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Hogwarts is never truly empty. The halls are never truly queit, despite the lack of students. Portraits keep watch, Filch patrols the halls, and a few students out past curfew find ways around both.
Tonight, you're one of those students.
Your footsteps soften instinctively on the stone, your pace measured even as the urge to hurry curls low in your stomach. You shouldn't be out here. You know that. Every shadow seems to hold the possibility of being seen, every turn a risk you've already decided to take but are second-guessing.
It had felt easy enough when you slipped from your dorm. Your plan was to be quick and quiet. All you needed was a book from the library to help you with your Potions essay due tomorrow. No one was in the corridors, no distant meows from Mrs. Norris, no lantern light from Filch.
Now, with the book pressed against your side and the path back stretching ahead of you, that fragile sense of ease has started to fray.
You adjust your grip on it, your thumb brushing along the worn edges of the spine to calm yourself. Your eyes flick ahead before you round the next corner. The staircase is just beyond that turn—the one that will take your down into the basement of the castle, back to the warm and dim safety of the Hufflepuff common room. You can almost feel it already.
You take the corner, and the sound hits you before the sight of the swinging lantern light. You don't have to wait to see to know the uneven stride belongs to Filch.
You freeze, your brain short-circuting. The sound is coming from the corridoer ahead—the one you need to pass through—cutting off the path you'd been seconds away from taking.
The footsteps gove way to the lantern light, and you stumble back, looking for somewhere that isn't exposed. The suits of armor are too rigid and obvious. The doorways are either too far or too open. The narrow recesses in the walls offer shadows, but not enough of them. Not with the lantern he's carrying.
Your pulse hammers in your head, each beat pressing higher than the last as the footsteps grow closer and louder, echoing off the stone in a way that makes it impossible to tell exactly how far he is.
But, no matter how far, he's too close.
You take another step back, turning slightly, already preparing to double back the way you came, and then a hand bracelets your wrist.
The force of it is sudden enough that your breath catches mid-inhale, your balance shifting before you can correct it. You're pulled back, your shoulder brushin the cold stone of the wall as your grip tightens around the book. Your other hand comes up, ready to swing the book at whoever's grabbed you, but you don't get the chance.
"Fancy seeing you here."
Your body goes still, eyes widening.
You know that voice.
Draco Malfoy.
You twist just enough to look at him to confirm what you already know. He's closer than you expected him to be—closer than he has any right to be—one hand braced beside your head against the stone and the other still pressed over your mouth.
Of course it's him.
Of course, out of everyone in this castle, it would be Draco Malfoy catching you out past curfew.
You don't even need to look to picture it—the faint curve of his mouth, the way he'd tilt his head just slightly in that stupid, mocking way of his. You've seen it too many times across classrooms and corridors, in the space between rival answers and pointed remarks, during the quiet competition neither of you acknowledges out loud but everyone knows exists.
Top of the class, always just ahead of each other, always watching and waiting for a slip up.
You've just handed him the perfect leverage.
You open your mouth, but his hand comes up to cover it, effectively cutting off any barbed comment before it can come.
"Don't."
The command is low, causing your eyes to narrow. Your eyes snap to his, searching for the satisfaction and the inevitable smirk for when he calls out and drags you forward like you're a reward.
Because he should. That's what he's been waiting for, hasn't he?
"Stop moving," he snaps, "unless you'd like him to see you."
It takes a second for the words to make sense, but you're struggling. There isn't any version of this situation where Malfoy hiding you makes sense.
Footsteps grow closer just beyond the alcove, and suddenly the position you're in stops feeling like a trap he's set and starts feeling like the only thing keeping you from being seen.
Your body stills before you can think better of it, your breath catching somewhere behind his hand as you listen, every part of you tightening as Filch's muttering drifts closer.
Malfoy is far too close. You can feel the warmth of him through the layers of your robes, the faint shift of his breath near your temple. It makes your stomach flip with something you wish you could claim was panic, but you know better than to lie to yourself.
Filch steps past the mouth of the alcove slowly, the lantern light bleeding across the stone for a brief, dangerous second before moving on. You don't try to look. You don't dare. Your focus narrows to the space you're held in and the pressure of his hand on your mouth.
Malfoy leans in a little more, his shoulder angling to ensure you remain hidden until the last possible second and the sound of Filch's muttering disappears fully into the distance. He doesn't pull his hand away immediately, the delay stretching long enough to start to make you anxious.
Finally, his hand lifts. The absence of it feels abrupt, even though it shouldn't. You allow yourself to breathe, no longer overly worried about staying quiet. You don't move. You don't know how to. All you can do is look at him.
And he's already watching you, too, but not with the expression your expect. There's no trace of the familiar edge you've come to associate with him—no immediate jav waiting behind his eyes or satisfaction at having caught you where you shouldn't be. If anything, there's a quiet relief in his expression that you're too wired to try and dissect that.
It unsettles you more than if he'd smirked.
"You're a prefect," you say, the words coming out quieter than you intend but, luckily, the edge is still there. Your voice steadies as you continue, your eyes searching for the version of him you know how to deal with. "You're supposed to turn me in."
You expect him to lean into it and remind you of how many times he's watched you skirt the line and how easily he could have said something before, and how you owe him a hundred times over now.
"You're also out past curfew, and you're not scheduled to patrol," you add, having checked the patrol schedules before slipping from the common room. Your words are sharper, trying to elicit an argument from him. "In case you missed that."
His mouth twitches slightly at that, and for some reason you feel as if the unspoken rules between you have been changed without your knowledge.
"I didn't miss it," he says.
You frown, irritation leaking into the confusion, and your grip on the book tightens as you take a small step away from the wall, trying to put some distance between you.
"Okay, then what was that?" you demand, gesturing vaguely toward the corridor where Filch had been only minutes ago. "You have every reason to call him over. I've seen you do it for less."
His eyes flick to the book in your hand before returning to your face.
"You caught me," you push. "You could have won yourself an easy lead."
"I didn't catch you," he shoots back, his eyes holding yours in a way that makes it hard to look away. "I stopped you from getting caught."
You stare at him. "Why?"
He hesitates, glancing down the hall before his focus lands back on you.
"You're insufferable," he says, a bit of the Malfoy you know bleeding into his words, "but you don't deserve detention over a book."
You don't answer, because that is not what you expected him to say. Ever.
The argument you'd been building has nowhere to go, left hanging between you wit nothing to catch on. You study him instead, searching for the motive you know he has but hasn't shared.
You should leave.
You should take the chance he's given you and go before Filch doubles back and this moment stretches into something harder to step away from.
"Next time, you may not get the chance to play hero," you say, trying to grab a reaction from him.
His mouth curves, but it's not mocking. It looks almost genuine.
"Next time," he echoes, voice soft, "try not to need one."
The corridor stretches out around you again, quiet where it had once been tense, but the air between you hasn't settled back into what it was. It lingers, charged in a way that won't ever settle.
You break first. You step past him, brushing close enough to feel the warmth of him. You don't know if you meant to do it or not. The book is still tucked against your side, your grip on it tighter than it needs to be as you move toward the corridor holding the staircase.
You don't look back, but you're aware of him anyway.
And as you turn the corner, the castle swallowing you back into its quiet, you can't shake the feeling that whatever's been building between you doesn't fit into rivalry anymore.