansy!" he called to her, ignoring the brutes holding him. "Where are you going?"
She blushed. "McGonagall has sent me home. I panicked when Potter showed up and the – the voice started. Made a right arse of myself and now this is me skulking off in shame."
Crabbe jostled Draco. "Come on, Malfoy. We got to hurry."
"Don't go yet," Draco called back to Pansy as they dragged him toward the marble staircase. "We might need you."
"We?" she shouted after him as he got farther away.
He tried to wave at her but Crabbe held his hand pinned, forcing him to walk submissively between them, like their prisoner. It was dangerous, and it wouldn't do.
"Oh, for stars' sake," Draco said, elbowing himself free and moving to the front of their procession. "Neither of you knows where you're going. Every time I brought you to stand guard outside the Room, you acted like you'd never seen the place before. Now get out of my way."
Goyle was openly relieved to see Draco acting like his old self again, and he let him march ahead. Pushing against the flow of foot traffic on the stairs and corridors, they made their way to the seventh floor and the space on the wall where Draco knew the door to the Room of Hidden Things would appear.
Goyle fiddled with his wand, restless and a bit sweaty. "Potter won't find it," he said. "No he won't. He better not. I got a bad feeling."
Draco snapped at him. "Oh, so you're a seer now, are you Goyle? How sensitive of you. Quit your whinging and get your Disillusionment spell started. As I recall, it takes the pair of you for-flaming-ever to cast it. And one of you will have to do mine since Potter nicked my wand. So hurry."
"Potter better find the Room," Crabbe was saying, fighting to coil the spell around himself. "What I wouldn't give for a proper go at him."
"That's what you won't have," Draco hissed at him. "Only the Dark Lord can kill him. Don't forget that or we're all done for."
Between the two of them and a lot of complaining and bossing from Draco, Crabbe and Goyle managed to get him Disillusioned. More tense than ever, the three of them waited as motionless as they could. They didn't move even as the door appeared and people came streaming out of what was currently the Room of Requirement. There were students but also adults from outside the school, members of the Order of the Phoenix and even turncoats from the Ministry, like Weasley's spectacled brother Percy.
Last to come out of the Room, shutting the door and waiting to open it again as the Room of Hidden Things, were Weasley, Potter, and Hermione herself. They were talking quickly and quietly, speaking one word more intensely than the rest: diadem.
Crabbe tried his best to repeat it. Goyle hushed him and sank further into the tapestry at their backs.
Though he meant to keep silent, Draco gave a small gasp at the sight of Hermione. He hadn't seen her since she'd broken into Gringotts and escaped on the back of a dragon. How could she have planned, executed, and survived all of that and still looked as fragile and kissable as ever? Beneath his spell, Draco's cheeks and throat flushed, and his heart beat out a thud. This woman…
"What're you gawking at?" Crabbe needled at his side.
Draco answered with a sharp elbow to Crabbe's gut. "Keep quiet, you idiot."
"They're going back in," Goyle said in a whisper. "We weren't supposed to let them go in the Room. What do we do now, Malfoy?"
Crabbe answered for him. "We get 'em."
His Disillusionment spell fell away as Crabbe lunged across the corridor and into the Room. With a snarl, Draco darted after him, Goyle following, all of them slipping inside just as the door began to fade from sight.
Inside, they blinked and squinted in the dust-heavy air. The familiar acrid smell hit Draco's senses, memories of fighting for his life to fix the cabinet all of sixth year rushing back to him. He did this. All of this chaos and violence was his fault, after what he let them in here to do to Dumbledore that night. How could it be made right? Who could he save? Maybe he had nothing to offer but more death and deception. He fell back a step, his hand open, feeling for the door.
And then, far away, lost among heaps of rubbish, came the sound of Hermione's voice. She was bickering harmlessly with Weasley. It was enough.
"Right," Draco began, moving off in her direction. He'd find her and Weasley first, get Potter, and they'd leave Crabbe and Goyle inside the Room to search for nothing. "Let's split up."
"No way, Malfoy," Crabbe said, his meaty hand clamped over Draco's arm. "You stay where we can see you. They told us you were shagging that Mudblood and we had to keep you close."
Draco scoffed. "That? What's a bit of slumming during a boring year stuck at home got to do with anything? And how do you expect me to lure Potter out of here without hurting him if the pair of you are bearing down on him with wands drawn?"
"You're staying with us," Crabbe growled, unconvinced, his voice much more than a whisper.
"You say something, Harry?" Weasley called through the room, his voice muffled by the stacks of abandoned garbage.
"No, still looking," Potter called back.
"Over there," Crabbe mouthed, inching toward Harry's voice.
"We don't need to fight him in here," Goyle said, hanging back. "I say we go back to the doors and jump 'em when they try to leave."
Crabbe bared his teeth, snickering. "That's no fun." He pushed Draco ahead of him, around the edge of a pile of broken chairs and right into the aisle where Potter stood looking lost, his profile turned to them.
Potter hadn't seen them yet. Crabbe was grinning, raising his wand to attack unseen from behind. But before he could, Draco called out from between the two massive bodies crowded in front of him, "That's my wand you're holding, Potter."
Potter spun around, his eyebrows raised. And just as they had done weeks ago in Malfoy Manor when Draco had helped Harry and the rest to escape, a look passed between them. Things were not as they seemed. Of course, Draco did not mean to recover his original hawthorn wand. They both knew he was well past that.
But what was he doing confronting Potter here with his old cronies? The look, the moment wasn't long, but in it Potter made a choice to trust Draco Malfoy.
Potter spoke back, letting his voice carry to warn Weasley and Hermione of this awful new development. "It's not yours anymore," he said. "Winners, keepers, Malfoy. So how come you three aren't with Voldemort?"
Crabbe couldn't help but answer – something about being rewarded. As he crowed on, Draco inclined his head very slightly in the direction he'd heard voices as they'd come in. Potter accepted it with a tiny nod and inclined his own head in the direction he needed to go, toward the bust of a warlock wearing a dusty wig and an ancient discoloured tiara.
That was what the Dark Lord had sent them to protect?
"Good plan," Harry sneered at Crabbe, edging closer to the tiara. "So how did you get in here…"
He was keeping the big oafs distracted, letting Crabbe brag, inching toward his target. And then, from somewhere out of sight, Weasley was calling out again.
It was too much for Crabbe and he shot a Descendo spell at a massive, tottering pile of junk. It was crashing down, a landslide of debris. Potter was fast, countering the tumbling spell before Malfoy could reach for his hidden wand.
Above the sound of falling debris and shouted spells there had been another sound, chilling – Hermione's scream.
"No!" Draco shouted, grabbing at Crabbe's arm to stop him from repeating the falling spell. "Don't – don't wreck the room. Our mission is to keep it safe, not to destroy everything."
Crabbe flung his arm out of Draco's grip. "Who cares what you think? I don't take your orders no more, Draco. You an' your dad are finished."
As they scuffled together, Potter made his move for the diadem, and the Room became a blur of disaster.
For Draco, one thing stood out of the chaos, clearer and more horrifying than the rest. It was Hermione's voice growing louder, no longer screaming but calling for Potter. She was coming to his aid, running into the line of erratic, murderous fire of Crabbe's spells.
"STOP!" Draco shouted, his voice echoing through the room. As he heard the reverberations, Draco knew it was a mistake. Now that Hermione knew he was here, she would only run faster into danger.
She was rounding the corner, her jaw set, hurling a Stunning Spell at Crabbe's head.
"It's that Mudblood!" he howled. Crabbe was through with toppling objects and blocking passages. He was casting killing curses – casting them at her.
Draco lunged sideways into Crabbe, knocking him out of the way of the spell Potter fired in retaliation. All the while Draco was shouting, "Don't kill them. DON'T KILL THEM!"
Goyle paused at the order, compliant long enough for Potter to disarm him. Hermione finished him off with a Stunning Spell. Goyle slumped at Crabbe's feet as he kept launching killing curses at anything that moved.
Weasley set off chasing after Crabbe as he retreated, while Potter fixed his attention on the diadem once again.
Draco knelt at Goyle's side, checking that he hadn't broken his nose when he fell.
Hermione skidded to a stop at his side. From where he perched on one knee on the floor, Draco looked up at her – sudden, grinning, dazzling. He watched her take in a quick breath, swept a hungry look from her feet to her head.
"Nice one, love," he said.
She lowered her wand, her cheeks flushed. "Draco, what are you – ?"
There was a new tumult to interrupt her. A roar was tearing through the air, a blast of hot wind rushing from the direction Crabbe and Weasley had run. They were racing ahead of it, Crabbe cackling, as if he was pleased with his burning spell. But his bravado was faltering, no more laughter but desperate, terrified running for his life. Weasley pelted past, snagging Hermione's hand and pulling her after himself without a word. Draco had scampered to his feet and was fighting to drag Goyle over the gritty ground.
It wasn't going to work. They'd never make it this way…
Around a bend, out of the blast zone, Hermione rooted her feet and slid her sweat-slicked hand out of Weasley's. "What can we do?" she screamed over the roar of the fire. "It's Draco. My Draco – he'll be – " Her wits were scattered, her mind blank with grief and terror. Why now, of all times, did she have nothing to say but, "What can we do?"
"Here!" Potter said, tossing a broom at Weasley and mounting one himself.
There took to the air in another hellish blur, hot and choking. There was no trace left of Crabbe. But Hermione heard Draco's voice calling for Potter as she held Weasley's waist, trembling and sick at his back on the broom. Draco – he couldn't meet his end here, like this, in Fiendfyre conjured by a fool for nothing.
Potter was swooping and grabbing, shouting. There was a yell of triumph as Draco swung onto the broom behind him.
An instant later, all five of them were lying on the gloriously cold stone floor of the corridor outside the Room, shuddering and coughing. Hermione was up first, climbing over Weasley to take Draco by the lapels and heft him to sitting. She looked into his face, her eyes wide and confused, her lip quivering, unable to even begin to ask him what kind of madness he was up to now.
"I'm sorry," was all he said, throwing an arm over her shoulder, rough with exhaustion and near-asphyxiation. She fell into him, her face in the crook of his neck, her mouth open and panting against his sooty white skin, his pulse beating against her lips.
He let out his breath, turning his face to her, his nose sinking through her hair, past the ash and brimstone to the smell of her skin. She was sighing, her body softening in his arms. He managed to speak again, in a whisper. "Like always, I'm sorry."
She sat back, batting weakly at his chest, her eyes red with smoke and tears. "Draco Malfoy, what in the stars did you think you were doing, following us in there?"
Draco nodded toward Goyle's motionless hulk. "They were hunting you. You saw Crabbe, he was like a rabid dog. I had to try to give you the time you needed in the Room, or he would have murdered Potter from behind."
"I thought Voldemort had to kill Harry himself," Weasley cut in.
"Yes, well Crabbe wasn't one for following orders, by the end, was he?" Draco snapped. There was an edge of heartbreak in his voice. Crabbe was dead. He was really, truly gone from Draco's side after an entire childhood together.
"Orders?" Potter said as Hermione swiped the pad of her thumb over the dirt on the end of Draco's nose. "You're here on Voldemort's orders?"
"Yes," he confessed. "He sent me to stop you from getting that – thing."
Draco waved at the tiara caught around Potter's wrist. As they watched, it crumbled to pieces, the fifth horcrux destroyed, ravished by the Fiendfyre.
Hermione gasped. "It's gone."
"Only the snake left," Harry said, low and astonished.
Not understanding the significance of it, Draco huffed and pecked a kiss on Hermione's temple before getting to his feet. "If it's the snake you want, you won't get anywhere near it. The beast is – "
"Well-protected, yes," Harry finished. "I know."
Draco was raising Hermione to stand beside him as Goyle was beginning to groan and sway, coming back around. "Crabbe…" he was muttering.
"He's dead," Ron said without much sympathy.
Goyle coughed out a sob, rolling onto his side. "Malfoy," he sobbed. "What – what do we do now, Malfoy? I don't know what to d-do."
Draco knelt beside him again, tugging him to sitting, bracing his neck and pushing their faces close together. "I know. He's gone but you're still here. You still have a chance. So this is what you do. Goyle? Look at me. This is what you do: go back to the Dungeons and make sure everyone gets out. Make sure no one else ends up like Crabbe. No one else. Alright?"
Goyle was wandless, weeping, but finding his feet, pulling himself up on the tapestry.
"Go on," Draco urged him. "Don't talk to anyone until you get to the Dungeons. Tell them Potter found what he's looking for, and it's time for everyone else to go."
"We've got to try for the snake anyway," Potter said, not raising his head to watch Goyle scuff away from them.
"But that's what he wants you to do," Hermione reasoned.
"It's what he sent me to get you to do," Draco added. "And honestly, I think you should go anyway, Potter."
Hermione clucked her tongue. "Draco…"
"Yeah? Well who asked you?" Weasley snapped at him.
Potter raised a hand. "Why though? Why would I walk into a trap like that? Tell me how he made that tank around the snake and how I can get through it or piss off, Malfoy."
Draco bowed his head and took a breath. "He's got this new wand. Not the old one that looked like it was made out of bone. A longer one with nubs all along it."
Weasley and Potter exchanged a wide-eyed look.
"No, it can't be…" Hermione began.
"It is," Potter said. "The elder wand. It's real and he's got it. I saw him take it out of Dumbledore's tomb. You know that."
"Elder wand?" Draco said. "You mean like…"
"The Deathly Hallows, yeah," Weasley said, quickly. "Turns out they're real. And out to get us."
"No, I don't think it's as simple as that," Draco said, frowning, thinking hard.
Hermione huffed. "No, of course not. Simple is what it never is."
"He's been murmuring about how this great new wand is not working the way he wants," Draco said. "He doesn't know why. But you've got to confront him, Potter, before he figures it out and gets that wand to full power. He's just sent for Snape to help sort it – "
"Snape!" Potter said, as if it explained everything. "Not Snape. He's — " Potter laughed. "He's got it wrong."
Hermione shook Potter's arm. "What? What's wrong?"
"He's not summoning Snape for advice," Potter said. "He's invited him in to kill him off."
Weasley gasped, understanding. "The wand last belonged to Dumbledore. And Voldemort thinks that if he kills the person who killed Dumbledore, the wand will give its allegiance to him."
Hermione was frowning. "But that's now how it works. Remember? Ollivander said Draco's wand changed its allegiance to you, Harry. But you never had to murder anyone for it, just win the wand."
"Yeah, and Snape never won Dumbledore's wand," Potter said. "Did he, Malfoy?"
Draco was speechless, his eyes dark and hollow. For the second time that night, he was torn away by terrible memories. He was remembering the Astronomy Tower, and a wounded Dumbledore barely able to stand letting his wand be flicked out of his grip by the trembling hand of a boy.
"It was Draco that disarmed him," Potter said. "It's Draco he needs to kill first."
