"It's an act, Hermione!" exclaimed Ron. "He did it all last year, and we fell for it, remember? It was only Harry that noticed -"
"I know that, Ron," the girl snapped the book shut and placed it beside her on the couch. The other two were standing, Harry against the wall, and Ron opposite her, arms folded, in the centre of the room. She was avoiding Harry's gaze, which was boring into the side of her head, demandingly expectant, just waiting for her to slip up in her defence of the accomplice to Dumbledore's murder. She focused her eyes on Ron, and there was a distinct hesitancy in her voice. "But he's powerless at the moment. He's got no-one, not even a wand. I really think he regrets what he's done, and so if we could just -"
"What did you find out?" Harry interrupted her, gesturing to the book.
She looked enquiringly at him, as though unsure of whether to reply. "I'm not going to stand here listen to you defend him," Harry said. "You didn't believe my suspicions about him last year, and you don't now -"
"Harry!" Hermione cried, her expression one of genuine upset. "If you think that I wouldn't go back and change that!"
Ron looked almost scornfully at him. "That was a bit harsh, mate," he said quietly. "Like Hermione said, if we could go back…" he trailed off and moved forward to sit by Hermione on the couch, handing her the heavy, leather-bound book she had been consulting. She sat it in her lap and opened the first page.
Harry stood very still, watching them. He didn't know what to think; ever since McGonagall had told them where Malfoy was he seemed to have become completely numb. He didn't want to think about that night, about what had happened, but every time he heard Malfoy's name it tore at him in one great rush - lying there, invisible, unable to move, unable to scream for help. And while Ron had remained almost silent, somewhere between Hermione's practicality and Harry's suppressed turmoil, the feeling of helplessness that had raged through Harry on that night returned in deadening blasts. Now he felt as though he couldn't feel a thing.
He took a deep breath, "I'm… sorry, Hermione," he said slowly. "It's just -"
"I know," she whispered. "But it doesn't matter now."
Ron sighed. "Right," he put his arm around Hermione, the cheery tone of his voice sounding a little forced; "are you going to tell us what you've been up to for the past few days? What is this thing, anyway?" He pointed to the tome lying on her knees.
"It's Scant's Compendium of Abnormal Occurrences," she said, her business-like tone returning with her confidence. "Malfoy said that he'd seen his mother in a dream, and that he knew she'd gone missing. Now, at first I thought that perhaps he'd just heard someone talking about a mysterious disappearance or something in the ward while he was sleeping, and his mind had made him dream about it. But then he told me that she'd told him about the Order, and I remembered reading about the relation between illnesses and psychic connections."
"Wait a minute," Ron said. "How do we know he wasn't lying about You-Know-Who not telling him about the Order? For all we know he already knew."
"Yes, don’t assume I hadn't considered that," Hermione muttered. "But I really think that if he was deep enough in a comatose state then this particular abnormal occurrence could have… occurred." She rifled through the pages and then pointed to a piece of cramped and ancient-looking text. "Here."
Ron leaned a little closer to examine the diagram of a sleeping person drawn in scratchy black ink, but Harry remained determinedly where he was. He threw a glance at the door to the room where Malfoy was sleeping, then looked back as Hermione resumed her explanation.
"When a wizard of a certain nature prone to psychic disposition -"
"In English, please," Ron muttered.
"Oh," Hermione moved her eyes from the passage. "It basically means that if Malfoy is psychically-inclined then he may be able to astral-project while asleep." The other two stared blankly at her. "It means he can visit other places while he's sleeping, and if he doesn't know he has this power then it's probably untrained and so he could end up anywhere. Though, I suspect it only happened because he was completely unconscious."
"So, you mean he could be somewhere else right now?" Ron looked nervously over at Malfoy's room.
"Well, it's possible." Hermione said, closing the book and placing it on the floor by her feet. "It's possible that he's been vanishing off to other places all his life, but he's only remembered this one. Or perhaps he thought the others were dreams."
Harry frowned. "That sounds a bit far-fetched to me, Hermione," he said. "Surely he'd know by now, or his parents would have known?"
"Well, maybe they just didn't tell him," she replied. "But, don't you see, Harry. It makes sense when you consider why McGonagall wanted to rescue Malfoy, and why the Death Eaters were trying to take him with them instead of just killing him on the spot. And it explains his mental state at the moment; to have performed such a vivid piece of extrasensory magic would have knocked him cold even if he hadn't been ill in the first place. It makes sense."
Ron looked a little confused, and glanced at Harry, giving him a half shrug. Harry's frown deepened. "So you're saying," he said slowly, "that Malfoy is a psychic who can astral - protect - or something, and Voldemort knows and that's why he's trying to get him back. You think he could use him?"
"Well…" Hermione began, as though she had just realised how odd this theory sounded. "It's a possibility isn't it? I mean, it says here that if properly trained, astral-projection can be an extremely useful power - it can be used to spy on people and sneak into places that no-one else can enter. It's like being invisible and able to walk through walls at the same time."
"Like being a ghost," muttered Ron. "Sounds like exactly the sort of thing V-Voldemort would want to be able to do." Hermione smiled at him.
"I don't know," Harry stared at his feet, then at Malfoy's room again. "Why don't we talk to McGonagall about it, ask her what she thinks? If she does know something then she'll have to tell us if we've twigged already." He moved towards another door in the room, leading through to the kitchen, then turned back and peered out of the tiny window. "It'll be dark in about an hour, I'll write her a letter to send with Hedwig."
Hermione watched from the couch as he left the room, closing the door to the kitchen behind him. Ron stood up, and for a moment she thought he was going to follow him, but he merely moved to stare out of the window, arms folded, leaning against the wall.
"Um…" she began quietly, "how are you coping? I mean - now that the Ministry have sent word -"
"Fine." Ron said shortly.
Hermione sighed. "Ron, you can talk to us, you know. Harry and me. We've got to help each other through this."
"I'm fine," he repeated. "It's nothing. Doesn't even matter - you know - we've got to get on." But his voice was beginning to shake dangerously. He gulped. "I think I'll go and give Harry a hand."
"Ron -" but before Hermione could say anymore, he had left the room.
It was the cold that brought Draco roughly to his senses, jerking him awake with the chattering of his own teeth. He had no idea what time it was. After so many weeks - or months, as it now transpired - lying in a warm bed in the hospital, the broken radiator of the flat and the scratchy bed sheets did little to aid his adjustment to life back in the London suburbs.
He sat up, peering through the gloom. His head was somehow much clearer now than it had been when he had first arrived, his memory sharper, though the events which had surpassed over the last four days seemed to have all blurred into one. They had involved him lying, in some sort of stupor, falling in and out of sleep, occasionally waking to find that food had been left next to his bed, or catching snatches of murmured conversation from the room beyond. He wondered why they hadn't placed some sort of charm on the door, to stop him overhearing them, but then remembered what Hermione had said when she rescued him - that the Ministry could detect magic in a Muggle-inhabited area.
He guessed that it was only Hermione who had been into his room, as she was the only one of whom he had caught glimpses through squinting eyes; the sound of the door opening sometimes woke him enough to see her set a plate down and walk quickly out again. A part of him wanted nothing to do with her, or either of the other two, but that part was overridden by a desire to bombard her with questions and demand answers. Where am I? What am I doing here? When can I go home?
He had dreamt of his mother again. Brief, hazy images flashed before his eyes, remnants of events which he found now that he could not recall. She had been pleading with someone, though he could do nothing to remember who it was, and then she had spoken to him again, alone this time. However hard he tried, he could not recall a single one of the words she had said, only the stricken expression on her face remained clear to him.
His head gave an unholy throb and he winced. Her heard a knock on a door, then realised that it wasn't his own. A crisp, though anxious voice could be heard muttering from the main room, then there was something like a sob, a rustle of paper, and the door closed.
A moment later, his own door opened.
"Oh," Hermione said quietly, holding a tray in her hand. "I thought you were asleep."
"I was," he said shortly.
Her face was completely blank, though something flickered in her eyes momentarily. "Well… I've brought you some food." She laid the tray down on the little table, holding out a glass of water to him. Draco took it without comment, and gulped it down noisily.
Hermione turned away from him, moving the curtain slightly aside and watching through the window. Draco's eyes moved to her free hand where she was holding a newspaper. "What's that?" he asked.
"The Times," she said simply. "It's a Muggle -"
"I know what The Times is. Can I see it?"
Blinking at his rudeness, she shrugged her shoulders and handed it to him, in return for which he gave her the now empty glass.
"I'll leave you, then," she said, walking towards the door.
Draco glanced down at the front page of the newspaper, a strange, sickening feeling rising in his stomach as he recalled seeing his own face under a very similar headline. But something else flared in his mind, and he called out, "What's wrong with the other two?"
Hermione had her hand on the doorframe. "What do you mean?"
"Well…" something in her confused expression put him off slightly, but he continued, "You're the only one who comes in here. I see you - bringing me food, but I never see either of them."
If Hermione was puzzled by the question, she had removed all traces of it from her face. "They prefer to stay as far away from you as possible," she said, then muttered, "And from your manners I can understand why."
Draco ignored this last comment. "But you don't mind, do you?" he asked, not really expecting an answer.
"Someone has to," she replied. "I suppress my emotions and get on with what I have to do."
The boy gave her a half-smile, though his eyes were narrowed. "Good little soldier."
Hermione took her hand from the door, and turned directly to face him, her arms folded. "You know," she said, and there was venom in her tone. "You ought to be a little more grateful. When I found you, you were a blubbering mess who couldn't even stand up! We don't have to keep you here, it's dangerous for us to let you stay here, but if we didn't you just end up getting yourself caught again."
"And why would you care if that happened?" her outburst may have removed the smile from his face, but he recognised that it had cleared a way to asking more questions. "Why not let me go?"
"Because - because -" she stammered, slightly flustered. "Well, McGonagall will explain it to you when she comes back."
"Why not you?"
"Because we're not sure yet." She said quickly. "We need confirmation."
He recognised that this was going nowhere, so decided to change tactics. "Why is Weasely so quiet?"
"What?" there was definite frown across her forehead now.
"I mean," he began slowly, "he was always the coward lurking at the back -"
"Coward!" Hermione cried. "You think he's a coward, do you? After you've spent the last three months hiding from the fate you deserve?! You talk about me being a good little soldier for hiding my emotions, well I'd like to know what you'd say about me if I still managed it after losing my father and two of my brothers -!"
She shook her head, clamping her mouth shut. A wave a horror swept over Draco in one fluid moment, and he saw her eyes glisten. Before he could say a word, she had run out of the room and slammed the door shut behind her.