He should have expected it, really.

It was customary at this point. They'd board the train, and at some point, Malfoy would come around with Crabbe and Goyle in tow. They'd trade insults, maybe draw their wands, and then the prat would be on his way.

Easy. Simple. Predictable.

Harry sort of wished it had stayed that way.

It was after Hermione had accidentally insulted Luna's dad—the editor of The Quibbler—that Malfoy finally came around. In a way, Harry was grateful for the interruption; the atmosphere had grown suffocatingly awkward after Hermione's gaffe.

"What?" Harry snapped as soon as the compartment door slid open.

Malfoy's face twisted in displeasure, and Harry could see the sharp retort forming on his lips.

And then… he saw it die before it could even take flight.

"I… I need to talk to you," Malfoy said in a low, almost uncertain tone.

It was then Harry noticed something unusual—Malfoy was alone. No Crabbe. No Goyle. None of his ever-present bodyguards looming behind him.

Without them, Malfoy looked smaller somehow.

"Well, we don't want to talk to you, Malfoy, so you can just sod off," Ron said, his tone acidic.

"I'm not here for you, Weasley," Malfoy shot back, some of his usual venom creeping into his voice. "I came to speak to Potter. Alone."

"There's no chance we're letting you sneak off with Harry," Hermione interjected coldly.

"Yeah! Anything you want to say to him, you can say in front of all of us!" Ginny added, her voice laced with defiance.

Neville remained silent, while Luna seemed entirely engrossed in her copy of The Quibbler.

Harry fully expected Malfoy to revert to type, to spit a few choice insults and stalk off in a huff.

Instead, the blond swallowed, then nodded.

"All right, then."

He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

What in the sodding hell...?

Malfoy squeezed himself onto the seat next to Neville, Ginny, and Luna, making the space uncomfortably tight. He sat directly across from Harry.

"This is so weird," Ron muttered to Harry, loud enough for everyone to hear.

It was only now, with Malfoy sitting so close, that Harry noticed a few things.

Malfoy's usually immaculate hair was messy, hanging long and unkempt around his face. He was even paler than usual, with dark circles under his eyes making his sharp features seem hollow.

Then there was the faint scar—a thin line running across the right side of his face. It bisected his right eyebrow, traced across his eyelid, and ended just above his upper lip. The mark was so faint it could easily go unnoticed, but sitting this close, Harry saw it clearly.

Malfoy's family was wealthy. If he had been injured, Harry had no doubt Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy would have spent a fortune to ensure their son was healed without a trace of harm.

So what could have caused that scar?

For several minutes, Malfoy sat silently, opening and closing his mouth as though trying to force words out.

Unsurprisingly, Ron was the first to lose patience.

"Look, Malfoy, if you're just here to waste our time and take up valuable space, you can, as I said earlier, sod off—"

"Imagine," Malfoy interrupted, his voice quiet but firm, "that from the moment you could understand English, you were told you were… special. That even among other wizards, you were something more. That the name Malfoy meant something—power, wealth, strength. You were told to take pride in your bloodline, a product of generations of pure magic."

Harry exchanged a glance with Hermione, who raised her eyebrows.

"I'm not sure where he's going with this either," Harry muttered under his breath.

Malfoy's voice hardened as he continued. "You're told the word pureblood matters. That it defines you. Then you're taught new words. Outsiders. Thieves. Muggleborns. Mudbloods. Blood Traitors."

Ron and Ginny bristled, their faces twisting in anger. Hermione scowled deeply, but Neville looked on, oddly invested.

Harry found himself leaning in, despite his better judgment.

"They explain it to you like it's obvious. Muggleborns steal magic; that's why Squibs exist. Pureblood ideals are dying because of them. They force their ideas on us, disrupt our traditions. And those who side with them? Blood traitors."

Malfoy's voice dropped, quieter now, almost trembling. "And then, one day, they tell you about a savior."

"A savior?" Harry blurted, unable to stop himself. "They told you Voldemort was a savior?"

"They said he was kind, powerful, and wise beyond his years. That he had a plan to restore our way of life. That he was misunderstood—demonized by people like Dumbledore, who wanted to destroy our traditions. He was the Light, and Dumbledore was the Dark. I grew up waiting for him. Preparing for the honor of serving him. I repeated everything my parents taught me, believed every word they said."

Harry felt a shiver run down his spine.

He suddenly recalled a memory from childhood. Aunt Petunia had once let him watch a documentary about a cult. He barely remembered the details, but the fanatical gleam in the victims' eyes stuck with him. They had talked about their leader as though he were a god, convinced he was their only salvation.

At the time, Harry had thought it was Petunia's way of trying to paint magic as dangerous. Now, though, the memory helped him understand what Malfoy was saying.

For the first time, Harry saw Draco Malfoy in a different light.

He wasn't just an arse by choice. He'd been made this way, molded by people who had filled his head with poison from the moment he could speak.

"And then," Malfoy continued, his voice trembling, "this summer, I finally met him. The man I was raised to revere."

He looked down, his hands clenched into fists.

"And I learned very quickly that he was neither kind nor wise. He didn't understand the concept of love. He's a madman. He made my father grovel for days for the crime of doubting his survival when the only things left of him were tattered cloak and a wand. He struck my mother for defending my father, for protesting the fact that her husband be made to crawl and beg for mercy like a house elf."

Draco, who had been looking down at the floor this entire time, finally met Harry's eyes.

"And he cursed me, for trying to defend my mother."

Suddenly, that scar on his face—the one that marred his otherwise perfect visage—had an origin.

"…What in the actual hell did you come here for, Malfoy?" Ron asked finally, breaking the silence. "To unload all of this shite on us? What makes you think we care? Why didn't you go crying to your pals, Crabbe and Goyle?"

Draco shook his head slowly, his expression grim. "They don't understand. None of them understand. They met him for a few moments when he caressed their faces and told them they were the future of the wizarding world. They weren't there when he spat venom at their parents. They weren't there when he went into his mad fits, talking to that beast of a snake. They weren't his plaything when he got bored and decided to curse you for fun."

Draco took in a deep, shuddering breath.

"They do not know that that man—no, that thing—is a monster. He does not belong. He is drenched in Dark Magic. He reeks of it. The world protests his existence. Magic curdles when he uses it. He is not a savior; he is a demon."

"…What do you intend to do?"

The question came, surprisingly, from Neville.

"Malfoy… you can't run," Neville said softly. "Your family has intertwined themselves with him. I know the stories you heard. Some of my family members told them to me before my Gran barred them from the house. There's nothing you can do at this point; once he has you… it's over. You're his. Now and forever. You know as well as I do, once someone in your family pledges their life to him, that entire family belongs to him. We can try to offer you shelter, but I don't think that matters to someone like him. Wards never stopped him before. Even the Fidelius, the only enchantment that seemed tailor-made to stop him, failed. I… I don't know what to tell you, but I'm sorry."

"He can go to Dumbledore," Hermione volunteered. "Professor Dumbledore can protect him!"

Malfoy let out an ugly laugh, sharp and bitter.

"Albus Dumbledore? Protect me? The poster child of the Dark side? I grew up listening to horror stories about that man, and I'm supposed to go to him for help? Throw myself at the feet of another powerful man and hope he'll give me a crumb of power, as my father did before me?"

"What other choice do you have at this point?" Ginny asked, her voice even.

"He can always leave an offering for the Heliopaths and see if they'll do something about You-Know-Who," Luna offered, her dreamy tone contrasting sharply with the tension in the room.

For a good minute, no one knew what to say to that.

Draco shook his head and got up, brushing off invisible dust from his robes. "I didn't come here to ask for your pity, so you could ask Dumbledore to take the smallest of mercies upon me. I still have some pride."

"Then why did you come here?" Harry asked. That was the part that confused him the most. Draco and he were the closest thing to enemies without involving a blood feud. Yet, apparently, he had been the first person Draco sought out.

Hell, if Malfoy had gotten his way, only the two of them would have heard this conversation.

Draco's face softened, a rare sight that almost made Harry doubt his own eyes.

"After I found out about my family being wrong about him, I wondered what else they were wrong about," Draco said in a small voice. "So… I decided to find things out for myself."

He turned to Hermione, his expression hesitant but resolute.

"I went to the Muggle world. What your people have… what they've built… it's beautiful. It's like a magic all on its own. I've never seen anything like it before. Your history, your science, your technology. Phones and cars and planes and electricity… I understand you better now. I have a better grasp on… people, I think."

Then he turned to Harry.

"I'm sorry."

Harry blinked, stunned. An apology? From Draco Malfoy? And not just an apology, but one that wasn't forced?

"I'm sorry for everything. All the curses and horrible words. I know a few words don't make up for four years of adversity, but… at this point? This is all I have to give you."

With a final wave, Draco Malfoy, his longtime enemy, walked away, closing the door softly behind him.

"Whatever problem that git's facing, it's not on us," Ron said stubbornly. "Let him rot, for all I care."

"That's hardly fair, Ron," Hermione argued, her voice sharp. "You heard him. He's been indoctrinated, and he managed to deprogram himself. He's a kid, just like us."

"You didn't care about him being indoctrinated when you punched the shite out of him last year," Ron shot back.

They were in the carriages now, rumbling steadily toward the castle. Hermione and Ron were locked in yet another argument, this time about what Malfoy had just revealed. Harry watched silently, letting the words wash over him, while Neville seemed lost in his own thoughts.

"This is different," Hermione insisted. "He apologized—"

"Four years, Hermione! Four years of trying to get us into trouble, calling you that horrid name, bullying everyone who isn't in his house—and we're supposed to just forget that because he finally realized what he was signing up for?"

"I expect anyone would change how they think if they had to stay with Voldemort for the summer," Harry mused aloud.

An entire summer with the man who had killed hundreds… Harry thought about the horrors Malfoy must have witnessed and shuddered. He'd always thought the Dursleys were bad, but at least they weren't that.

Ron flinched at the sound of Voldemort's name, then pressed on.

"Even if we wanted to help, which we don't, the bloody bastard doesn't even want it. Dumbledore's the only person who can help him, and he refuses to go to him. Spouting some shite about Dumbledore being the bad guy."

"...Well, it's not that far-fetched, if you think about it," Neville said nervously.

All eyes turned to Neville. He shrunk into his seat but managed to continue.

"Like I said, think about it. The war wasn't just spells flying around—it was also rumors, stories, propaganda. If you want kids to hate someone, you make them the boogeyman. You-Know-Who was ours. Dumbledore was his. Especially if you paint Dumbledore as this bloke who wants to destroy everything your family has worked toward for generations."

"Oh, bollocks!" Ron exclaimed. "The only thing the Malfoys and the other pureblood families have worked toward is their stupid pureblood status and other shite that lets them get away with all the messed-up things they do! Like pretending they were Imperiused during the War!"

"Yeah, but… do the Slytherins actually know that?" Harry asked, cutting in.

"What kind of question is that? Harry, of course, they know that! They've been bullying us since day one!" Ron shot back.

"But how many of them know it's wrong?" Harry pressed. "The first thing I ever heard about Slytherin was that only Dark wizards come from there. That the man who killed my parents was from that House. That definitely colored my view of them. You telling me it didn't color yours?"

"Mate, it's hardly coloring our views if every Dark wizard in Britain for the past hundred years has come from Slytherin! I've never heard of a Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Gryffindor Dark Lord."

"Yeah, but we know from experience that not every Gryffindor is a shining example of bravery and goodness," Hermione said darkly.

Pettigrew.

Ron winced at the reminder. "Okay… that's a fair point. I'm not gonna fight you there. But the fact still remains: Slytherins are a bunch of evil bastards, and one of them having a sudden change of heart isn't possible."

"I'm not saying we should blindly trust him," Harry said finally. "But let's judge him by his actions, not just his words. If he's really changed, we'll see it. And if he's still the arrogant arse we all know and hate, then good riddance to bad rubbish."

"That seems fair," Hermione said eagerly, relieved to be done arguing.

"I don't think I'll ever be friends with Malfoy," Neville said carefully. "But… having a Slytherin on our side can't be a bad thing, can it? One less wand for You-Know-Who."

"This is going to blow up in all our faces," Ron warned. "And when it does, I'll finally get to say, 'I told you so.' Bet you he's back to being an arse by pudding."

"Mate, if you're right, you can have all my treacle tart for the rest of the semester," Harry offered with a grin.

Ron grinned back.

"Add in your bacon in the mornings, and you've got a deal."

After a night full of revelations—demon horses that only appeared if you'd seen death pulled the carriages, Hagrid was missing, the Ministry was trying to take over Hogwarts via Umbridge, and Seamus and his daft mum thought Harry was a psycho—Harry had pretty much forgotten about Draco and his newfound attitude.

Of course, he'd noticed the change: Draco had… calmed down? If that was the proper word. No more insults, no more heckling, no more bullying. Draco mostly kept to himself these days, fading into the background. Crabbe and Goyle still shadowed him, but even when they were together, Draco seemed oddly… alone.

Still, since Draco wasn't making a nuisance of himself, Harry didn't think about him much. He had bigger problems—like everyone in the castle treating him like a liar and Umbridge seemingly making it her mission to drive him mad with anger.

But his former enemy's (or was it rival now?) shift in behavior came sharply into focus during their first Care of Magical Creatures lesson of the term.

At the start of class, Harry had asked Professor Grubbly-Plank about Hagrid's whereabouts. He was soundly rebuffed, which left him cursing under his breath and worrying about his first friend. Distracted, he paid little attention to who else was nearby.

So it was a shock when Draco Malfoy appeared beside him, grabbed the largest Bowtruckle from the table, and spoke.

"Do you really not know where the gamekeeper is?" Draco asked, his tone more curious than cutting.

Harry glared. Was this a setup for some nasty joke about Hagrid?

"Well, if I knew, I wouldn't have asked her, would I?" he snapped, jerking his head toward Grubbly-Plank.

Draco hesitated, scanning the area. Once he was sure no one was within earshot, he leaned closer and dropped his voice.

"He's in the mountains, looking for others like him."

Harry nearly dropped his Bowtruckle.

"Others like him? You—you mean giants?"

Draco nodded. "I imagine Dumbledore wants an alliance. Or at least a non-aggression pact. Since Hagrid's half-giant, he's the logical choice for an emissary."

Harry's mind raced. If the giants sided with Voldemort, it would be catastrophic. Hagrid could handle creatures most wizards wouldn't dare approach with ease: in their First Year, he had raised a baby dragon. In their Third, he had played around with Hippogriffs. And in their Fourth, Hagrid had created his Blast Ended Screwts. Any one of those creatures could have killed a man by accident, but Hagrid just chuckled and said they were playing.

If the average giant was even twice as strong as Hagrid, the Light Side was in serious trouble.

But suspicion crept in.

"How do you know this?"

Draco gave him a dry look. "Oh, I don't know, Potter. Maybe it has something to do with the literal leader of the bad guys staying at my house? Kind of hard to keep operational security when your sitting room is the war room."

"Oh. Right. Him."

"Yeah, him," Draco said flatly. Then, with a hint of exasperation, he added, "Even when I was a bastard, I tried to help you a few times. I'm sure you know that, considering your little escapade into Slytherin in second year."

Harry blinked. "You knew it was us?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "You two were shrinking as you walked out the door. Weasley's head looked like it was on fire. I was rude, not stupid."

Harry flushed. That should've been obvious, now that he thought about it.

"…Why are you telling me this?" he asked cautiously.

Draco studied him for a moment before replying. "He's your friend, isn't he? It's only natural you'd want to make sure he's safe. I'd do the same for my family."

"Draco?" Pansy Parkinson called from across the clearing. "What are you doing?"

Draco straightened, his expression shifting into something colder.

"And you'll be lucky if you ever see that overgrown oaf in this castle again, Potter!" he announced loudly.

But as he strode away, Harry caught the subtle wink Draco shot over his shoulder. It was for appearances, not malice.

"That treacle tart is mine," Ron declared, reaching for the dessert with a determined glint in his eye.

Harry smacked his hand with a fork.

"Ow! What the hell?"

"Ron, stop cussing," Hermione said wearily, not even looking up from her book. "Harry, don't jab Ron with a fork."

"That's not fair! He lost the bet!" Ron protested, nursing his hand indignantly.

"First off," Harry said, voice dripping with dry amusement, "the bet was for the day we got back, so you technically lost already. And secondly, Malfoy wasn't being a prick. At least not on purpose."

This caught their attention. Ron froze mid-glare, and Hermione lowered her book, interest piqued.

Harry recounted what Malfoy had said about Hagrid's mission to the giants, explaining how Dumbledore had sent him to broker an alliance or a truce. The news seemed to jolt even Hermione out of her usual calm, her exhaustion momentarily forgotten.

"That makes so much sense!" she whispered excitedly, her voice hushed as if speaking too loudly might shatter the revelation. "Giants have been enemies of wizards for centuries! They used to encroach on wizarding and Muggle settlements, and their skin is tougher than a troll's, making most spells ineffective against them. Wizards nearly drove them to extinction, but hundreds of wizards died fighting them. Hagrid really is the perfect bridge to bring the two species together!"

Ron snorted. "No offense, Hermione, but last I checked, giants aren't big on talking. They're more the smash-things-now, destroy-cities-later type. I don't see how Hagrid expects to reason with them—it'd be like Mum trying to chat with her accountant cousin about magic. Just... weird."

"Well, I have faith in Hagrid," Hermione said firmly. "I think he can do it."

Ron wasn't convinced. "Better question: how do we even know this is true?" he asked, now reaching for the pudding. "For all we know, Malfoy's lying."

"What reason would he have to lie about where Hagrid is?" Hermione asked, frowning.

"To get into our good graces, or—or trick us into something!" Ron said, his tone triumphant, as if he'd just uncovered a grand conspiracy.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Mate, now you're really stretching. It's a pretty weak lie if it's one at all. We can verify it when Hagrid gets back, or we could ask someone in the Order—Snuffles, or even Dumbledore."

If he even bothers to look at me, Harry thought bitterly. Or maybe he'll just keep me in the dark, all in the name of 'protecting me.'

"You two are getting way too comfortable with Malfoy for my liking," Ron accused, pointing his pudding spoon at them both. "Just because he's got a sob story doesn't mean we should forget what a wanker he is."

"Nobody's getting comfortable with Malfoy," Hermione retorted, her voice sharp. "Harry's the only one who's even spoken to him."

"You were defending him!"

"I want to give him a chance," Hermione shot back. "Everyone deserves a second chance. If he messes it up, fine—rub it in our faces. But until then, you should try to keep an open mind. Besides, you're ignoring the practical benefits of having Malfoy in our corner."

Ron's expression twisted with skepticism. "What benefits? What could that prat possibly offer us?"

"Information," Hermione hissed, leaning closer. "Do you know how long it might've taken us to find out about Hagrid if Malfoy hadn't said anything? And think about it—he spent the entire summer in direct contact with You-Know-Who. He could tell us what the Death Eaters are planning, what kind of creatures they're recruiting, and—most importantly—what the weapon is!"

Harry's breath hitched. The weapon. Of course.

For the first time, he allowed himself to imagine the possibilities. With Malfoy feeding them intel, they could finally figure out what Voldemort was planning—and stop him.

"That's why I'm advocating for giving him a second chance," Hermione continued, her voice steady but urgent. "Draco Malfoy is in the perfect position to be a spy for the Light Side."