The next day was different somehow. Maybe it was because he actually slept a little bit the night before, maybe it was something else. Either way, when Draco woke up he felt as if a weight had been lifted off of his shoulders. He rolled onto his side and pushed himself up into a sitting position, swinging his legs over the side of his bed. The curtains that he usually had closed while he slept were open, though Draco was pretty sure he had left them that way the night before, so he didn't really question it.

"You actually sleep last night?" Draco looked up from the ground, which he had been staring a bit blankly at for the past few minutes, half-asleep still. Ron was the only other person in their dorm room, meaning Dean, Seamus, and Neville had likely already gone down to breakfast. His red hair was a mess-more than usual-and the look in his eyes was tired, but there was a small genuine smile on his face.

"Guess so… Is Harry still…?" Ron nodded slightly, frowning as he looked down at his hands.

"Yeah, unless he woke up and nobody decided to tell us." He took a deep breath, like he was trying to calm himself, and looked back up at Draco. His expression went from troubled and worried back to what seemed to be a reassuring smile, a tiny bit of the spark Draco had gotten used to since the beginning of the year, but had been mostly gone for the past few days, shining in his eyes. "How about we go down to breakfast? It's almost nine."

"You say that like that's not an hour before you usually get up when we don't have classes," Draco said, without really thinking. He hadn't made any sort of joke since they got past Fluffy, he had been too scared and worried to even feel capable of it. Ron grinned for the first time in days and stood up.

"You're the one who slept in. C'mon, I'm starving," Ron said and made his way towards the door of the dorm, grinning at Draco, who in turn raised an eyebrow at him.

"When are you not starving? Also, I'm not dressed." Ron eyed the uniform Draco was still wearing from yesterday, which was now slightly wrinkled because he had slept in it. Ron or Harry would have just left it on without really thinking about it, if either of them actually fell asleep in their uniform, which seemed an unlikely scenario, Ron hated the uniform and Harry liked the pajamas the school gave them better cause he found them more comfortable, they were softer or something. They'd probably just straighten their ties a bit, nothing else. Draco on the other hand couldn't stand the idea of staying in something he'd already been wearing for over 24 hours. The collar felt like it was choking him, the shirt was scratchy and the pants were twisted up.

"Nobody's gonna care," Ron said and Draco raised an eyebrow at him again.

"Well, I care. I'm going to change, you can go ahead, I'll catch up." Draco waved a bit dismissively in Ron's direction as he stood up and went to the closet that held his clothes.

"Knowing you, you'll take half an hour to 'change'," Draco could practically hear the air quotation marks Ron was probably making. "I'm gonna wait for you and if you're not done in ten minutes, I'm going to drag you down to the Great Hall, no matter how little gel you have in your hair or how crooked your tie is."

Draco closed the door of his closet part-way and glared at Ron, who just gave him a slightly unimpressed look. "Shut up, Weasley," he snapped, even though he knew he was technically right, he did take longer than most to get ready in the morning.

"You're not scary, Malfoy," Ron emphasized the last word with a slight mocking undertone. "You're not even five feet tall."

Draco glared at him for a few more seconds before turning away and rifling through the clothes in his closet, ignoring the other gryffindor. It wasn't his fault he wasn't a beanstalk like Ron!

Where were all his clothes that weren't uniforms? After a solid minute of staring at the identical white button-ups hanging in there, and the identical grey sweaters, and identical black pants, he sighed quietly and grabbed one of the shirts and pants before opening the top drawer under the doors and took out a tie and new pair of socks.

When he straightened up and closed his closest, Ron raised an eyebrow at him like he was telling Draco to hurry up without actually saying it. "Shut up."

"I didn't say anything," Ron said, grinning slightly. Once again the amused expression threw Draco off a bit, he hadn't looked actually happy at all since they went through the trapdoor. What was different suddenly?

Instead of saying anything in response to that, Draco simply turned and stalked off to the bathroom. The day before, he would have snapped something about how he shouldn't be looking that happy or smug, Harry was still hurt, maybe dying, and they didn't really know anything, but something was different, though what it was, Draco didn't have a clue.

The first difference outside of the fact that the air felt lighter, like the tension that had hung over the school since Harry had ended up in the Hospital Wing had disappeared, was that Severus was back. When Draco, Ron, and Hermione, who had been waiting for them in the Common Room, reading, came into the Great Hall, they all immediately noticed him. Nothing about his appearance gave away anything about whether or not he had been the one who had hurt Harry. He looked exactly like he always did; hair straight and shiny with grease, skin pasty, long black robes on despite the warm weather.

The three gryffindors froze in the doorway when they saw him and after staring at him for what was at least half a minute, they all simultaneously started walking towards their table, where they sat at the very end, as far from everyone else as possible.

"What's he doing here? Shouldn't he be locked in Azkaban?" Ron hissed the second they sat down, glancing at the front of the room again at Severus. His hands were fidgeting with the fork sitting next to the plate in front of him, his eyes glinting nervously, any of his previous happiness completely gone.

"Technically, Dumbledore never told us it was him, which means he might not know," Hermione said, her gaze also flicking between Snape and Draco and Ron, chewing on her lower lip. The flush her cheeks had before from the heat of the day was gone.

"Both he and Quirrell disappeared after it happened, isn't that suspicious? Why would he even come back? Especially without Quirrell. Anyone with even a small amount of common sense could put together that he was connected to both Quirrell's disappearance and Harry being hurt." Draco frowned at his godfather, though he honestly didn't feel like the man deserved the title anymore if he really was the one who had hurt Harry and tried to take the stone.

"You think he killed Quirrell?" Ron spoke so quietly Draco almost missed it, but he turned to look at him and saw by how pale the redhead was that he hadn't misheard him.

"I don't know…"

"He might have, except they could probably trace it back to him. I imagine magic just makes it easier to find out who murdered someone," Hermione said with a slight tremble in her voice. She looked even more scared than she would if someone told her she had to hover a hundred feet in the air on a broom for an hour.

"Not if he used the killing curse and transformed the body into something nobody would question, like a stick or something." Draco bit his lip and shuddered.

"We need to tell someone that he's the one who tried to take the stone," Ron said and Hermione nodded, glancing at the teacher's table again before looking away quickly, as if Snape would know what they were saying just by her looking his way.

"Both McGonagall and Dumbledore aren't here," she said. The latter of the two not being there wasn't that unusual, Dumbledore was rarely there for meals, but Professor McGonagall not being there was both convenient and concerning. She was almost always there, the only times she wasn't was when something big had happened.

"She's probably in her office." The three of them stood up again, Ron grabbing a piece of toast quickly before they left the Great Hall. Hermione raised an eyebrow at him but didn't say a word as they all walked as quickly as they could without looking like they were forcing themselves not to run towards where Professor McGonagall's office was.

They didn't even make it past the first flight of stairs, however, before they almost collided with the person they were looking for. "Mr. Malfoy! Slow down! Same goes for you, Ms. Granger, and you, Mr. Weasley." They all froze, staring at Professor McGonagall with likely identical expressions of slight guilt on their faces. "I was just about to come and find you three."

Draco, Ron, and Hermione all glanced at each other. Why would she be looking for them?

"Is Harry alright?" Hermione demanded, and dread pooled in Draco's gut at the thought that their head of house had been looking for them to tell them Harry was dead. Her expression didn't appear troubled, which likely meant he hadn't, but still, he couldn't shove away his fear like he wanted to.

"Yes, in fact that's what I came to speak to you about. He woke up this morning, and keeps asking about the three of you." Draco, Ron, and Hermione all let out a collective sigh of relief.

"Can we see him?" Ron asked, blue eyes brighter than they had been in days, no longer clouded with worry.

"Yes, I believe so, though not for very long, he needs to rest." Some part of Draco wanted to protest that Harry had been resting for three days already, but he knew that while that was true, depending on how hurt Harry was, he could need weeks of rest.

"Doesn't matter how long, we just want to make sure he's okay," Draco said and when Hermione and Ron nodded, Professor McGonagall sighed softly and nodded herself.

"Alright, Madame Pomfrey will let you in," she said and before she could say another word they were running, the reason they had originally been looking for her completely forgotten. Besides, if Harry was awake, he had probably already told Dumbledore what had happened.

They raced through the corridors of the castle, nearly tripping over their own feet multiple times in their haste to get to the Hospital Wing. Maybe this was why everything had felt different when Draco woke up that morning, maybe some part of his subconscious could tell that things really were alright again, like his magic could somehow sense that Harry had woken up.

It seemed to take ten times longer than usual to get to the Hospital Wing, the stairs all seemed to be against them, moving when they didn't want them to, catching their feet in trick steps they hadn't known about. By the time they got there, all of them were breathing a bit heavily from running, strands of Hermione's hair framed her face, having escaped the ponytail she'd had it in, and Draco's fringe was falling in his eyes, having grown out slightly due to not having been cut in months, only kept in check by his magic, which seemed to keep it at a tolerable length. Ron had kept his word up in the common room and dragged Draco out of there before he had even got the chance to try and fix his hair. In all honesty, Draco realized it wasn't as bad as he thought it would be without gel.

The door was locked when they tried to open it, which seemed incredibly odd and inconvenient considering this was the place anyone who got hurt in any way was supposed to go. Voices were audible from the other side of the door, though what they were saying, and who they belonged to was impossible to figure out, the thick wood of the door muffled it too much. Draco looked at Hermione and Ron, about to knock on the door to see if they'd be let in. Before he could, however, the lock clicked and opened.

"Five minutes," Madame Pomfrey said like she would rather tell them to go back to their dorms like she had done after making sure they were alright three days earlier. How had she known it was them? She stepped to the side and wandered towards her office in the back, allowing Draco, Ron, and Hermione to run inside the Hospital Wing. Harry wasn't hard to spot, he was in the second bed on the right side of the room, bedside table covered in candy and notes from people.

"Harry!" It could have been one or all of them who yelled it, but either way they all raced to his side. Hermione almost threw herself at Harry to hug him again like she had before walking through the door of flames, but she stopped herself at the last moment, seeming to realize it might not be the best idea. Her eyes held even more concern than Draco had ever seen from her, and it struck him that she must have been hiding how worried she was in an attempt to make Ron and Draco less worried over the past few days. It was a sort of odd thing to think about, but if she had been as out of it as him and Ron were, Draco was sure both of them would have been much worse.

"Oh Harry, we thought you would-Dumbledore was so worried-" The last part was somewhat debatable in Draco's opinion, but he didn't comment on it.

He sat down on the bed next to Harry's legs, a frown tugging at his lips as he tried and failed to push down the concern that still bubbled inside his chest. "Are you alright? Nobody would tell us anything, not even if you were hurt or-or dying. You're okay, though, right?" Draco spoke quickly, nerves making his words almost blur together. He had gone days without knowing if his best friend would make it to the end of the school year, Draco was pretty sure that gave him the right to be scared, though it still felt like a weakness, as his father had always seemed to think-too much connection to someone made it so they could hurt you, it was better to not get attached.

"I'm fine, Draco. My head just hurts a bit, that's all. Are you guys alright?" Harry asked in response and Hermione, Ron, and Draco all nodded.

"Just a few scrapes, we're all fine," Ron said, sitting down on the other side of the bed, frowning at Harry. "The whole school's been talking about what they think happened, but… Harry, what really happened?"

Harry hesitated for a moment before speaking, his right hand rubbing at his scar almost absentmindedly.

"When I got past the flames, I ended up in this big room. Someone was already there, but it wasn't who we thought it would be-it was Quirrell." Their eyes all widened in shock.

"Quirrell?" Ron demanded and Harry nodded, the look in his eyes showing that he hadn't expected it any more than they had.

"That explains why he hasn't been here since then…" Harry grimaced at Draco's words and looked down at his hands, which he had clenched tightly into fists in his lap.

"Yeah… everything was Quirrell. He's the one who tried to knock me off my broom during the Quidditch game, he's the one who let the troll in. Snape was trying to stop him the whole time. That's why he got hurt on Halloween, he went up to the third floor to try and catch Quirrell, but Fluffy got him instead. He must have been saying a counter curse during the Quidditch match, and he wasn't threatening Quirrell to get him to tell him how to get the stone, but to know how much he knew." Had this been about anything else, Draco would've said, "I told you so," but he didn't, because it really wasn't something he should be smug about, especially considering he had ended up believing it was Severus in the end.

"The mirror was there, in the room," Harry continued, and it took Draco a moment to understand which mirror he was talking about. How had it moved from that abandoned classroom to down through the trapdoor? "Dumbledore managed to hide the stone in there so that the only way you could get it out was if you wanted it, but not to use it. Quirrell was trying to figure out how to get it out, because he didn't know that, but he couldn't figure it out, so he told his master he needed help."

"Master?" Hermione, Ron, and Draco all demanded at the same time, and Harry nodded.

"Yeah, he just said he needed help, told his master to help him, and a voice answered, even though nobody else was there. He had me look in the mirror and tell him what I saw, but I lied because I saw myself getting the stone, and suddenly I felt it in my pocket," Hermione made a small confused noise but didn't say anything, chewing on her lower lip.

"I told him I saw us winning the house cup and he shoved me away. I thought I might be able to escape, but before I could get out of there, the voice spoke again; it said that I was lying. Quirrell tried to get me to tell him what I'd really seen but I didn't get a chance, not that I would have taken it if I had, to talk, because the voice said it wanted to talk to me, face-to-face." Harry shuddered slightly like even the memory of it scared him, which made Draco gulp and frown. Barely anything scared Harry, he was made of courage and bravery, strong and confident no matter what was happening.

"Quirrell took his turban off and… Voldemort was under it," Hermione shrieked and clamped her hand over her mouth, staring at Harry with wide, terrified eyes while Draco and Ron's jaws dropped, both paling.

"V-Voldemort?"

Harry nodded, looking a little pale himself as he spoke again. "He tried to get me to give him the stone, and when I wouldn't… he told Quirrell to grab me. When he did though, it burned him, and it made my scar hurt. Voldemort kept telling him to grab me when Quirrell let go because touching me was hurting him. He…" Harry frowned and absentmindedly rubbed at his throat, which brought Draco's attention to the fading bruises there. A spike of fear and anger went through him and he knew what Harry's words would be before he even spoke them. "He tried to strangle me, but it kept burning him and… and then, I don't really know why, I grabbed his face and he… I don't exactly know, honestly. I passed out."

Draco moved a bit closer, resisting the urge to reach towards Harry and move his hand out of the way so he could properly see the bruises. Why hadn't Madame Pomfrey gotten rid of them? Was there not a spell for that?

"When I woke up, I was here, and Dumbledore was here. I kept asking about the stone and he told me that he destroyed it." Harry fidgeted and looked down, curling his hands into fists again, though they still shook slightly.

"So… the stone's just gone?" Ron asked after a long moment where nobody spoke. "Flamel's just going to die?"

"That's what I said, but Dumbledore thinks that-what was it again?-'to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure'."

Silence fell again for about a minute, before it was once again interrupted by Ron, "I always said he was off his rocker." Draco snorted, trying to contain his laughter. He had a point there, most of the time Dumbledore was either terrifying or seemed completely mad, not all there.

"And what happened with you?" Harry asked, ignoring Ron's comment even though the corner of his lips tugged up a little bit.

Their story was technically much shorter than Harry's, and it didn't have any sort of reveals, but it still took longer to tell because three people were telling it instead of one. Ron kept interrupting Hermione, and Draco added details every few sentences.

"Do you think he wanted you to do it?" Ron asked when they finished telling their version of the story. "Since he gave you the cloak and everything?" Draco gave him a confused look, when had they discovered that? Had he missed something?

"Well," Hermione practically yelled, anger sparking in her eyes, "if that's true-I mean to say that's terrible-you could have been killed."

"No, he didn't," Harry said, looking thoughtful. "He's a funny man, Dumbledore. I think he just wanted to give me a chance. I think he knows more or less everything that goes on here. I reckon he had a pretty good idea we were going to try, and instead of stopping us, he taught us just enough to help us. I don't think it was an accident that he let me find out how the mirror works. It's almost like he thought I had a right to face Voldemort if I could…"

"I don't think that makes things any better. We're kids, Harry! Mon dieu, even if he taught us what we needed to know to survive, that doesn't mean we absolutely would have! We all could have died, you especially! Even though none of us did, he more or less purposefully put us in danger. Isn't that sort of messed up?" Draco demanded, not fully comprehending how Harry could possibly think that what their headmaster had done wasn't dangerous or wrong.

"Yeah, Dumbledore's definitely off his rocker," Ron said before Harry could say anything in response to Draco's words. "Listen, you have to go to the end-of-the-year feast tomorrow. The points are all counted up and Slytherin won-you weren't there in the last Quidditch game, so Ravenclaw destroyed us without you-honestly, I don't know how they didn't win, but the food'll be much better than whatever you get in here."

Before any of them could say anything, Madame Pomfrey stormed back out of her office, her door slamming open with unnecessary force. "You've had fifteen minutes now, OUT!" she yelled and they all scrambled to their feet, shooting one more concerned look at Harry before quickly leaving the Hospital Wing.