Draco is right about lunch, it's a hurried affair and only the fact that Ron has ordered food for him that is on the table when he gets there sees him eat anything at all. By two thirty-five he has cleared his desk, set Unspeakables to work on three new projects and made an apprentice curse-breaker cry. He makes a brief note in his diary to raise the curse-breaker's salary if he has the balls to stay on after today.

At three on the dot, he is at the inner gates to Malfoy Manor, welcoming his guests. To his surprise, Hermione is there with Ron. Hugo and Lily are each clutching an adult, having Apparated side-along, Scorpius appears holding Albus's arm, and James appears with Rose.

Hermione hands Hugo a satchel. "You can carry the luggage, since most of it's yours," she tells him.

"Hello Hermione, hello Ron," Draco greets his guests. "Hello terrible children come to eat me out of house and home."

Scorpius hugs him. "Hi, Dad."

Draco kisses his forehead. "Hello, Son." He smiles at the others. "Come in, my mother has been assembling miniature cakehenges all afternoon, I hear."

With a chorus of "HelloMrMalfoythanks" the six children stampede towards the house. Draco, Ron and Hermione follow at a more dignified pace.

Draco clears his throat, not wholly sure of himself. "It's good to see you," he addresses Hermione. "I could never quite work out how to invite you …"

She smiles crookedly. "Ron tells me you've redecorated."

Ron puts his arm around her shoulders. "I tell her that she cannot continue to avoid social visits with her daughter's best friend's family. Even if they're Malfoys who insist on owning bloody peacocks. Seriously, Draco, those birds are evil." To prove his point, a peahen runs across their path shrieking like the possessed.

Even Hermione starts to laugh at that.

"Come on, love, you thought it was a good idea when I told you about Narcissa's tea collection," Ron reminds her.

Draco smiles supportively. "I won't take it personally if you'd rather just go home."

Ron goes on talking. "Nah, it took too much effort to actually get here on time. It was a close run thing, and I was starting to wonder if even Hermione's shrinking charms could deal with the amount of rubbish five teenagers need to live for a week. I checked on Hugo last night and I suspect he is planning on making a bid for adoption since he has packed nearly everything he owns."

"Adoption?" Draco can't help smiling.

"Well, every time he's ever been to the Manor before, it has involved birthdays or cake. It may be that Scorp and Al have slightly over-emphasised the glamour of your home life."

"Oh, the indoor pool and cinema are real," Draco says airily. "But they made up the professional Quidditch Pitch, the fun pier over the lake and the Honeydukes shop."

Hermione rolls her eyes. "That's right," she says in mock revelation. "We hated you at school because you were appalling."

"That's right," Draco agrees. "Years before you met my mad and unlamented aunt. Come on, he's not exaggerating about the tea."

Hermione squares her shoulders and resumes walking. Draco and Ron exchange small smiles over her head.

As the Granger-Weasleys walk inside ahead of him, Draco watches the tall Auror's hand caress his wife's shoulder, and sees how she leans slightly against him. For a moment he feels a slight tightness in his chest, which is obviously a sign of an impending cold.

"Straight ahead, we're out in the conservatory, all the way to the end of this hall, yes, that door," Draco guides from the back. He sees Hermione's hand hesitate for just a second at the doorknob, and he realises why as she pushes it open.

His mother is on her feet, the children behind her acquiring platefuls of cake. She sees Hermione, and her face pales. She steps towards her, one hand extended, shaking slightly. "Oh my dear," she says. "I am so sorry ..."

Hermione steps forward, away from Ron, and takes the older woman in her arms. "It's all right," she says. "You saved Harry."

"I couldn't save you," Narcissa says sadly. They hold each other.

Draco leans against the doorjamb. Ron looks back at him. "I forgot," Draco tells him. "I forgot they hadn't seen each other since that night."

"It's why she wanted to come," Ron says. "She's brave that way."

The tightness is back in Draco's chest. Ron pats him on the shoulder. "It's OK mate, she makes everyone feel like that."

"She's ..."

"Yeah," Ron smiles proudly. "Yeah, she is."

Narcissa kisses Hermione's cheek. "Thank you for coming, I've wanted to see you for such a long time, but had no idea what to say."

Hermione smiles, and Draco is reminded again where Rose's looks come from. "I've wanted to talk to you, too," she says. "My daughter thinks you're wonderful. And after watching your career for the last twenty years, I think she may be right."

Narcissa's laugh is a rich trill. "Oh, jaunts abroad with friends hardly constitutes a career, dear ..."

Hermione grins conspiratorially. "Is the American Muggle liaison officer really writing a script for a Hollywood film?"

Narcissa takes her arm and leads her across to the cake table, whispering animatedly.

Draco is slightly embarrassed by the moisture that has sprung to his eyes. Ron, being a genuine friend, pretends he can't see it. "You should come to Christmas dinner with us," he says.

"Yes," Draco agrees. "And then we can pop over to the Middle East and solve the Muggles' ongoing crises for them."

"No, seriously," says Ron. "It'd be good. Besides, we have girls who Charlie's been going out with for three weeks come to Christmas. Scorp's Albus's boyfriend and Rose's best friend and Lily's conscience. It's only right that you be there."

Draco's eyes begin to dance merrily, he can feel a laugh bubbling up inside.

"What?" Ron asks, catching his amusement.

"I'm just imagining our mothers at Christmas dinner," Draco says. "'How do you do? I'm Molly Weasley. I believe your husband tortured my daughter.' 'So pleased to meet you properly at last. Narcissa Malfoy, I believe you killed my sister.'"

Draco's whispered impressions see Ron reduced to peals of silent laughter. "It's worse than that," he manages between gasps for air. "Andromeda and Teddy are usually there, too."

"Oh good." Draco bows his head against the door. He looks up brightly. "Let's your family and mine kidnap Al and run off to Monte Carlo instead. Healthy walks and lovely sea air."

Ron laughs. "It'll be fine. We'll just go to our place or come here. Mum's too polite to make a huge fuss in someone else's home. Besides, Dad likes you."

"And I like your father, even if I know his affection for me is based on a lifelong desire to see the Malfoy Dark Artefact collection."

Ron looks interested. "Oooh, is there really some left?"

Draco laughs. "Yes, and you should bring Arthur over one afternoon. We destroyed the worst of it, but left some ingenious curses intact."

"Cheers, that'd be great," Ron says enthusiastically.

"You're a strange man, Ron," Draco tells him.

"It's the company I keep," Ron replies. "Are those custard slices? We should visit more often."

o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o

Hours later the children are watching their third Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes film. Helene has joined the adults and they are now onto the vintage wine and petit fours. Ron is holding forth on the dangers of Aurordom, but tactfully. Tales of Muggle-baiting and smuggling abound, political topics are skirted around. Draco is grateful again.

"And there was Harry, trying to convince the Muggle to back away from the cursed wallet, but the bloke didn't speak any English, so I was all ready to immobilise him when Harry tries French and the bloke is all 'Parlez Francais?' and Harry's 'Bien sur ...' and the next thing I know they're chatting each other up and the Harry's giving him a fake name and contact details while frantically gesturing for me to decurse the wallet ..."

"Harry speaks French? Where did he learn?" Helene asks.

"Harry was chatting him up?" Draco asks.

Ron, several drinks down, seems to decide that Helene's is the easier question. "He was there for three months after the War."

The sudden silence at the table isn't needed to tell him he chose the wrong one.

Narcissa and Draco both wear the same patient, questioning look.

"Balls," says Ron.

"He was there for three months because of testicles?" asks Narcissa. "That really should have made the news."

Draco smiles at his mother's humour. But he can see Hermione's hand tighten on Ron's shoulder. He wonders if it is an encouragement.

Apparently it is. "He thought it was inappropriate that you were all exiled without trial. He went to check that you were all right, and to talk to the French Ministry about lodging an appeal." Ron shakes his head. "He is going to kill me when he finds out I told you."

"I always wondered who started that process," Narcissa muses. "I thought it was my cousin."

"I thought it was you," Draco tells her. "Father was locked in his study every day, I thought you began the appeal for a project."

"Goodness no," Narcissa laughs. "I spent that summer gardening. I don't think I lifted a wand or a quill. It was strangely lovely." She smiles benignly at Ron, then winks. "We won't let on. We know Harry well now. He can't help himself."

"I wish he'd told us sooner," Hermione says suddenly. "About you, I mean. You and Voldemort."

Narcissa waves her hand. "I think that he must have found it very hard to know what to say. It's not as though we were blameless. If my husband had not been so blinded, it is possible that Voldemort would not have been so successful. It may have even been that his first grab for power could have been stopped before so many died, including Harry's parents." Narcissa's face is quite serious now. "If I had had more courage, if my husband had had more sense, we could have stopped a lot of evil, and maybe even been successful with some of the things that he believed in that were worthwhile, such as a strong wizarding community, and good international relations."

Hermione takes her hand across the table. "You cannot hold yourself responsible," she says.

"Oh my dear," Narcissa smiles gently, "of course I can. My husband listened to me. If I had been less of a fool I could have saved him. And you … and you …"

Hermione rises to her feet and moves swiftly around the table to hug Narcissa. "It's all right," she says. "It was so long ago."

Helene conjures delicate handkerchiefs, which she passes to her mother-in-law and friend.

Draco exchanges a look with Ron. It took the two of them some twenty years to cover the territory that these two have managed in six hours.

Ron grins at him. "Women."

"And their grace," Draco adds.

"Their practicality," Helene corrects him. "We are always putting things back together after you men take them apart, because otherwise they would stay broken."

"We never mention his name," Draco reminds her in a soft voice, for only the three of them.

"We fix what we can," she answers similarly, patting his hand.

Ron raises his wineglass. "To repairs," he toasts. The others lift their glasses.

o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o

Hermione is in Draco's office when Harry appears there the next morning. At the sight of her, he seems slightly embarrassed at the door-throwing, leather-coat-snapping and hair-streaming striding entrance he has just made. Draco hides his smile quickly.

"Morning," Harry announces. "How are you both?" He flops down in the office's remaining chair.

"Fragile," Hermione admits, gesturing at the remains of coffee and hangover potion on Draco's desk. "I went along with Ron yesterday, and we didn't end up going home till about four this morning."

Harry's eyebrows raise. "What, you were all at the Manor?"

"Yeah, Narcissa had a spread laid on when we got there," Hermione explains blithely. "And then there was dinner, and then there was wine, and then there was an epic scene of forgiveness and reconciliation, which, of course, led to more wine, and then we had to wait until we'd sobered up enough to Apparate and if you think I look shabby, you should see Ron."

"Draco looks fine." Harry's lips pout slightly.

"Draco is on his fifth coffee and has at least three spells counteracting the dark circles that threaten to engulf his eyes," Draco admits, much as it pains him. He has a suspicion.

"So you had a great night then?" Harry asks.

"Surprisingly, yeah," Hermione says with a smile.

"And no one thought to invite me?"

Inside, Draco does the gleeful dance of complete rightness.

"You were busy with work," he says, his exterior a carefully schooled model of propriety.

Harry blinks. "Yes. Yes I was. And I am here on work. Of course. Anything out of the usual today?"

Draco lifts a few sheets of parchment off his desk. "I was actually going to see you once Hermione and I had finished here. There are scanner alerts all over the place, but they're amorphous. The only concretely directional reading I can find points to the south coast of Sweden. I've alerted them to be on the lookout, but I can't tie things down to any location closer."

"So we have Swede-hating criminals. Great. I'll turn our investigations towards herring and Eurovision entrants."

Draco throws a stick of sealing wax at Harry's head. Harry snatches it from the air and grins fondly. Draco groans, and ignores Hermione's confused expression. "What I am trying to tell you is that your sources are right and there is something big on the way, we just can't tell where or when yet."

Harry nods. "All right. Update me if anything becomes clearer. How's your Muggle-tech boy doing, has he found anything?"

"Not as such, I have a memo from him saying that he'll be spending the morning out of the office chasing up multiple leads, which may be Fotherington for 'I have a cunning plan and am even now pulling together the finer details' or may actually mean 'I was in the office working till three-thirty this morning and plan to have a lie-in.'"

Hermione is looking at him with amusement. "Muggle-tech?" she asks.

"It's ever so sweet," he replies in a voice dripping condescension. When she has rolled her eyes enough for his taste he admits: "Muggles need to be inventive because they don't have magic. And while most of what they put on those computers is rubbish, there are many good things, too. Fotherington and his team understand it all, I trust them to sort it for me. All those cameras and satellites must be good for something."

"Nice to hear you admit it," she says, grinning. "And thanks for the breakfast. I should face the morning's horrors myself now. My belief that they can legislate without me is not wholly borne out by evidence."

Harry stands up, too. "I'll see you up." He tosses the sealing wax back to Draco. "And you should definitely invite me around to dinner some time if you're going to feed all my friends."

Draco rolls his eyes. "Oh Harry, it was hardly all your friends, I've never fed Longbottom so much as a cake."

Hermione sniffs. "I swear I'm still drunk, either that or you two are flirting. Tell Narcissa that she has ruined me today."

Slightly guiltily, Draco conjures a fresh cup of coffee and presses it into Hermione's hands as he escorts her to the door. "I'll have your office find you some nice greasy bacon and eggs. I'll tell them it's women's problems so they know not to pry."

"I will have to kill you the minute I feel better," Hermione warns him.

"Don't do that," Draco jokes, walking them down the long corridor. "Mother's just put you and Ron on the guest list for her seventieth, and it will be a great party. Kill me afterwards."

"She has to tell me what she's using on her face, I'm serious."

Draco laughs. "I'll snaffle some for you. I've been snaffling some for me for years."

"And here I was thinking there was a very unappealling portrait somewhere," Harry mutters.

"Well," Draco concedes. "That, too."

They walk into the circular room and wait for the doors to stop spinning. Draco calls the lift for them. "See you both soon," he says, holding the door for them to walk in.

"I want my dinner," Harry reminds him as the doors close.

Draco shakes his head in amusement. It is, he reflects, a very good thing that Hermione Granger-Weasley is not herself this morning. He hopes that her memory will be too full of larger things to start replaying small details for her later in the day.

In fact, it is his own mind that latches onto details as the day progresses. Fotherington appears around lunch. He has a case full of satellite images of clouds and sea currents and is clearly frustrated. "It's something to do with the weather, sir," he says. "It's not right, not even for the current always not rightness."

Draco presses for details and Fotherington mutters about collating data and developing models. For the second time that day, Draco conjures up a large pot of coffee from the kitchens and sends his brilliant young eccentric away with both it and orders to report regularly.

At three, he is upstairs chatting with Ron when one of Weasley's junior Aurors runs up to them. "Bust down at Tilbury, sir, Dark Magic users on one of the barges. It's big, Fawcett and Radford are there already, they've asked for back-up."

"Take three teams. Hang on, I'll come with. Sorry Draco," he apologises, striding away.

"Go, I'll see you later," Draco calls after him.

At five, with several hours' work still ahead of him, Helene calls on the departmental Floo to tell him that she will not be able to join him and the children that night as her friend who is coming in from Oslo has been delayed by a terrible storm.

At quarter past five, Fotherington appears with a sheaf of parchment and a deep frown. "There's something happening with water temperatures, Sir, and the Met Office have begun forecasting a storm surge. We're still getting the erratic readings on the scans, I'm sorry, sir, I'm just not …"

Draco stands up suddenly. "There are Aurors at Tilbury …" He can feel the pieces sliding into place, one by one. "What's the weather like outside?"

"Today?" Fotherington looks at him. "It's nice. Forecast to turn ugly later on, but it's warm and pleasant."

"The Muggles all stay in town on nights like this, don't they?"

"Some, the others are all driving home or on the Tube."

Draco can feel the answer coming towards him. And there it is. He grabs Fotherington's arm. "Find everyone. Everyone. If they've gone home, bring them back. Meet me upstairs in the Aurors' offices in ten minutes, hurry!"

Draco takes off at a run. He pauses only for the time it takes the lift to reach level two, and then he is running again, down the long corridor, past a surprised Ron, freshly back from the Tilbury operation, straight to Harry's offices, and long before he reaches them he is shouting: "Harry! You're needed! It's the Barrier! Potter! Now!"

Harry appears at the run. "Draco – what's going on?"

Draco grabs Harry's arms, insistent. "Storm surge coming, up the Thames, the Tilbury bust is a trap, they're at the Barrier, they're going to hold the Barrier open."

Harry looks at him for a long moment. "Shit," he says quietly. Draco can all but see his mind working behind those eyes. Three seconds later he looks up at the Aurors who have come out into the corridor at Draco's shouts. "Right. Everyone's on duty. Warn the team at Tilbury, get them up to the Barrier Park. We need brooms, we need concealment charms, we need curse-breakers."

"I have my team coming up, we have curse-breakers and we can erect a disillusionment field," Draco says swiftly. "How many brooms do you have? We'll need to have some of our people in the air to keep the field operating."

"We've fifteen. We'll need a dozen to take them from above; it's safer than Apparating to a spot they already occupy. Do you think they're still there? What if they've set up a series of destructive charms?"

Draco shakes his head. "They're still there. The Barrier control constantly monitors for problems. They'd have picked up anything that was already wrong. This will be last-minute. This will be done on the spot."

There are footsteps running down the corridor. It is Fortherington and the team from the Room of Futures. "The others will be here soon," he announces. Draco notes that he has his computer tucked under his arm. "I raised forty of them. Six curse-breakers. I was right, there is a surge, and it's moving faster than it should."

"How long do we have?" Harry asks the question at the same time as Draco.

"Forty-five minutes, maybe fifty."

"We need to move," Harry announces. "Draco, can you take your team to Thames Barrier Control? Ron, you join with the Tilbury set on the other shore, take four of the brooms, I'll need you to come in from there when we hit. Abbott, you're with Draco. Get them to wherever they're needed, keep them safe. Put your best four in the air, I want them ready to attack from the south. I'll sweep in from upriver with my team. Draco, I can spare your people three brooms. Will that be enough?"

"There are six gates, should do."

"Right. Those on the ground protect the Unspeakables. Concealment is half the mission."

The lift doors can be heard in the distance, forty sets of feet are running towards them. The rest of Draco's Unspeakables arrive. He speaks quickly: "Thames Barrier, we think there's a team using dark magic to hold it open. Storm surge is coming, a big one. I want all of you from the Time Room down at Woolwich. Do what you can to stretch out the time we have. Prophecy team with Ron at the park, the rest of you are with me."

Harry, Ron and Draco exchange looks. The plan is sketchy and will have to come together on the fly, but it is what they have. They nod. "Go. Wait for my signal to move in," Harry announces.

Draco is already moving when Harry calls his name. He turns back in time to catch the Firebolt that is being thrown at him. He looks at it carefully. "This is your best broom," he says, smiling.

Harry doesn't look to see who else is still there before taking his hand. "Just stay safe. This is going to be a bad one."

"I will. You too." Draco is too surprised to do anything more than answer honestly, and squeeze the hand around his. He wheels about and strides towards his Unspeakables. "We get it right, or we doom thousands. Understand?"

"Yes, sir!" comes the answer in chorus.

"Good," Draco barks. "Let's go."

o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o