My concentration was rather mediocre.

I tried to pay attention in class but my mind kept drifting.

Professor McGonnagal eyed me sceptically in her class but I didn't give her the chance to say anything against me.

At dinner I sat alone.

I had been doing so for weeks, since the break-up with Astoria.

I had got used to it. Hsjfj

I liked to have my peace and quiet, so I could watch people.

In this observing, I noticed that Nott, Crabe and Smith were missing.

I had hardly given them a thought because all my attention was on Daisy, so it was only now that I realised that Professor McGonnagal had probably taken care of their punishment.

And that seemed to be suspension, because they weren't in class either.

I still didn't think suspension was enough for what they had done.

After I finally got through the lessons, which was harder than I expected, especially because Daisy wasn't sitting next to me in Potions, I set about putting my plan into action.

My plan.

I had thought about it over dinner and in Potions today and it involved talking to someone I usually avoided talking to.

I avoided contact, but knew exactly where to find this particular person.


The wind blew through my hair and I was glad that it was not raining.

The quidditch pitch was deserted except for a single player high above the grass.

"POTTER!", I shouted towards the player and sure enough, he spun on his broom and headed straight for me.

When he was directly in front of me, he landed and looked at me through narrowed eyes.

"What do you want Malfoy?!"

He literally spat out my name like it was the most disgusting thing he had in his mouth and I couldn't blame him.

If he knew what I was about to ask him, he would have sounded even more deprecating.

"I'm here because you owe me", I began in the most arrogant tone possible.

"I owe you?

That's what you're dreaming of", he replied snappishly and was about to take to the air again but I held him by the arm.

"Sixth year Bathroom of Moaning Myrtle.

Last year Malfoy Manor", I said quietly.

I hated both of these events and I avoided talking about them more specifically.

Potter's features changed.

He knew I was right and I knew he was someone who didn't like being in someone else's debt.

"What do you want Malfoy?", he repeated his initial question.

"Your invisibility cloak."

People told a lot when they were drunk and that was how I had found out about Potter's cloak of invisibility last year.

He stared at me, aghast.

"What?!", was his perplexed reply.

"Don't deny you have one, my source is trustworthy.

Just one night, you'll get it back before breakfast tomorrow."

"No. You do something illegal with it and then it gets confiscated and then I have the problem."

I laughed.

"Like you've never done anything illegal with it before."

He just glared at me. His hair was sticking out in all directions and his cheeks and nose were flushed.

He looked anything but threatening.

"I'm not going to do anything illegal. Just stretching the rules a little."

I put inverted commas in the air at the words 'stretching the rules'.

"Slytherin word of honour."

I placed one hand on my chest, raising the other as if swearing a Muggle oath.

"Like I give a damn about your word."

Snapped, he gave his arms away in front of his chest causing his broom to fall to the floor.

I looked at him with raised eyebrows.

"You don't trust me anyway, no matter what I say. So just give me the cloak, watch me on your great map or tell on McGonnagal.

But if you give it to me, we're even and I'll never ask anything from you again."

I had also found out about the map last year and it explained so much.

The mention of the map seemed to surprise him.

"Fine", he said curtly. "Tomorrow morning, 6:30 before the portraits in the cloisters you're late I'll rat you out."

6:30 am, by Salazar, no earlier than that but it didn't matter, I had what I wanted.

The two of us hit it off and Potter, with an accio, took the coat out of his sports bag, which was in the changing room.

"If there's even one seam loose, if I get it back you're dead."

Like I'm going to let him intimidate me.

"Sure Potter", I replied arrogantly and walked back towards the castle with the cloak under my arm.

I heard a hypocritical "Malfoy" and when I turned around Potter had already disappeared into the air again.

I grinned inwardly at my triumph over Potter as I moved on to the second part of my plan, which was to hide a box of things in the courtyard.


I waited under Potter's cloak outside the hospital wing after dinner until all of Daisy's visitors had left.

Longbottom and Abbot were the last to come through the door holding hands.

I used to hate couples who showed their love so publicly but lately I found myself wishing I could walk the corridors with Daisy like that.

That didn't work for various reasons and because of one of them I was now hiding under this cloak.


I waited another ten minutes after the two of them had left, just in case Madame Pomfrey was still examining her, until I quietly pushed open the door to the hospital wing.

There was no sign of the medi witch and Daisy hadn't noticed the door open either.

Quietly I went to her and still under the cloak and whispered when I was close enough: "Don't scream or Madame Pomfrey will hear us."

Daisy flinched and dropped her book on her lap but remained silent.

I stuck my head out from under the cloak and smiled at her.

"You can't sneak up on people under a invisibility cloak then expect them not to be scared", she whispered back, laughing softly.

"Yes well, that wasn't so well thought out.

Hold on."

As she asked "What?", I had slid my arms under her, lifted her out of the covers and wrapped the cloak around her.

"Hold on", I whispered.

As quickly and quietly as I could, I hurried across the room and out into the corridors of the castle.

"What are you doing?", she asked, laughing.

"Getting you some fresh air."

She had taken my advice to hold on and now had a tight grip on my upper body.

The scent of her shampoo rose to my nose and I thanked Merlin that someone had brought her shampoo and that she now smelled of peach and vanilla and not the disgusting soap I had been forced to use in the hospital wing.


I headed purposefully for the courtyard and when we were there I stripped off the cloak and sat her on the bench under the tree.

Immediately I took out the box in which, shrunk together, was everything she needed to stay warm.

Two thick jumpers, cosy socks, sweatpants and a fluffy blanket.

All my things, but the main thing was that she didn't get sick.

I put the blanket around her and when I saw her bare feet I also held out the socks.

"You really thought of everything", she said laughing as she slipped the socks on.

"Of course, I wasn't planning on getting killed by anyone because you caught a cold.

And besides, I just care about my kidney, okay?"

We both laughed at that and I dropped down on the bench next to her.

"Now, if you don't want me to get cold, you're going to come under the covers with me and be forced to cuddle."

She held up the blanket and I slid closer to her only too willingly.

"You really will do anything for the kidney", she laughed as I wrapped my arms around her so we could both fit under the covers.

The wind from this morning had died down, taking all the clouds with it and now allowing us a view of the star-studded night sky.


"Thank you."

She didn't look at me as she said this but kept her gaze on the stars and the full moon that lit up the courtyard.

"I'm going crazy in there."

"That's what you have me for, not going crazy."

There was silence for a few minutes while I just enjoyed her closeness and the scent of her in my nose.

She had said that today she was going to tell me why she had kept it from me about her grandfather.

I was curious but would not ask.

She was quite quiet by her standards, I blamed it on the exhausting healing process.

That the reason for her silence was different became clear to me now as her trembling soft voice cut the silence.

"I am an Animagus."

It was almost breathed and made every hair in my body stand up.


What I heard and what I understood were two completely different things.

What I heard was 'I am an Animagus', what I understood was nothing.

But it wasn't just that, it was as if all my thoughts had been erased.

Like there was nothing there.

Like I was standing on a trapdoor that had opened and now I was falling.

I was falling out of everything I thought I knew, falling into nothingness.

My whole body stiffened and I was not able to do anything.

Not even to think.

She moved away from me a little and stood up.

Sudden coldness overcame me, even though the blanket was still over me.

I was still staring at the sky, the spot I had been looking at since she had said that sentence ages ago.

It was probably just seconds, seconds of not being able to do anything and just sitting there staring.

"That's why I lie, because I'm afraid of reactions like that."

She sobbed but kept talking.

"My real name is Florentine Daisy Scamander."


If her first sentence had triggered the falling, this one stopped it abruptly, as did the staring.

I turned my head in the direction from which I heard her crying and saw someone who looked nothing like the Daisy I knew.

Suddenly she looked small and vulnerable and it wasn't because she wasn't physically fit.

Nothing reminded me of the quick-witted comments, the courage and strength that resided in her or the curiosity that got her into trouble.

I couldn't see her eyes because she was looking at her hands but I knew I wouldn't be able to see the sparkle in them at that moment.

She always seemed so strong but she was broken.

She was as broken as I was and it was the first time I recognised it.

She had long since seen behind my mask, had broken through the façade but I hadn't even noticed hers.

I had been blinded by my own problems, my own struggles, that I hadn't seen hers.

With every second the nothingness that had spread inside me filled up.

Filled itself and filled me.

Filling gaps with emotions and feelings that I had always repressed until now.

Guilt, pity and my lost courage.


I stood up and bridged the distance she had put between us with two steps.

I pulled down the blanket that was still over my shoulder and put it around hers.

I felt her trembling under my hands.

She looked up at me. Her eyes were teary and there was indeed none of the sparkle.

Green. I stare into deep green eyes.

It hit me like a blow, unexpected and hard.

They were her eyes.

The little boy I had seen in my dream had her eyes.

It was her son.

It was our son.

The happiness I had seen, which would be the reason I wanted to change who I was, was my happiness.

Whether it had been a vision of the future or just a dream, it had been mine, it could be mine.

My luck.

And everything hinged on that moment.

This was the moment when I would take my life into my own hands, when I would give everything to find the happiness I had seen.

That was the moment I decided against Malfoy and for Draco.

The moment I chose her.


One small step forward.

I pulled her close to me and hugged her to me.

I held her close because I would never let her go.

"It's okay", I murmured and the sobs in my arms grew louder again.

The trembling grew stronger but I held her.

Whether minutes or hours passed as we stood there, not saying a word and Daisy crying I couldn't tell.

Again and again I stroked her back soothingly and at some point the sobs stopped and the trembling became less.


"I'm cold", was the first thing she said, softly almost whispering against my chest.

Only now did I realise that she was standing on the damp grass in only socks and wrapped in a blanket.

I quickly lifted her up and she clawed at my torso.

"I would never let you fall Florentine", I said calmly and her tense posture relaxed.

While she had lain in my arms, I had decided to call her Florentine from now on.

It was a privilege that she had given me that name and I would honour that vote of confidence.


I carried her back to the hospital wing, the invisiblity cloak I had still taken with me, but I no longer put it over us.

There were only a few candles burning as I laid her back in her bed.

Her breathing was quiet and calm and I tucked her incarefully.

She must have fallen asleep on the way.

I smiled.

The chair I had transformed yesterday was still an armchair, thank Merlin and I sat down in it now.

Even if she was asleep, I would not leave her alone now.


I took a piece of parchment and a strange writing utensil from her bedside table that acted like a quill but wasn't and wrote.

I wrote down all the things that were racing through my head.

I had to sort out the jumble that was there and the best way to do that was to write it down.

I had kept a diary for quite a long time.

At some point my father had forbidden it and I had not contradicted him out of fear.

I had started again in my sixth year at school to keep a record of what happened.

To sort out my thoughts and to realise that this was not what I wanted but what my father was not capable of.

I wrote to become aware of things and that's what I had to do now.

I had to become aware of what she had said.

What it meant and what I would do with it.

I hoped that in the long run some of my questions would be answered but for the moment it was enough just to have them written down.


I folded the parchment and put it in my jacket pocket.

Inside I felt something I had forgotten was there.

It was also a folded piece of parchment, only this one looked a bit worn.

Without unfolding it I knew what was on it.

It was a homework assignment that Professor Slughorn had given us after the holidays.

I put the note back in my pocket after briefly considering leaving it for her.

I wanted to tell her personally how I felt about her and that was something Malfoy would never do but Draco would.

Someday.