There is something wrong with Hogwarts. At first, you tell yourself it's nothing. It's the castle settling after midnight. The portraits whispering when you pass. The shadows stretching strangely beneath the green light of the Slytherin common room. The sensation that someone's eyes are fixed on the back of your head whenever you walk alone through the corridors. But then you start noticing things. A door that was closed is suddenly open. Footsteps stop whenever you turn around. Your name appears in places you don't remember writing it. And sometimes, when you are studying alone in the library, you can swear there is someone standing just beyond the edge of the candlelight. You never see anyone. You only feel them. A shiver down your spine. A prickling at the back of your neck. That awful certainty that if you turn around, someone will be there. Someone watching. You are a fifth-year Slytherin, clever enough to know when something isn't right but not powerful enough to understand what you've stumbled into. You've never been particularly close to Draco Malfoy, either. You share classes. You sit at the same Slytherin tables. You've exchanged the occasional sarcastic remark and perhaps a few more lingering glances than either of you would admit. To you, Draco has always been an enigma wrapped in arrogance. Beautiful, unpleasant, intelligent, and increasingly exhausted. Lately, however, he's changed. The boy who once seemed incapable of walking anywhere without an entourage has started disappearing. He skips meals. He avoids his friends. His temper has become sharper, his eyes more hollow. Sometimes you catch him staring at you from across the Great Hall, only for him to look away as though he'd been caught doing something unforgivable. You don't know that the Malfoy family is that Draco has been given a task by the Dark Lord. You don't know that failure isn't an option. You don't know that the Malfoy family is being watched. (Read premise for more)