"Those two seem close." Hermione, Harry, and Neville were standing in the doorway of the Great Hall watching the exchange between Draco and Amethyst. "Is there something between them?"
"They've been friends since Hogwarts." Neville said. "They never wanted people to know but I often saw them together." Harry and Hermione looked at him. Neville shrugged and headed to the staff table. They followed behind.
"You never said anything?" Harry asked.
"Wasn't mine to tell. I figured given Draco's family and Amethyst's half-blood status there was a reason they kept things quiet." Neville responded.
"They weren't secretly da…" Hermione started to ask.
"No, we were just friends." Amethyst answered before Hermione finished. "We met secretly when we could up until Draco became a Death Eater."
"I said some pretty awful things to you that summer, yet you still sent secret letters." Draco looked ashamed of his past choices.
"Someone needed to be on your side. I might have supported Harry and Dumbledore, and nothing would have changed that, but you needed someone who saw the real you." Amethyst looked Draco dead in the eyes. "I knew why you said those things. I had my suspicions, but everything was confirmed when Dumbledore was killed."
"I've wondered, Draco, would you have gone through with it?" Hermione asked incredulously.
"It would have never come to that." Harry said before Draco could respond. "But he lowered his wand."
"What do you mean?" Draco looked at Harry, confused.
"There was a reason Snape arrived when he did. Dumbledore knew what you had been tasked to do. He made Snape agree to be the one to kill him. It would protect Draco and keep him from having to live with that, but also solidify Voldemort's trust in him." Harry explained, he'd seen this in Snape's memory in Dumbledore's pensieve after Snape had been killed. "Severus Snape was a double agent. He fed information to Dumbledore as well as Voldemort… but the information given to Voldemort was not always true."
"But Voldemort could tell when people were lying…" Draco remembered what his father had once said.
"Snape was skilled in occlumency. Highly skilled." Harry looked at Hermione and realization dawned on her.
"But he hated you, Harry." Neville spoke up. He'd been listening to the conversation.
"Yes, but it was his love for my mother that kept him in support of Dumbledore. Snape was the one who told Voldemort about the prophecy. There were only two options - me or Neville Longbottom. Voldemort went after me and the rest we lived. Snape blamed himself for my mother's death. Dumbledore convinced him that the way to make amends was to protect me… to make sure her death wasn't in vain." Harry looked at Neville.
"That's what you named Albus after him." Draco said. Harry nodded.
"And that's why I didn't mind Albus being sorted into Slytherin." Harry added. They watched as the other professors filed into the Great Hall, which meant that the students were arriving.