Chapter 34
We left McGonagall’s office in silence.
The air in the corridor felt too still, the torches flickering in a way that made my skin crawl. It wasn’t fear—it was awareness. That feeling hadn’t left me since we stepped out of the Chamber, and now, standing in the quiet hallways of Hogwarts, I was certain of it.
Something had changed.
Something was still watching.
No one spoke as we moved, the weight of McGonagall’s last words Salazar’s Shadow curling in the back of my mind like ink bleeding through parchment. I wanted to ask what she knew—demand answers, demand something solid—but the way her expression had darkened, the way her fingers had tightened against the arms of her chair, told me she was just as unsure as we were.
Whatever had been down there, she feared it too.
We walked in silence, our footsteps echoing too loudly against the stone. Every hallway felt stretched, the shadows in the corners deeper than before, shifting just out of sight.
The castle had always been old, always been filled with secrets. But tonight, it felt aware.
Ron kept glancing over his shoulder. Ginny’s fingers twitched at her sides, like she was resisting the urge to reach for her wand. I tightened my grip on Solara’s perch, feeling the faint warmth of her feathers against my skin. She was quiet too.
We passed a suit of armor, and I could have sworn it turned its head—not a trick of the firelight, not my own nerves. I stopped, staring, waiting for it to move again.
Nothing.
But the feeling stayed, slithering through my ribs.
“We need to go somewhere safe,” I muttered. My voice sounded too thin in the empty corridor. “Somewhere it can’t follow us.”
No one argued.
When we turned the next corner, the door to the Room of Requirement was already there, waiting.
We didn’t separate immediately. None of us wanted to be alone.
Instead, we ended up in the Room of Requirement—not because we planned to, but because it was the only place that felt safe.
The room shifted as we entered, adapting to what we needed. Low torchlight, deep chairs, warmth against the chill in our bones. Solara landed on my shoulder, her golden glow flickering weakly, and I knew she was exhausted. So was I.
Ron collapsed into a chair, rubbing his face. “That was worse than the last time.”
Ginny didn’t sit. She paced instead, her hands still curled into fists at her sides. “It was expecting us. That wasn’t just a cursed creature or some old magic waiting to be triggered. It was something intelligent.”
Harry was staring at the fire, silent. I watched the way his jaw clenched, the way his fingers flexed around his wand even though we were safe now.
I knew what he was thinking.
It had spoken to him.
It had been waiting for him.
I swallowed the unease curling in my chest and turned to Draco.
He was standing by the edge of the room, one hand braced against a bookshelf, his head lowered slightly. He hadn’t spoken since McGonagall’s office.
Tenebris hovered near him, not as a shadow, but solid—real, present, prowling in slow, deliberate circles around his feet. His Eidolon was watching him, not the room.
Draco wasn’t fine.
He was holding it together, barely, like a thread pulled too tight.
I took a careful step toward him.
“Draco?”
He didn’t answer immediately. When he finally did, his voice was too even, too measured.
“I told you, I’m fine.”
I exhaled slowly. No, he wasn’t.
His hands were still trembling, barely perceptible, but there. His magic still felt off, like a current moving the wrong way beneath his skin.
I could feel it.
Solara could feel it.
So could Tenebris.
I opened my mouth, ready to press further, but Ginny beat me to it.
“You almost died,” she said, voice sharp. “I don’t care how much you pretend you don’t give a damn, but I’m not letting you brush this off.”
Draco scoffed, but it wasn’t convincing.
“I’m standing, aren’t I?”
Ginny’s grip on her wand tightened. She wasn’t letting him deflect this.
“You didn’t just get hit by some curse, Malfoy. That thing touched you. It took something.”
At that, something flashed in Draco’s expression. A flicker of something raw, something unnerved—but it was gone as fast as it had come.
Harry finally turned away from the fire. “She’s right.” His voice was level, but his eyes were sharp. “What happened back there?”
Draco’s jaw locked.
For a moment, I thought he wouldn’t answer.
Then—
“I don’t know,” he muttered.
It wasn’t a lie.
Not entirely.
But there was something else there, something he wasn’t saying.
I could see it in the way his shoulders tensed, in the way his fingers twitched as if he was feeling for something that wasn’t there.
Ron sat up, frowning. “Did you—did you hear anything? When it had you?”
Draco hesitated. Just a second. But I caught it.
“No.” His voice was firm, but I wasn’t convinced.
And neither was Harry.
His gaze narrowed slightly. “Draco—”
“I said no.”
The words came out sharper than he intended.
Tension thickened in the room.
Tenebris stopped pacing, his golden eyes locked on Draco.
A flicker of something silent, unreadable, dangerous passed between them.
Draco exhaled, dragging a hand through his hair. “I don’t know what you want me to say,” he muttered, quieter now. “It let me go. I’m still standing. That’s all that matters.”
It wasn’t.
But we let it go.
For now.
Because none of us had the strength to argue.
Because we were all waiting for something we couldn’t name.
No one spoke as t he fire crackled softly.
No one moved to leave.
The exhaustion was there, heavy in my bones, but I knew none of us would sleep. Not yet.
Harry was still staring into the flames, his expression distant, unreadable.
Ron tapped his fingers against his knee, his wolf Eidolon curled at his feet, ears flicking at nothing.
Ginny stood with her arms crossed, her griffin shifting beside her, talons flexing against the stone floor.
And Draco—
Draco had retreated.
Not physically, but I could feel it.
He wasn’t here. Not really.
I didn’t realize I was still watching him until his gaze flicked to mine. Something unreadable passed between us.
I wanted to tell him it was okay. That whatever happened back there, we would figure it out.
But I didn’t.
Because I wasn’t sure if that was true.
And because I knew he wouldn’t believe me anyway.
So instead, I just nodded.
And to my surprise—
He nodded back.
It was small. Barely there.
But it was enough.
For now.
The conversation dissolved into silence, but the tension remained—a weight pressing against my chest, thick and suffocating. The room hadn’t changed, but something in the air had. The warmth of the fire no longer felt reassuring. It was too dim, too distant, like the light wasn’t reaching far enough.
No one wanted to be the first to move. The unspoken truth sat between us, heavy and undeniable. Whatever had happened in the Chamber, it wasn’t over.
Draco was still watching me, his gaze steady but distant. I thought about speaking—about pressing him for answers, for something solid to grasp—but I could already see the walls going up behind his eyes. The same careful control he had always wielded now felt more like a defense than a choice.
Tenebris shifted at his feet, his tail curling, slow and deliberate. Solara’s glow pulsed faintly on my shoulder. I felt the weight of her tiny body, the reassuring warmth, but even she seemed uneasy.
Finally, Harry stood, stretching with a slow exhale. “We should get some rest.” He didn’t sound convinced, and neither was I.
Ron let out a breath, rubbing his eyes. “Yeah, right. Like that’s happening.”
Ginny didn’t respond, her arms still crossed, her expression unreadable.
Draco was the last to move. He pushed himself up, too controlled, like he was willing his body to cooperate. His magic still felt wrong. Not broken, not gone—just… off.
No one said it aloud. But we all felt it.
The castle groaned faintly in the distance, the wind pressing against the high stone towers.
Outside these walls, the world continued as it always had.
But we knew the truth.
Something had woken up in the dark.
And it wasn’t going back to sleep.
The others settled, if only in the loosest sense of the word. The firelight flickered in uneven patterns, stretching our shadows long across the floor. No one made a move to leave, but conversation had thinned to nothing, replaced by the occasional rustle of fabric or the sharp crack of the wood in the hearth.
I tried to focus on the warmth, on the solid presence of Solara on my shoulder, but my thoughts kept circling the same point.
Draco.
He sat apart, his head tilted back against the chair, one arm slung over the side in a practiced display of indifference. But it was forced—I could see it now. His magic wasn’t sitting right. It was like watching a song played out of tune, like something had been adjusted just enough to be wrong. Not broken, not obvious. But noticeable.
And the thing that worried me most?
He hadn’t noticed it himself.
Or if he had, he wasn’t saying.
A deep, hollow clang echoed through the castle—the sound of the bell tower marking the late hour. No one moved. No one even flinched.
The fire flickered again, guttering lower.
The castle shifted.
The weight of the walls, the history in the stone—it all felt different now, as if Hogwarts itself was holding its breath.
I exhaled slowly, pushing the feeling aside, but I couldn’t shake it.
The castle was too quiet.
Not in the way it usually was in the dead of night, when the only sounds were the shifting of ancient stone and the occasional hoot of an owl outside the windows. No, this quiet felt unnatural—like something was listening. Like something was waiting.
I tried to shake off the feeling, but it curled at the edge of my senses like mist creeping through the cracks in a door.
We were still in the Room of Requirement, but I no longer felt like it was the refuge I had believed it to be. Maybe it was just exhaustion making me paranoid. Maybe it was the lingering imprint of whatever had touched Draco in the Chamber.
Or maybe it was something else entirely.
The fire crackled softly, casting flickering golden light across Draco’s face. He was still standing apart from the rest of us, braced against the bookshelf, his fingers pressed against the wood like he needed the solid surface to ground him. His usual sharp-edged confidence was dulled—hidden beneath exhaustion and something I couldn’t quite name.
His posture was controlled, too controlled. And yet… something about him felt wrong.
I had spent years studying magic—how it functioned, how it connected, how it felt—and Draco’s magic…
It felt different.
Like it wasn’t moving the way it should.
Magic was supposed to be fluid, a current that pulsed naturally through a witch or wizard’s body, responsive and alive. But Draco’s felt static, like something wasn’t settling properly. I had noticed it when I grabbed him earlier—his magic had flared at the contact, but it hadn’t felt like his usual magic.
It had felt off.
And I wasn’t the only one who noticed.
Solara, still perched on my shoulder, let out a low, uneasy trill. Her golden glow flickered strangely, pulsing in a rhythm I didn’t recognize. At my feet, Tenebris had stopped pacing entirely, his sleek form unnaturally still. His golden eyes weren’t on the fire, or the others.
They were locked onto Draco.
I swallowed.
He must have felt it, too.
Draco exhaled sharply through his nose and pushed himself away from the bookshelf. The movement was smooth, practiced—but when he took a step forward, something shifted around him.
For a fraction of a second, the shadows at his feet didn’t move correctly.
They stretched wrong—too far, too slow, like they were dragging behind him instead of naturally following his body.
It was barely noticeable. Almost imperceptible.
But I saw it.
And so did Tenebris.
Draco caught the brief flicker of hesitation in his Eidolon’s expression, and for the first time since we left the Chamber, something in his mask cracked.
Only for an instant.
Then it was gone, replaced by his usual sharp-edged scowl.
I felt a tight knot of unease settle in my stomach.
“Alright,” Ron sighed, breaking the silence, “since we’re all avoiding the obvious—what the hell do we do now?”
Harry ran a hand through his hair, still staring at the fire. “McGonagall said she’d tell us more when she had answers.” His voice was flat. “But I don’t think we have time to wait.”
Ginny’s arms were crossed, her expression grim. “You think it’s going to come after you again.”
Harry didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
We all knew the truth. Whatever that thing was, it had been waiting for him. And if it had let us leave, it wasn’t because we had won.
It was because it was playing a longer game.
I forced myself to focus. Think, Hermione. There had to be something—some clue in what the creature had said, some reference to Salazar’s Shadow, something that would tell us what it was and why it had been sealed away beneath the castle.
But the only thing I could think about was Draco.
I knew what corrupted magic felt like. I had spent too much time studying curses, too much time reading about what happened when magic was twisted into something unnatural. And even though Draco looked normal, even though he hadn’t collapsed or lost control—
Something had changed.
It was subtle, but it was there.
Solara let out another low, warbling sound—uncertain, questioning. Tenebris mirrored it with a quiet, guttural growl, his hackles rising just slightly. He had been too close to Draco all night, lingering near him like he was waiting for something to happen.
Like he was guarding him.
Draco ignored it, sinking into one of the chairs and exhaling, dragging a hand through his hair. He was trying to look unaffected, but I could see it now—he was tired.
Not normal exhaustion. Drained.
Draco Malfoy never looked drained.
Ron must have noticed too, because he frowned. “Alright, mate? You look—”
“I’m fine,” Draco snapped, his silver eyes flashing up to meet Ron’s in irritation. The sharpness in his voice was forced, but it worked—Ron raised his hands in surrender and leaned back.
“Fine,” he muttered. “Just making sure you’re not about to pass out or turn into a bat or something.”
“Wouldn’t be the worst outcome,” Ginny murmured.
Harry snorted softly, shaking his head. But his humor didn’t last—he turned to me, expression serious. “You’re thinking something.”
I hesitated.
I didn’t want to say it.
Not yet.
I didn’t want to admit that something was wrong with Draco’s magic until I knew for certain. Until I knew how bad it was.
So I only said, “I think whatever that thing was, it wasn’t fully awake.”
Draco stiffened slightly.
Ginny frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” I swallowed. “It let us go. But it didn’t need to. It was testing something. Watching us.” My fingers curled against the armrest of my chair. “It wasn’t finished.”
A heavy silence settled over the room.
Harry’s gaze darkened. “Then we need to figure out what it wants before it is.”
No one argued.
But as the fire flickered and our exhaustion deepened, I felt it again—that wrongness beneath my skin.
It wasn’t coming from the castle.
It wasn’t coming from the creature.
It was coming from Draco.
I just didn’t know how deep it had already sunk its claws into him.