The crash came before any of them were properly awake.
Something — structural, from the sound of it — had given way somewhere above them. Kevin surfaced from sleep with the immediate, instinctive alertness of someone who had spent years conditioning himself to wake up ready. Harry, his roommate for the night, lurched upright beside him.
"Was that your toilet?" Kevin said.
"Your toilet," Harry muttered on reflex, still mostly asleep.
Ron's head appeared from the next bed. "Whose?"
"Yours," Kevin and Harry said simultaneously, and then looked at each other.
"…"
They rolled out of bed.
On the landing, Hermione and Ginny were already peering from their doorway, both in pyjamas, both alarmed.
"You two stay here," Kevin said. "Harry and I'll check."
He and Harry took the stairs. On the second floor, they found Dobby in the corridor, methodically banging his head against the doorframe and muttering something about the obligations of free elves and the moral complexity of ancestral loyalties. Kevin and Harry, having long since reached a settled peace with Dobby's inner life, stepped around him without breaking stride.
They reached the second-floor bathroom.
There was Draco.
They hadn't seen him in over a month. In that time, whatever Grindelwald had been doing to him had clearly been effective, because Draco looked considerably more capable than when they'd last met — and also, at this precise moment, considerably worse. He was sprawled on the tile beside a shattered toilet. A plunger was wedged firmly on his head. Damp tissue paper was distributed across him at apparently random intervals. The pipe had burst cleanly; water sprayed in a steady arc that had soaked him from collar to boots. His expression was a complex masterwork of pain, humiliation, and barely controlled fury.
"Draco," Kevin said. "Why did you destroy Harry's toilet."
"Yeah, why mine specifically," Harry added.
They were both trying very hard.
Kevin understood the mechanics of it — Draco had Apparated for perhaps the first time without assistance, misjudged his destination by a few feet, and arrived at high velocity into something that was not equipped to receive him. The plunger was particularly difficult to explain, but Kevin decided not to press.
Dobby's earlier agitation made more sense now, too.
Draco spotted them and snapped.
"Will you stop — just get me out — my back is—"
Kevin flicked his wand. The water cut off. The floor dried. Draco's clothes returned to something approaching acceptable. One smooth tug, and the plunger came free. He hauled Draco upright by the arm, ignoring the wince.
Draco straightened, smoothed his robes, and glared.
Kevin grinned.
"Was planning to come drag you out of your house today anyway. Saves me the trip."
Before Draco could marshal a response, Sirius appeared at the end of the corridor, scratching his stomach, yawning enormously, taking in the scene with the slow comprehension of the recently awoken.
"The hell? When did you — I thought Grindelwald had you locked—"
He stopped himself. Looked at Kevin. Clocked the grin. Arrived at the correct conclusion.
Draco followed his gaze to Kevin. Then back to Sirius. His expression settled into something very tired.
Kevin looked away, whistling quietly at nothing.
"…"
The morning rearranged itself around Draco's arrival, and by the time everyone had gathered in the upstairs sitting room with tea and varying degrees of consciousness, things had settled into something like normalcy.
"So you Apparated wrong and ended up headfirst into a toilet," Ron said, leaning forward with bright eyes and the expression of a man who has waited his whole life for this exact piece of information.
"I landed safely," Draco said coldly. "The landing location was imperfect."
"Hahaha. You absolute—"
"I will end you, Weasley—"
They went for each other. The others watched with the weary indifference of people who had sat through this particular performance many times.
"Ron," Kevin said, waiting for a gap in the scuffle, "in fairness to Draco — he actually did it. Seventh-year coursework, officially licensed, proper Ministry field training. He pulled it off without a splinching."
"He landed in a toilet."
"He landed somewhere. Precisely. Which is the hard part."
Ron, pinned under Draco's elbow, grudgingly acknowledged this was technically accurate.
Harry leaned over to Draco. "What was it actually like? The training. What did Grindelwald put you through?"
Draco extricated himself from Ron with dignity. He was quiet for a moment — weighing it, Kevin thought, against some internal standard of what could be said out loud.
"Tea," he said finally. "He drinks a lot of tea. Takes his bird for walks. Gets bored." A pause. "When he's bored, he sets up a maze full of venomous plants and tells you to reach the other end without a wand. Or he makes you hold off a troll for thirty minutes — again, no wand. Or he runs you through the same spellwork until your magic is dry, and if you stop for even a moment, you get a wall of fire for your trouble."
Silence.
"He also has very particular opinions about posture," Draco added.
More silence.
"My father thinks I'm receiving an honour," he continued. "He's been helping. Volunteered for it. I asked to come see you lot once — just once — and my mother had to spend four days convincing him to allow it." He stared at the ceiling. "If they ever bury them separately, I want one in the Antarctic."
The room dissolved.
Kevin caught Hermione's eye across the chaos. She was laughing too hard to speak. He reached over and stole a biscuit from her plate while she wasn't paying attention.
Grindelwald's method was brutal, no question. But Draco had come out of it standing, and the way he held himself now was different — quieter, more settled inside it. The training had found something in him and drawn it out.
Whether he'd needed it or not was beside the point. He'd had it now.
"You look like you could handle yourself," Kevin offered.
"Yes," Draco said, glancing at Ron with a slow and deeply unpleasant smile.
Ron felt the temperature in the room drop several degrees.