during

Messages went back and forth, owls to drop boxes and patronuses and, after a delay that made Draco exclaim more than once that Potter was still the biggest arsehole to ever walk the earth, a meeting time was agreed upon. He'd sit at night on their couch, legs wrapped around Hermione, as she read and reread the precious notes that proved that Ron and Harry were still alive, her fingers tracing the scrawls of their abominable handwriting. Draco could feel his heart break a little at how much she missed them. He could feel a flutter of jealousy he tried to ignore at the sight of how much she hungered for proof they were fine. He couldn't picture her - couldn't picture anyone - holding on to a note from him with the same desperation.

Blaise caught that expression one of the long nights they spent setting up a meeting stripped of as much risk as possible and, when Hermione disappeared into the shower, touched Draco's shoulder. "She loves you, too," he said.

Draco shrugged and studied a scuff he'd gotten on the toe of one shoe. His father would have hated that, might have lectured him on how a man showed pride in himself by presenting a polished image to the world while running down how to do different shoe polishing charms. "It's fine," he said to Blaise. "They're her oldest friends. I understand."

Blaise cupped his face with one hand and said, simply, "Good, because green's a bad colour for you."

Draco laughed. "I think it's the only colour allowed these days. The colour of noble house of all things good and snaky."

"You know what I mean."

after

Hermione traced her fingers over the loops of the signature. He was alive. She was going to kill him.

during

Hermione stood in the garden outside the cottage, her arms wrapped around herself, and waited. The sun soaked into her hair and songbirds were loud and she'd come out early and then they were late and she began to think they weren't going to come. They'd gotten lost, or changed their minds, or worse. Her mind had raced to the worst possible outcomes of a Harry Potter who wasn't where he was supposed to be when the pair apparated into the woods outside the cottage, past the line of the Fidelius charm, and squinted at what to them looked like nothing but a continuation of trees and shadows.

"Is this the right spot," Ron asked and Hermione choked back a sob at hearing his voice even as she stepped past the safety line for the first time since Blaise and Draco had brought her home. He watched her appear and made a sound suspiciously like a sob of his own before he yanked her into an embrace that almost crushed her. "I thought you were dead," he said, the words muffled into her hair. "I thought they'd gotten you, and there was no way you could have survived."

"Hermione." It was all Harry said but she pulled herself from one set of arms to throw herself into another, and then all three of them were standing there, holding onto one another and pretending that the ways their eyes watered had to do with pollen and dust and anything but the relief of knowing they'd all survived. So far, they were all still mostly okay.

When Hermione they finally let one another go, Hermione took a deep breath and said, "You ready?"

"For Malfoy?" Harry let out a snort of derision. "Not really, but lead on."

She made a slightly pained expression, one side of her mouth pulling up in a grimace, then took each of their hands and led them into the garden. As they were admitted to the ring of the Fidelius Charm, Harry let out a long, low whistle. "Cute," he said.

Hermione looked at the small cottage with the windows she'd sat in and the tiny garden she'd dueled in and healed in. She'd spent so much time there she didn't really see it anymore. It was peculiar to see it through Harry's and Ron's eyes and, looking at it, she saw the myriad ways it spoke of wealth and indifference. For all the nettles in the flower beds, this wasn't the cottage of six impoverished brothers and their weaving sister. "It's home," was all she said, suddenly uncomfortable with the place's obvious aristocratic origins.

Draco and Blaise seemed to take the passing of the trio into their space as the sign to come out and the door opened and Draco stood there, Blaise behind him, and he and Harry regarded one another with crossed arms and scowls. "Potter," Draco said. "Nice of you to finally pay us a visit."

"Hermione said you had good biscuits," Harry said. "Couldn't pass up the image of Draco Malfoy with an apron on, stirring the batter."

"Hate to disappoint," Draco said. "We didn't cook for you."

"Shocker," said Ron.

Draco had lied, however, though it was true they hadn't baked. Knowing the pair of Order members had been on short rations, Blaise and Hermione had put together a meal that, while as uninspired as most of their cooking, did manage to combine calories in a way that soon had all five of them crowded around a table eating and avoiding conversation. "This is good," Ron said as he wiped his mouth, "so I'm assuming Hermione didn't have much to do with the preparation."

Draco smothered a laugh and Hermione glared at him. Harry looked from one to the other and then at Ron. Ron followed his gaze and just said, "Well, shite."

"What?" Blaise asked. He pushed back from the table and crossed his arms over his chest.

"This is for real," Ron said. He looked at Blaise. "All of you?" The question hung in the air and Hermione tensed.

"Didn't mean for it to happen," Blaise said. He picked the words out with care. "Neither of us did."

"But it still happened," Ron said. He seemed to balance between outrage and resignation. "You - "

"They saved my life," Hermione said. She hadn't gone into details in any of the missives she'd sent the boys but she did now and as she explained what had happened, with Blaise adding some details she didn't remember, Ron grew pale.

"You're okay now, though, right?" he asked.

When Hermione looked at Blaise with guilt in her eyes it was Harry who said, "Shite."

"She's not in a ward at St. Mungo's," Draco said. "We did the best we could."

"She can walk," Blaise said, "and think, and there aren't even any visible scars, but - "

"I have tremors," Hermione said, cutting off their defensive rambling. "I shake when I'm tired, and I get tired easily, and it's stopped improving, so I think this is probably it."

She watched Ron bite his lip and could see him exercising the self-control war had brought him. He nodded and said, "I'm sorry."

She reached across the table and took his hand and he squeezed her fingers. "It could have been a lot worse," she said.

"I don't know," Harry said, in a transparent attempt to add levity, "You fell for Malfoy. Does it really get worse than that?"

"She could have fallen for you?" Draco suggested.

The look Harry gave him was scathing. "Maybe we could move on to discussing your sudden interest in leaving the side of your noseless master and turning spy, because your personal life doesn't do it for me."

after

Hermione stretched a leg out and opened one lazy eye. Blaise had gotten up sometime in the afternoon and returned to bed with some of the honeycomb they'd picked up at the market that morning. He smirked at her as he held the comb up and let it begin to dribble out onto her thigh.

"The sheets," she said, an obligatory protest to food in the bed, even as she realized someone, probably Draco since they dangled from his finger, had pulled her knickers off while she slept. She must have been exhausted.

"Lazy," Blaise said. "Sleeps all day, doesn't want to wash the sheets - "

"We all know she's not going to wash them," Draco said with a scoff. "Try again, Hermione."

But she was already laughing and spreading her legs and he grinned at her. "Is that a request?"

"Just don't want the honey to get on the sheets," she said. "Don't want to have to change them."

Draco and Blaise exchanged one of those looks she'd hated and now loved that spoke of their years of connection even as Draco tossed the knickers aside and lowered himself so his mouth was at her skin. Blaise took a bite out of the comb and watched them, lust and satisfaction dancing in his eyes, as Draco began to lick the sticky sweet off her skin. Each pass of his tongue woke her, each grazing of his teeth ignited her, until she had her hands in his hair and whimpered as he refused to move any higher up her skin. "The sheets," he said, his breath hot on her thighs. "Don't want them to get dirty."

"I hate you," she said as Blaise let some of the honey drip onto her stomach and Draco moved up - too far up, and began to lap at where it pooled in her naval.

She turned to eye Blaise and he shrugged. He would have been the picture of innocence if he hadn't been naked. She took one hand out of Draco's hair and reached over to run a nail along him. He inhaled sharply at that touch and she licked her lips.

"Don't tempt me," he said. "I'm trying to wait my turn."

She opened her mouth, planning to tell him not to be ridiculous, but Draco had finally stopped teasing her and she only let out a squeak that made them both laugh. She would have glared at Blaise, but he licked at the comb and then lowered his mouth to hers and shared the sweetness with her and she was distracted but all was well.

during

Hermione sighed as she let her head loll against Blaise's shoulder. The pair of them, along with Ron, had retreated out to the garden to let Harry and Draco yell at one another. Things had started off smoothly enough, and the pair of boyhood rivals had shared notes on Voldemort, the war, what they both knew. Then Harry made a comment about the night the Death Eaters came to Hogwarts and ruffled Draco's feathers. Draco retaliated by commenting the Chosen One didn't really know much about being trapped. Harry had laughed so bitterly at that tears had come out his eyes.

"Fat lot you know about being trapped," he'd said. "Staying here in your pretty little cottage, able to make runs to the market, Hermione and Zabini keeping the bed warm for you."

"You don't know shite, Potter," almost exploded out of Draco's mouth.

It got worse from there and, after a few minute, Hermione discretely yanked both their wands and tipped her head toward the yard. Ron and Blaise followed her out, all planning to out wait what surely couldn't take that long. At first they'd just talked over the loud yelling coming from inside, then they'd muffled the cottage, and now, whenever anyone looked in, Draco and Harry appeared to be in a pantomime of silent, heated gesturing. It was almost funny.

"They have a few things to work out," Blaise said. He'd gone inside, fetched food, and come back and the three people outdoors had had a picnic while the yelling had gone on and on and on.

"Malfoy's a git," Ron muttered. He glanced at Hermione. "No offense."

"So're you," Blaise said. His hand seemed to want to reach for his wand.

"And I'm no peach myself," Hermione said. "Can we stay focused on defeating you-know-who and not on how much we didn't care for one another at sixteen?"

"At sixteen he let Death Eaters into Hogwarts," Ron said.

"And by eighteen, his parents were dead," Hermione said. "It's a war, Ron. They held a knife to his throat. What would you have done if Molly had been in you-know-who's custody?"

Ron bristled and looked ready to say he'd have fought the good fight, but at her level look he subsided. "Probably what he did," he admitted. "Doesn't mean I have to like it. Doesn't mean I have to curl up in his lap and trust the blighter now."

"Draco's lap is taken," Blaise said.

"I see that," Ron said, and then they all fell into another silence, too strained to make polite small talk. He watched as Hermione shifted the way she leaned on Blaise and the way the man tucked her into him so she'd be comfortable. When she'd drifted off, Ron said, "Your arm'll fall asleep if you let her stay like that."

"I know," Blaise said.

after

The screeching was followed by a loud hiss and the sound of two cats racing down the stairs. Draco picked up a pillow and pulled it with an emphatic thump over his head. The muffled demand, "Whose idea were these cats?" emerged from beneath the feathers and ticking.

"Yours," Blaise and Hermione said in unison.

Draco groaned at the sound of something, probably something expensive and fragile, getting knocked to the ground. "I was an idiot," he said.

Hermione glanced at Blaise, who was trying not to laugh. "Do you think we can get a recording of that?" he asked. "Just to haul out and play back whenever we need to?"

Draco threw the pillow at Blaise and missed.

during

"Horcruxes?" Draco had yelled himself out and now he just sagged at the table and drank the tea Blaise had made. That it was more than laced with whiskey had helped bring the man from fury and outrage and despair to borderline hysterical. He'd begun to laugh when he'd told Blaise, then he'd cried. Immortal. The man was immortal. He really was the monster under the bed, unkillable. It really was unending.

"We just have to get them all," Hermione said. "We know what they are, we think. They're just almost impossible to find, and…"

"And some of them are in my home." Draco began to laugh again. "The place I learned to fly a broom and where I made biscuits with my mother has the Darkest relics imaginable just tucked away. Here's your grandmother's tea set. Here's the plate you made at art class at four with your handprint on it. Oh, and here's a foul bit of magic keeping the devil alive. Not a problem, right?"

The laughter turned to tears. "All you have to do it find them and destroy them with almost uncontrollable magic. That's all."

"There's only three left," Hermione said. "And one of them in Harry."

"And one of them is his snake," Draco said. "I watched that snake eat a person."

"Well," Blaise said. "It sounds like you need to find the cup first, and get it to the noble and glorious house of idiots, and then they'll take care of it, and then the snake."

"And then all of hell breaks loose and the devil burns us all." Draco buried his face in his hands. "I can probably find the cup. I can even get it past the wards and off to our Hermione's friends. But how do we kill the snake without starting a war?"

"We're already in a war," Hermione said. She set her hand on his. "Draco, if you think you can't - "

"I can," he said. "I will." He laced his fingers through hers. "Anything to be free," he said. "Anything but losing you." His eyes caught Blaise's. "Right?"