Malfoy was walking down the corridor when she came upon another cluster of Hufflepuff students loitering in the hallway. They were chattering away in voices pitched high with excitement, which meant they were absorbed in some pointless nonsense, as usual.
Everything had been grating on her nerves lately. Malfoy made no effort to conceal her irritation.
"You there—Hufflepuffs. Would you kindly stop blocking the middle of the corridor for no reason? Is swarming about in packs the only thing you know how to do?"
The Hufflepuff children spun around in alarm.
Carina Malfoy was a formidable opponent for Hufflepuffs. Noble blood, an unguarded manner, a razor-sharp tongue, and a charisma that crushed the room before she even opened her mouth. Her looks alone were enough to make them lose their nerve and scatter the moment she approached.
As far as Malfoy was concerned, it was nothing more than a casual swat at a few irritating flies. Children who had nothing to recommend them except their numbers were beneath her notice.
But today, for once, the Hufflepuffs didn't wilt. They answered back.
"What's this? Isn't she the loser?"
"If you got knocked out of Quidditch, the least you could do is keep quiet about it."
"Cried after losing to Cedric, didn't she."
"Oh?"
A timid little rebellion. The dregs of Hufflepuff—the lowest house in Hogwarts—were actually daring to talk back to Malfoy.
Right. Win a Quidditch match and suddenly you lose all sense of proportion. Malfoy gave a slow nod, acknowledging the logic.
That didn't mean she had any reason to let it pass.
She narrowed her eyes and walked straight into the middle of them.
Malfoy was alone; they were four. And yet it was the Hufflepuffs who were losing ground. They stumbled backward, flustered.
"How pitiful. The best you can boast about is Cedric Diggory. One win—and not even a clean one, since you couldn't manage it on merit alone—and you parade it around like a trophy. It's almost sad."
"Don't you dare talk about Cedric like that! He would've beaten you on pure skill too!"
"Yes, I'm sure he would have. But I rather doubt Cedric Diggory wants his name invoked for something like this. And besides—"
Malfoy glanced past them at the object sitting in the corner.
A simple magical mousetrap. A tin of treacle tart inside, just large enough to catch and hold one mouse.
A pathetically unfunny contraption—contemptible from conception to execution. Malfoy looked down at them as though they were the ones in the trap.
"—you're standing here sniggering over a mousetrap. What exactly is there to be proud of?"
"W-we didn't set it! We were just watching!"
At that moment, while the Hufflepuffs were distracted, the mouse they had been herding into the corner bolted. One of them let out a disappointed sound.
They had apparently been trying to drive a mouse into the trap for sport. Malfoy regarded them with undisguised contempt.
"You come to Hogwarts and spend your time chasing mice. Utterly infantile. I'd sooner believe you were Yorkshire Terriers than wizards. Why not become Animagi and turn into dogs? It would suit you far better."
"Ugh..."
A torrent of merciless scorn, delivered from a face of infuriating beauty.
As ever, the Hufflepuffs could find no answer to Malfoy's words. They stood there with clenched fists, in the process of swallowing their defeat.
"Hey—you lot! Don't touch that!"
A red-haired boy came sprinting toward them. Malfoy felt a fresh spike of annoyance; the Hufflepuffs looked almost relieved. Ron Weasley skidded to a stop, breathing hard.
"That's a trap I set to find my rat. If you break it—oh, bloody hell, it's Malfoy. What are you doing here?"
"Weasley. This pathetic contraption is your handiwork? It's as cramped as your house."
"Our house is not cramped. My room is cramped. That's different. Anyway—was there a rat in there? You didn't let it go, did you?"
Ron Weasley pushed past Malfoy toward the Hufflepuffs and began interrogating them. When he heard that a rat had been cornered and then escaped, his reaction was immediate.
"There was a rat? What colour? What did it look like?"
"Er, well..."
Even Weasley could make them trail off like that. Malfoy exhaled through her nose and cut in.
"Dirty grey-brown. It ran off down that corridor. I couldn't tell you what it looked like—rats don't have distinguishing features."
"They do! Scabbers is scrawny and he's missing a toe on his front paw!"
"You're the only person alive who pays that kind of attention to a rat, Weasley."
"It's not a small thing! Whether it's Scabbers or not matters because Harry and Hermione—oh. Never mind."
Weasley caught himself and scratched the back of his head. He turned to the Hufflepuffs.
"Thanks. If you spot a brown rat, let me know, would you? And please try not to break the trap. If a rat does get caught inside, don't kill it. Whatever you do."
"Oh—all right."
The Hufflepuffs exchanged glances and shuffled away. Weasley crouched down and began resetting the trap.
"Your rat is already dead, isn't it? Word is Granger's cat had it for a snack."
"That's what I thought too. Otherwise Scabbers wouldn't just vanish. He's too old to survive on his own without someone looking after him."
By all accounts, the Weasley family was so short of money they passed their pets down like heirlooms. Malfoy had assumed that was an exaggeration, but if it was true, the creature was well past four or five years old.
It had long since outlived any reasonable lifespan. Dying would hardly be surprising. Weasley's determination to keep searching struck her as foolish.
Ron Weasley finished resetting the trap and straightened up.
"But Harry and Hermione keep saying Scabbers must be alive, and they've been searching for ages. They genuinely believe it. With that much effort going into it... I can't just sit here doing nothing. I have to look too."
Malfoy's expression soured at the mention of Harry Potter.
"They're going around together hunting for a rat?"
"Not hand in hand, but yes, they're looking. Haven't found him yet, by the looks of it."
Harry Potter was still spending all his time with Hermione—and it was over a rat?
Malfoy, who had never thought of rats as anything more than owl fodder, found this difficult to accept.
And on top of that, Harry Potter had told her to stay out of it. If he'd pushed her away over something as trivial as catching a rat, Malfoy thought she might actually be disappointed.
"He's turning Hogwarts upside down for some wretched rat? Just buy a new one."
"'Some wretched rat.' Well—I suppose that's how it looks to someone who has nothing to do with it."
Ron reached into his pocket and produced a torn photograph. A clipping from the Daily Prophet—the article about Mr. Weasley's lottery win. In the family photo, perched on Ron's shoulder, was a scrawny, unremarkable rat looking thoroughly decrepit.
"He's ugly and lazy and not much to look at, but he's been with me for two years. I've grown attached. And the reason they're looking for Scabbers isn't really about Scabbers—it's because they care about me, and Scabbers matters to me."
"It would be more considerate to buy you a new owl and let you assume the cat got him."
"I told you, I've grown attached. Give it two or three years with something and you'd think differently."
"That will never happen, Weasley the pauper."
Attachment was an excuse. Give Ron Weasley a new owl and he'd forget the rat within a fortnight.
The only reason he couldn't buy something new was money. Calling it attachment was just a way of inflating the value of something worn-out—a justification for making do.
Malfoy said so, flatly.
"Unlike you, I have no occasion to use the same worn-out thing for two years. Let alone inherit someone else's castoffs. If it were me, I'd have thrown it away. Especially if it were a filthy rat."
She had expected the jab at his family's poverty to make him angry. Instead, Ron simply shrugged.
"Fair enough. I was pretty gutted when Percy handed Scabbers down to me—gutted enough that I wished Percy would disappear. But now that Scabbers is gone, I miss him. I want to find him. That feeling is real."
The lack of reaction deflated her.
Ron Weasley had spent enough time around Harry Potter to develop an almost preternatural ability to absorb insults without flinching. Blood traitor, pauper—no matter how precisely she aimed, he'd wrinkle his face and move on without bothering to argue. Nothing like the Hufflepuff lot at all.
Had he simply grown a thicker skin?
"Tch. No fun at all."
With nothing left to say, Malfoy clicked her tongue and turned away. Weasley called after her.
"You should stop being so awful and make up with Harry. He's been looking pretty rough lately."
Rough? Why?
He had rejected the hand she'd extended, and then thrown her family in her face for good measure.
And now, after all that, he was wandering around with Granger—a Muggle-born—chasing a rat. What on earth did he have to feel rough about?
Harry Potter had been insufferable since first year. She'd offered him a word of advice in Diagon Alley when he'd been floundering, and once he got to Hogwarts he'd made a point of picking apart everything she said.
They had fought relentlessly. In the corridors, in the Great Hall, in class after class. Wands drawn, hexes exchanged, pranks that had nearly ended with someone in the hospital wing—the hostility had never let up.
If anyone at Hogwarts said the word 'rivals,' the first names that came to mind were Harry Potter and Carina Malfoy. Without question.
Things had shifted somewhat since the diary had made them reluctant allies, and a handful of incidents before that had worn the edges off their antagonism.
But Malfoy still couldn't quite account for how it had happened. How had they gone from that to something almost tolerable?
Was it what Weasley had called attachment?
"Attachment. Please."
Malfoy muttered it under her breath and turned toward Snape's office.
Snape had asked a favour of her. He had some business to attend to and would be away, so would she please deliver the potion on his desk to Professor Lupin on the night of the full moon?
She received special treatment from him often enough, and she had the persistent sense that he was waiting for her to notice something—so she had agreed.
She pushed open the door to Snape's office and stepped inside. The room was packed floor to ceiling with books, potion ingredients, and rows of sealed bottles containing completed brews. Malfoy moved carefully toward the desk, determined not to touch anything.
A charmed ladle was stirring itself in the professor's brass cauldron. The steady rise of bubbles signalled that the potion inside was finished.
As Malfoy ladled the potion out, she noticed a faint smear where some had spilled—and beside it, a set of small paw prints pressed into the desk. It looked as though a rat had mistaken the cauldron for something edible, fallen in, and scrambled out.
What are all the castle cats doing? Rats everywhere, and not a single one of them earning their keep.
She stared at the potion for a moment, then sealed the lid and said nothing.
It wasn't as though it could be remade. And as long as the person drinking it didn't know, it hardly mattered.
Thinking of Snape, Malfoy let out a quiet breath.
He seemed to want her to notice something—but she couldn't give him the answer he was looking for.
She already knew that Sirius Black was an Animagus, and that he wasn't the real traitor. Hunting for an informant now would accomplish nothing.
And what did delivering a potion to an ailing Professor Lupin have to do with any of it? What was she supposed to notice? Even the essay Snape had assigned on identifying werewolves had come to nothing in the end...
...Wait. Ill? On the full moon?
Something flickered through her mind.
Professor Lupin, who fell ill every month. The potion. The essay on identifying werewolves. The informant.
The facts began to connect, one to the next. The scattered pieces drew together and took on the shape of something true.
A werewolf...?
By the time her thoughts had settled into something coherent, Malfoy was already standing outside Professor Lupin's office.
She raised her hand, slightly tense, and knocked.