Disclaimer: I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).

What's been disturbing for the last weeks is that Potions revision has inevitably reminded her of sex. This had not been a problem in previous years, because neither Severus Snape nor Horace Slughorn provoked fantasies of fleshly bliss, nor had Draco Malfoy's pointy face suggested anything more to her than the necessity of watching where his shifty eyes lighted next, which might give her a hint about what was going to come hurtling Harry's way, while she frantically whispered instructions to Neville so he wouldn't blow anything up while she was otherwise occupied …

Potions class had really been most distracting, but not that way.

Now he looks up at her over his smoking cauldron, as Luna chops the next round of ingredients, and licks his lips, and once (Merlin help them all) he winks. A good thing Ron didn't see that.

Then he gives her a heavy-lidded look that she supposes he means as sultry… It's all very cheesy and theatrical in a silent-film or nineteenth-century way, and she wonders which long-dead Muggle exemplar of seduction he's aping. Maybe Valentino, because he told her that Pansy Parkinson had a serious fan-crush on Theda Bara…

It isn't until he turns back to his work, absently humming under his breath, that she remembers the thing he means her to remember.

At the end of the journey, he was singing.

Right before, he tensed, eyes squeezed shut and hands clenching over her wrists, and then his hips bucked under her and she felt the pulse and the rush, and at the same time he let go of her, let go of everything and his head went back and his eyes opened and his mouth too—and she noticed the auroral flush lighting his pale skin from within. He wasn't trying to form words; it wasn't not her name or a god's name or a curse word but pure sound—a clear pale tenor voice singing the sunrise in the middle of the night.

Tenor. Or contralto, some perverse shadow of a suggestion said in the back of her head where forbidden thoughts live.

She leaned forward and gathered him up; he was swooning, boneless, and she kissed his throat where she could feel his pulse pounding, sucked vampire kisses along the clavicle and then up the side of the neck to the earlobe. She kissed his mouth, which was shockingly cold (no wonder, she thought, all the blood is somewhere else).

"Oh," he said. Shivered.

Then, "That was amazing."

And finally, in more like his ordinary tone, "Granger, I owe you. Again."

What he didn't say aloud, but she could read as if he'd written it on the darkness in letters of fire: And I will remember this in Azkaban, until they take it all away.

Friday night, she reviews once more the very interesting letter from Viktor. It's odd to hear from him after so long, yet he elides that lapse of correspondence, gracefully alluding to the war and her very impressive role in it. He tells her that he's very definitely going to be in London for the War Crimes Trials. His uncle and aunt who sit on the International Quidditch Commission will be there, and so they would be properly chaperoned if she would like to have dinner or drinks. His treat, of course.

And he understands from conversations with his cousin Andrei that she's been making some very interesting inquiries, and he's reminded of the conversation they had at the Yule Ball, about Necromancy…

Ron might have been somewhat reassured if he could have heard the conversation between herself and Viktor as they whirled away in each other's arms: he was telling her about how Necromancy was in fact still taught at Durmstrang, in theory only, though the laboratory did cover Reverse Necromancy and Banishing Rites. The difficulty, of course, is in guessing the name of the thing that you wish to Banish, because if you cannot call it by its right name, it will do worse than laugh at you …

The literature is full of cautionary tales on this point.

Viktor's style of writing reminds her a bit of his style of flying: graceful, madcap, full of stylish swooping and diving. Speaking, of course, in his second language (no, actually English is his fourth, after French and Latin) his clumsiness is half his eloquence, but writing—well, it's the difference between his clumsy duck-footed walk on the ground and what he becomes when he takes flight …

If she's thinking what he thinks she's thinking, there are some interesting volumes he can recommend… nothing that's in print in wizarding Britain, though there are clandestine collections. One such is at Malfoy Manor, which he understands has been Decommissioned.

"Good riddance to bad rubbish," she reads between the lines, and remembers the way that he bared his teeth when he glanced over his shoulder at Draco dancing with Pansy. (He'd told her sotto voce that the little snip had dared to praise Grindelwald in his hearing, and he'd put a stop to it by suggesting that there might not be a Malfoy heir next generation if that line of discussion continued… which was the first time she'd ever heard the name of Grindelwald from living lips. Professor Binn, of course, doesn't count, being both crashingly dull and a ghost.)

If her Ministry connections are not adequate to the purpose, or if she wishes to be discreet, he can make inquiries, and if she likes, he might bring some volumes with him when he comes for the trials. They're nothing that you want to request formally from a library, even Durmstrang.

On Halloween night, in the dark of the night, Viktor's name had come up in conversation, in rather a different connection. Draco, yawning like the proverbial cat overfed with cream, considered her notions about Polyjuice and said, "Now I know what Krum was smirking about."

"What do you mean?"

"Remember fourth year? The Yule Ball and all that? Every time we were going on about, excuse the expression, swotty bushy-haired mudbloods, he'd smile in this really annoying enigmatic way as if we were dumb as trolls and completely missing the point. As if we were stupid kids and he was a man of the world."

"You mean every time you were going on like that. About me."

"Well, yes, but I thought we weren't doing the enemies thing any more."

"As of fourth year we were doing it." For some reason she wanted to laugh, but suppressed the urge. "So what do you think I was doing with Krum?"

"Switching bodies with him and shagging him senseless."

"Malfoy, that's really perverse." He smirked, and she remembered that she really had no call for that moral indignation, given what she'd done with his body. And in any case, he was likely bluffing, given how disturbed he'd been at the initial suggestion. It had been far more fun than she'd anticipated, shocking Draco Malfoy, so she added, "But now that you mention it, an interesting idea. Want to try it?"

"Just how much Polyjuice do you have stockpiled?"

She read that as an indication that he was game, having gotten over the initial shock of the idea.

With a pang of regret, she considered an alternate universe, in which she and Draco spent their sixth and seventh year snogging in random broom closets all over Hogwarts, when they weren't blowing things up over the Quidditch pitch … a world in which were no Dark Lords lurking, only a surfeit of teenage hormones.

From the journal of Hermione Granger

Saturday 21 November 1998

We struck our bargain on Halloween, and I confirmed it yesterday before I set off for work in London, just in case he'd only agreed in his state of post-coital giddiness. Strike that and rewrite: in his euphoria at his newly minted non-virgin status in the heterosexual league. But the thing he wouldn't tell me is whose hair he wanted for the other defloration. I would have thought that two weeks would be enough for him to come up with a name, and I really can't abide procrastination. Harry and Ron made me half crazy with that for years and now I have to go through it with bloody Malfoy.

And today… well, today I got what I wanted. What I thought I wanted. But of course, like most granted wishes, it didn't go quite according to plan.

When I came back upstairs from my Potions lab with the two tumblers of Polyjuice, the initial dose and the booster, he had taken off all of the clothes he'd been wearing under the school robes, and hung them over the chair: two layers of full-length robes in fine wool, a full-length garment in dark green silk, and a white silk tunic or shirt. Rather a lot of layers, and all of them medieval. I suppose if he can't manage warming charms, the castle is uncomfortably cold.

Through the half-open door, I saw him pause to luxuriate in the warmth of the central heating, standing just over the floor vent and letting the warm air flow over his bare skin, before he shrugged on the school robe again. I hung back a bit, because I had the feeling that he wouldn't like to be caught indulging himself in Muggle luxury.

I dropped the hair into the glass of Polyjuice with my back to him, and I watched it bubble and swirl and then clear to a lovely concoction the color of sunrise, and the smell coming off it reminded me of the flowery-grassy scent I'd caught on the breeze off the moors, just after dawn. (Neville laughed when I asked him to identify it. He said, "It's everything, all at once.")

I turned and handed the glass to Draco.

"This is going to hurt," I said.

"I know," he replied. And then I remembered what Harry told me about him Polyjuicing Crabbe and Goyle into little girls all sixth year to serve as lookouts while he labored at his Vanishing Cabinet hack. I realized he would have seen them doubled over in agony in the throes of transformation. And nonetheless he would have insisted they do it the next time he needed lookouts, the little shit. A la guerre comme a la guerre.

But this is the post-war.

He took the glass and raised it. "Cheers," he said, and downed it in one gulp. He smirked at me, in about the last second when his face was his, and then it began. His features blurred and melted and rearranged, and he curled in on himself clutching his belly. I winced sympathetically; I remember the feeling of my bones and my guts rearranging themselves when I turned into Bellatrix for our jaunt to Gringotts. Oh yes, Bellatrix. His aunt. But we won't think about that, because Bellatrix Lestrange is the last person I want to think about when I'm about to…

He straightened up again, except he wasn't he. There was Tonks, in black robes a little long for her, with her hair flaring turquoise and ultramarine and gas blue, like a candle flame in the wrong part of the spectrum. "That didn't hurt as much as advertised," she said. And her voice was absolutely right, but the intonation was wrong.

She smiled at me. No, she smirked. On her face, it came out as mischief. Her eyes sparkled. "So what do you want to do with me now that you have me?" she said. "Whoever it is that I am."

Oh no no no. It looked like Tonks, and sounded like Tonks, but the vocal inflection, and the thought, were pure Draco Malfoy.

How unspeakably creepy. I was facing Tonks possessed by Draco.

I realized in that split-second just how much of my crush was about the personality, how much of it was love and longing for someone I'd never see again, and mourning for lost chances. You know, the stuff of poetry and those songs on the radio my mum used to sing along with. My mum the dentist, the crisp rationalist whose solid good sense she congratulated me on having inherited.

I reached over and put a finger on his lips. Her lips. Because the dead don't talk.

She smiled and nodded.

Girls just wanna have fun…

She opened her arms to me and smiled and this time it wasn't a smirk but a real smile, that lit up her heart-shaped face and twinkled in the little dimple that nestled about a half-inch from the left corner of her mouth. I hesitated. She cocked her head to one side, still smiling, and lifted a single eyebrow. A purple one, as it happens. The other one was deep blue. Took a step forward, and tripped over the robes. Sweet Nimue, it was her. With mismatched eyebrows, yet.

I stepped forward to catch her, and she pitched into my arms.

She kissed me first. Well, I had told Draco what I had in mind—well, some of it, by innuendo and parallel structure; I'd told him I wanted an arrangement like the one he wanted.

Apparently Draco is very good at parallel structure.

And I can't compare because I never kissed Tonks in life, but it was sweet and a little clumsy and very wet, and thus far in character. As long as he didn't open his mouth to talk, he was doing fine.

And then she kissed me in earnest.

It was the most sumptuous kiss I've ever had, all peaches and nectarines; it was velvet couches and silk sheets and the most delicious chocolate torte you've ever eaten that leaves you sticky all over your face and you don't care. I was the one who carried it into the countryside, so to speak, kissing all the way across her cheek and licking that little dimple that I didn't realize had unbearably enticed me in life…

I kissed and licked and hummed to myself all the way down her neck to her clavicle and then inside the collar of her robes and yes, down her sternum, because the black robes were giving way before me, her fingers undoing them nimbly just ahead of me, and then to either side to the slight rise of her breasts.

And then there was a delighted giggle. Pure Tonks.

"Ooh, I had no idea breasts were so much fun!"

The inflection was utterly Tonks but the thought had to belong to Draco. After all, having breasts had to be old news to Tonks by age twenty-something.

I kissed her on the mouth. It was a deep kiss, and very satisfying, and when I opened my eyes…

I almost screamed. Who was looking back at me was a young Bellatrix Lestrange: jet-black hair, hooded eyes, aristocratic features whose hauteur was written in bone rather than muscle.

I gulped to suppress the up-rush of bile… no, I was not kissing Bellaix. She was dead. And this face wasn't her, anyway…

I closed my eyes and rested, trying to be neutral, but of course you can't be neutral if there are only two of you. And she—he—it—kept kissing me, and I was shaking all over, and no doubt he thought it was arousal.

And then I opened my eyes again; and there was me—I mean a face that looked a great deal like me, except plainly it wasn't. Some things were softened, others more pronounced… it was my face, actually, as seen through a seriously glamorized soft-focus lens.

It was me, with a little touch of Bellatrix.

The thought hit with a wave of nausea and fear. Whatever the arcana of Pureblood sexual etiquette, it probably doesn't include vomiting on your partner.

But the voice, when relaxed, was Tonks…

She was—had been—a Metamorphmagus, but this was not her. It was a husk, with some of her reflexes. What I saw—was what he was thinking, what he was imprinting on.

Teddy has begun to do that, Dean told me; sometimes he has black hair like Harry, and green eyes, sometimes Ginny's hazel eyes and red hair… but he doesn't need a wand. He's a baby, and he does this magic: shape-shifting, which is purely and plainly embodied, wandless magic.

Tonks didn't need a wand … briefly I wondered, if I were to place my wand in his hand, her hand, just now, if he'd be able to do anything with it. He had the borrowed magic of her body, but he hadn't any control, of course, which is why the hair wouldn't stabilize, why the eyebrows were mismatched, why the face—her face—wouldn't settle.

It occurred to me … that Tonks was a magical creature. Metamorphmagi are rare, and if I'm right, not quite human. Certainly, in the Muggle world, shape-shifters are sinister in nearly every story I've ever heard. I didn't want to conjecture about why the face shifted to Bellatrix … and I didn't want to tell him to stop thinking about her, because he clearly had no idea I could see it.

Of course, he couldn't see it. I had been very careful to remove all the mirrors.

And I'd gone to such trouble for this assignation, and risked so much, both on my side and on his …

I closed my eyes, and let those soft kisses caress my face, let my hands wander over her shoulders and breasts, and felt that wild magic subside a little, as she sighed and put her arms around me. I remembered how much I loved her changeable face and her elfin sense of humor, how much I'd wished I could be like her—well, like was as much as could be managed, and the likeness of the body wasn't enough, for I'd had that—briefly inhabited her body—and it had left me hungry, because she wasn't there. Nonetheless, the warmth of her, nestling against me, softness and springy muscle where her cousin (the vessel for her resurrection) was bony or sinewy, soothed me.

Cautiously I let my eyes open a little: Bellatrix was gone, except for the characteristic Black chin and cheekbones, and the structure of the eye sockets and the bridge of the nose: the facial features that Tonks shared with her mother, her aunt Narcissa, her cousin Draco. This time, the face was heart-shaped, the impish expression paradoxically making it nearly unbearably sweet …

I wanted more than anything else to talk to her, but of course the mind behind that longed-for face wasn't hers, and so I would have to content myself with making love to the simulacrum.

She already had her hands inside my robes, and she was whispering in my ear that I was wearing far too much, as her hands pulled my shirttails out of my jeans. I followed that thought with my lips, across her chest to the soft part where I could no longer feel ribcage, and my hands slid up her waist, crumpling the fabric of her robes under my spread fingers and I lifted each one and kissed my way around each in turn, circling the aureola in an erotic spiral like a dying orbit …

… and I'd had no idea I had so many ideas about what to do, knowing nothing about this except from my parents' broadminded library, which rather tended to the clinical, and yes, a few spicy novels I'd heard recommended but really I never was a novel reader, not for years now—not since my Hogwarts letter at what, age eleven?—not when my summers were spent in cramming for the next round of defending against the Dark Arts—and my schoolmates—oh, yes, one of whom I was doing just now under the guise of my lost love, no we are not going to think about that right now.

Anyway, it was a good thing I was precocious in reading naughty literature when I had the chance circa age eleven to twelve, because this was the first I've had the chance to do the practicum and at least I had some theoretical preparation. Snogging Ginny didn't count, and what I'd done with her brother… well, suffice it to say that the Weasleys take the initiative, and all they say of passionate gingers is true, at least for those two.

… and now she was bumping against my leg, yes, opening her thighs against mine, something wet and searing against me and she was thrusting and I …

... I thought that was going to be the difficult part, I mean it sounded rather icky in the descriptions, but no, going south seemed just the thing to do at this season; spicy and aromatic trade winds wafted me on my way and I don't know exactly how it arranged itself but it did and I had a firm hold on the architecture of her hips and she was strong, solid and flexible.

As I kissed my way south from her navel to the blessed isles, I realized that this was not the body of a woman who had given birth. This was in fact the very Tonks I had fallen in love with, yes yes yes. The very one. My lost love. Quite unexpectedly I started to cry as I reached the gateway to that possible-impossible world where she waited as my lover. My lost, my impossible, my adored, my missed chance, the mischance that as a stupid fifteen-year-old I hadn't had the gall, the guts, the gumption to make a pass at her, that I hadn't tried to snag that comet on her near approach before she swung out of my ken toward the distant stars…

I felt it first under my tongue and then like an earthquake moving out from epicenter it rocked into the hips and her thighs shuddered against my face and then I stupidly slid back into conscious mind just in time to realize that my calculation of our common center of mass was already wrong and we—by then a couple or at least a coupled system—tottered, tip-tilted in a tangle of limbs, and I fell forward, she backward, with a rather undignified crash, cushioned only somewhat by the half-discarded robes. Erotic slapstick. I landed on top of her, and distinctly heard the thud of skull against floor. Her skull. The back of the skull, whose name I forget, inside of which lives the cerebellum, which controls the autonomic nervous system. That's how you can kill someone with a blow to the back of the head.

They call it the little death but let's not take this too literally.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

"Bloody fucking fuck."

My feelings precisely. And that choice of words is Tonks to the life.

"Sorry," I said.

She sat up with a disgruntled expression, rubbing the back of her head. The occiput, yes, that's the word I was forgetting. "I had no idea you were such a strenuous lover," she said.

"I'm sorry," I repeated. "Other than that, was it… all right?"

She sat the rest of the way up and grinned. "Utterly fantastic," she said. "Only next time let's improve on the dismount."

She stood up.

Then she stood me up, lifted me to my feet, placed me, with my shoulders against the wall, positioned me, hips against the wall, legs apart. "Stability, Granger, stability. Three points of support." I went cold, flinched: meat on a slab. Tonks never called me Granger.

She knelt in front of me, hands on my thighs, looked up. "What's wrong?"

"You called me the wrong name."

A momentary flash of puzzlement and then the realization. "Oh," and it was unexpectedly sad. Very tentatively: "Hermione."

I nodded.

She rubbed her cheek against my thigh. Velvet, with a tickle of eyelashes. "Hermione." Tried out the syllables of my name like a song. Delicious contralto, hot breath against skin already too sensitive, feathered fingertips up my legs, under my open robes. I quivered where I stood as the tension from standing vied with the tension set up by that touch. Masterful. I already knew how this would end, and couldn't wait. Open hands, palms soft as satin, tickling touch like piano arpeggios on the inner thigh. I followed it, involuntarily, with my hips. "Oh, not yet, not yet… Hermione. You're impatient," she crooned. Teased me.

After a few verses of that song, the first touch of her tongue was awkward, as if she'd expected to find something else.

As if she'd expected…

But that thought was very dim, a tiny fish in the cold deeps. The surface waters were deliciously sunlit, aquamarine and coral. I let the unwanted thought swim around down there in the blue-black, and tried to ignore it, as I felt the soft sleek heat change its mind and shape itself to actual conditions, wind and writhe and wriggle cunningly into what it found, warm-blooded and heat-seeking. Felt it tease and tickle and tweak; felt tongue, tongue and lips, tongue and lips and teeth.

I let the crescendo of incoming waves build, rocking, drawing out to sea then moving toward shore, rocking, each time higher, each time closer, hotter, less conscious, legs tensed but ever nearer liquefaction. When finally it shivered up from the arches of my feet and they wanted to lift from the floor, I was pinned firmly in place, writhing with my back against the wall and my lover's open hands on my hipbones, as I rocked and flexed and opened in helpless delight.

"T… ahhhh," I said, catching myself before I shaped the name.

Released, I slid down the wall, bare back and bum against cool plaster, robes riding up behind me, legs spreading to either side of her. My hands in her hair, grasping handfuls of it. Pulling her head to me, kissing her, tasting myself. What had sounded disgusting to the eleven-year-old who first read about it, but felt delicious in present tense.

Finally she disengaged her mouth from mine, and said, "Ah … could we not sit on the floor? It's chilly."

I had forgotten entirely that there was a bed in the room.

The bed in which I'd slept as a child… We stood, and then I embraced her and softly drew her down on that bed, arranged the robes under her, my arms around her, my head on her breast, my lips on her bare shoulder. I curled against her as if she were my mother. Her arms closed warm about me, and I settled into bliss. "I love you," I murmured, entirely forgetting myself.

I must have fallen asleep, because next thing I heard my name through fog in an unfamiliar voice. "Hermione." I tried to burrow back into the warm place where everything was fine, and it repeated. "Hermione!" It wasn't my mother; it wasn't time to get up for school, though there was something of her impatience in it.

I murmured and settled myself again, belly and breasts to the warmth under me, tried to pull the covers over me and find a comfortable spot.

"Granger!"

Everything clicked and the reflexes went into high alert like an air raid siren: That's Malfoy. Where is my wand?

In one motion, I threw off the covers, dived for my wand—shockingly, found it—and rolled to my feet. I came to full consciousness in dueling stance, wand out. Naked. And yes it was Malfoy, but he was sitting up in bed, naked as well, his long legs tangled in what looked like two sets of robes and staring up at me with an absolutely gobsmacked expression.

"Oh." I lowered my wand. "Sorry."

He raised one eyebrow and commenced to untangle his legs from the folds of drapery, and then to separate the two garments one from the other.

He tossed me my robes. "Put on some clothes. You scare me like that."

I put them on, noticed they were inside-out, took them off again to reverse them, and rummaged about on the bureau for the rest of my clothes. "Keep going with compliments like that, Malfoy, and you can forget another date."

"I mean that you look like some kind of allegorical figure of Righteous Vengeance and you had your wand pointed at my heart, and if you don't mind, you've already cracked my head on the floor so you don't need to compound the offense with the Killing Curse."

He stretched his arms out and then leaned to one side to stretch his neck. "And you sleep like the dead after good sex." I winced at his choice of words. He smirked. "So who is she?"

I stared at him. "That wasn't part of the bargain."

He didn't answer me, but got to his feet and walked over to the chair where he'd hung his clothes. Rather against my will, I noticed that he and Tonks both had long legs for their height, though her thighs were rather sturdier and her hips more dramatically flared—not entirely all the difference of sex, but something she must have inherited from her plump and sturdy father rather than the slim and willowy House of Black.

Of course his hips were narrower, and, yes, they both had that unexpectedly pert rump—no, I had not spent much time previously considering the rear view of my late annoyance (it had been more his back I'd been gratified to see, in the act of absenting itself).

He shrugged on the white tunic, over his head, and I watched in fascination as the fine fabric settled itself, shimmering, over his thighs. Then the next layer, dark green: from an esthetic point of view, it was entirely right that he had been Sorted into Slytherin House, for no other color made his pale skin glow like that, or nearly any, shade of green.

He turned to me and smirked. "I'll figure it out, Granger," he said. He counted the points off on his outstretched fingers. "She's a Quidditch player, or she was. Seeker, I think." He smirked at me again. "Brilliant reflexes but clumsy. On the ground at least. I bet she's incredible in the air." Licked his lips and leered at me. "She knew what she was doing, too. I hardly had to think at all. Just let her reflexes take over."

His robes flared around him as he paced, doing up the fastenings. As he donned the last layer, the black school robes with the insignia of Slytherin, I spotted some turquoise hairs on the shoulders and discreetly Vanished them. No clues, no mirrors. It was none of his business who she was.

He laughed. "You really do collect them, don't you? I bet she plays for the Harpies—reserve Seeker, maybe? Who do I impersonate next, Gwenog Jones?" He stopped, as if considering the idea. "Though that could be fun, if your mystery girl is any indication."

"Malfoy, you have a dirty mind."

"Pot, kettle, Granger. Whose idea was this?"

"Which reminds me, Malfoy, we have a little rendezvous for tomorrow that I've gone to some trouble for, and you haven't given me a name." He stopped, smirk gone. "Who do you want? Or at least whose hair would be acceptable?"

He looked at me, licking his lips, but this time it was more nervous than lascivious.

"Come up with a name, or either we cancel or I pull something random from the files."

"The files?"

Brazen it out, I decided. Lie a little, even. Push the procrastinating little git to the wall so he'll either cough up a name or cancel, because I do not have time for this charade.

I continued, blithely improvising: "Well, you've got your choice of Weasleys—I think Charlie's rather fanciable, myself, and Percy's not bad either but it won't be the same without the glasses. Though as I said, I don't guarantee who you'll get if I just do a random draw. You could end up with Ron."

He looked at me in horror.

The nasty piece of me chortled quietly to itself at the unedifying image of Draco receiving his initiation at the hands of a simulacrum of Ron. Nobody would be happy with that one. Not Draco, not Ron, and definitely not me. A shame it was pure bluff.

Then the sick thought flashed across my mind like a comet of ill omen and necessarily remained unspoken: Or I could resurrect your darling Aunt Bella; I think I did end up with some extra hairs. Followed by one even sicker: and I might have something of your father's in there too. Also not true, but could you imagine the look on his face?

Shut up, I said to whatever was conjuring this nauseating slide-show. I don't need this right now.

And my guess is only about half of the rumors about Malfoy family life are actually true. Maybe not even a quarter. They're probably charming people with a happy marriage and afternoon tea every day at four o'clock. Well, charming except for their little racial supremacy and genocide habit. But among their own, lovely people.

"Longbottom," he said. "Neville. He's right here. That should be easy."

It felt like a blow to the solar plexus, and I nearly doubled over, though you knew this all along, said the sardonic voice in my head.

The words were out of my mouth before I could stop myself: "Malfoy, you thorough bastard." My own fault, of course; I'd known, but hadn't thought, hadn't wanted to think...

He looked at me, eyes wide and lip quivering, like a child threatened with loss of a treat. "You promised. Anyone I wanted."

Shape-shifter, like his cousin: only he changes age. I wanted to berate the manipulative eighteen-year-old, and here I was faced with a nine-year-old on the verge of tears.

He said, "And I fulfilled my part of the bargain, didn't I? Didn't I give you what you wanted?" and then, almost plaintively, "You liked it, didn't you?"

I nodded, though in the faded after-glow the face of Bellatrix flickered unbidden through memory with the chill of the grave—the grave I vowed then I would no longer violate. On the spot, before my resolution could falter, I took out that envelope, my precious cache of last traces of her niece and victim, and Vanished the lot.

The grave's a fine and private place / But none, I think, do there embrace.

As well it should be, that voice in my head added.

Then I startled as Draco Malfoy pulled me into an unexpectedly crushing hug and kissed me with something that felt very much like gratitude.

Author's note: "The grave's a fine and private place" (Marvell, "To his coy mistress").