The Hogwarts Express at Christmas ran lighter than the September Express — fewer students, the carriages quieter, a different quality of stillness moving through the train.
Kevin had a compartment secured by the time Hermione arrived, and they settled in with the comfortable ease of two people who have spent enough time together that travel feels like another form of home. She talked for a while. He listened. She had opinions about their Defence revision schedule for the rest of the year that he agreed with without needing convincing.
He was asleep before Scotland ended. Hermione let him have twenty minutes before she shifted, and he was alert in the particular instant way of someone whose sleep is light from habit.
His head was in her lap.
Hermione's hand was in his hair.
He lay still.
She was thinking about something — he could tell from the quality of her silence, the slight change in her breathing. The bracelet on her wrist pulsed very faintly. His answered.
This is good, he thought. Whatever happens next, this is good.
What happened next was the window exploding inward.
Kevin had Hermione on the floor with him over her before the glass settled. The fire curse came through the gap where they'd been sitting and took the seat and the luggage rack in one burst of heat.
The train wasn't slowing yet. People further down the car were screaming, running.
Kevin had his wand and his crowbar out.
"Stay down," he said. "Second attack incoming — they'll want to confirm the hit."
"Kevin — "
"Stay down."
He sent a chain of fireballs out through the blown window. The broad arc spread across thirty metres of outside space and detonated in three successive explosions that lit the grey winter landscape orange.
Two figures went off their brooms.
Three remaining.
"Hermione." He needed her focused. "Three still airborne. I need your eyes and your wand. Can you do that?"
She'd been shaking for approximately six seconds, which he counted as a perfectly reasonable response to a fireball through a window, and had stopped. "Yes," she said.
"Good." He pulled her up. "One blocks, one fires. Switch on my call."
They fell into it like they'd practised it, which they hadn't, but they'd been doing magic together for long enough that the rhythm was there.
Kevin suppressed the third attacker with Shield and Hermione broke him with an explosive hex. The last two adjusted — smarter, reading their pattern.
"Boarding," Kevin said. "They're coming on the train."
He grabbed her hand and they moved.
Five masked figures in the rear carriages. Kevin and Hermione worked through them car by car, Kevin's physical force and unpredictable switching between wand and crowbar combining with Hermione's precision in a way that consumed four of the five in the space of eight tense minutes.
The leader was different — patient, powerful, the kind of experienced that comes from decades. Kevin's fireballs were absorbed. Hermione's hexes were deflected with contemptuous ease.
Kevin called a feint — sent Hermione left with a smoke cover, appeared from the right, took a hit that should have knocked him down, and used the stumble to close distance and put the crowbar into the leader's ribs at close range.
The explosion that followed was close enough that Kevin wrapped himself around Hermione mid-air before they hit the field beside the tracks.
He was winded. She was shaken but whole.
He Legilimised the leader in the twenty seconds before the man's strength gave out completely. Hired — the letter had specified the train, the timing, the target. Two names he recognised as Lucius's contacts.
No surprise there.
He extracted the memory, stood up, and looked at the train.
"Sonorus," he said, and put his voice out to the scattered students across the field. "Attackers are down. Come back to the train. Backup is en route."
Snape arrived with the first Hogwarts response team, which told Kevin that Dumbledore had sent the best person available rather than the most available person.
Kevin gave his full account standing in the grass with his wand loose in his hand, Hermione at his shoulder, the train behind them with several carriages that were going to require significant reconstruction charms.
Snape listened. He said nothing for a moment after Kevin finished.
"You're consistently inconvenient," Snape said finally.
"I'll take that as a compliment," Kevin said.
"It wasn't one." Snape's eyes moved to Hermione for a brief moment, checking her condition with the speed of someone who checks things without wanting it acknowledged. "Miss Granger. Are you — "
"Fine," she said. "Kevin had us covered."
Snape's expression moved fractionally in some direction Kevin couldn't quite read.
"The Ministry will want statements," Snape said. "Both of you."
"We're available," Kevin said. He looked at the darkening sky. "Lucius Malfoy."
"That," Snape said, "is a matter for the investigation."
"I know," Kevin said. "I'm noting it for the record."
Snape held his gaze for three seconds and then turned to organise the scene.
Kevin sat down next to Hermione in the grass while the Hogwarts team worked, and looked at the orange horizon line, and let himself feel the particular exhaustion that comes after genuine fear has been sustained and survived.
Hermione leaned against him.
"You could have told me earlier," she said quietly. "That there was going to be danger this year."
"I didn't know it would be this specific," he said. Which was true.
"But you expected something."
"I'm always expecting something."
She was quiet. Then: "Next time — even if you're not sure — tell me."
"All right," he said. "I will."
She pulled his arm around her and looked at the horizon with him.