This was such a terrible idea, Draco thinks, looking over his shoulder as he holds onto the branch for dear life. This will not work at all.
He hears heavy coughing and then a deep gasp, and he turns just in time to see Hermione's head dunk under the surface of the rushing river again.
"Bloody hell," he grinds his teeth. "I really should have thought this through."
He waits a spare second until he sees her hideous pink sweater and takes a deep breath, and before he can second guess himself, he dives after her.
*******
Earlier that day
"Weasley, I need to talk to you!" Draco groans as pristinely as possible and leans on the portrait once more. He blatantly ignores the Fat Lady huffing and puffing over by the vineyards. "Open the door!"
"If you would stop your incessant banging, I could go fetch someone for you!"
He turns to glare at the painting. "You would only bring someone unimportant. I need Weasley, Ron Weasley."
"He's resting!"
"And I am waiting! You will find in the very next few moments that I am a very impatient man, and if I do not have Weasley in my sights by then, I will most deliberately blow every stroke of pastel off..."
"He's kidding," comes the muffled reply behind the portrait, and then it swings open to find a bleary Ron blinking away sleep and pulling a sweater over his naked torso. "He's kidding, Fat Lady, he wouldn't dare ruin your delicate artistry."
The Fat Lady harrumphs and turns her back.
"What is it," Ron yawns. "Did something happen?"
"I found something," Draco says urgently, pulling on his sleeve. "I need you to come with me, there is something you need to see."
It takes two minutes for Ron's shoes to get to the entrance after he summons them and then Draco hits him with another Rennervate before pulling him down the Tower.
"Where are we going," Ron asks, his voice still sounds hoarse but it's not slow anymore. He catches up with Draco's pace quickly.
"The Room of Requirement," Draco stops briefly to look him in the eyes, tries to portray how important it is. "I want to show you something."
With their rapid pace, it doesn't take long to get to the seventh floor, and Draco reiterates everything he's found in the past couple of weeks with Ron nodding along.
Draco has the tracing spell memorized by now, and while Ron throws up Disillusionment charms on the entrance, he waves his wand around before the familiar planes of magical signatures glow in front of his eyes.
"Woah," he hears Ron behind him. "That's a lot of magic in one room."
He sees a flash of violet and grins, and when he turns, the little ribbon swirls in excitement. "Hello to you, too."
He turns to Ron but finds he's already looking at him. "Who's is that?"
Draco shrugs. "I have no clue. It is very friendly, though. It helped me find Potter's signature."
Ron nods. "What did you want to show me?"
"Alright, so," Draco starts. He walks over to the darkest corner in the room and points at the angry green hive of energy. "That is Voldemort's magic, as you know, Potter's is trapped inside. I have been coming here for days now, trying to figure out how to untangle it."
"Right," Ron says, nodding. "I know that."
"Good," Draco lifts his eyes again and points. "Now, if you look a bit to the left, you see an orange ribbon of magic."
Ron squints, moves to stand very close to Draco's arm so he can see where he's pointing. "The one that's going in circles?"
Draco exhales. "Yes. That one."
"What about it?"
"That signature is Granger's."
Ron's head snaps to Draco so quick, he might have cracked his neck a little. "Hermione? Hermione's stuck in there, too?"
"No," Draco shakes his head, points to the signatures trying to interact. "Do you see the way Granger is trying to find a way in? If you look closely, Harry is trying to find a way out. And Voldemort's is doing nothing. His signature is trying to keep Harry's in, for some reason."
Ron's brow furrows and he looks around at all the different magical signatures. "It's recent, right?"
Draco nods. "A couple of weeks," he looks around as well. "Wherever the Room dumped her, she is still trying to get a hold of Potter."
"Okay, so how did you find Harry last time?"
Draco feels a pool of cold settle in his gut. "I kept asking to be taken to him."
"Well, do it again," Ron exclaims. "If that's our only chance to find them, what are you waiting for?"
"Me? Why me? Why not you? She is your friend."
Ron rolls his eyes. "It's Voldemort's magical signature, as in, it repels his enemies."
Draco lifts a brow.
"Gryffindor," Ron sighs, pointing to his chest, then points at Draco. "Slytherin."
He feels enlightened, but it's gone in a second. "I am not risking that, what if it does not work? Then I get stuck in Salazar-knows-where and you are left with a half-hearted buffoon and the Ministry officials."
Ron rolls his eyes into the back of his head. "You'll be fine, Malfoy. If I try to do it, it'll probably mess with the equilibrium in the magical and spiritual tandem."
There's a very long stretch of silence, where Draco is too surprised to speak and Ron is rolling over the choices in his head.
This idiot, Draco thinks, is not an idiot at all. "How..."
Ron surges forward and grabs him by the shoulders. "Please! It's our only shot! If we wait for the Ministry to take action who knows what could happen."
Draco takes Ron's wrists and gingerly lifts them off his shoulders with a grimace. "Control yourself, man."
"Malfoy, please," Ron begs, looking up towards Hermione's orange ribbon that's still banging against the green hive.
The Slytherin steps back and swallows whatever insult he's about to throw. "I do not suppose you plan on telling anyone."
Ron gives him a look.
"Very well," Draco breathes. "If I come back, you owe me."
He takes a step to start pacing when Ron stops him by the arm and pulls him in, hugging him to his chest. Draco is awestruck. "When," Ron whispers. "When you come back."
Draco watches as he moves away and stands still, Ron never shifting from the pure trust and appreciation he has in his eyes. Draco nods, and he paces.
The first time he thinks of Hermione's less than perfect marks.
The second time he thinks about her bushy squirrel hair and big smile.
And the third time he thinks of her as, dare he say it, a friend.
Nothing happens when he stops and he turns to look at Ron in confusion.
"What?" They both say, puzzled.
Ron steps forward, and Draco narrows his eyes towards the ceiling when he starts to hear a whistle. "Do you hear that?"
The Gryffindor stops in his tracks, looks at Draco, then up. "Hear what?"
"It sounds like...a kettle."
When Ron takes another step further, there's a gust of wind that blows past Draco and his eyes widen. He holds out his hands.
"Do not take another step."
"What's wrong," Ron whispers, halfway into taking a full step. "What is it?"
Draco feels a fizzle of energy run up his spine. "The tandem is shifting," he mumbles, looking around. "We just triggered whatever is malfunctioning in the core of the room."
"What happens if we move?"
"I really do not want to find out," Draco turns to tell him. He sees Ron's position and frowns. "I do hope you can stand like that long enough for me to figure out how to disarm it."
"Uh," Ron chuckles nervously. "I'm not sure how long I can stay like this, but I won't move if I can help it."
Draco huffs, blows his fringe off his forehead. "Of course. Of all the people I could have gotten stuck with in a faulty magical room it had to be you."
"Hey," Ron breathes, he goes leaning to one side and then jerks straight again. "I thought we were friends."
"You do not endanger the lives of your friends," Draco rolls his eyes. "Seems you and your gang of sacrificial neanderthals never understood that."
"We weren't that bad. It's called loyalty."
"That is not..."
"We had trust," Ron interrupts him loudly, and Draco quiets, stares into Ron's eyes with mirrored intensity. "We have trust between each other. That means that no matter how difficult things got or what type of situation we were in, we always had each other. There isn't a damned thing I wouldn't do for those two because I know that they will always have my back no matter what."
Draco swallows. He wants to look away but he knows that falls under the category of weakness and there is no room for such thing. Ron purses his lips.
"We are loyal to each other's decisions. It doesn't mean we agree to everything, we have our differences but there's nothing in this world that can tear us apart. I mean," Ron blinks, looks down at his shoe. "We survived a war. There's not anything worse than that."
"We do not," Draco's voice cracks from Ron's confession, but he clears his throat. "Slytherin does not have loyalty...anymore. I think there used to be, but now whoever is sorted into it is too afraid to speak out about what they believe in. It seems the generations only follow in their parent's footsteps," Draco looks down at his hands. "Much like I did."
"You didn't do anything wrong," Ron says quickly. "You have to know that. Even Harry knows that. If he didn't, then he wouldn't have stepped up during your trial."
"I know," Draco says. I didn't deserve it, he doesn't say.
"You carry a burden," Ron tells him, like he knows exactly what he's thinking. "Like Harry. You think some of this is your fault."
Draco's interior aristocrat claws at him. He snarls. "And what are you, a therapist?"
He ignores the complete change in Ron's appearance. The way Ron's eyes harden but there's still hurt showing, and his hands clench into fists, and with his foot in the air Draco can see he's starting to shake. Apparently, Ron Weasley has a very short fuse. "You and Blaise and all the rest of you lot are so ungrateful. The bloody war is done. I don't know how many times I have to say this in order for it to go through your thick skulls."
Ron lets his foot fall and the floor and another harsh gust of wind pushes past Draco's shoulder. He stumbles and looks to Ron.
"It's okay to show weakness, it was never wrong in the first place. I understand you have scars from the war, but we all do! The way you treat everybody when you think you're getting profiled is disgusting. Hypocritical, even. You used to do the same thing to Harry."
"Weasley," Draco whispers as he looks up. The signatures are going haywire above them.
"I'm trying to show you what it's like to have friends, but Merlin, you are hard to befriend. It's no damned wonder that Slytherin has no House loyalty."
"Weasley, shut up."
Ron throws his hands up and the whistling gets louder, as if it's getting closer. Draco notices a twisted pattern in the signatures, along with every other blast of air rushing around him.
It's a whirlwind.
Ron is still talking about...Draco actually doesn't know what he's going on about but he's upset. And he keeps stepping to one side and then going back to his original position, and he keeps throwing his hands up in despair.
And with every action, the whistle gets louder and the blows get quicker. "Weasley," Draco says urgently. "If you do not stop throwing a tantrum, something very bad is going to happen."
Ron, a little too late, realizes that he's put them both in trouble and his eyes go wide. "Oh, uh, sorry."
Draco's eyes roll back involuntarily. "Just...stop moving. Let me think."
He looks to the side, at the floor, where he wracks his brain for broken magical tandems. Or magical rooms with minds of their own. Or magic strong enough to create whirlwinds and propel the elements.
He comes up short.
"Do you think, maybe, if we stay still it'll go away?"
Draco turns to look at him with as much malice as he can. "You stupid cow."
"It was a suggestion!"
"Yes, a terrible one!"
Ron huffs and crosses his arms.
Draco feels one more blow and then everything stills. He looks up to the Gryffindor. "What just happened?"
"I don't know."
They both look up when there's a faint whistling over them and they both look at each other. It gets eerily louder in the silence of the room and then Draco feels one small blow of air go through him and then there's something pulling on the core of his magic.
He looks up to Ron with equally round eyes.
"Weasley," he squeaks.
Suddenly, the air rushes out of him and he feels as if he's been hit, sending him folding and flying back. The last thing he sees is Ron rushing forward with an outstretched hand and his name falling from his tongue before he's sucked into a vacuum.
Everything turns black.