The holidays vanished fast. Kevin Croft and Hermione said their goodbyes to her parents and boarded the train back to Hogwarts.
"Harry! Ron! We're back!" They swept into the Great Hall. The two boys were exactly where they'd been last Christmas — waiting, grinning, taking stock of them both.
"Kevin, you're even flashier than last year," Ron said. He was staring at the blue cloak draped over Kevin's shoulders, Hermione's scarf looped around his neck, one hand in his pocket like he owned the room.
"You wouldn't understand," Kevin shot back, smirk in place. He flicked the scarf for emphasis.
"Kevin, Hermione — never mind that." Harry leaned in, voice dropping. "I heard the train got attacked on the way home. Is that true?"
Word had spread. Hogwarts tried to keep it quiet, but students talked, letters flew, and gossip moved faster than any owl.
"You two hear everything."
"So it's real? Who attacks a train full of Hogwarts kids?" Ron looked genuinely shaken.
No one outside their tight circle knew Kevin had been the target. Harry and Ron had no idea.
"Not here. Come on." Kevin led them out, and they walked to Hagrid's hut.
Thanks to Kevin's involvement in second year, things had played out very differently from how they might have. Hagrid had never been pegged as the one who opened the Chamber — no Azkaban for him this time around.
"Uncle Hagrid! Merry Christmas! Thank you for the gifts."
"You're back! Come in, sit down. Tea's just brewed." Hagrid beamed and waved them through, his enormous frame filling the doorway.
"Kevin, I heard you got jumped on the way home. You alright?"
Even Hagrid had caught wind of it. His face creased with worry.
"Don't worry about it, Uncle Hagrid. I took care of them. No one was hurt." Kevin sipped his tea, perfectly at ease.
"You took them all out?" Harry and Ron said together, jaws slack.
Kevin sighed and walked them through the whole train ambush — the hired attackers, the Legilimency he'd used on their leader, the memory he'd pulled.
"So they were specifically after you?" Harry asked, face tight.
"Yeah. Their leader had a letter commissioning the job. No sender name. But I've only managed to properly annoy one person with that kind of reach." Kevin paused. "Lucius."
"Then report him!" Harry said sharply.
"No proof." Kevin set down his cup. "Not yet."
"Am I the only one wondering what Legilimency is?" Ron asked, a little sheepish.
"..."
"Ron, read a book sometime." Kevin shook his head, then explained it patiently enough.
It wasn't really Ron's fault. Second years weren't taught mind-reading magic.
"Don't you worry, Kevin," Hagrid said, leaning forward. "Dumbledore's already on it. He might not be able to touch Lucius directly, but he'll take apart that underground market piece by piece."
Underground markets were wizarding black markets — fluid, persistent things that the Ministry periodically cracked down on without ever fully eliminating. Most of the trade had been funnelled into Knockturn Alley, a semi-official hub that was at least easier to keep an eye on. The truly dangerous dealings still happened elsewhere.
A knock at the door.
Hagrid answered it. Draco stood outside, glancing over his shoulder like he didn't want to be seen. He stepped in, spotted Kevin, and crossed the room quickly.
"Kevin. I'm glad you're all right."
"Easy, Draco. Sit down. Tea?"
Draco sat. The guilty look on his face moved through something more complicated before he seemed to make a decision, straightening in his chair.
"Kevin — about the attack on the Hogwarts Express." His voice was quiet and deliberate. "I have no proof. But I think it was my father."
The words landed like a stone in still water.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione all went rigid. Some of the looks on their faces were dangerously close to anger.
Kevin raised a hand before anyone could speak. He understood what this cost Draco — his father on one side, his own conscience on the other. There was no clean path through it.
"Draco, relax. You couldn't have stopped it. And you did warn me — at the start of term." Kevin held his gaze. "That counts."
The others remembered. Draco had tipped them off early. The anger in the room cooled by a few degrees. The boy couldn't control Lucius Malfoy.
"But Draco —" Kevin's tone shifted, quietly. "Looking at all of this — what your father has done — do you see any pure-blood glory in it? Any honour?"
Draco said nothing.
"Or just arrogance? Selfishness? Stupidity?"
Kevin stood slowly. The shift in the room was subtle but real — a pressure building.
"Draco Malfoy." He kept his voice level and walked closer. "You are going to be the next head of your family. It is past time you started thinking for yourself."
Draco looked up at him, lost.
"Malfoy honour. Pure-blood honour. Your honour." Kevin held his gaze. "Those things aren't handed to you at birth. You have to earn them. Fight for them. Shape what they mean."
He was close now, looking straight down at him.
"That's the only honour worth anything."
Harry and the others had seen this before — Kevin in this register, pressure radiating off him the way it did off Snape. Quieter, though. Less contempt, more weight.
Draco cracked. His jaw tightened, and then his shoulders shook. He pressed his face into his hands.
All his father's lessons. Everything he'd been told about what it meant to be a Malfoy. He hated what his father had done. And he hated that he couldn't say so out loud.
But I'm the next Malfoy head.
I choose what that means.
Silence stretched.
"Kevin." Draco's voice came out low and ragged. "I know what I have to do. But I'm on my own. I can't fight the whole family."
"Do you know why Dumbledore — a man who could probably handle Voldemort alone — chooses to teach children?" Kevin stepped back, and the pressure eased. He clapped a hand on Draco's shoulder. "Why he stays here, year after year?"
Draco looked up. "Why?"
"Because the right values, planted early enough, break chains. A child who thinks for himself doesn't become his parents' puppet. And then his children don't, either." Kevin glanced around at the rest of them. "Hogwarts is supposed to be where you figure out who you are. Not just what family you came from."
He looked back at Draco.
"We're your crew. You're not on your own. We'll back you."
It was, admittedly, completely made up on the spot. Kevin had no idea why Dumbledore really taught. But a lost kid needed to hear something.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione were already on their feet, crowding round Draco. Something about the speech had landed on all of them — like school had suddenly clarified into something with actual purpose.
Kids were easy. Give them friendship and something worth believing in, and they were yours.
Hagrid, on the other hand, was a grown man pushing forty, half-giant, entirely capable of tearing a troll apart with his bare hands.
He was crying anyway.