Draco took his usual seat aboard the Hogwarts Express, rather glumly, with his face pressed against the window. Luckily he would be escaping Pansy; her parents didn't want her home (yay!) and so she was currently in the Slytherin common room, downcast, having tried to kiss him before he left. The door slid open and he looked up.

"I thought I'd find you eventually," Hermione sighed with relief, sitting opposite him. "Pansy not returning home?"

"No," Draco replied moodily. "She did try to kiss me before I left, though."

"Try?" Hermione sounded disgusted.

"She failed," Draco said shortly, rather distracted.

"Anything off the trolley, dears?"

When Draco said nothing, Hermione looked up at the kindly woman and shook her head, a meaningful expression on her worried face. The woman backed out again.

"Malfoy?" She knelt before him. "Stop worrying yourself. Remember what you said last year? 'Darkness will come, and it changes the best of people. But it is light now, and I hope the day will be as long as possible.' Cherish that time, before darkness comes once more."

"You remembered what I said?" He looked up slowly.

"Of course I did," Hermione said gently. "I've a good memory; ring a bell anywhere?"

"' I prefer the term eidetic'," Draco imitated Hermione's fussy tone and cracked a smile, if only half-hearted. Hermione grinned.

"I didn't sound like that!" She protested.

"You're right - you still do!" He laughed.

"Do not!"

"Do!"

"Don't!"

"Did you say you were going skiing? Why you would you make a fool of yourselves on wooden sticks, when you can just do that without them?"

"Don't tease me! And don't attempt to change the subject!"

"I didn't attempt. I succeeded!" Triumphant.

"Wwhat?" Hermione spluttered.

"Ha! Getting the last word rules. I do it all the time with Pansy, but she doesn't know enough words to continue quarrelling anyway."

"We are not quarrelling!"

"Fine. We're shouting."

*

In the end, Hermione cut her skiing holiday short. She'd found out about Arthur and the snake, and Harry believing he was being possessed, and had tactically taken the Knight Bus to No. 12, Grimmauld Place, London, leaving behind some distraught parents. Fortunately, she'd managed to reassure them she was going to study and so she'd left snow-capped mountains behind to visit her friends in a dingy house. 

What a perfect Christmas. Complete the picture with a snake attack and another friend stuck with an abusive father. Check. She had come to see Draco as a friend, however little he realised that. Hermione believed that Draco might not even understand friendship so she could be anybody to him: acquaintance, frenemy, enemy, fellow student? Anyway, she could only help one friend at a time and, right now, that friend was Harry.

She found him in Buckbeak's room, feeding dead rats to the Hippogriff that had come back from the dead; of course she and Harry were responsible for that. She led him to Ron and Harry's shared room on the second floor, where there was a roaring fire and sandwiches that Mrs Weasley had kindly made. Ron and Ginny were already there, sitting on Ron's bed.

"Harry, you've had these dreams before," she interposed before Harry could have another little tantrum. How careless he was, not to realise that Ginny truly was the only person he knew who'd been possessed. Poor Ginny. "You had flashes of what Voldemort was up to last year."

"This was different." Harry shook his head. "I was inside the snake. It was like I was the snake... what if Voldemort somehow transported me to London_?"

Hermione was exasperated. 

"One day you'll read Hogwarts: A History, and perhaps it will remind you that you can't Apparate or Disapparate inside Hogwarts. Even Voldemort couldn't just make you fly out of your dormitory, Harry."

"You didn't leave your bed, mate," Ron put in. "I saw you thrashing around in your sleep for at least a minute before we could wake you up."

She saw Harry contemplating the situation furiously before (finally!) realising he wasn't the so-called weapon. Sirius' loud singing of 'God Rest Ye, Merry Hippogriffs' brought their minds back to Christmas, and Grimmauld Place had never seemed a happier place to stay.