Draco stood in the Room of Hidden Things with his hand extended, waiting. Hermione looked hard at it, and then at the red velvet shroud he'd draped over the half-mended vanishing cabinet behind him.

"Let's find Snape," he said again, "so he can help me explain the rest. You're going to have a million questions and he can answer them better than I can."

She didn't move. "I need," she began, "I think I need to go a little more slowly. I commend you for telling me about all this, but still, my trust has been, well - disturbed. And it's not just because you took so long to confide in me. It's Snape too. I mean, if you were taking me to McGonagall for answers, that would be one thing, but Snape…"

She took his hand, but instead of letting him lead her away, to Snape's dungeon office, she stepped into his arms again, setting his palm on the small of her back. "Draco, you and Snape work both sides of this conflict. But me - I've never done that, though if I take one more step with you, I'll be closer to that grey area than I've ever been before. It's terrifying. So I need something to give me more confidence, more convincing that it would be the right thing to do - something beyond you looking at me that way."

He bent to connect their foreheads, looking at her even more intently than before. "Dumbledore trusts Snape," he said. "Isn't that what your Order tells you? Isn't it still good enough?"

She sighed. "I can't always be the obedient little foot soldier. Sometimes I need to find things out for myself instead of just accepting whatever everyone tells me." She rolled her forehead against his. "I do have a way to get the assurance I'm looking for. But I need you to wait here for me while I get it sorted."

Draco leaned back, raising his eyebrows. "Sneakoscope?"

She laughed. "No."

"Right. Then go ahead and use legilimency on me. I won't resist."

She frowned. "I'm uncomfortable with the ethics of legilimency. It's a violation."

He nodded. "Speaking of dodgy rules of consent, how about Veritaserum? Do you have some? I'll take it. Maybe Snape could give us some."

"I said, no Snape," she protested. "Not yet. But trust me, and wait here for me. And do not touch that cabinet."

Harry jumped from where he'd been reclining on his bed, glaring at the Map. "It's Hermione. She's finally back on the Map," he called to Ron, though he was still in the shower. Harry watched her dot, waiting. "But not Malfoy. Ah, but who cares. If I get her to take me back to the seventh floor, she can get me inside the Room of Requirement, which will be better than confronting him in the corridor anyway."

Soaking wet, Ron stuck his head out from behind the bathroom door. "You talking to someone out here, Harry? You alright?"

Harry tucked the map underneath his pillow. "Yeah, great," he told Ron. "Off to say hi to Romilda Vane."

Harry was moving so fast he had to fight not to fall down the stairs. Of course, he had no interest in meeting Romilda Vane in the common room, and he hoped she'd have gone by now. She hadn't. In fact, she was standing near the portrait hole as if she was monitoring it, waiting to pounce after a holiday break's worth of plotting. He swore at himself for being in too much of a rush to think to come downstairs in his invisibility cloak.

It was too late now. Romilda had seen him and she was beaming, striding toward Harry from her post at the portrait hole, her friends hanging back, tittering with laughter. "Hi, Harry," she said.

"Hey," he answered, nodding but weaving past her, toward the exit.

"Wait up, Potter," she said, tossing her hair. He didn't want her following him, so he stopped. "My family gave me loads of sweets for Christmas, like I'm still a six-year-old who doesn't give a care about her figure." Romilda twisted her stance, highlighting her figure as she spoke of it. "I've managed to give most of the lot away but I'm left with this last box of chocolate cauldrons - the liqueur type. Would you be so kind as to take them off my hands for me?"

It was an odd request, pretty clearly an attempt to slip him that love potion Hermione had warned him about ages ago. Harry was instantly repulsed but not inclined to deliver a lecture about the sanctity of his powers of consent. No, the easiest way he could think of to deal with it was not to deal with it at all. All Harry said was, "Sure, thanks," as he took the chocolate, and bolted back up the stairs.

In his room, he rooted through his trunk to find his cloak, tossing the chocolate aside. He came back down the stairs again, invisible as he pleased, to find that Romilda and her friends had gone and Hermione was now coming into the common room. Thanks to the delay with Romilda, he'd missed his chance to catch Hermione and get her to take them back to Malfoy before she made it back to her house.

But she didn't look like she had arrived in the common room ready to relax and unwind for the night. Instead, she was on her knees, looking under the sofas and chairs, whistling through her teeth in a squeaky way. "Crookshanks," she sang. "Crookshanks come out. I need you, my darling beast. Crooksy…"

All at once, Harry had what he thought was a better idea than trying to convince her to take him back upstairs right away. Instead, he'd stay hidden, quiet, watching to see where things led.

"Oh, there you are," Hermione said, reaching under a desk. "Come along, Crookshanks. Time to show me whether you've settled your differences - or not."

She bundled the hairy orange mess in her arms and ducked back out the portrait hole, Harry slipping through behind her. He was in luck. She was heading directly up the staircase, making for the seventh floor. She walked briskly, muttering sweetly to her cat who was still angry about spending the better part of the day traveling by train inside a carrier.

Harry followed with an awkward tip-toeing gait, fighting to keep his footsteps quiet on the hard stone floors. He nearly cheered when she turned down the corridor with the troll tapestry and the door to the unplottable room was visible to him in the stone wall for the first time this year. She turned the handle to step inside, and just as she did, Harry took her arm, pushing into the room with her, his cloak falling to his feet.

Just as Harry expected, there was Malfoy, hiding inside the room. Harry didn't expect to find the room so full of weird and broken and forbidden objects, but he wasn't noticing much about them right now. All he saw was Malfoy, still dressed the way he had been earlier, when they tussled on the train, gaping at him, looking shocked and hurt.

"Harry!" Hermione gasped. "You've been sneaking around, following me?"

"That's right," Harry said, too triumphant to be ashamed of himself, standing between Malfoy and Hermione with his wand drawn. "Sorry I had to trick you, Hermione. Not sorry I caught this one red-handed in here though."

Malfoy couldn't help sneering. "Nice one, Potter. And what, exactly, do you think you've caught me doing?"

Harry glanced around the room. It was the oddest collection of objects he'd ever seen but most of it just looked like rubbish - potion bottles with their contents dried out to crystals, torn books, cushions darkened with wine stains and reeking like rotten fruit, damaged furniture. It was what the big dustbin behind Borgin and Burkes must look like on the inside. Nothing about it leapt out as particularly useful or incriminating for Malfoy or the Death Eaters.

Harry shook off the distraction, stepping closer to Malfoy, still gripping his wand. "I don't know what you're up to yet, but you're going to tell me right now."

In all the tension, Hermione's grip on Crookshanks had got much tighter than he ever allowed himself to be held. He yowled, twisting and leaping free of her arms, scampering into the mess. Hermione's hands were empty now, and she used them to tug backward on Harry's elbow.

"Harry, please," she said. "Put your wand away. I swear to you, I will tell you everything I know. But I need a little more time, more information before I can begin to talk about it, just one more day - please."

"Thanks, Hermione," Harry quipped, "but I think I can handle questioning him myself. I might enjoy it."

He took another step, his wand already in motion. Malfoy was doing nothing to protect himself, looking over his shoulder instead, as if worrying about something behind him getting hit. He didn't move as Harry called, "Petrificus totalus."

Malfoy's entire body stiffened and crashed to the floor, paralysed.

"Harry Potter, you stop it right now!" Hermione was shouting from behind him. "I have a wand too and I will use it to defend someone who's helpless, even against you."

Harry gave a bitter laugh. "Helpless? Is that what you call him?"

Harry was standing over Malfoy, who was indeed powerless to move or to protect himself, laid out on the floor at the foot of the shrouded vanishing cabinet. "Remember the last time this spell passed between us, Malfoy? On the train at the start of Fall term? You said it was for your father, didn't you?"

"Harry, stop. Don't make me - "

Harry bent to snatch Malfoy's wand out of his pocket. Hermione knew him well enough that she could tell what would happen next. He would use Malfoy's own wand to cast Prior Incantato, revealing Malfoy's last spell. This spell, she remembered, would be the one he used to send the experimental apple through the vanishing cabinet. It certainly wasn't a common spell, and Harry might not recognize it, but if it was cast too near the vanishing cabinet, who knew what might happen?

She had drawn her wand. "Harry, no - "

There was a screech, a hiss, and a flash of orange fur. Before Harry could touch Malfoy or his wand, Crookshanks had shot out of the room's wreckage and sprung onto Malfoy's chest, the cat now standing on Malfoy's petrified body with his back arched and bristling.

Harry staggered back in surprise and with the impact of another, far more devastating feeling. It was a sense-memory. Something much like this had happened before, in the shrieking shack, when they had Sirius pinned to the floor, and Harry had wanted to kill him - was going to kill him - but this same cat had done the same thing - jumping on his chest as a shield.

Lowering his wand, Harry slumped to sit on the floor.

Hermione was kneeling beside him. "Do you see?" she was saying. "It's just like it was when we were wrong about Sirius Black. Crookshanks knows who we can trust. It's a magical gift from his kneazle nature. And he knows how important it is to protect the trustworthy, even from us."

The fierce warrior cat was looking less fearsome now that he had sat down on the motionless Draco and started grooming his own flat face with his paws. Hermione grinned at him, and decided that, for now, her conversation with Harry would go best if Draco remained petrified a little longer.

Harry was limp and speechless, his head in his hands. He had expected to find Malfoy here. What he hadn't expected to encounter here was a scene so much like one from his past, and with it, the fresh trauma of memories of Sirius in distress and all because of him. Their time together had been full of drama and danger. He had promised Harry a happy family life, but he hadn't survived long enough to provide it. The grief Harry carried around at all times, usually as a constant rumble, surged into a massive, buffeting wave, sinking him.

Hermione's arms were around him, and he was crying into her shoulder.

"I hate them," he said, "The Malfoys and Blacks. They took Sirius from me. They left me alone. I hate them."

"I know you do. You can hate them. It's alright." she said. "Hate whoever you want and I'll still be here with you. I will never betray you."

He sobbed against her as she patted his back. She waited until his sobs quieted to sniffles before she went on. "I'm so sorry about how this looks, Harry, but please trust me. There's something here, with Malfoy and Snape, that might actually help us. I don't understand it and can't explain it yet. But I'm working on it. So can you give me until the morning? Can you go home to bed and wait a few hours more? I promise you, Harry, I'll tell you everything there is in the morning, after I get a proper idea about it myself."

Harry kept his silence a little longer before he sat up, away from her shoulder.

"Please," she said again.

He gave a noisy sigh and a nod, and rose to leave them there.

"Finite incantatem," Hermione said once Harry had left.

Draco stirred, groaning, flexing his newly unfrozen muscles and sitting up slowly, one hand rubbing the bump on the back of his head, the other cradling Crookshanks against his chest. He was aching and ready to catch up with the dinner he missed that evening, but feeling lighter and happier than he had in months.

Crookshanks sealed it by not springing away from Draco's hold, but nestling between him and Hermione as she sat close to them.

Draco grinned at her as he lifted his face out of Crookshanks's coat. "Nicely done, family."

Neville was walking through the boys' bedroom in the dark, surprised to come up to find most everyone else already in bed. Ron, thoroughly snogged, was sleeping peacefully. Harry, after a good cry, was sleeping fitfully. Between their beds, on the floor, was a cardboard box just sturdy enough to hurt when Neville stubbed his toe against it, sending it spinning off under Ron's bed.

Ever the considerate roommate, Neville tried to hop and hiss as silently as possible as he gripped his smarting toe. When the pain subsided, he reached an arm under Ron's bed to retrieve the box and toss it onto the blankets, next to his feet. In the dark, Neville couldn't read the label, and didn't know it was a box of chocolate cauldrons, sent with love from Romilda Vane.