19 : a pungent taste in the mouth

Draco

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Classes, library, dinner, sleep. Draco's routine was as exhausting as it was boring. All Theo could talk about was exams, because he hoped to have a chance of coming first now that Granger was out of the competition. Draco, on the other hand, was aiming for the top ten in the school without much ambition. He didn't feel as stimulated as he had at the beginning of the year, perhaps because the first was no longer there and there was no competition at all.

Driven by the desire to make his father proud, he hung in there and attended all of Theo's study sessions in the library. Since Blaise was also attending, Pansy had ended up joining them, more out of a desire to be with them than to actually work.

Draco was very good at Potions. He'd already understood it in first year, but his results this year proved it even more. Even Theo was asking him for help, even though he was an expert in every subject. And although Draco was quite proud of having more knowledge than him, he couldn't help but wonder if he really had some talent in Potions, or if his teacher was just a friend of his parents. Maybe Snape was even overestimating him so that a Gryffindor wouldn't rise higher than him in the rankings.

Towards the end of May, with exams fast approaching, Draco was sitting at the usual table in the Library, where all of Theo's scrolls and books were laid out.

Next to him was Blaise, reading a paragraph from the Defence Against the Dark Arts textbook, opposite him he could see Theo bent over a scroll and Pansy was to his left, filing her nails. Draco thought it was a very muggle thing to do, but he didn't dare point it out for fear she would take it the wrong way. She had taken off the tights of her uniform and swung both of her bare legs over the arm of her chair to rest her feet on Draco's.

Draco was studying a particularly complicated chapter in Astronomy, his least favourite subject, when the librarian's shrill voice rang out beside him:

"Miss! Mind your manners, take off your legs and straighten up!"

Pansy rolled her eyes rudely and slowly removed her legs from the armrest, one by one, stubbornly looking at Madame Pince. The latter, outraged, continued in the same tone:

"You're supposed to be in uniform!"

"I am in uniform!" replied Pansy, pointing to her green tie with her hand.

"Not completely. I'll have to make out a report and send it to your Head of House."

Pansy gave a small chuckle and shrugged:

"Go ahead."

The librarian walked back to her desk still scandalized, and Pansy put her legs back on the armrest as soon as her back was turned.

"Stop it Pans', you'll get yourself kicked out of the Library." muttered Blaise without looking up.

Pansy sighed loudly:

"Have you all decided to piss me off?"

She removed her legs anyway, which made Draco smile. It was funny how she obeyed Blaise rather than an authority figure. Just for show. They fell back into silence, before Pansy broke it again a few minutes later:

"You forgot Saturn, it's in the axis of Jupiter, not Venus."

"Huh?" asked Draco, lifting his head.

Pansy had tilted her head to the side and was looking over his shoulder at his homework without him noticing. Her eyebrows were furrowed and she was still filing her nails.

"There!" she replied, pointing to her parchment with her perfectly manicured finger. "Here, you forgot Saturn. You've got the planet's axis mixed up."

Draco made a face of incomprehension and Pansy rolled her eyes again:

"Give me, I'll show you."

He slid the paper across the table and Pansy hastily crossed out the mistakes he had made and, failing to have a tape measure, used her nail file to show him the scale of the planets, explaining in a low voice:

"There, that's Jupiter, your angle is wrong, if you add that..." She wrote down some kind of calculation that Draco had never seen in his life. "You get this, it means your axis follows Venus', see?"

"No, I don't get it." Draco admitted.

Pansy explained each planet's axis to him one by one. Her explanation was much clearer than Professor Sinistra's, whose quiet voice always made him sleepy.

By the time she finished, Draco had understood his chapter much better, and he noticed that even Theo had looked up to listen to Pansy's presentation.

"Thanks. I didn't know you were so good at Astronomy." Draco remarked, picking up his parchment again.

"We spent our lives stargazing in your backyard! That's how I learned."

"I didn't know it was so calculated. To me, they were just pretty lights in the dark sky." huffed Draco.

Pansy was half agape, half smiling, now. Her emotions were so hard to capture, in a second she could switch from one to the other without her changing her facial expression.

After Mrs. Pince passed behind them several times with her disapproving look, Pansy asked if they could go to dinner, and they agreed. Draco couldn't stand studying anymore, he really felt like that was all he was doing at the moment. It had better be worth it, he had to shine during the exams.

They packed up all their things and headed for the Great Hall. Blaise was telling a funny story that had happened to him the day before when Draco froze.

His father was walking straight towards them, furious.

For a second he thought it was a hallucination. But no, it was Lucius Malfoy approaching them, his eyes wide, his cloak flying behind him and his hand clenched on his cane. Both Blaise and Theo recoiled at the sight of him, and Pansy moved quickly away from Draco and pulled her skirt down in an automatic gesture to try and hide her legs. Fortunately, Lucius paid no attention to her, too busy throwing himself at Draco. He grabbed his arm and pulled him to the side.

The boy wondered what he had done to make his father so angry. He reviewed his behaviour over the past few weeks: his grades? Quidditch? had he answered his mother's letters properly lately? His eyes widened as he thought, "What if he knows what I think about Granger?"

Lucius finally let go of his arm and stood facing him.

"Potter stole Dobby from me." he hissed.

Draco turned the sentence over in his head several times to make sense of it.

"Huh?" he asked after several seconds.

"Potter stole Dobby from me!" repeated Lucius. His eyes darted all around him, as if he didn't really notice Draco before him anymore. "My plan has failed, and Dumbledore is back... The famous Potter has managed to unravel the mystery, and as if it wasn't enough for him to have ruined my plans, he has the audacity to steal Dobby right in front of me!"

Draco understood absolutely nothing, but he decided not to ask any questions and waited for Lucius to finish ranting his story. He imitated his mother, who had made a habit of letting Lucius speak by simply nodding her head without interrupting. Draco did the same, watching his father froth with rage as he muttered incomprehensible phrases about Potter, Dobby and Dumbledore. Draco was just glad to know that the anger his father felt was not directed at him. The boy was just glad to know that the anger his father felt was not directed at him. He had never seen him so angry in his life.

Finally, his father spat out one last hateful sentence, and then seemed to remember his son's presence. His jaw tightened and he stared at him with piercing grey eyes:

"Potter freed Dobby. He's not our house elf anymore."

Draco felt like a small punch to the gut. Although he would never admit it to anyone, he liked Dobby. He was the one who had read him bedtime stories, the one who made him butter toast in the morning, the one he had confided in sometimes. Knowing that he was no longer there made him a little sad, nostalgic.

"Potter?" repeated Draco without understanding.

"Yes. That idiot tried to humiliate me one last time by giving him a sock, and now we've lost our servant, and the Slytherin heir has been found."

"Potter found him?" asked Draco, shocked.

"Apparently." ruminated his father, gripping his cane even tighter, which was probably going to break between his fingers. "Bloody Weasleys... I'll probably lose my place on the board now!"

Draco had no idea how the Weasleys, Potter, and Dobby were connected in this mindless story, but he nodded anyway to appear consoling. Lucius glanced briefly at the group of Draco's friends waiting at the end of the corridor, all three of them standing tightly and hesitantly. He pointed to them with his chin and hissed at Draco:

"Join them. I'll meet you at King's Cross Station in a few days."

Then he left down another corridor, still muttering his resentment. Draco stood there for a few seconds, still not realising what had happened, then went to join Blaise, Theo and Pansy.

"What did he want?" asked Theo eagerly.

"I didn't get it." Draco admitted. "Apparently, Potter managed to unmask the Slytherin heir and Dumbledore is back. And he managed to steal Dobby from me at the same time."

"Dobby?" asked Blaise, his eyebrows furrowed.

"Yes, my house elf. Apparently he freed him with a sock." repeated Draco.

Theo, Pansy and Blaise looked at each other for a few seconds, before turning back to Draco:

"Huh?" they asked in the same voice.

"I'm just like you. I don't understand. Anyway, my father was furious, and he's probably going to get kicked off the Hogwarts board."

Blaise raised his eyebrows:

"Well... If it means we won't run into him in the school corridors anymore, all the better, right?"

Draco nodded his head in agreement.

Hermione

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Her dream dissipated in her mind, she could only grasp vague shapes and colours. She had a pungent taste in her mouth. Unpleasant. Her eyelids lifted very slowly, and the flash of white around her blinded her a little. Hermione blinked to get used to what she was seeing. Her throat was dry, her muscles were stiff, and her ears were ringing. She could hear a tinkling sound right next to her echoing in her skull.

She turned her head and saw curly blonde hair spread out in a white bed. She realised when she saw the white stone archway at the end of the room that she was in the Hogwarts hospital wing. Instinctively, she wanted to lift her arm to feel the cat fur on her skin, but her arm wouldn't lift, it took strength she didn't have at all.

Madam Pomfrey stood up, and Hermione realised that the unpleasant clinking sound next to her was the sound of glass bottles being placed on her bedside table by the nurse. She met her gaze and gasped:

"Miss Granger! You're the first one to wake up, I didn't think you'd be healed for several more hours!"

Hermione frowned. She had no idea what she was doing there. She opened her mouth to ask, but the nurse put a hand on her shoulder to stop her:

"Don't try to talk, Miss Granger. You're still in shock."

Her throat was indeed sore, as if it were swollen. She glanced at Madam Pomfrey who answered her silent question:

"You were petrified."

Then she remembered, suddenly the memories fell into her head like a large block of stone.

"I... remember!" she managed to say in a hoarse voice. "It's a... a snake... yellow eyes... Basilisk, I read it in the Library... Harry... You have to tell Ron..."

She tried in vain to lift herself off the bed to get up, but her arms still refused to respond. Why was her body so numb?

"Miss Granger!" the nurse shouted. "Stop, lie down, it's all right! It's over."

"Over?"

The word came out of her throat like a dagger blade and she coughed softly to try to regain her voice.

"Yes, it's over, you're healed, the potion took effect."

"Harry, how is Harry?" she managed to ask weakly.

"Potter is fine." the nurse replied with a frown. "He has found the heir, the monster has been defeated. I don't know how you knew..."

Hermione's eyes flickered and she did not hear the rest of the nurse's sentence. The nurse placed a warm hand on Hermione's icy cheek again and Hermione smiled a little as she closed her eyes.

"Calm down, rest..." were the last words she heard before sinking back into the abyss of sleep.

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Hermione woke up again, but she had no idea how long she had been unconscious. She could move now, though she still felt as if her body was sore all over.

She turned her head and saw Penelope beside her, the prefect who had been petrified at the same time as her. She was pale and her eyes were a little glassy, but as soon as she saw that Hermione was awake, she almost threw herself at her:

"Thank you! Thank you for saving my life. If it wasn't for you, I would have looked the monster in the eye!"

Hermione simply smiled at her, her throat still burning. In the distance she saw Colin Crivey sitting up in his bed, he was completely turned around and staring at his sheet, lost in thought. Justin was no longer in his bed. Ginny Weasley was sitting on a chair away from the room, holding a cup of hot chocolate in her hand, but she wasn't drinking it. She was in the same state as Colin Crivey. Hermione noticed that her parents were next to her and looked as shaken as she was.

"Ah, Miss Granger! Welcome back!" the nurse announced as she approached her. "Do you remember what happened?"

Hermione nodded several times and shook off the duvet on her bed.

"Here, drink this, it will do you good."

Madam Pomfrey handed her three glasses. The first was red, the second clear and the third tar black. The advantage of being top of the class was that she could easily identify potions from reading about them. So she knew that the first was a tonic, the second a Stretch Potion, and the third a drink to soothe her throat. She drank all three one by one, and by the end of it she was already feeling much better.

"How long were we petrified?" she asked.

"Three weeks." Penelope replied. "It's the 30th of May."

Hermione heard the date like a shockwave: 30th of May? All she could think about now was finding her two best friends and having them tell her what happened. She had no idea what time it was, but it must have been late, because the hospital wing windows reflected only the dark sky and were only dimly lit by the moon's rays.

Madam Pomfrey eventually allowed the students to go out for a late dinner, if they wanted to. Hermione left the hospital wing without changing her pyjamas, too eager to see Harry and Ron again.

She could hear hundreds of voices all coming from the Great Hall, so she entered, and was stunned by the sight before her eyes.

All the tables in the Great Hall were overflowing with plates of all kinds, and all the students were moving from table to table, shouting. Hermione spotted Ron's flaming hair at the Gryffindors' table, and at the same time Harry looked up and smiled at her. Hermione, only too happy to see them, ran to hug them:

"You solved it! You solved it!"

Hermione had never experienced a night like this. The party atmosphere continued until the end of the night. Hermione had no idea what time it was, she was too busy greeting Neville, Fred, George, Seamus, Dean, Lavender and Parvati who were clapping. She spent the evening eating, because her stomach was actually painfully empty, while listening to Harry and Ron's stories, interspersed with the voices of some of the speakers adding important details to the story.

"Where's Professor Lockhart?" "How did you figure out it was a Basilisk?" "What happened to Riddle's journal?" "What did he look like?" "Where's Hagrid?"

Hermione pestered them with questions as she listened intently to what she had missed. The quietness with which Harry was recounting what had happened in the Chamber of Secrets was remarkable: she would have been incapable of doing that. She was disappointed to learn that Lockhart was a fraud, and that he never really did what he said he did in his books, no matter how excited Ron was when he told her about it. Hermione glanced quickly at Lavender and Parvati who were just as disappointed as she was.

When Harry and Ron had finished telling the story, it was Ginny who took over after arriving at the feast. She explained her year in a low voice, and Hermione felt deeply bad that Ginny had gone through it without her noticing.

"Oh, Ginny, I'm so sorry..." she said as she finished in a small sob.

The redhead wiped her nose and rounded her eyes:

"No, I'm the one who's sorry, Hermione! Because of me, you got petrified..."

"It wasn't your fault!" Hermione cut in as Ginny's eyes filled with tears. "You were being possessed, you could never have known..."

"So, do you forgive me?" asked Ginny.

"Of course!"

She leaned in to hug her and felt Ginny take a deep breath in her arms. She smelled exactly like Ron, the smell of the Weasleys that she loved and which was even more invigorating than any tonic she could have drunk in the hospital wing.

At that moment the doors opened and Hagrid entered. He was sticking out of the door frame and had to bend over to get in. He seemed surprised by all the eyes on him, and said awkwardly:

"Here I am."

There was a thunderous applause throughout the Great Hall, and the gamekeeper almost recoiled in surprise. Dumbledore stood up and applauded at the same time, then all the teachers, and Hermione saw Hagrid chasing a tear down his cheek.

When the cheering was over, he walked over to the Gryffindors' table and slapped Harry and Ron on the back and they were thrown forward by the impact:

"Thank you, if it wasn't for you, I'd still be in Azkaban by now."

Harry hugged him and whispered:

"There is no Hogwarts without you, Hagrid."

The gamekeeper squeezed Harry in his arms. Then, he leaned towards Hermione:

"Good to see you back in form, Hermione."

He winked at her and walked back to the staff table with a big smile on his face. Dumbledore spoke from behind his desk:

"A strange and eventful year is ending. Thank you for your warm welcome to our gamekeeper Hagrid, whose absence proves that Hogwarts cannot stand without him."

Hagrid waved his hand at the compliment and nearly knocked over Professor Flitwick's glass in the process. Dumbledore continued:

"I would like to give special thanks to Professor Sprout for concocting the restorative potion that revived our petrified ones, and to Madam Pomfrey, who has cared for them throughout this year with unfailing care and patience."

The two women greeted the students, who applauded them.

"And finally, I would like us to applaud the students who suffered these attacks."

Hermione blushed as soon as the room continued to applaud and felt the hundreds of eyes turned towards her.

"I offer 100 points to each of them." Dumbledore continued in his quiet voice, which came through despite the exclamations of the amazed students. "And I also offer 100 points to Ginny Weasley, who has fought demons throughout this year and braved them with untold courage." (Ginny turned as red as her hairline.), "And another 100 points each to Ronald Weasley and Harry Potter for once again saving this school from a terrible threat."

The banners in the Great Hall turned to Red and Gold and the whole Gryffindors table roared with joy. Even Professor McGonagall let out a small cry of joy.

She stood up in turn and said:

"And as an end of year present, all exams are cancelled!"

The Great Hall seemed to explode with screams. Harry and Ron literally screamed with joy, but Hermione did not applaud. Without knowing why, when she heard this, she glanced at the Slytherin table to spot Theodore Nott.

He was already looking at her, his eyebrows furrowed. They were the only two people in the Great Hall not clapping, he looked as bummed as she did, but when she met his gaze, she thought she saw defiance. He could almost have articulated "shall we do it again?". Hermione felt the adrenaline of competition coursing through her veins and she smiled before she lost eye contact with Nott because of the students running around in front of them.

Hermione

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Dear Hermione,

We have received an alarming letter from Professor McGonagall, who tells us that you have been petrified. We don't need to tell you how worried we are, and we are looking forward to hearing from you. Your teacher told us that the serum that is supposed to cure you is being prepared and should be administered in the next few days, so we hope to receive a letter soon.

Danny is panicking too, he says he hasn't received a letter from you in a long time and keeps asking us if we have anything for him. We don't know what to tell him.

We're waiting for your owl.

Mum.

Hermione sat on the couch in the Common Room with parchment and a quill and wrote a quick note to her parents to reassure them, and a letter to Mary and Danny.

Dear Danny,

Sorry, I seem to have lost my letters recently. My parents told me that you didn't receive anything from me, the postman must have forgotten my letter somewhere.

I hope you are well and that you have enjoyed the month of May. I can't wait for you to tell me all about it when I get back to London in a week. Until then, I'm enjoying the good weather and I've even stopped working (yes, I swear!)

The last few weeks have not been very happy, because I've had a bad flu and I've spent a lot of time in the hospital wing at school to look after myself. Fortunately, I'm much better now, and I'm looking forward to enjoying the library and the sun before I go home.

Do you have any trips planned this summer?

I hope my letter arrives safely, and if not, I'll see you in a week.

Best wishes,

Hermione.

She rolled up the two scrolls and was about to get up to go to the owlery when Neville approached her. He was looking a bit shifty, as usual, and fidgeting with his hands.

"Hey Hermione." he called out.

"Hey Neville!"

"I have a favour to ask you." the boy said as he sat down next to her.

"Okay?"

"I spoke with Ginny..."

He pointed to her with a shake of his head and Hermione discreetly turned to her. She looked better than she had in the last few months, but she still had dark circles under her eyes and flinched whenever anyone walked by her. Neville continued in a low voice:

"And I get the impression that she's still not doing very well. She's feeling guilty and thinks it's her fault that all this happened at school, and that people were petrified."

"But I told her that..." cut in Hermione, but Neville stopped her by holding up a finger and continued:

"So I had an idea to cheer her up." he said with a smile. "And that's where I need your help. I noticed that Ginny wasn't using the upstairs hallway anymore, the one next to the girls' room, and I figured it was because she was afraid to walk past the messages she wrote when she was possessed. Do you have any idea what we could use to erase them?"

Hermione's mind spun a hundred miles an hour the instant she heard this suggestion.

"Neville, that's such a good idea!"

He waved his hand in Hagrid's manner when Dumbledore had complimented him.

"It was just an idea..."

Hermione stood up and suggested that Neville go to the Library to find the solution. They went through the owlery to send the letters to her parents, Danny and Mary, and then sat down at the large table in the Library that Hermione often occupied. She went through several Potions books with Neville, and after several hours he slid one of them in front of her and pointed to a paragraph:

"Scrubia potion: will erase anything if you sprinkle the contents on the desired area."

Hermione read the recipe and almost laughed at how simple it was.

"That's it, Neville! Well done, you've got it!"

Neville's puffy cheeks flushed slightly.

"You mean I scored something in Potions?"

Hermione prepared the potion in her own cauldron using the ingredients from her kit that she had bought on Diagon Alley over the summer. As she simmered, she wondered why Snape hadn't thought of such a simple potion to remove the messages on the wall.

When it was finished, it had such a strange texture that it took Hermione some time to find a suitable container to hold it in. The potion was dusty and grey, like Muggle gum residue. She finally settled on a bowl, and passed it to Neville:

"There you go!"

It was already 7pm, and Ginny was getting ready for dinner in the Great Hall. Hermione and Neville approached her:

"Hi Ginny, will you come with us?"

"We've got something to show you." added Hermione as she saw Ginny's bewildered look.

They didn't really give her a choice and exited through the portrait of the Fat Lady, before heading in the opposite direction to the Great Hall where the muffled conversations of the students could be heard.

"Er... Where are we going?" asked Ginny.

"Not too far." explained Neville who was hiding the bowl in a flap of his robes. "We saw you were a bit down in the dumps."

Ginny snorted with a wry smile.

"To say the least." she grumbled.

"So, we thought, to make you feel better..."

They walked towards the hallway in question and Neville finished his sentence by pointing to it:

"You had to erase the evidence of your year!"

Ginny opened her eyes wide and shook her head sharply:

"No, I don't want to go, this is where I..."

"Exactly, that's why we're here!" explained Hermione as she took her hand and led her to the front of the wall.

The two messages were still there, glowing slightly in the reflections of the torch beside them. Ginny let out a fearful groan when she saw them.

"Here, take this." said Neville, handing her the jar. "Take some of the powder and rub it into the message."

"That's impossible, Filch hasn't been able to erase them." Ginny replied in a small voice.

"Filch doesn't have the same brain as Hermione, believe me!" exclaimed Neville with a smile. "We found a potion that can erase them, try it and see!"

Ginny raised a hesitant hand, dipped it into the bowl, grabbed a handful of powder and cautiously approached the wall. As she began to rub, her eyes widened as the words faded:

"Oh!" she exclaimed.

Then, she burst out laughing. Neville and Hermione followed her, and as they laughed, they had fun rubbing as hard as they could to get the two sinister messages off the wall. This went on long enough, because they half finished by throwing the powder in each other's faces, and then started a battle to try and wipe each other's eyebrows off as quickly as possible.

In the end, there was nothing left on the wall, but Ginny was bent over laughing, and Neville only had half an eyebrow left, but a big smile on his face.

Draco

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Draco and Pansy had both fallen asleep in the compartment of the Hogwarts Express.

He had laid his head on her lap, and Pansy's face was buried in Draco's jumper curled up against the window. Blaise and Theo had been kind enough to keep quiet, and were reading quietly on the opposite bench, until the compartment door opened wide and Crabbe and Goyle rushed in:

"What?" exclaimed Crabbe. "It's a deadly atmosphere in here! Why are you all sulking? You should be celebrating!"

"Because we were sleeping, you idiot." growled Pansy.

"Oh." replied Crabbe simply.

Draco stood up and massaged his sore neck before glaring at the two boys who had interrupted his sleep:

"What are we celebrating? Potter's victory?" he quipped.

"No, the cancellation of the exams!"

"Is that all you've remembered from the last month?" snarled Nott.

"Yes?"

Theo rolled his eyes and continued reading, resting his chin on his hand.

"Me, I'm gutted. I could have finally beaten Granger and come in first." he grumbled. "I was sure I was going to beat her, she didn't have time to study..."

"Yes, she had a good excuse." scoffed Blaise. "You don't want to beat her like that, Nott, you want to play fair, right?"

Theo nodded, as if to convince himself. He looked determined to come first, which meant even more sessions in the Library, and Draco was already tired in advance. Theo suddenly raised his head and his eyes crinkled as he looked at Goyle:

"What have you got in your pockets, Goyle?"

"Uh..." the boy replied.

Draco could see bags of Chocolate Frog and Chocolate Wands sticking out.

"You told me you didn't have any money on you!" shouted Theo, outraged. "You said you couldn't pay me, and you buy sweets on the train?! How did you pay for that?"

Crabbe and Goyle tried to respond, probably making up an excuse, but they soon ran out of ideas and preferred to run away. Theo jumped up, knocking over his book in the process, and chased them down the corridor of the Hogwarts Express.

"You owe me 40 Galleons! Come back!"

Pansy, Blaise and Draco burst out laughing.

It had been a very good trip, at least until the mountain and field scenery was replaced by London buildings. Pansy smoothed out her black dress and put on the timeless black headband that never left her hair when she saw her father.

Draco picked up his and Pansy's suitcase when the train stopped, and then got off on the platform. He immediately spotted his mother waiting at the side. His father was not there. Draco went first to Pansy's father, whom he quickly greeted, but he barely glanced at him and immediately grumbled:

"You're a mess, Pansy. Put your tights back on properly."

Pansy complied at once and didn't look at Draco as he walked away to join his mother. She gave him a quick hug before walking away from him with a small smile:

"Tough year?" she asked in a soft voice.

He nodded. He didn't feel like telling, he was tired and very hungry. His mother understood and added:

"Your father got kicked out of the administrative council and the Hogwarts Board of Governors."

Draco understood from this remark that his father was probably even angrier than the time he had run into him at Hogwarts, and the obvious tiredness on his mother's face proved it. She held out her arm to pull him over to the other side of the barrier, where a queue had formed to get through.

"Are you hungry?" asked Narcissa.

Draco looked around for Dobby on the floor, only to remember that he wasn't there anymore. His throat went dry and he quickly answered "yes" before turning his head to focus his attention on something else.

Draco saw Granger standing in the queue. He took some time to observe her, mostly because he wanted to suppress the image of her petrified that he had kept in his head and kept popping up in his dreams. The Granger who was there was nothing like it, she no longer had an icy face, her cheeks had turned red and she was smiling as she spoke.

When she talked, her hands were always going in all directions, several times almost hitting someone without her realising it. She was chatting with yet another redhead, one of the twins, who was listening with a small smile. Draco wondered what they were talking about, but he couldn't hear anything because of all the noise around him.

She continued to walk towards the gate and rushed through it without thinking, still immersed in her conversation.

I won't see her again for two months, Draco thought.

He had no idea why that thought made him so sad.