Passing through the solid barrier of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, the scarlet Hogwarts Express stood billowing steam into the air. With fifteen minutes to departure, Narcissa straightened her son's collar one final time.
She pulled Draco into a tight embrace on the crowded platform, holding on longer than was strictly dignified. Draco looked embarrassed, but was secretly glad of it.
"Take good care of yourself, do you hear me?" Narcissa said, her voice thick. She pressed a heavy purse into his coat pocket. "Write often — tell me if you need anything."
She smoothed his hair, her eyes bright with unshed tears.
"Alright, everyone is watching," Lucius said impatiently, tapping his cane against the platform.
"My only instruction is this: do not take risks. Always keep a classmate nearby, and never go anywhere alone." He handed Draco a small, smartly monogrammed case bearing the Malfoy family crest, then cleared his throat. "Your grandfather asked me to bring you these. From Honeydukes." He developed a sudden, keen interest in the steam billowing from the locomotive.
"Thank you, Father," Draco said.
He hugged them both again and carefully avoided looking at the worry in their eyes. Steeling himself, he turned and stepped aboard the Hogwarts Express.
Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle had already claimed a compartment near the back of the train and were quick to help him with his luggage.
Both had grown over the summer.
"Are you alright? My father said you might be in danger," Goyle said, something approaching genuine concern crossing his usually blank face.
"Don't worry," Crabbe said loudly. "If Pettigrew comes anywhere near you, we'll be right here." His new haircut — a shape not unlike the bottom of a cauldron — made his round face look even rounder.
"I'm fine," Draco said lazily. "I'm not afraid of him."
Crabbe and Goyle stared at him with open admiration.
A shrill whistle cut across the noise of the platform. Through the compartment window, Draco could see a guard making his way down the train, shutting doors. A moment later, several familiar figures hauling trunks swept past the glass. Out of the corner of his eye, Draco caught a flash of bushy brown hair.
Harry and the others, he thought, searching for an empty compartment.
"They'll be disappointed," Crabbe said with some glee. "We've got the second-to-last one, and the last is already taken."
"Odd-looking man in there," Goyle said. "Never seen him at Hogwarts. His robes were practically falling apart. Looked ill."
Threadbare robes. Sickly. The more Draco thought about it, the more certain he became: that had to be the new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor — Lupin. The werewolf.
The topic didn't hold Crabbe and Goyle's interest for long. Their attention drifted, inevitably, to the various boxes of sweets in Draco's case.
"Don't even think about it," Draco said, giving them a flat look. "Those are from my grandfather."
They exchanged a look and put the chocolates back with sheepish expressions. Children from old wizarding families all knew the legend of Abraxas Malfoy, and neither of them was reckless enough to eat what the so-called Shadow Minister had purchased for his beloved grandson.
They gazed longingly at the Honeydukes label, licked their lips, and turned to debating exactly how many varieties of sweets Honeydukes actually stocked.
"I am absolutely going during the Hogsmeade weekend," Crabbe said, his round face taking on an almost dreamy quality. "Jelly Slugs... Fizzing Whizbees... Blood-flavoured Lollipops... Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans... Drooble's Best Blowing Gum... those Black Pepper Imps that make you breathe fire..." He trailed off with a long, satisfied sigh.
Goyle swallowed audibly beside him.
"...And those big chocolate balls," Crabbe continued, "the ones stuffed with strawberry fondant. I could live in Honeydukes."
"I've discovered a gift in you, Crabbe," Draco said dryly. "Your memory is remarkable — provided the subject is confectionery."
Crabbe gave him a vacant smile.
"And he can make you hungry just by talking," Goyle added.
---
At one o'clock, the witch with the lunch trolley finally appeared in the corridor. Draco stepped out at once, intending to buy a little of everything.
He was directing the delighted Crabbe and Goyle in carrying back a teetering stack of cauldron cakes when he heard a surprised voice behind him.
"Draco?"
Hermione had stepped out from the very next compartment, a handful of coins in her palm.
He looked at her properly. She was wearing a grey jumper with fine red stripes, olive-green trousers, her brown hair loose around her shoulders.
He had to admit that Muggle clothing had never featured in his idea of elegance — and yet, worn by her, he found it difficult to look away.
"I had no idea you were next door!" she said, smiling warmly. The light from the corridor window caught in her eyes. "Come and join us, if you'd like."
Through the glass of her compartment, Draco glanced inside: Harry, Ron, and the sleeping man with light brown hair. Lupin, just as he'd suspected.
The warmth her smile had stirred in him vanished at once.
"No, your compartment is already quite full," he said, keeping his tone easy, though wariness had crept into his expression. "And if I were you, I'd keep my distance from strangers."
"Oh, I imagine he might be the new professor — I saw the name on his case. Professor R.J. Lupin," Hermione said, ignoring his tone entirely, with the air of someone waiting to be told they were clever.
He almost smiled at her. Then came the wave of inexplicable frustration that seemed to follow close behind every almost-smile, lately.
Draco didn't have time to examine it, because the trolley witch was growing impatient. Hermione quickly ordered a few pumpkin pasties before the woman could move on.
"A sharp eye, as always," he said as she gathered her things, and dropped his voice. "That said — professor or not, it doesn't mean he's harmless. Be a little more careful. And you haven't said anything untoward to him, I hope?"
"Of course not." A faint guilty look crossed her face. "Right, I'd better get back."
She took her pasties and retreated, seemingly in a hurry to warn Harry and Ron about something.
Draco shook his head, a nearly invisible smile on his lips, and returned to his compartment.
---
The train pressed north, and the sky gradually darkened. Raindrops scattered on the windows built to a steady drumming, and then to a rushing downpour. Draco had already changed into his new school robes. Silver-grey lanterns flickered on in the corridor outside, casting soft light through the glass.
He rolled his shoulders tiredly and found himself thinking, oddly, of the Muggle train Hermione had described to him over the summer — the one called the high-speed railway.
"Did you know," he said to Goyle, who was working industriously through a packet of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, "that there are trains in the Muggle world now that could get you from London to Hogwarts in under three hours?"
Goyle looked at him with an expression of profound incomprehension and made a vague, bean-muffled noise.
"Never mind. Carry on." Draco waved him off and turned back to the window. Outside, darkness had swallowed the last traces of the countryside.
The train slowed.
The rumble of the pistons faded and died.
They hadn't reached Hogsmeade yet. Something was wrong.
A murmur rose through the carriage. Draco slid the compartment door open and found students all along the corridor craning to look out their windows. Harry had appeared in the doorway of the adjacent compartment, seeming about to say something.
Before either of them could speak, a violent jolt shook the train. Draco grabbed the doorframe to keep his footing — and then every light in the corridor went dark at once.
Students cried out up and down the train, their frightened voices overlapping: *What's happened? What's going on?*
And then, like something surfacing through deep water, the memory arrived.
*The Dementors. They board for inspection.*
He had forgotten entirely. He had meant to warn Harry.
"Harry!" he called into the darkness toward the adjacent compartment. "Can I come through?"
"Of course." Harry's voice came from somewhere close. "What is it?"
"I'll explain in a moment. Can I bring Crabbe and Goyle?"
A pause. "...Yes, alright."
Draco turned back to the two dark shapes slumped in their seats. "Don't ask questions. Come with me to the next compartment. Bring my chocolate — now."
Crabbe and Goyle did not ask questions. They were entirely obedient when Draco used that tone.
From next door, they could faintly hear Harry saying, "Ron, put the cat basket on the luggage rack — Draco's coming—"
The three of them felt their way along the carriage wall in the pale moonlight leaking through the windows and crowded into Harry's compartment.
"It's me," Draco said quickly into the dark. "We're all here."
"I think something just climbed onto the back of the train—" That was Ron, pressed against the window.
"Draco?" Hermione's voice came from somewhere in the dark compartment, laced with both worry and relief. Before he could answer, she had found him in the darkness and seized his sleeve.
"It's me," he said.
"What's happened?" she asked, her voice low and unsteady.
"Dementors. They're boarding to search the train."
A sharp collective intake of breath filled the compartment.
"Oh no—" Hermione and Ron said together. Crabbe and Goyle made low, pained sounds.
"Dementors — the Azkaban guards?" Harry asked, still catching up.
"They're here searching for Pettigrew." Draco kept his voice level. "Harry, stay away from the door." He registered the shuffle of someone's foot. "That's my foot."
"Oh — sorry," Harry said.
"Never mind." Draco caught Hermione's wrist with one hand and groped for his wand with the other. "Harry, get closer to Professor Lupin. Hermione, sit down. Crabbe, Goyle — go sit with Ron."
Another brief scramble of rearrangement followed before the compartment door was firmly shut.
"Why are they all crammed in here?" Ron muttered.
"Put a sock in it, Weasley," Goyle said.
"Yeah, want to make something of it?" Crabbe added.
"Oh, will you all stop it," Hermione said sharply, "and look at the window."
Frost was blooming across the glass. Delicate crystalline patterns crept over the surface as the air in the compartment turned bitterly, unnaturally cold.
Ron, Crabbe, and Goyle fell completely silent. They huddled together, shaking.
"Harry," Draco said, across Hermione, "can you wake Professor Lupin?"
It went against every instinct to rely on Lupin — a werewolf sleeping an arm's reach away was not a comfortable thought. But the facts of the situation were what they were. Lupin was a Defence Against the Dark Arts professor, and anything he could do awake was better than what he'd accomplish unconscious.
"Of course," Harry said.
Hermione could feel the warmth of Draco's breath near her ear. It was barely September, yet the cold pressing in from the door was deep and wrong, far beyond any autumn chill.
As Harry called softly to the sleeping professor, Hermione whispered, "Draco — Dementors. Are they dangerous?"
He didn't have time to answer. He heard the compartment door sliding open — and a wave of cold so profound it was almost a sound hit him full in the chest.
*Click.* A beam of light blazed from his hand toward the door.
"What kind of spell is that?" Ron asked, startled by the brightness.
"Don't be daft — that's the Muggle torch I gave him." Hermione's voice carried a note of muted pride. "I didn't think you still had it—" She peered out from behind Draco's shoulder, squinting into the beam.
In the white light, everyone saw it.
A hooded shape, darker than the darkness behind it. A greyish-white, decaying hand crept out from beneath the heavy cloak and rested on the doorframe, its waxy skin gleaming. The thing beneath the hood seemed to be searching the compartment.
"Stay calm," Draco said. His own voice sounded strange to him — very quiet, very even. "Routine inspection. Everyone stay still."
Goyle and Crabbe had compressed themselves into the smallest shapes possible, pressing hard against Ron. Ron, for once, did not object. He couldn't seem to find his voice.
"Draco—" Hermione's fingers tightened around the hem of his robes. "Harry — something's wrong with Harry. He's convulsing."
Draco registered that Harry had stopped trying to wake Lupin.
Around him, everything had become muffled and strange. The cold was absolute. His mind was beginning to fracture at the edges — brief, ugly fragments surfacing: a tower splitting open in a burst of lightning... a marble floor... a jumble of terrible things he could not name, surfacing from somewhere darker than memory.
"Draco—" Hermione's voice again, close and trembling.
He shook himself. Something had to be done.
"Hermione — wake Professor Lupin." He gritted his teeth, angling his body to shield her. He could feel her shaking against his back.
He fought to control his own trembling and turned toward the shape in the doorway.
"Peter Pettigrew is not in this compartment," he said, his voice hoarse but clear. "Leave."
The Dementor did not move.
It breathed — a long, rattling exhalation — and leaned forward again, one scabbed, glistening hand reaching into the compartment as though something inside had fixed its attention.
"Expecto Patronum!" Draco cast with everything he had.
A rush of silver vapour erupted from his wand and filled the doorway. The Dementor recoiled a step, startled by the light.
But only a step.
Draco's Patronus Charm was unfinished. He'd been practising for barely a fortnight and could manage a strong silver mist — impressive for someone his age, but not enough to repel a Dementor. It could suppress, delay, deter. It could not drive one away entirely.
The Dementor drifted back toward the door, its breathing growing louder and more irregular. It lunged forward again, clawing toward something in the compartment that seemed to call to it. The silver mist at Draco's wandtip guttered and thinned. Every emotion in him was flattening out into a grey, terrible nothing... his lungs felt full of ice... the corridor behind the Dementor seemed to stretch infinitely away from him...
"Expecto Patronum," he said again, barely a whisper. A wisp of silver, faint as breath, trailed from his wand.
Then a pair of hands closed over his.
Hermione.
The memory arrived unbidden: her smile when she introduced herself to him. Her laugh on the skateboard. The chocolate shop, her grinning as she tucked a piece into his mouth. The way she had beamed at him, triumphant, every time she'd brokered some small peace.
She was shaking. She couldn't speak. But she was holding on.
"Expecto Patronum!" he cried, filling his mind with her.
The silver mist surged back, stronger and steadier than before. The Dementor let out an angry rasp and pulled its hand back.
Draco breathed. He clung to the wavering silver light. He didn't know how much longer he could hold the charm — it was exhausting him — but he would not give ground. Not until she was out of harm's way.
"Professor Lupin!" Hermione screamed behind him.
Draco gritted his teeth and held on, watching his Patronus thin again at the edges—
A great silver shield of light erupted past him from deeper in the compartment and drove itself into the doorway.
Remus Lupin, at last, was awake.
The Dementor — met with something far more formidable than silver mist — let out a sound like a rattling intake of breath and swept away from the compartment in a rush.
*Click.* The overhead lights blazed back on all at once. A weak, indignant meow issued from the luggage rack above.
In the sharp light, Draco, white-faced and hollow-eyed, folded back into his seat and exhaled slowly. He turned his head to Crabbe and Goyle, both standing rigid as if Petrified, and said in a hoarse voice, "Give out the chocolate. Everyone gets some."
The two of them blinked back to life, nodded wordlessly, and began distributing handfuls of chocolate from the case.
Draco heard Ron murmur, "Cheers," to Crabbe.
The rustle of foil being unwrapped filled the compartment. Hermione was no longer pressed behind him. She had settled against his arm instead, watching his expression with quiet, worried eyes, and lifted a square of chocolate toward him.
He took a bite automatically. Warmth spread through him — immediate and real, reaching all the way to his fingers.
"Thank you," he said, managing a weak smile. He turned to look at her properly. "Are you alright?"
"Better, yes. But—" Hermione looked past him to Harry, who had slumped sideways in his seat, pale and damp with cold sweat, his eyes closed and his body almost sliding to the floor.
Professor Lupin crouched beside Harry, checked him over efficiently, and straightened up. "He's fainted. He'll come round shortly." He looked at the crowded compartment. "He ought to lie down."
An ambitious aspiration, given the present arrangements: seven students, one professor, and an indignant ginger cat.
"Crabbe, Goyle — come on," Draco said, rising carefully. "Let's take some chocolate to the other compartments."
"Perhaps wait a moment longer," Professor Lupin said, gently but with a firmness that was not quite a suggestion. "I don't think you've quite recovered."
He turned to Ron. "Would you go with them instead?"
"Yeah — course," Ron said. His colour had been restored somewhat by the chocolate, though he still looked shaken.
"Go on, Ron," Hermione said, cradling Crookshanks against her chest. "We'll look after Harry. Find Ginny while you're at it — she's probably terrified."
Professor Lupin watched the three of them file out.
When the door slid shut, he turned and looked at Draco with quiet, unhurried attention.
"That was very brave," he said, with a tired smile. "A third-year student casting a Patronus Charm is no small thing. Quite remarkable, in fact."
Draco met the professor's gaze. Something complicated turned over in his chest.
He had always thought of Remus Lupin simply as a dangerous werewolf. A creature to be regarded with caution. Today, Lupin had saved all of them, and done so without hesitation.
"I haven't fully mastered it," Draco said after a moment, his tone quieter than usual. "Under normal circumstances I wouldn't have cast it. Not on the train."
"You did precisely what needed to be done. And I'll explain the necessity to anyone who needs an explanation." Lupin's brow furrowed. "But something troubles me. Dementors are permitted to conduct routine searches — they should not have lingered the way that one did."
"It wouldn't leave," Draco said quietly. "It wasn't interested in moving on. It seemed drawn to something — or someone — in this compartment specifically."
"Why would that be?" Hermione asked. "Is there something particular about this compartment?"
Silence settled over them.
All three turned to look at Harry — unconscious, pale, his breathing shallow and his robes damp with cold sweat.
No one said what they were all thinking.