"Harry! Ron! We're back!"
The Great Hall on the first morning of term had the particular atmosphere of a space that has been quiet for two weeks and is remembering how to be occupied. Kevin and Hermione found Harry and Ron at the Gryffindor table and the greetings were the warm, slightly chaotic type that happen between people who have been friends long enough to have actual news to exchange.
Ron's eyes went immediately to the cloak.
"Kevin, where did that come from? That's — "
"A gift." Kevin put his hands on his hips. Chin up. The cloak fell perfectly.
Ron looked at Hermione. Hermione had her hand over her face.
"Anyway," Ron said, with the energy of someone moving to the main event, "Harry got an Invisibility Cloak for Christmas. Dead of night, no note, turns out to be his dad's. And he snuck out and found this mirror — "
Kevin was already nodding. "Mirror of Erised. Still there?"
"How did you — no, Dumbledore moved it." Harry squinted at him. "How'd you know it was the Erised and not where it was?"
"Because a mirror that shows your deepest desire in the middle of a school is bad for everyone, and Dumbledore would know that."
"You don't want to see yours?" Ron said.
"I know what I want." Kevin glanced sideways at Hermione.
She caught it. Her cheeks did the thing. She looked at her breakfast with great intensity.
Harry and Ron looked between the two of them with the slow realisation of people who have missed something obvious for several months.
Back in the term's routine, Kevin stuck his head into Snape's office, returned a borrowed measuring kit, and said: "Thank you for the book."
Snape, without looking up: "Get out."
Kevin got out.
He caught up with the others heading toward the dormitory and they were all looking for him, which meant something had happened.
"Hagrid was running through the castle," Harry said. "Looked terrified."
They went.
Hagrid opened his door to four faces and immediately tried to close it. Harry got a foot in. Kevin watched the negotiation with the patience of someone who already knows the outcome, and when Hagrid finally yanked them inside with the resigned energy of a man outvoted by circumstances, Kevin went straight to the fireplace.
The pot over the flames was cradling something large and dark and cracked.
"Kevin — stay back — " Hagrid started.
"Norwegian Ridgeback," Ron said, from behind Kevin. He'd grown up with dragon-enthusiast brothers and the identification was immediate. "Hagrid, that's not legal — "
"I won it fair," Hagrid said defensively. "Bloke in a pub, had it in a bag — said he didn't want it anymore — "
The egg cracked.
The silence was total for the two seconds it took.
Then a small wet shape pushed through the shell — wrinkled, yellow-tinged, with a face that managed to be simultaneously the most lizard-like and most helpless thing Kevin had ever seen. Tiny wings, barely more than suggestions. Eyes still closed.
"Oh," Hermione said softly.
"Isn't he magnificent?" Hagrid breathed.
Ron opened his mouth to say something practical. Kevin moved to the door and opened it slightly, then closed it.
"Draco's at the window," he said.
Hagrid went rigid. Everyone else spun.
Draco was visible in the grimy glass — pale face, wide eyes, the expression of someone trying very hard to look as though he hadn't just seen what he'd just seen.
"Stand still," Kevin said, with the calm of someone who has already decided what happens next.
The spell was lazy, almost conversational — a simple Leg-Locker Jinx that caught Draco mid-turn and put him face-first on the ground outside.
They hauled him in.
Draco sat in the chair Kevin had put him in with the posture of someone trying to project dignity from an undignified position. The wand to his sternum discouraged excessive movement.
"Draco," Kevin said. "No hard feelings."
Draco's expression suggested hard feelings, actually.
"You have two options." Kevin crouched to eye level. "One: I Stun you, take you somewhere quiet, and someone with limited practice performs a Memory Charm. Possible outcomes include partial amnesia, a persistent belief that you're a badger, or nothing at all — honestly, hard to say."
Draco made a sound.
"Two: you keep this quiet. In exchange, you get visiting rights. You come and see the dragon when I arrange it. You get the experience. You tell no one." Kevin held his gaze. "You're not a bad person, Draco. You're just used to everyone being afraid of you. I'm not afraid of you. That means we can actually talk."
Ron said, loudly, that he didn't trust it.
Hermione explained patiently why the Memory Charm was genuinely risky.
Ron deflated.
Kevin flicked the Silencing Charm off Draco.
"Option two," Draco said, with the speed of someone who had made that decision thirty seconds ago and had been waiting for the opportunity to say it. "I keep quiet. I swear it."
He met Kevin's eyes. Kevin read him — the calculation, the genuine fear, the underneath of it where something else lived that wasn't entirely performance.
"Good," Kevin said. "But we're going to settle this properly first."
He explained the duel. Draco understood — a witnessed altercation covered both of them if anything needed explaining later.
They went outside. Draco prepared himself with what was, Kevin had to admit, a reasonable degree of composure for someone who'd been hauled off the ground five minutes earlier.
Kevin hit him with a chain Stupefy that bounced between three targets before landing, then finished with EX Excalibur for form's sake — a brief, very impressive flare of fire that made everyone take a step back.
Draco, flat on the ground, stared up at the evening sky with the expression of someone recalibrating several assumptions.
Incident closed.