A/N:Well, hello there. How are you all doing?
If you enjoy the fanfic, comments, reviews, and power stones would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for reading!
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There are no fewer than a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts.
Draco, who had lived here for seven years, knew them like the back of his hand: some were wide and grand; some were narrow, cramped, and wobbly; some mischievously shifted every Friday, attempting to lead students somewhere entirely unexpected; and some had a step that simply vanished halfway up, ready to swallow an inattentive foot.
For the dazed and disoriented new students, however, these stairs were far more treacherous than charming.
Memorising their layouts and habits was no small feat -- after all, everything seemed to be in constant motion.
Hermione Granger had clearly not yet worked out all the tricks.
One Friday evening, after the library had closed, she was making her way upstairs, weighed down by a stack of heavy books, when her foot sank into a missing step simply because she wasn't paying attention.
"Of all the wretched luck," Hermione muttered, frowning.
She tried to climb out on her own. It was impossible without help.
But she wasn't sure anyone would come.
This staircase was a shortcut she had recently discovered -- hidden behind a door, with sliding panels and hanging curtains that made it exceptionally secluded. Hardly anyone used it. The quiet had been its appeal, and now it had become its drawback.
What was worse, at this hour most students had already returned to their common rooms, which greatly reduced her chances of being rescued.
"Hello? Is anyone there? Please -- could someone help me?" she called out tentatively, up and down the stairwell, hoping for a stroke of luck. Only silence answered from both ends.
She couldn't help noticing the wall beside the staircase. Dim candlelight flickered across the stone, deepening the eerie atmosphere of the corridor.
Hermione's pulse quickened. She raised her voice and tried again, several more times -- but all she received in return were small, hollow echoes bouncing off the surrounding stone.
She pushed and strained on the step, increasingly discouraged, and began flipping miserably through the copy of Hogwarts: A History still clutched in her hands, searching for anything that might help her free herself.
The book, however, appeared to assume that all students made friends at Hogwarts, and that at the very least, no one would want for a friendly hand to pull them out of a missing step.
The all-knowing Hogwarts: A History, Hermione thought bleakly, and it can't offer a single practical solution.
After nearly half an hour of fruitless waiting, she finally heard footsteps -- someone coming downstairs.
The sound of leather soles on stone steps, unhurried and easy.
At that moment, it was the most welcome sound she had ever heard.
This might be her only real chance of rescue tonight. Who knew when the next person would come?
"Hello -- could you possibly--" she looked up and started eagerly, but the words died on her tongue.
It was Draco.
Oh, Merlin. This is mortifying.
She had spent the entire day being cold and aloof toward him, blanking his friendly greetings -- and now, apparently, Merlin's retribution had come swiftly, not even waiting out the night.
This Slytherin boy would certainly take the opportunity to humiliate her.
Hermione lowered her head at once and went back to flipping through her book, determined to pretend she hadn't seen him.
If she was stuck, then she was stuck. She would rather be here all night than ask him for help and give him the satisfaction.
Draco had already seen her. He had just been given the cold shoulder by the Grey Lady and come downstairs in a low mood -- only to stumble upon Miss Know-It-All, stuck in the middle of the staircase.
You little rascal.
Typical Hermione Granger recklessness -- getting herself caught in a disappearing step... Draco's mouth twitched.
Look at her. Gone was the arrogant composure of the daytime. In its place: a girl who looked exactly like a cat that had accidentally stepped into a mousetrap, holding her book up as a shield, guilty and mortified.
His mood improved at once. He walked calmly to her side, stopped, and tilted his head to look at her. "Need any help?"
"No," she said curtly, eyes fixed on the page.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, a hint of a smile hovering at his lips.
"Reading." She waved the thick book at him.
"Does reading while wedged in a step do particularly good things for one's concentration?" He raised an eyebrow.
"That's none of your business," she said, her face colouring.
Her guilty expression was... rather endearing.
"I can help, if you ask," Draco said pleasantly -- with a warmth in his voice he didn't quite notice himself.
"I don't accept help from people who don't follow rules." She refused to look at him, but she could hear the amusement he was trying to contain.
He's laughing at her, she thought furiously.
"Still going on about that? No one even noticed. You need to learn some flexibility." He spoke lightly, as if it were of no consequence whatsoever.
"I have nothing to say to you." She drew herself up with as much dignity as could be managed from a sunken step.
Then, abruptly, the staircase shuddered.
It moved with great purpose, apparently bored by the conversation taking place on its back. In an instant, it gave a mischievous heave that sent them both staggering.
"Arrogant" was suddenly a word that didn't apply to either of them; "dishevelled" was considerably more accurate.
Hermione's book tumbled from her hands and went clattering down the steps.
But that was not the worst of it.
The worst of it was that the jolt of the staircase sent her pitching sideways -- directly onto the boy -- entirely against her wishes. And he caught her shoulder with startling speed, stopping her from falling further.
That was really rather too much. Would she have to cling to his clothes in the middle of a spinning staircase and actually thank him? Hermione wondered, flustered, as the world lurched around her.
The staircase, having spun with tremendous enthusiasm for a good while, eventually ground to a lazy halt. When everything settled, the doors at either end led somewhere entirely different from where they had been.
Both of them let out a breath. They glanced at each other -- and then, in a sudden flash of realisation, said at the same moment: "Friday!"
On Fridays, some staircases shift erratically, attempting to lead to different places and causing mischief for students...
The shared understanding dissolved some of the awkwardness, and a small, unwilling smile appeared on Hermione's face. Draco seemed to feel the same -- a brief smile crossed his expression too.
"Let me help you." He glanced at where the staircase had brought them, then frowned and said, "These stairs aren't safe."
If he remembered correctly, this passage led toward the restricted area on the fourth floor. Not a pleasant place to linger.
"Yes. Thank you," Hermione said, a faint blush rising. "If it's not too much trouble."
"Not at all," Draco said briskly. He studied Hermione's foot, still embedded in the step, and said with easy practicality, "I'd suggest putting your arms around my neck and holding on as tightly as you can."
Somewhat dazedly, Hermione did as he said. She wrapped her arms around his neck, rested her head on his shoulder -- and he pulled her into a full embrace and freed her cleanly from the treacherous step.
He set her down on solid ground, a smug gleam in his eyes as he looked her over. "Better? Still nothing to say to me?"
His smug look made Hermione feel rather put out.
She was about to retort when a cat's meow from somewhere below the stairs cut her off -- followed by Mr. Filch's agitated voice: "I heard someone talking up there! Someone's making trouble on the fourth floor tonight -- I'll have them, mark my words! No amount of excuses will work! I'll break out the chains from my office!"
"We have to move. This staircase leads to the restricted corridor on the fourth floor." Draco's expression sharpened. "If Filch catches us here, there'll be no explaining it."
"But my book--" Hermione started.
"It fell to the second floor. We'll come back for it." He grabbed Hermione's sleeve and pulled her upward.
"But the fourth floor is up -- shouldn't we be going down--" she tried to point out.
"Down to the third floor, straight into Filch? Use your head." Draco rolled his eyes and kept pulling. "He's hunting students tonight. He's in the mood."
"But there's nowhere to hide up here--" Before she could finish the thought, he had turned sharply right and pulled her into the darkened fourth-floor corridor -- pitch black and deeply unpleasant.
At the far end was a door. The very door to the restricted area.
"We can't go in there -- there's--" Hermione gasped for breath and said, somewhat incoherently, "Professor Dumbledore said so."
A three-headed dog was in there. She had already encountered it by accident. But she wasn't sure whether to tell Draco -- if she did, wouldn't it mean openly admitting she'd already broken school rules herself? She was deeply conflicted.
"I know!" he said impatiently, and kept pulling her -- not toward the door, but behind a statue some distance from it.
By now Filch's complaints and threats were growing louder, and the flicker of a lantern had appeared at the top of the stairwell.
"Are you sure this will work?" she whispered from behind the statue, trembling slightly. "He'll see us."
"No, he won't." Draco reached into his robes, drew out a shimmering silver cloak, shook it loose, and draped it over both of them.
Hermione reached out -- and watched her own hand disappear.
"This is--" she breathed, eyes wide.
"An Invisibility Cloak. Space is tight -- come closer, quickly, don't let anything show," he murmured.
Hermione was transfixed. She had never seen such a thing in her life.
Besides, Mr. Filch was terrifying. She had no desire to be caught, to have points stripped from her record, or to be subjected to whatever chains he kept mentioning.
Panic overrode any self-consciousness. She nestled almost entirely into the shelter of his arms and carefully shifted her feet beneath the cloak's hem.
"Will it work?" she asked anxiously.
"Not another sound," he breathed against her ear.
Hermione held completely still. Filch was getting closer. His cat -- Mrs. Norris -- had appeared at the base of the statue and seemed to be sniffing the area with unnerving interest.
What exactly is that cat detecting?
Without meaning to, Hermione drew in a small breath -- and caught that same clean, pleasant scent from the collar of the boy named Draco.
She turned her head slightly to look at him.
He was watching Mrs. Norris. Watching Filch. The caretaker was right beside them now, his face drawn and furious, his pale eyes passing less than an arm's length away.
She pressed herself tighter to his collar, unsettled by Filch's contorted face and those awful close-set eyes. Draco, however, was utterly still -- his expression unchanged, one hand curled into a loose fist against her back, the other tight around his wand.
From his expression, she thought, he looked exactly as though he were prepared -- if Filch so much as glanced directly at them -- to cast a Memory Charm on the spot. She barely dared breathe.
Fortunately, Mr. Filch found nothing. He snapped at Mrs. Norris and moved off to search elsewhere.
"Can we move now--" Hermione asked in a barely-audible whisper, her entire body stiff from holding the position for so long.
"Wait a little longer," Draco said softly, his fist still resting lightly against her back.
Filch's greatest talent was the ambush. Draco knew his methods all too well from his previous life.
Hermione let out a faint, exhausted sigh and let her head rest against his shoulder.
Between being wedged in a step for half an hour, sprinting up and down two flights of stairs, and the prolonged tension of the dark corridor -- it had entirely worn out a twelve-year-old girl's reserves.
In the quiet darkness, she found herself drowsy and heavy-eyed. His shoulder was surprisingly solid. He had already pulled her free from the step and hadn't said a single sarcastic thing, which was more than she had expected.
Draco -- this Slytherin boy -- had been far kinder to her than all the Gryffindor boys put together. He was also clever and remarkably calm under pressure, having outwitted Mr. Filch with what appeared to be no effort whatsoever...
It wouldn't hurt to rest her head there, just briefly. They couldn't move anyway. And there was nothing else to lean on. Hermione thought, drowsily.
Draco felt the weight settle against his shoulder and glanced sideways in surprise. His lips moved, but he said nothing, and let her stay.
How does she have absolutely no guard against him? Not even an hour ago she had been icing him out with spectacular coldness. And now here she was, leaning against his shoulder, completely and trustingly -- as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
Something no one could have predicted in two lifetimes.
This impulsive, infuriating, rather wonderful girl, he thought, and found he couldn't quite finish the thought.
The noise from the stairwell interrupted him in any case -- sure enough, Filch doubled back, lingering at the far end of the corridor for quite some time before finally leaving.
Draco was right, Hermione thought, eyes still closed. Thank goodness she had waited.
This was so different from the last time she, Harry, and Ron had wandered into a forbidden area by accident. That time she'd been in a cold sweat the entire time, desperately trying to think her way out while the boys blundered about. This time, she hadn't needed to worry at all. Draco had simply handled it.
She felt, oddly, less afraid. With him here, it seemed like there wasn't really anything to worry about -- he simply would not let anything go wrong.
And so Hermione closed her eyes, and rested, and let her mind go quiet.
They waited in careful silence for a long while, just in case. Only when the corridor had been completely still for some time did they slip out from under the cloak and make their way quietly toward the staircase at the other end.
"Wait -- Draco -- is it actually allowed, bringing an Invisibility Cloak to school?" Hermione's mind had begun to clear as they descended, and a thought surfaced. "Do you sneak out like this in the middle of the night regularly?"
"What do you think the Invisibility Cloak is for?" Draco said pleasantly, without any apparent guilt, strolling along at a leisurely pace.
He had the air of a repeat offender who had never once considered stopping.
"This is against the rules!" Hermione fell into step beside him, keeping her voice low as she scolded. "You can't keep doing this -- it's dangerous. What if Filch catches you one night? I know you're good at getting out of trouble, but that won't always work! You can't just use an Invisibility Cloak to do whatever you please, or I'll tell Professor McGonagall--"
"Let me point out," Draco said, giving her an irritated look, "that if it weren't for that Invisibility Cloak tonight, we'd both be sitting in Filch's office right now, contemplating his chains. A little gratitude wouldn't go amiss."
That ungrateful girl. She used him and then ignored him!
Hermione made a derisive sound, clearly unpersuaded.
She knew perfectly well the cloak had saved them tonight -- but that wasn't the point. Breaking school rules was still wrong, full stop.
"There is a difference between an accidental mishap and a deliberate pattern of behaviour, isn't there?" she said stubbornly.
Draco stopped dead. He turned to look at her, and a cold, calculating smile spread across his face. "If you go to Professor McGonagall, you'll be explaining tonight right alongside me. We were in that corridor together."
"You're threatening me!" Hermione said, outraged. The gratitude she'd felt -- the strange sense of safety she'd found in the dark -- evaporated in an instant.
"Yes." Draco pursed his lips. He walked to the second-floor landing, picked up Hogwarts: A History from where it had landed on the steps, dusted it off with evident distaste, and held it out to her.
Then that infuriatingly composed face leaned closer to hers -- close enough that she startled backward -- as though he were genuinely curious about whatever was going on behind her eyes.
Hermione was caught off guard by his sudden nearness. His grey eyes were sharp and defiant and, she noticed with some irritation, rather striking. His hair caught the light of the nearby candles and gleamed silver-blond in the wavering light. And yet every single word that left his mouth was so thoroughly exasperating that she didn't know what to do with him.
Finally, a wave of desperate indignation surged up inside her. Her face flamed, and she said the worst thing she could think of -- the sort of thing she'd heard older students say about Slytherins:
"You ruthless Slytherin!"
And there it is, Draco thought, expressionless. Accused of playing dirty, just like in his previous life.
"Yes! That's exactly what I am -- always have been, always will be. Don't bother reminding me. Go back to your respectable Gryffindor common room and kindly stop crossing paths with Slytherins. Goodnight!" he said with great precision, turned on his heel, and left her standing on the landing.
Hermione Granger. Rigid. Dogmatic. Entirely too principled for her own good. And quite a handful.
He grumbled along the corridor toward the Slytherin common room.
But would she manage not to step through another missing stair on the way back?
After all the chaos of the evening -- the late hour, and Filch prowling the corridors on a mission -- the thought nagged at him. His steps slowed. He grew slower, and slower still.
The most infuriating girl in the world. Draco stopped, frowning, and looked back at the small figure on the landing below before he could stop himself.
On the other side of the castle, Hermione walked the rest of the way to the Gryffindor common room in sullen silence, clutching the book he had retrieved for her, looking thoroughly dejected.
After that night, her heart felt like an overturned paint palette -- Gryffindor red and Slytherin green spilled everywhere, with a smear of blue over the top.
(Blue, which carries the quiet weight of melancholy.)
In short: a complete mess.
How was she supposed to feel about a Slytherin boy who helped her and then cheerfully admitted to breaking every rule in the book?
He had also -- very coolly and openly -- threatened her. Even if his face was rather well put together, he was still thoroughly awful.
Those dreadful grey eyes. Which were, admittedly, quite pretty.
And he smelled really good too.
She climbed through the portrait of the Fat Lady in a state of considerable internal conflict -- entirely unaware that an invisible boy was trailing quietly behind her, his expression like a badly knotted pretzel. Only once she had stepped through into the Gryffindor common room did he let out a slow breath.
The Fat Lady -- who had nearly nodded off while changing into her painted nightgown -- was startled awake by the sound and fell dramatically backward. "Who's there?!" she gasped into the empty corridor. "Is that -- Peeves?!"
The invisible figure made no reply, and descended the stairs in silence.
For the next few weeks, Draco was in a low mood and took no particular joy in anything.
It wasn't his studies -- those were fine. The first-year curriculum was tedious for him. Since the start of term, he had been performing well, and even the professors who had been unkind to him in his previous life were treating him with relative lenience.
The most notable example was Professor McGonagall. Though strict and unyielding, and not particularly fond of Slytherins, she would still award an O -- Outstanding -- to a genuinely excellent Transfiguration essay. An honour that had previously belonged exclusively to Hermione Granger, the Know-It-All.
As for interpersonal politics -- it was the same old Slytherin calculus: bloodline, family, and demonstrated ability. The first-years had quickly sorted themselves by these measures and decided who sat where in the Great Hall.
Most Slytherin relationships grew from polished civility and probing wit, threaded through with the fragile remnants of childhood friendships and small, fleeting moments of actual sincerity.
This was the world Draco understood far better than the open, loud, unguarded Gryffindor variety. He could thrive here, if he chose to.
Drawing on his intimate knowledge of his Slytherin classmates from his previous life -- Theodore Nott, Pansy Parkinson, Blaise Zabini, Vincent Crabbe, Gregory Goyle, Marcus Flint, and the rest -- he had found his footing among them with remarkable ease.
His sleep troubles had also been partly addressed. He had managed to obtain a Dreamless Sleep Potion from Madam Pomfrey -- helped along by a carefully cultivated air of innocence and a talent for polite, disarming charm.
The potion couldn't be taken too often -- misuse of any magical preparation carried risks. But this was where Occlumency proved its worth. Using the discipline, he had learned to lock away the worst memories of his previous life, to freeze and bury the feelings that were unbearable.
"It's rather self-deceptive, isn't it?" He smiled thinly at his reflection. "But at least you can sleep."
Admittedly, it solved nothing at the root. But for Draco, finding even a small measure of peace -- and getting a full night's rest -- was worth more than anything else right now.
And yet, beneath these apparently steady days, a deep and persistent anxiety had taken hold. The challenge he had been working toward had hit a wall.
His campaign to speak with the Bloody Baron -- or the Grey Lady -- had stalled.
The Grey Lady was famously unapproachable. Though she appeared gentle and graceful, she ignored everyone except a small handful of Ravenclaw students, and had a habit of drifting away from any unfamiliar face.
Draco had been making the trip to the vicinity of Ravenclaw Tower nearly every day to try his luck -- which was no small undertaking for a Slytherin, requiring considerable effort to slip past Ravenclaws with their infuriating habit of noticing things.
But every time he had managed, through patience and careful navigation, to position himself near the Grey Lady -- she would vanish at the sight of an unfamiliar face, flitting away like a startled sparrow, disappearing through a wall or around a pillar.
As for the Bloody Baron -- the Slytherin ghost on whom Draco had pinned such hopes -- he had retreated entirely back into himself.
He ignored Draco's repeated attempts to engage him, drifting along the Astronomy Tower in a state of private misery, humming faintly, oblivious to everything around him. That brief, candid conversation at the dinner table two months ago might have been a hallucination.
All of this was deeply discouraging.
Not that there had been no progress at all. At least the Bloody Baron had grown used to Draco's presence on the Astronomy Tower and was no longer averse to it.
The Baron often stared toward Ravenclaw Tower, muttering quietly to himself, calling Helena's name over and over -- making no effort to hide it from Draco.
This was not nothing, for a ghost. Most ghosts were extraordinarily sensitive creatures with deeply entrenched obsessions, and they were rarely easy to reach -- least of all one like the Bloody Baron, whom even Peeves was careful not to provoke.
But for Draco, receiving this quiet, tacit permission to stand nearby brought far more ache than comfort.
He had always dreaded the Astronomy Tower. He had even considered avoiding it altogether.
This place dragged him back, every time, to the most complicated and painful memories of his previous life. It plunged him into a grief he couldn't name.
The worst of it -- the memory he least wanted to face -- was what had happened here. The killing. Dumbledore's death. The night that had changed the course of everything.
If there was an ominous place at Hogwarts, this was it.
Draco wished he could keep his distance. But he had no other option -- the mystery of the Diadem pressed on him, and it needed to be resolved.
So he came anyway, suppressing the dread, standing again and again on that tower alongside the ghost lost in his own sorrow, trying to prise some fragment of truth free.
At least the Baron wouldn't flee. That alone was something. Draco told himself as much.
The wind on the tower grew colder with each passing day.
When Draco woke early one morning and caught the warm, rich scent of roasting pumpkin drifting through the corridors, he knew Halloween was nearly upon them.
Just as in his previous life, Professor Flitwick announced in Charms that the class would now begin practising the Levitation Charm.
Hermione Granger, as ever, was the first student to make her feather rise -- earning Professor Flitwick an involuntary little bow of delight. Ron, beside her, had gone the colour of a thundercloud and was visibly seething.
Draco sat across the room, separated from them by the open centre of the classroom. He watched the girl opposite for a moment -- she had the air of an extremely smug cat, chin tilted high, wand moving with neat precision to keep the single feather floating in the air above her, utterly ignoring everyone around her.
Then he raised his wand and lifted his own feather to join it.
"Excellent work, Mr. Malfoy!" Professor Flitwick said brightly, before turning back to assist Potter and Finnigan, whose feathers had been singed.
Hermione found Draco's feather intensely irritating. Her feather had been floating in perfect peace -- and then his had appeared and immediately begun getting in the way. She sent her feather higher; his climbed alongside it. She brought it lower; his dropped beneath and blocked the path. She dodged left and right; his followed, darting and circling.
She shot him a sharp look. He was gazing at the ceiling with an expression of dedicated concentration.
Draco was, in fact, practising properly. He had no intention of repeating the disaster of his fifth-year O.W.L. exams -- when his glass had slipped from its charm, shattered on the floor, and been witnessed with evident glee by Potter. A humiliation he intended never to revisit.
He did also have an ulterior motive.
Why did this ungrateful girl keep ignoring him? Since the incident on the stairs, she'd grown even more distant -- refusing to be his partner, not meeting his eye, treating him as though he were something revolting she'd found on her shoe.
Even Potter could manage a smile at him now. But Hermione avoided him as thoroughly as ever.
Were they simply destined to be at odds? Incapable of being even ordinary friends?
Draco sighed quietly, glanced at the girl across from him -- face flushed, gripping her wand like she was considering snapping it -- and at last stilled his mischievous feather.
The candlelit hall had been elaborately decorated for Halloween. Live bats swooped between enchanted flames, and colossal pumpkins had been carved into glowing lanterns large enough to seat three students comfortably inside.
Every year, the Halloween feast was lavish enough to satisfy the whole school.
The students were especially restless that afternoon. Crabbe and Goyle had spent most of their lessons whispering and daydreaming about the feast, cataloguing the food with the enthusiasm of people who hadn't eaten in a fortnight.
Though their muttered menu-recitations were making him genuinely hungry, Draco had his usual errand to run first -- and so, as the sun dropped toward the horizon, he climbed to the Astronomy Tower once more.
The nights at the end of October were bitter at the best of times, and worse on the tower. Draco's robes were nearly soaked through by the cold wind despite several warming charms; the gusts simply undid them.
The Bloody Baron appeared to be in an unusual state tonight. Several mouldy empty bottles lay scattered at his feet, and his gaze was fixed somewhere in the middle distance -- making his already ghastly face look even more unsettling.
"Festive atmosphere," Draco remarked.
Also -- could ghosts get drunk? He found this a genuinely puzzling question, but it wasn't his most pressing concern at the moment, and he let it go.
"The Grey Lady doesn't seem to be at Ravenclaw Tower tonight," Draco said lightly, casting another warming charm and settling in beside the Baron as though discussing the weather. He followed the ghost's gaze toward Ravenclaw Tower.
"Hmph." The Baron was clearly displeased.
"Wasn't she invited to the ghosts' Halloween party? I saw quite a few of them heading off together," Draco said, keeping his voice easy.
"She will never invite me," the Bloody Baron said suddenly.
Draco looked at him sharply.
"She will never forgive me. She hates me." The Baron's voice was raw. He raised the shackles on his wrists and stared at them like a man who understood exactly why they were there. "I regret it... I regret it so much. I deserve to be punished."
The years at Malfoy Manor -- years of reading faces in high-stakes rooms, of watching carefully and reading the air -- had honed Draco's perception to something unusually sharp.
Now, looking at the Baron's silver-stained robes and his shackles, he arrived at a possibility.
A chilling one.
"You killed her?" he asked, carefully. He knew the Baron might not offer him a second opening.
The Bloody Baron nodded slowly. Even prepared for it, Draco felt the impact. He held his expression still, afraid of breaking the moment.
"I found the forest where she was hiding. She was proud. She didn't love me -- she refused to come back -- so I stabbed her." The Baron bowed his head, staring at his transparent hands. "I regretted it at once. So I killed myself afterward. I wanted to be near her. Even though she hated me."
How did you find her?
"She was in a dark forest in Albania -- so far from her mother that she couldn't be reached. Her mother was ill. Very ill. She had sent me to find her and bring her home."
"The Albanian forest," Draco murmured, filing the name away.
Quirrell had claimed to have encountered something deeply wrong in a dark forest. That connection might not be a coincidence -- and in Draco's experience, it rarely was.
He had learned that lesson the hard way. There weren't many true coincidences in the world; most of what looked like chance was actually the product of carefully concealed design. It had been that same logic that had led him to the secret of the Vanishing Cabinet in his previous life -- the insight that had ultimately made him an instrument in Snape's murder of Dumbledore.
The principle itself was innocent. It still illuminated things. And it illuminated something now: even Rowena Ravenclaw -- brilliant beyond measure -- had not been able to find her daughter in the Albanian forest, her magic falling short of its depths. It was difficult to imagine another forest so dark and remote anywhere in the world.
When a weakened Dark Lord had needed a place to lie low, to rest undisturbed for years -- hadn't the desolate Albanian forest been exactly what he'd needed?
"And the Diadem?" Draco pressed carefully.
"I didn't find her -- and I didn't find the Diadem." The Bloody Baron sighed, a sound like wind through dead leaves, and his dull gaze shifted to Draco -- as though noticing for the first time that there was a living person beside him.
"Don't leave things until it's too late to regret them." He looked at Draco with an expression of bottomless sorrow, spoke those words into the cold air, then rose and passed through the tower wall into the darkness beyond.
Poor ghost. Draco let out a soft breath, and felt a small, quiet sympathy rise and fade.
Then his mind slipped into thought.
The Baron's revelation that the Diadem had never been recovered -- that mattered. Rowena Ravenclaw had sent the Baron to bring back her daughter. But what she had wanted returned was not only Helena.
The Diadem had gone with her into that forest. And even her own mother had not been able to find it.
It was easy now to understand why the Grey Lady had spent so many years refusing to use her own name.
She was ashamed. She had betrayed her mother -- stolen the Diadem -- and hidden it somewhere so remote that no one could reach it.
Tonight's cold and hunger had not been wasted. Draco had found his first real thread leading toward Ravenclaw's lost Diadem. The excitement of it overrode the chill, and he paced the drafty platform in the bleak winter dark, his mind racing.
If the Diadem had been hidden in the Albanian forest -- how had it come to end up in the Room of Requirement at Hogwarts?
What had the Dark Lord's role been in all of this? And why had he wanted the Diadem?
Many questions remained. But Draco's instinct -- finely honed over years of navigating danger -- told him he was one step closer to the answer.
What came next was the greater challenge: to reach the Grey Lady herself. To find a way to make her stay long enough to listen -- and then, slowly and carefully, to earn her trust.
That would be a thousand times harder than getting through to the Bloody Baron. But it was the only path forward, and it began with keeping her from fleeing at the very sight of him.
The real test was just beginning.