Chapter Text
The answer had been in Harry's pocket the whole time.
It came to him in the middle of a Charms lesson, sometime in January, while he was trying not to listen to Professor Flitwick explain the same spell a third time. He'd gotten a chocolate frog card on the train, and Ron had given it to him later because she'd had six of the same one. Harry dug it out of his trunk that night and turned it over. On the back, under a picture of Dumbledore, it said that he was famous for defeating a dark wizard, and for the discovery of the twelve uses of dragon's blood, and for his work on alchemy with his partner, Nicolas Flamel.
"Flamel!" he said, loudly enough to wake up Seamus. Ron fell out of bed.
By morning, Hermione had it all. She'd gone to the library in her dressing gown, come back with a book so large she needed both arms, and dropped it on the table at breakfast in front of the two of them. Nicolas Flamel was the only person who'd ever made a Sorcerer's Stone. It turned any metal into gold, and it produced an elixir that made you live forever, and he was six hundred and sixty-five years old. He lived in Devon with his wife.
"So that's what Fluffy's guarding," Ron said, once they'd all read it twice. "Dumbledore's got it hidden in the school. And Snape's trying to get in."
"We don't know that," said Hermione, but she said it very quietly.
Harry had his own reasons for believing it. He'd caught the Snitch against Hufflepuff in about five minutes, a record, and Dumbledore had come down to shake his hand, with Snape looking on from the referee's chair as if somebody had stepped on his foot. Three days later, he'd walked past the edge of the forest and seen Snape standing in the shade of a tree with Professor Quirrell. Quirrell was twisting his hands together, and Snape had him backed up against the trunk. "...your little shows of loyalty," Snape was saying, in a voice like silk over a blade. "Once you've decided where your loyalties lie, you and I will have another talk."
Harry had stayed behind a bush for ten minutes afterward, thinking, I knew it.
Hagrid's hut was too hot that spring, and it was because of the egg.
It sat in the middle of the fire, black and mottled, about the size of a football, and every time it rocked, Hagrid went red and said it was a bit of a surprise. He'd won it off a stranger at the pub, and he'd always wanted a dragon. Harry hadn't known about the stranger, or the egg. He'd come down to ask about the guards on the stone, and Hagrid had told him, at last, over a cup of tea. Professor Sprout, Flitwick, Quirrell, and McGonagall had each put a spell on it, and Dumbledore had done something too, and Snape. Nobody else knew how to get past Fluffy, which Hagrid said made it a perfect plan.
"Because yeh'd have to know," he said. "And nobody does. Only me and Dumbledore." Harry decided to stop pushing. He was just reaching for a rock cake when the egg split.
The dragon was about the size of an umbrella and looked like a crumpled black umbrella too, with spiky wings and a snout. It sneezed out a few sparks. Hagrid was already crying. "Norbert," he sobbed. "Oh, bless him, look at his little face."
There was a movement at the window. Harry spun around, and for half a second there was a face pressed against the glass, a pale one, with pale hair under a green ribbon. Then it ducked out of sight. By the time he'd run to the door, there was only a girl's footprints in the garden, going away fast.
"Malfoy," he said. "She saw."
Ron swore. Hermione said that was it, they were done for. For two days, Harry waited, at breakfast, in Potions, and every time he saw a green scarf in a corridor, for the news to get around. She'd tell Snape, or McGonagall, or the headmaster. Nothing happened. She looked across the Great Hall at him once, with her chin up, and then went back to her food. The longer it went on, the more he wondered why.
The dragon, meanwhile, was growing fast. By the end of the week, he was the size of a large dog, and he'd bitten Ron. Her hand swelled up to twice the size and turned green, and Madam Pomfrey would only be told it was a dog. Hagrid couldn't keep Norbert much longer. Ron's sister Charlie, who worked with dragons, agreed to take him, and sent two friends with brooms, to meet them at midnight on Saturday at the top of the tallest tower.
It took a lot of work. They got Norbert into a crate, and the crate under Harry's cloak, and Harry and Hermione carried it up seven flights of stairs, with Ron in the hospital wing and Norbert bumping the sides. The tower was freezing and open to the sky. Charlie's friends arrived on time, on brooms, and they were so delighted with the dragon that they very nearly cried. They strapped the crate between them and flew off into the dark.
Harry, who had never been so relieved in his life, was halfway down the stairs when he noticed something. He was cold. The cloak was missing.
"We left it up there," he whispered. "On the tower."
"We can't go back."
They crept along the corridor at the bottom, and a light came on behind them. Filch was standing in the doorway with a lantern, his eyes shining, and Mrs. Norris was winding around his ankles.
"Well, well, well," said Filch. "Students out of bed."
It went downhill from there. Professor McGonagall was waiting in her office in a tartan dressing gown, with her hair in a net, looking more furious than Harry had ever seen anyone. They'd been caught red-handed, she said, with illegal creatures, in the middle of the night. She could hardly believe it. Neville, who'd been waiting in the corridor to warn them, was standing in front of the desk too, looking miserable. And so, to Harry's surprise, was Draco.
She was in the corner with her hands folded and her robe buttoned to the neck, and she didn't look at any of them. Apparently McGonagall had found her wandering around the second floor an hour earlier. Draco hadn't said why. She'd said she couldn't sleep, and then she'd said nothing at all, and McGonagall had told her she'd have a detention for it. It hadn't occurred to Harry until that moment that she could've saved herself by telling on him. He couldn't remember her mentioning the dragon once.
"Fifty points," McGonagall said at last, "from each of you. And a detention."
That was a hundred and fifty points, and it dropped Gryffindor from first place to last in a single night. The next day, the whole house knew who'd done it. People stopped him in the corridors to say it was a disgrace, and the twins wouldn't look at him, and when he went to sit down at dinner someone moved their bag onto his chair. Even Wood was short with him. Ron, whose hand was healing, said she'd stick by him, and Hermione looked as if she'd been through something, and the two of them kept Neville laughing in the common room until she cried for a different reason.
Harry kept thinking that it hadn't been Draco's fault, which was a strange thing to be sure about.
The detention was set for eleven o'clock on a Friday night, and it was in the forest.
The four of them stood outside Hagrid's hut in the dark, in their robes, with Filch's lantern jerking away across the lawn behind them. It was freezing. There were lights in the trees, but they weren't the kind you could trust. Hagrid had a crossbow over his shoulder and a worried look, and Fang was cowering behind him.
"Summat's been killin' the unicorns," Hagrid said, in a low voice. "Found one dead last week. We've got to find whatever's hurt it. So stay close, and if yeh see anything, send up green sparks from yer wands."
"I'm not going in there," said Draco.
"Yeh are, if yeh want to stay at this school. Look, it's me who's got to be there for yeh. Don't make it hard." He thought. "Harry and Draco, yeh'll go with Fang. Hermione and Neville, with me."
She stared at him. Then she put her chin up, in the way Harry was starting to recognize, and said in a very small, very controlled voice that she'd be fine.
The trees closed over their heads after about two minutes. Fang walked ahead, with his tail between his legs, and Harry's lamp threw yellow circles across the roots. Draco was walking beside him, with her robes gathered in one fist and her feet picking at the mud, and she hadn't stopped talking since they'd left the hut.
"This is barbaric," she said. "My father will hear about this. Detention in a forest? What's next, detention in a dragon's den?"
"Scared, Malfoy?"
"I'm not scared. I'm cold. And my shoes are ruined, and there's probably something in these trees that wants to eat us."
She was scared. Harry could hear it in her breathing, which was too fast, and in the way her voice was a little too high, and the way she kept her eyes fixed on the ground. It occurred to him that this was the same voice he'd heard in Madam Malkin's, the one that said things that sounded cutting and were mostly meant to keep someone out. He didn't say anything. He found himself smiling a little in the dark, which he knew was unkind, and tried to stop.
A twig snapped, somewhere off to the left.
Draco jumped. She let out a tiny, high, involuntary squeak, and clapped a hand across her mouth, and her eyes went enormous over the top of it. Harry made a very bad job of not laughing.
"Did you just squeak?"
"No. Shut up."
"You did."
"I did not, Potter, and if you say it again I will personally—" There was another rustle, closer this time, and her hand shot out and grabbed his arm. Her nails dug in through his sleeve. "If we die, I'm going to kill you."
"That doesn't make sense."
"Neither does following you into a dark forest. And yet here I am."
"You didn't follow me. You got assigned."
"Shut up."
She didn't let go of his arm. Harry was careful not to mention it.
They'd walked on for ten minutes when Fang stopped dead and began to whine. Something silver was shining on the ground, a pool of it, thick and bright, and then another, in a trail leading off between the trees. It was the blood of a unicorn. Harry crouched down beside it, and the back of his neck prickled.
"Come on," said Draco, very faintly. "We should go back."
They didn't. The trail led to a clearing, and the clearing had something in it that made Harry's heart stop. There was a white shape on the ground, as pale as moonlight, with long, slender legs, and a thing bent over it. It was dressed in a hooded cloak that trailed along the grass, and it was drinking.
Draco's hand tightened so hard on Harry's arm that it hurt. He pulled her behind the nearest tree, and they crouched together in the dark, with their knees touching and their breath coming in short little gasps. He could feel her whole body shaking. She'd put her other hand over her mouth again, and above it he could see her eyes, wide and wet, fixed on him as if he was the only thing in the forest that was solid.
The cloaked figure raised its head. It turned, slowly, toward the tree. And Harry's scar split open with pain.
He fell on his hands and knees. He couldn't see, or hear. He thought he heard Fang screaming off through the trees, and Draco saying his name, over and over, high and shaking, and then there was the sound of hoofbeats, so fast and loud that the whole ground jumped. Something flew over his head, and something snarled, and the pain stopped.
He looked up. A centaur was standing over him, with a pale gold body and a human chest, and a face as calm as the moon. Behind him, the cloaked thing had gone.
"Are you hurt?" said the centaur.
"I'm okay." Harry sat up, and his scar was still burning. "What was that?"
"I am Firenze," said the centaur, in a low voice. "Come. You should not be here. Both of you."
Draco was still sitting against the tree with her arms wrapped around her knees. She'd stopped saying anything. When Firenze offered her a hand, she looked at it, and at Harry, and then slowly got to her feet. She didn't let go of Harry's sleeve until the centaur had lifted them both onto his back. She'd gone so quiet that Harry would've preferred it if she were shouting.
Firenze carried them back to the clearing, where Hagrid was waiting, wild-eyed, with Hermione and Neville and a bleeding Fang. Hagrid said he'd heard the scream. He picked Draco up himself and set her on her feet, and she stood there, with her face scrubbed clean of expression, and said she was fine, thank you, and could someone take her back to the castle. And then she did something that Harry would remember later. She reached up, in front of all of them, and retied her ribbon.
"Wait," said Firenze, as Hagrid was about to lead them off. He'd drawn Harry a little aside. "Do you know what unicorn blood does, Harry Potter?"
"No."
"It will keep a person alive, even at the very edge of death. Even if they are dying. But it is a monstrous thing to kill something so pure, and the one who does it has a half-life, a cursed life, from the moment the blood touches his lips." Firenze looked at him. "Only a creature who has nothing to lose and everything to gain would do such a thing. Is there nothing in the school at this moment that might bring a creature like that back?"
"The Stone," Harry whispered. "He wants the Sorcerer's Stone. He's been drinking the blood to stay alive until he can get it."
"You must go," said the centaur, but Harry already had the answer, and it made his blood run cold. The figure in the clearing hadn't been a creature at all. It had been him, the one with no name, the one who'd killed his parents. And he was close.
He was walking back up toward the castle, behind Hagrid and the others, when Draco fell into step beside him. She was a few paces off. She didn't look at him.
"If you ever tell anyone I squeaked," she said, very quietly.
"I won't."
"Good." She walked on a few steps. "And you're an idiot, Potter. You know that, don't you?"
"Probably."
She pulled away and went on ahead, and she didn't say anything else, and Harry watched her go. The back of his arm was sore where she'd gripped it. She smelled like flowers, expensive ones, and woodsmoke. He'd have liked to know what she'd been going to say to him when the hooded thing turned around, because it had been something, and he'd missed it.
It would've been nice, he thought, if he'd stopped wondering.