Happy anniversary! I'm a couple of… months late, but as of May 28, this story is 2 years old! A big thank you to all the people who have supported me by reading, favoriting, following and reviewing this story! It's amazing how fast 2 years can go by and how much stuff can happen in two years. Since starting this story I've graduated, found a job, worked for a whole year, and now I'm looking for a new job (that first one was a one-year thing, I didn't get fired or anything).

Short summary of the previous chapters: Daphne and Astoria overheard a conversation Cassius Warrington, the Slytherin chosen to compete in the Triwizard Tournament, had with some older students that there would be a meeting about the last task in the forest. Hermione and Harry decided to investigate. Neville got worried when he saw Cassius in the castle. Astoria, Draco and Neville went into the forest where they were attacked by Death Eaters. McGonagall came to the rescue. Back at the castle, Draco talked to the headmaster, learning of Harry's blood protection.

Here is chapter 77. Read, enjoy and review!

Draco tentatively poked his head through the partly opened door. Once he was certain neither McGonagall nor Snape was in the Hospital Wing, he gently pushed the door open and stepped into the room, careful not to upset his aching side any further. He knew that ignoring McGonagall after she had saved him and his friends from certain death in the Forbidden Forest would have consequences. But after Dumbledore had revealed his plans to him, Draco was glad to postpone the scolding. Dumbledore's words were echoing in his mind, the shocking revelation still hard to digest.

"Mr. Malfoy," chided the voice of Madam Pomfrey when Draco had barely made it past the threshold.

Draco stopped mid-motion and turned his head towards her. He threw her a - what he hoped to be - charming smile. "I-"

"I do not want to hear any excuses! Your health is not something to be taken lightly," she made her way towards him, her arm outstretched to reach for his forehead. Draco instinctively tried to duck away but winced as pain shot through his abdomen.

The Hogwarts school matron drew her eyebrows together. "Let me have a look at that."

Draco stared at her. Then he looked down at his side and back at her again. "Wait- What? Here? Now? In front of everyone?" Draco glanced behind her to see Neville snickering. Daphne had joined them. She was sitting on Neville's bed and was giggling with Astoria. Harry, Hermione and Ron he could not see, but he could hear them whispering.

He glanced back at Madam Pomfrey. But she looked serious. And it was not as if he had to strip down to his underwear or anything. "Fine," he groaned, more annoyed than embarrassed, and shrugged off his robe. Then he struggled with his button-down shirt until he had pulled it up enough so that Madam Pomfrey, who was leaning towards him, could examine his side.

At her disapproving look, Draco looked down as well and noticed that the whole side of his upper body had taken on a deeply purple, almost black color. He was no healer, but he knew that this was worse than a simple bruise.

Madam Pomfrey waved her wand over his side, before she nodded. "Choose a bed, Mr. Malfoy. You will be staying the night."

Draco pulled his shirt back down. He looked at his robe, which was lying on a heap on the ground, but decided that bending down to pick it up was not worth the pain. He trudged towards the bed closest to Neville and sighed. "What's wrong with me?"

"Nothing to worry about," said Madam Pomfrey, while she bustled through the room, gathering all kinds of potions. "A bit of internal bleeding. I will mend it at once, but I'm keeping you in overnight. You shouldn't overexert yourself for a few hours."

Another night in the hospital wing was not something he was looking forward to. But it looked like the others had to stay as well, so at least Draco would not be alone.

Madam Pomfrey gave him several potions to drink, before she disappeared into another room.

"McGonagall is going to kill you," Harry said once he was sure Madam Pomfrey was not within earshot anymore.

Draco shrugged his shoulders. He had expected it and he did not particularly care about the opinion the Gryffindor head of house had of him, which had never been all that great to begin with. Although the fact that she had come to save them and had almost single-handedly taken out several Death Eaters impressed him more than he was willing to admit.

"You don't much care about our house points anymore, do you?" Daphne asked. "Because what I've heard, we're in the negative numbers by now."

"Not particularly," Draco laughed. "It's not like we still had a chance of winning." The constant fights within Slytherin had cost them enough points that even 3rd place had become a utopic dream. "And I doubt the others could hate me any more than they already do. Did we get detention for being outside the castle?"

Neville nodded his head. "You more than us, but we all won't see much sunlight for the rest of the year."

The others stayed quiet for a while. Draco was sure they had tons of questions, but no one seemed to be willing to start this conversation. To start a discussion that would make the upcoming war more real than it had ever been for his friends. But it was a discussion that they had to have and if they weren't going to talk, then Draco would.

Draco had wanted to keep them out if it, but perhaps it had been the wrong approach. His actions had already made Neville and Theo targets. Perhaps even Astoria and Daphne, especially after the encounter they had just had in the forest. Something bitter settled in his stomach at the thought of his actions further endangering his friends. He could not undo what had already happened. If he could not keep the enemy unaware of his friends, then it was perhaps better to inform them about what was to come as good as he could without raising suspicion. It would certainly be better for them to know what they were facing if he could not keep them away from danger.

But before he lead the discussion in such a direction, there was something he needed to know. "How did McGonagall know where to find us?"

Apparently, they had not given this specific aspect of the night much thought yet, as they all looked at each other. All but Astoria, who held Draco's gaze.

"Fred and George told her," Astoria said.

"Fred and George?" asked Ron, while Draco's smile grew. Her short disappearance before they had gone on their late-night excursion had almost slipped his mind with everything else that had happened afterward.

"We weren't sure if Harry and Hermione were in trouble," Astoria continued, "or whether fetching a teacher would get them in trouble. So, I figured it would take us half an hour at most to get you if everything was alright. I told Fred and George to get help, if we weren't back by then."

"And when the time had passed, they went to Professor McGonagall," Hermione finished for her.

Astoria nodded.

"Brilliant," grinned Ron.

Draco smiled at her, before he settled his gaze on Hermione and Harry. "What happened in the forest?"

"We went there, invisible," Hermione started their tale, "to search for Cassius. But we noticed right away that something was off. The forest is not usually that quiet. It has owls hooting and twigs snapping and wolves howling. Today there was none of that. The silence was almost unnatural."

"The darkness, too," Harry supplied. "We tried to get out of there, but they seemed to be everywhere. So, we wanted to wait it out. We'd hoped that if they thought we weren't coming, they would leave."

"And that's when we came buzzling in?" Neville asked, sounding bitter. "Fantastic."

Hermione smiled at him. "It's sweet that you worried about us enough to come after us. With reinforcement."

"You were gone for a long time," Neville said. "I saw Cassius in the castle and that's what got me worried."

Daphne sighed. "This is all my fault. I was the one to tell you to go there tonight. If I'd known… Urgh- I'm going to kill that cockroach Warrington! I confronted him before I came here – Snape told me that Tory was in the Hospital Wing – and he pretended like he didn't know what I was talking about! Acted all like I was the one bothering him!"

Astoria put an arm around her sister's back and Hermione assured her that no one was blaming her.

Draco found the whole thing rather odd and he went over Dumbledore's words again.

"But what if they were counting on us to do absolutely nothing?"

"I assume that is the case. They clearly were not afraid of repercussions."

The headmaster obviously did not think that the Death Eaters were constantly surveilling the school, hoping to get lucky with some rule-breaking students. He thought they had had a plan. And the more Draco thought about it, the more evidence he found in support of this theory. Maybe the whole ordeal, even Astoria and Daphne overhearing Cassius' conversation, had been painstakingly planned. A stitch-up.

But for whom? Who was their target? Was it Harry, whose blood they apparently needed for the return of their master? Or Neville, who needed to pay for his parents' return? Or Draco himself, who had seemingly drawn the Dark Lord's attention? What Voldemort might want from him was still a mystery to him. Apart from his rather ambitious attempt to take down Dumbledore, Draco had never really caught his attention. And even then, it was only due to his father's failure to retrieve the prophecy.

Those were questions he would not be able to answer anytime soon. But there was another that he could perhaps answer before the year ended.

"How and why did Cassius do it?" Hermione asked, as if reading his mind. "Assuming they were not just observing the castle and got lucky."

"If that had been the case," Astoria mused, "Cassius would have been in the forest as well. But he wasn't. So, he must have been part of the plan."

"You said you saw him with some older students," Harry said, looking at Daphne, "do you remember who they were?"

"I don't, I'm sorry. I couldn't see their faces," Daphne replied, frowning. "Do you think it was them and not Cassius?"

Harry shrugged his shoulders. "It's a possibility. Cassius seemed – I don't know, decent, I guess. He told me to open the egg underwater. Wouldn't it be weird if he suddenly tried to get me killed?"

"Are we sure it was Warrington, though? It might have been him, but it could have also been someone under Polyjuice," Draco finally joined the discussion.

They all stared at him.

"A student using Polyjuice," Hermione carefully asked, "or someone from outside of Hogwarts?"

"Outside," Draco replied calmly.

"Impossible!" Ron said.

"Death Eaters in our school? That seems a bit farfetched," Daphne agreed.

"Doesn't the castle have defenses against such things?" Astoria asked. "And don't you think Dumbledore would know?"

Draco threw a look at Neville, who at least knew about what had happened originally. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the Golden Trio glancing at each other.

"I'm not saying it's what happened," Draco explained. "It might have been a complete coincidence. Death Eaters lurking in the forest, observing the castle, and we just accidentally run into them? Perfectly possible, if a bit improbable. Warrington working with the Death Eaters? Not outside the realm of possibility. All I'm saying is that Warrington being innocent and Death Eaters using Polyjuice is also not impossible." Perhaps even more than not impossible, if one knew that their original plan had been exactly that.

"It wouldn't even be the first time," Hermione conceded. "Voldemort himself was in the castle during our first year. And both Sirius and Pettigrew have made it into the castle last year without Dumbledore noticing. The castle's protection is not infallible."

"And someone put Harry's name in the cup," Ron said, grinning sheepishly at Harry. "If it wasn't you, then it must have been someone from outside of Hogwarts. Maybe it was the same someone."

"There have been a lot of new people inside this castle this year," Daphne thought aloud, "perhaps it was one of them."

"Karkaroff maybe," Harry mused. "Dumbledore has shown me some memories in his Pensieve - he used to be a Death Eater."

"He's not the only former Death Eater in school," growled Ron.

"It's not Snape," hissed Draco.

"How do you know?"

"He's my godfather, for crying out loud. Do you really think he'd try to kill me and I wouldn't even notice?"

"Seems like you haven't noticed with your parents either."

"Ron!" exclaimed Hermione, elbowing him. Draco hoped that hurt.

"Sorry," he muttered. "That was a low blow."

Draco only grit his teeth and nodded.

"Dumbledore trusts Snape," Harry said, and if his voice did not sound all too confident, it was at least enough to stop that line of discussion.

"It's not Karkaroff either," Draco finally said. "Dumbledore's keeping an eye on him... and he defected. He's probably more scared of Him than any of us."

"Rita Skeeter," muttered Hermione after a short silence.

"How can you be worrying about her now?" said Ron, in utter disbelief.

"I'm not worrying about her," Hermione said. "I'm just thinking . . . she talked to me in the Three Broomsticks. 'I know things about Ludo Bagman that would make your hair curl.' And Winky too, remember . . . 'Ludo Bagman's a bad wizard.' And you learned from Dumbledore that he passed on information to Death Eaters."

"Yeah, but Bagman didn't pass information on purpose, did he?"

Hermione shrugged.

"Whoever is behind this, I am sure the Aurors will find out about it in no time," said Harry.

Draco exhaled slowly. There was no point in not telling them. "The Aurors are not coming."

"What?" several voices said in unison.

"Dumbledore does not want them in our school. With Neville's family on the run and Death Eaters infiltrating the ministry… I guess he has a point." Not necessarily one Draco agreed with, but there was not much he could do. It probably was not even the first time Dumbledore did something like that for what he assumed to be the greater good. He had definitely not called any Aurors when his godfather had been nearly killed by a werewolf, and when Draco had nearly killed some random students in his attempts to kill Dumbledore, Dumbledore had also not done much about it.

"Ok, so just to clarify," Daphne said, "there might be Death Eaters in our school and in the ministry, we nearly got murdered today, and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is about to return – and Dumbledore won't do anything about any of that?"

Draco rubbed his forehead. "Basically," he sighed. For someone from the future, he knew frustratingly little about what was really going on here.

"Brilliant," Daphne laughed bitterly. "Absolutely brilliant. We are all going to die."

"I'm sure he has his reasons," said Harry defiantly, but his words lacked conviction.

"He's not doing nothing," Neville, who had been quiet so far, chimed in, defending the headmaster. Draco glared at him. Even though he had considered telling the others a bit more about their plans just minutes ago, he had not really reached a decision about how much was truly necessary. "He's getting rid of the stuff that's making Him immortal. That's something."

Astoria's eyes wandered from Neville to Draco and back, before finally setting on Draco. "You know more than you're telling us." It wasn't a question. Astoria had hinted at knowing that Draco was keeping secrets many times already and he knew her patience was not endless.

Draco sighed. There was no point denying it, it would only further aggravate Astoria. "Not much." All eyes were on him now. "As you probably already know, we are wanted, Harry, Nev and I. I don't know why He wants me, but I learned that he does during the Easter holidays. We are untouchable as long as we stay in the castle, but as we saw today, not so much once we leave it."

"You think they'll attack during the third task?" Hermione concluded. "But there will be hundreds of people. Maybe even thousands. And Aurors."

"There were thousands of people and almost all British Aurors at the World Cup. It did not stop them then; I doubt it will stop them now."

"This is crazy," hissed Daphne. "They should call off the whole thing. They should have as soon as the goblet named Harry a fourth participant!"

"But they haven't and there's nothing we can do about it. Deal with it," replied Ron, sounding aggravated.

"Don't tell me what to do," barked Daphne.

"Calm down, guys," said Harry. "This isn't helping anyone."

Neville put a reassuring hand on the back of Daphne's neck, and she slung her arms around him, burying her head in his chest.

"How can you three stay so calm?" Astoria asked, looking at Neville, Harry and Draco. "They are murderers and they are out to get you, and still you are the calmest of all of us."

Harry shrugged his shoulders. "People have wanted me dead since I was born. I just did not know about it for most of my life."

That answer nearly made Draco smile. It was true in a way. Even though the specific situation was in some way unique, this was not new to any of them. Harry knew since his first year that people were out there, and even in the castle, who wanted him dead. And they had tried. Several times. Perhaps not on such a grand scale, but the situation itself was nothing new. And Neville must have known, if not before than at least once they had healed his parents, that they would target him.

"At the World Cup, when they were attacking Theo… I knew helping him would make me one of their targets. I chose to help him, knowing full well what it could lead to. It's a decision I have made. I might not like some of the results, but I stand by it."

Neville nodded. "Pettigrew tried to kill us last year. Since then we've been attacked by Death Eaters several times. At the World Cup, at St. Mungo's… today."

"Yeah, but this is different," mumbled Daphne into Neville's chest. "You were attacked by only a few. This time, there'll be more. They might even bring You-Know-Who back. You barely made it out of the forest alive today. That was nothing compared to what they are capable of."

"But we know when and where. There will be other people. And we can prepare," Harry said confidently.

Neville nodded. "We know when they will most likely attack and who their targets are going to be. We know they might be using Polyjuice... We will be prepared."

Draco looked at Neville. His and Harry's confidence was contagious. He found himself nodding along. Yes, they would be prepared.

TBC

Hope you enjoyed this chapter. It was really difficult to write. I hate these in-between chapters, as you might have already noticed. So I will probably jump to the third task in the next one. Good news, I've already written most of the next two chapters, so I'll guarantee an update next week and the week after that.

Let me know what you think of this chapter and also what you think will happen in the next few.