Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling owns Harry Potter, and therefore everything in this fanfiction that you recognize.

**THROUGH THE YEARS**

CHAPTER EIGHT

"Fourth Year (pt. II)"

Heavy footsteps pounded against Hogwarts' stone hallways, making their way from the Entrance Hall down, heading toward the Slytherin dungeons.

"Malfoy!" Crabbe and Goyle called, heaving as they stopped running. They stood at the top of the stairs, calling to the boy who rushed down them. "Wait up, Malfoy!"

Draco's footsteps didn't even let up as he all out ran to the entrance to the Slytherin common room. Hair a mess, eyes wild, Draco didn't even bother trying to remember the password. He just made a fist and began pounding on the cellar wall.

"Open up, will you?" he bellowed, a choked sound escaping him after the last word came out of his mouth. "Open up."

After a moment, the one way door slid open. Draco almost fell through the door, on top of the Slytherin witch who had opened it.

"What the hell, Draco?" Pansy barked, pushing the tall wizard off of her. "Are you being chased by some sort of monster? You better have a damn good explanation for why you decided to interrupt my concentration. In fact, I expect to be paid back in full. I had ALMOST FINISHED that essay, Draco! Tell me, was it a monster? Or was it just Granger and that terrible hair of hers?"

Draco collapsed on a green sofa, grey eyes staring blankly ahead of him. The Granger insult didn't even register, and Pansy stopped on her way back to her seat to look at the boy. "Draco?" she asked.

"Ferret," the boy said in a hoarse voice. "Ferret."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Pansy Parkinson's eyes blazed as she marched through the halls, heels clicking menacingly. She stormed up staircases and whipped around corners, her mind fixed on a single goal.

The library doors banged open as the girl flung them open. She scanned the library, searching for a certain head of bushy brown hair. Or, her second choice: messy black.

She found them both, heads together at a table, poring over a large tome. Pansy's eyes narrowed as she focused in on her prey. Then, making no sound, she slithered over to them.

"What are you reading?" she asked in a sickly sweet voice. The two jumped at the sound of her sitting at their table.

"Parkinson," Granger said sharply. "What do you want?"

Harry stared wordlessly at the intruder, brilliant green eyes staring directly at her. Pansy almost shied away from his gaze. She stopped herself at the last minute, instead choosing to aim a particularly furious glare at the boy before returning to Granger.

"Oh, I was just interested in that dusty old brick of parchment you pulled out from the depths of this age-old library," Pansy sneered. Hermione raised her eyebrows.

"Really," she said drily.

"No, not really!" Pansy snarled. "I want to know what the hell you did to Draco. I want to know why he's sitting in my common room almost catatonic, staring at nothing and repeating the word 'ferret'."

Hermione stared at her blankly. "Well?" Pansy demanded. "I don't have all day, Granger. I'd prefer to get Draco out of whatever funk he's in by dinner."

"I have no idea what happened to him," Hermione responded. "So I'm sorry, Pansy, I can't help you."

"Oh, come on," Pansy groaned. "You two are always – "

"Actually," Harry Potter interrupted her. Pansy froze, and moved her eyes so they were looking at his hands. She couldn't quite convince herself that gazing right into those green depths was a good idea. "I might have an idea as to what happened."

The three sat in silence for a moment too long, Pansy waiting for Harry to continue, and Harry waiting for Pansy to acknowledge him. "Well?" Pansy asked harshly. "What happened?"

"Professor Moody," Harry informed her. "Malfoy tried to hex me when my back was turned, and Moody took that personally, for some reason."

"And?" Pansy said, her eyes flickering up to glance across Harry's face. "I somehow doubt that a detention would reduce Malfoy to the gibbering mess he is right now."

"Well…" Harry said hesitantly, "he transfigured Draco into a ferret. Bounced him on the ground a couple times. It was…kind of…funny…"

Pansy stood unexpectedly, slamming her hands down on the table. "Well," she said, meeting Harry's gaze with fury filled brown eyes, "I think we're done here."

She pivoted on her heel, preparing to leave. "Are you sure?" she heard Harry say behind her. "Hermione's trying to teach me summoning charms…might be useful…"

Pansy's spine stiffened. "That's quite all right," she said, in a different tone than the one she had just used. "I believe I've had enough of socializing with the likes of you, Potter."

With that, she stalked out of the library.

Behind her, Hermione looked at Harry incredulously. "Really?" she said, disbelief evident in her expression. "Pansy Parkinson?"

"What?" Harry squirmed in his seat. He cleared his throat. "Let's learn more about this 'accio' one," he said, bending over the book again. "It seems easy enough to remember."

Hermione rolled her eyes, watching Harry pore over a book he had been indifferent to before. With a sigh, she bent over the book as well.

"You better hope Draco's not permanently injured," she muttered. "I might hold you personally responsible."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

It was cold. Draco's face was almost completely obscured by the hat, cloak, coat, and scarf he had bundled himself into before trekking out to the front of the castle, complaining all the way.

"It's cold," he whined. Pansy and Daphne rolled their eyes at him. "I saw that," he grumbled.

The Hogwarts students had been hustled into lines , three lines on either side of the open doors to the castle. The light coming from inside flickered out, casting shadows over everyone's faces.

Draco stared at the doors longingly, wishing he could be where he was ten minutes ago. The Slytherin common room was warm. The fire was warm. And the essay he was working on HAD to be done. Honestly!

Across the way, the Gryffindor students laughed and chortled with each other. Draco caught sight of the Weasel nudging Hermione, and Harry bursting into laughter. Next to him, Pansy slipped her hand into his, squeezing once.

Behind him, he felt Crabbe and Goyle breathing on his neck. "Back off a little, will you?" Draco snapped, turning to face the pair for a split second. That second was followed by relief as their stifling presence backed off a little.

To his left stood Blaise. The boy was so detached from the group nowadays that Draco sometimes felt himself wondering if he would notice if Blaise were to one day disappear. As the year dragged on, it was becoming evident to Draco that his friend of three years might do just that.

Disappear.

Watching the golden Gryffindors across from him, Draco wished he could do the same.

On the other side of the aisle the professors had created with students, Hermione was mercilessly teasing Harry.

"I can't believe you won't even tell Ron who your mystery crush is," she laughed, poking Harry's side.

"Shocking, it is," Ron agreed. Harry blushed bright red between the two of them, gaze fixed on the ground.

"I bet it's one of my dormmates," Hermione speculated, grinning.

"Well, I could see why he wouldn't tell you, if that were the case," Ron nodded.

"Oh, please," Hermione scoffed. "You know I'm barely civil with Lavender and Parvati."

Harry groaned. "It's not Lavender, or Parvati," he said. "Please stop."

Ron guffawed, slapping Harry on the back. "Come on, mate…"

Hermione tuned them out with a sigh. She had a pretty decent guess as to who Harry's crush was, given his panicked stammering the last time Pansy Parkinson stopped by the library. It was a shock, and a bit horrifying, but really, she didn't have a leg to stand on, what with Draco…No. She wasn't crushing on Draco Malfoy. Not a chance. Shaking herself, she linked arms with Ginny, who spared her a distracted smile before returning to gazing off into the distance – or whatever she was looking at.

It was by sheer chance that Hermione looked across the way at the exact moment Draco looked away from Blaise.

The two of them made brief eye contact, and an electric jolt shot through Hermione. She removed her gaze from his, turning her face away from Harry and Ron. She was sure she was red as the scarf she was wearing.

When she finally did work up the courage to look back, a shocking sight greeted her. Three Slytherins in a row each seemed to be transfixed by a person in the Gryffindor line. Hermione's eyes narrowed.

Draco's eyes widened as he saw Hermione's gaze flicker between him, Pansy, and Blaise. He looked away sharply, bumping into Blaise and pulling Pansy with him.

"What the hell, Draco?" Pansy shrieked. She attempted to pull away, looking down at her ruined shoes in horror. Draco had accidentally splashed a miniscule amount of mud on them. "These are – "

"Shut up and listen to me," Draco said quickly and quietly in a clipped tone, yanking both Pansy and Blaise closer to him. "Stop staring or someone will notice, and believe me when I say none of us will like the consequences." With that, he shoved them away from him and straightened his jacket, just in time for the Beauxbatons carriage to come sailing through the air.

Pansy averted her eyes from the students across the way, affixing a smirk to her face.

"Arsehole," she grumbled.

Blaise side eyed her and Draco. "You both are pathetic."

Draco elbowed his friend with a sharp, mean little grin. "Don't pretend you're not.

All that much more irritated, they slapped sneers on their faces and waited for it to be over.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Draco would've like to think it was pure chance that he came across Hermione after the names were chosen from the goblet. She was pacing back and forth in an abandoned hallway, her gaze ferocious.

"Well," Draco drawled, propping his shoulder up against the wall and shoving his hands in his pockets. "Fancy meeting you here."

Hermione advanced on him with no warning, her wand out in the blink of an eye. "Did you do it?"

"Did I do what?" Draco asked, his voice low and harsh. She backed him against the wall, her wand under his chin. In the past year, he had grown to be almost a foot taller than her, but she still presented a formidable threat. He slowly drew his hands out of his pockets, raising them by his head.

"Did you put Harry's name in the Goblet of Fire?"

Draco huffed. "How on earth would I do that? Believe it or not, Granger, but I don't actually want Potter to die."

"But…" Hermione's wand dropped a centimeter. "If you didn't, who did?"

Draco shrugged, pushing her wand arm down. "I don't want Potter dead. That doesn't mean that nobody else does. The Boy Who Lived has enemies, big surprise."

Hermione sighed, the breath leaving her in a painful whoosh. She took a step away from Draco, sliding down the wall beside him to sit on the floor. "Why is it so hard to keep him alive?" she murmured, almost to herself.

Draco sat down, crossing his legs. "I imagine it's got something to do with his death wish."

Hermione huffed out a laugh, shaking her head. "You would think that."

"Hey." Draco nudged Hermione's arm with his elbow. She turned her head, looking up at him. "It'll be alright, yeah?" he said, attempting to comfort her. "If anyone could keep Potter alive, it would be you."

"Thank you, Malfoy." Hermione sighed, pushing herself to her feet. She made her way down the corridor, feet dragging. "Means a lot, even from you."

Draco shook his head, fighting the small smile that was threatening to grace his face.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Draco squeezed his way through the crowds in the stands at the first trial. Pansy held onto his hand, and Daphne to Pansy's, in an attempt not to get separated by the oodles of people present. Crabbe and Goyle were somewhat behind the three of them, using their girth to push people out of their way. Draco didn't know where Blaise was. It seemed that every time he thought to look, the Italian wasn't in the Slytherin dorms.

Heaven knows what he was getting up to these days.

Squinting his eyes, Draco caught sight of an empty gap in the stands.

"Found somewhere!" he yelled back to Pansy. The dark-haired girl nodded, in-between a snarl at one person and a hiss at another who had bumped against her. Keeping his eyes fixed on that empty spot, Draco picked up the pace and headed toward that spot, dragging the girls behind him.

Once he got there, Draco collapsed on one of the seats, stretching an arm across the back of the two seats to one side of it.

"You're welcome, ladies," he said with a smirk.

"Like you did all the work getting us here," Pansy sniffed as she and the ever silent, ever present Daphne took their seats.

"I rather think I did," Draco said, removing his hand from the back of the girl's seat. He sat straight, slightly angled toward the person he was conversing with. "Wasn't I the one who found us the seats? Who plowed a path for you to follow?"

Pansy rolled her eyes. "If I say I agree, will you shut up?"

"Perhaps," Draco said. "But then again, perhaps I shall become inclined to disagree with your agreement, for the sake of our conversation."

Pansy laughed. "Shut up, Malfoy."

"A gentlemen should always adhere to a lady's request," he said pompously. "Therefore, I shall stop talking and instead watch the most interesting preparation for the first Trial." He stared at the empty field in silence for a few moments. "Wonder what the trial will be," he said. "A duel?"

"Dragons," a feminine voice said. He started, searching for the source of that voice.

"Oh?" he said. Hermione Granger hopped the last couple steps to the empty seat beside him.

"Yup," she said. "I imagine they're going to wait until the last minute to bring them out, though, to keep the element of surprise."

"You don't seem too surprised," Draco grumbled. Hermione wasn't listening, instead talking to the Gryffindor girl a seat over who had saved two seats.

"Where's Ginny?" he heard Hermione say.

"I don't know," the girl answered. "She asked me to save seats for you two, then disappeared. Who knows where she gets off to. I just hope she's here before the trial starts."

Draco was distracted by a jab in his side. He whipped around to face Pansy, who was staring at the field with a worried look in her eye.

"Did she say dragons?" she whispered.

"Yeah," Draco said. "Can't be worse than…"

He trailed off. Pansy nodded. Some things were better left unsaid.

"We'll all face worse than dragons before…" she said. It was Draco's turn to nod then.

Worse than dragons, indeed.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Draco stood with the girls, shouting and hollering as they watched the three first competitors defeat their dragons. Draco had to admit that he was impressed with the ingenuity of the two boys and girl. It was quite entertaining. More so than he had expected.

When Ludo Bagman announced the next competitor, Draco could feel Pansy tense up. He reached out to her, taking his friend's hand.

Pansy looked at him gratefully.

"It'll be fine," Draco said, avoiding her gaze. He knew what she was worried about.

"She's still not here," Hermione said on his other side, to no one in particular. She glanced anxiously at Ginny's empty seat. "I thought she would come to watch Harry, at least."

"Eh," Draco said. Hermione looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "Blaise isn't here either. I suppose the trial isn't that important to some people. Like Ron, perhaps?"

Hermione shook her head. "No, he's here, somewhere," she told him. "He and Harry are…well, I guess they're in a fight. Ron thinks that Harry put his name in the Goblet on purpose."

Draco snorted. "Potter's not smart enough to do that."

He raised his hands in surrender as he was met with glares from the girls on either side of him. "I take it back," he laughed. "I take it back."

With that, the three turned their attention to the field.

Draco watched impartially as Potter came out and saw the giant dragon. This was just the last person in a trial that he had to get through. No matter how entertaining it may be, he was really looking forward to being back in the Slytherin common room, relaxing with his friends. Trying to weasel out from Blaise where the boy had been disappearing to.

Pansy clung to his arm on one side. "I can't watch, I can't watch," she murmured in a distressed tone. Draco reached up to pat her on the head, when suddenly, his other hand was grabbed in a grip so tight it wouldn't have been out of place on a muggle roller coaster.

Draco didn't dare to fully look at Hermione Granger. Or at their intertwined hands.

She stood beside him, whispering encouragement that Harry Potter couldn't possibly hear. Holding the hand of Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter's sworn enemy.

Draco found that he enjoyed watching Harry Potter succeed much more than he had thought he would, with this little witch's hand in his.

All too soon, Harry was done, rushed off the field toward the mediwitch's tent.

Hermione released her grip on Draco's hand. Angling her head slightly toward him, she offered him a small smile.

"I need to go check on Harry," she said to the Gryffindor girl on her other side. Without any further comment, she rushed down from the stands, heading toward the tent Harry had disappeared to.

Pansy shook beside Draco. "Back to the common room?" Draco asked, shouting slightly over the commentary on Potter's score.

Pansy nodded, and grabbed Daphne's hand. Draco grabbed hers, and they began to make their way back down the stands, mirroring the way they had arrived.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The next day, Draco was walking with Crabbe and Goyle, on their way to their next class. As they walked past McGonagall's transfiguration classroom, a movement inside caught Draco's attention.

"Malfoy?" Crabbe grunted as the boy he trailed stopped with no warning.

"You two go on ahead," Draco said, trying to catch a clear glimpse of who was in the room. "I'll catch up."

"Kay," Goyle mumbled. Draco waited for the two to shamble along about ten feet ahead of him before he opened the door to the classroom, and darted inside.

His disappointment was almost palpable when he realised the brown hair he had seen did not belong to Miss Hermione Granger. Instead, it was attached to the head of one Ms. Rita Skeeter. He recognized her from many public events that he had been forced to attend with his family. She was well known for her ability to take any small comment you might make and twist it into a sordid tale to feed to the masses…and for somehow knowing things that no one remembered saying in her presence.

Lucius Malfoy had told Draco in no uncertain terms that he was to stay away from the woman.

"Oh," he said as the reporter jumped, looking like a child with her hand caught in the cookie jar. For a split second, her face looked like that of a bug, enlarged grotesquely.

"Mr. Malfoy," she said in surprise. She quickly gathered her composure and her bag, straightening. "Were you looking for someone?" A shark-like grin made its way across her face. "Someone…in particular?"

"No, not at all," Draco bristled. "Just thought I'd see what you were doing in Professor McGonagall's classroom."

"Oh, really, Mr. Malfoy," Ms. Skeeter said, pulling a Quick-Quotes quill out of her hair. "I wonder if you'd like to comment on a certain photo I was able to capture at the Trial yesterday."

Draco stilled. He forced a calm and polite mask on his face before rotating to face the reporter, his mind hurrying at one hundred miles a second. The bug face – her uncanny knack for hearing things she shouldn't have… "Oh?"

"Yes," she replied, grinning maniacally. Reaching into her bag, she carefully took out a photo. "Would you like to comment on why, in this photo, you're holding hands with not one, but two different girls? And one a muggle-born, no less! I was trying to think of a short, succinct, attention-grabbing title, but it's hard to encompass two girls, let alone two of such…different… backgrounds…"

Draco stared at the photo unthinkingly. There he stood, on the stands, watching the action below. On one side, Pansy clung to his arm, her face buried in his shoulder, not trusting herself to watch. On the other side, Hermione's eyes were wide open, unblinking, terrified to miss a moment.

Her hand was clutching Draco's.

He smiled a bit at the memory, massaging the hand that she had held in such a tight grip. He was still a little sore. Then he remembered where he was.

"I'd much rather comment on you, Ms. Skeeter," he said. "You see, I've been curious about how you've been getting around the castle. You always appear in the oddest of places. Places I wouldn't have thought you'd be allowed, given that you're a gossip reporter in a children's school. Places such as here, right now."

Draco took a step forward. The gleeful smile faded off of Rita's face as she took a step back.

"Now," Draco said, pulling out his wand. "You have ten seconds to leave, before I hit you with a nasty, memory-loss inducing, curse."

He was bluffing, of course. The worst he could do was Obliviation, but he didn't know how to do that so well. If forced to follow through with his threat, who knew how much damage he could do.

Luckily, he had Skeeter backed into a corner, quite literally. The reporter's eyes darted frantically from one place in the room to another. Finally, she realised she had no escape but the obvious.

In a blink and you'll miss it moment, Rita Skeeter and all her things shrunk into the compact form of a giant beetle.

An evil grin grew on Draco's face as the large bug tried to scurry away toward one of the cracks in the wall. "Accio," he said quietly, and the thing flew into his hand.

"Hello, Ms. Skeeter," he said smoothly. The bug waved its legs frantically. "Now I know how you get so many of your scoops. It'd be a shame if anyone found out, wouldn't it?"

The bug's frantic waving began to slow down.

"I believe that we can help each other," he said slowly, so his words were not missed. "Let's have a chat, shall we?"

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