On Wednesday, Hermione did a very Hermione-like thing and skipped lunch entirely so she could spend some time in the library before Potions. Her efforts were rewarded when she discovered an unassuming-looking book entitled Poisons, Antidotes, and You.

Despite the nonsensical title, the book contained exactly what she had been trying to articulate to Theo in the library the previous Sunday: it was theoretically possible to break down serums in the same manner as it was for antidotes, by applying Golpalott's Third Law.

I still need some Veritaserum, she lamented. I should ask Draco if he knows how to get any, next chance I get. If not him, maybe Harry. In the mean time, I can start trying to disassemble the truth-compelling powder. Once I get it broken into its most basic parts and do the same to some Veritaserum, I can theoretically figure out what would act as an antidote for both…

The first warning bell for afternoon classes sounded, taking her by surprise. Not having realized she had been so long in the library, she shut the book with a snap and hastened toward Madam Pince's desk to check out Poisons, Antidotes, and You, feeling rather silly doing so.

What she was planning to pull off had never been done before – that she knew. If she were successful, she would not only be a step closer to finding an answer to the conundrum of her's and Draco's lives... she could accept a place in potioneering history. Even if she only found an antidote to Veritaserum (nevermind taking the theory behind it further to answer the puzzlement that was their mandala-gone-awry), she would be discovering something that the wizarding world had never been able to create before…

"One foot in front of the other, Hermione," she murmured to herself on her way to the dungeons.

.

.

Potions seemed to pass in great globs of time, despite being a double-block. Hermione was distracted enough that she nearly did not notice when Harry added the porcupine quills to their Disillusionment Draught far too early. Luckily she caught the faux pas before any real disaster occurred.

"Bollocks," Harry cursed under his breath, looking relieved she had stepped in. "I think this is one I need to know for Auror training, too. I'll never make it through if I can't even do this."

"Relax, Harry," she soothed, dropping a sprig of lavender into the cauldron. "That's why you're in school: to learn these things. In any case, the Auror program will most likely promote you based on past merit alone. You're the wizard that defeated Voldemort, after all."

"But I don't want to be promoted because of that," he muttered quietly.

Ron, meanwhile, had left the heat too high on his and Daphne's potion. It had bubbled over and melted a part of their work station in the brief time she had stepped away to rummage through the supply cupboard. Panic-stricken, he had tried to vanish the mess... but given the nature of the potion, this had only made it worse.

After class, Hermione cornered Professor Slughorn and grilled him with questions about serums until he was forced to invent an excuse for showing her out. Not to be deterred from her purpose, she navigated herself straight to the married suite and assembled a potions laboratory in miniature.

Having elongated the coffee table to act as a work space, she soon had a cauldron heating up atop an iron handle. Propping open Advanced Potion Making to the page dedicated to Golpalott's Third Law, she set to work.

"'The potion-maker must find that single ingredient which, when added to the blended antidotes, transforms them near-alchemically into a combined whole which will counteract the entire blended poison'," she read aloud from the book, her finger moving across the page beneath the words as she went along. "'Simply put, a true antidote to a blended poison is more than the sum of its parts.'"

There were more than a scant handful of what-ifs with regard to this experiment – but as with the initial mandala experiment she and Draco had conducted in the first place, she was now simply too curious not to try...

Once the dissolving agent was prepared, she set to work immediately, using only a miniscule amount of truth-compelling powder to break down; she could feel instinctively that she should not waste it all. The fumes from the steaming cauldron quickly turned her curls into an uncontrollable tumbleweed, but she paid it no mind.

Complicated concoction that it was, she was at it for over two hours, pulling ingredients from the cauldron as they floated to the top of her bubbling brew, and analyzing what the truth-compelling powder appeared to be made of. She was beginning to grow tired of being bent over the cauldron, and was sweaty from the steam building up in the chamber, when the dormitory admitted Draco.

Hermione's head snapped up, and she saw him come to a halt under the arch of the entryway. Immediately feeling self-conscious, she knew she must look a fright - after brewing for this long, her hair always tended toward looking abominable, so huge and curly it would dwarf the rest of her head. She shifted uncomfortably where she sat cross-legged on the carpet, her nose still in her book and cauldron boiling away. Over thirty dishes of raw ingredients were fanned out in a semi-circle around her on the floor; a few other books were scattered amongst the ingredients.

He cleared his throat and cocked his head to the side.

"Hello," she greeted. Her throat was somewhat scratchy, so it came out a bit croaky. She had to clear her throat, but it only made her more self-conscious.

Slowly, he approached, eyes on her until he was directly in front of her. Then, leaning over her well-worn copy of Advanced Potion Making, he glanced down at the page she had turned to, and questioned, "Golpalott's Third Law?"

"Er, yes."

He pressed a swift kiss to her forehead. "You have something on your cheek…"

Raising her hand up, she wiped at her face and her thumb came away with a smear of something orange and pasty she had pulled from the cauldron over an hour ago, and had not yet identified.

"Well, that's embarrassing…" she muttered, wiping her thumb on a small towel beside her.

"A drawback to advanced potioneering, actually," he allowed, eyes roving over her collection of ingredients all around, before coming to rest on her again. "Well, wife... you're up to something."

"That's the second time you've called me that," she pointed out wistfully.

"Called you what?"

"Wife."

He smirked widely, "Well, that's what you are. Now, care to share what it is you're working on?"

"I… well…"

"What's this?" he teased, circling around the outside of her ingredient collection, "has Mrs. Malfoy been up to something wicked?"

A shiver ran through Hermione that she was absolutely certain had nothing to do with the wind howling outside the windows. "How is it you make that sound so indecent?"

Seemed more pleased than ever, he came to a stop behind her and squatted down to press a second kiss behind her ear, "Because you wanted it to be."

She shivered again, her hands frozen over her work. "I don't think so."

"What sort of wicked things did you want to get up to, wife?" he whispered into her ear, pressing another kiss in front of her lobe. "Do tell me."

"Draco…" she murmured. Her hands became still, work forgotten.

"Mmm," he hummed, now kissing the side of her neck where her pulse throbbed, "that wasn't very specific."

She gasped as he nipped at the most tender spot on her neck, "I know."

"Well, then," he murmured, pulling away and resting his chin on her shoulder from behind. "Tell me what sort of work you're doing."

"Well…"

"And don't try to lie," he warned, nuzzling her neck. "I can smell your brain cooking something up. Save yourself the trouble and just tell me the truth."

Would that really be so bad? She licked her lips and judiciously began, "Perhaps I was a little bit wicked…"

Draco's shoulders went back slightly where he hovered behind her, his interest clearly piqued, "Oh?"

Picking up the stoppered vial of the ultra-fine truth-compelling powder in her hands, Hermione turned it over twice before holding it up for him to see, turning to look him in the eye, "Do you remember this?"

Eyes flashing with both surprise and intrigue, he said nothing at first.

After two beats of silence, she pressed, "Draco?"

Plucking the vial from her hands, he examined it in his palm. "You took this from Ravenclaw's study?"

Raising her chin defiantly, she answered, "Yes."

He stared at it a moment longer.

"I'm not sorry I did it."

Placing the vial back into her hands, he corrected, "You misunderstand my silence. I'm not interested in your remorse… I'm impressed." His eyes darted around the fanned-out semi-circle of ingredients separated into small dishes all around her, then to Advanced Potion Making propped open on a bookstand before her. "Am I to understand you're breaking this powder down as if it were a blended poison, and you are trying to find an antidote?"

"Yes."

His brows furrowed. "To what end? There's never been a successful antidote yet made to the truth serum. I know you're intelligent, but what makes you think a student can discover it with only a prototype version and a textbook?"

Hermione reached beside her and held up Poisons, Antidotes, and You. "This book believes most serums can be broken down in the same manner as poisons, using Golpalott's Third Law. I wanted to see if I could do it to the powder too… it seemed a better place to start, since many simple poisons come in powdered form, while the more complex or stronger ones tend to be liquid."

"But to what end?" Draco stood now, observing her mess from above, his eyes darting from ingredient to ingredient. The small glass dishes that surrounded her were filled with strange bits of things: some orange gloop was directly beside her, along with a blue-green liquid, several wet piles of powdered ingredients, and a single shriveled sphere that might have been whole nutmeg.

"I had a theory," she explained. Using a fine-mesh sifter to lift something that looked like ground peppercorns where it surfaced in the cauldron, she siphoned it into yet another glass dish. She stirred counter-clockwise as she elucidated, "If I can find an antidote of sorts that will counteract the effects of the truth-compelling powder, I've found a cure for it in a sense."

"But you'd need some Veritaserum to test it against as well," Draco pointed out, his eyes now on the cauldron, which began spitting out silvery sparks the moment she ceased stirring. "That way you could be sure you undisputedly had the answer."

"I know. I'd like to test that next."

Regarding her keenly, he posited, "How are you planning to obtain it in the first place? It's highly regulated by the Ministry. More than ever after the war."

"I was hoping you might be able to help me with that, actually. If I can successfully find an ingredient that acts as antidote for a powerful serum like Veritaserum and this rather potent truth-compelling powder, what's to say I can't break down our mandala chemically? After all, we used powder- and liquid-based materials to bind ourselves. If I can disassemble the ingredients we used in the same way and find an antidote of sorts to them, maybe we could find a way out through chemistry."

Draco was only staring at her, but she could practically hear his brain whirring away with what she had just dropped onto his shoulders.

"Think about it. It could be as easy as us drinking a decoction made of a few simple ingredients, and the effects of the Mercury and Sulfur that were in our mandala would be undone. Like flipping a light switch." It occurred to her after she said it, that it was distinctly possible Draco had never used a light switch before. Nevertheless, she pressed on, "We wouldn't have to undo the entire mandala, just this one part. It could make the whole thing null and void!"

"That's… there are so many things… that might not…" he uttered disjointedly. "It's just… it's brilliant… if it works…"

"If it works," she agreed practically. "I'm aware how much I am trying to stretch this. Do you remember the chapter McGonagall taught about the Comte de Saint-Germain's teachings?"

Draco mused a moment; if he was not mistaken, that particular lecture was the one in which Hermione had failed to show and he, himself, had dozed in class. "Which part?"

"I'm thinking particularly of his claims that alchemically, powders are like all other powders at their most basic state, and liquids are like liquids…"

"Ah, so you're counting on the fact that if this were true, the truth-compelling powder is not unlike the sulfur powder, and the mercury is not unlike Veritaserum. Interesting thought."

"Right." Hermione paused here to scoop another base ingredient from the top of her lightly simmering cauldron. Placing the damp silver strands that might have been unicorn tail hair into its own dish, she glanced into the cauldron once more. The process seemed now complete, as the steaming solution inside ceased emitting sparks and was now a murky brown. "So can you help me?"

"How?" he queried.

"Can you get me some Veritaserum?" she pressed. "Because if not, I will try asking Harry…"

"I'll see what I can do," he interrupted irritably. "No need to ask Potter."

She snickered at him. Some rivalries, it seemed, were forever.

"But," he stipulated, "if my friend is able to help us, meeting him could be a potential issue, as he does not go to Hogwarts and travels widely."

Hermione nodded sagely. "I can get us out of the castle if necessary."

"I thought you were highly against rule-breaking?" he japed.

"That's the thing about being best friends with Harry," she retorted. "Rules kind of go right out the window. I can get us out."

"I'll send my owl tonight," he promised.

Maybe you'll let me send a letter of my own when your owl comes back, she thought privately, thinking of her follow-up inquiry to the Upadhyaya sisters secretly tucked away in her alchemy things.

.

.

The new Head Boy and Girl called a prefect meeting for the very next evening, Thursday. Hermione arrived early and took a seat toward the middle of the room, pretending to be focused on her book despite that she automatically glanced up each time the door opened. Draco sauntered in a few minutes later and took a perfunctory look around the room. He hesitated when he spotted her.

Catching his eye, she smiled and gestured to the seat beside her with only her eyes and a half-smile. He took the hint and made his way over cautiously, as a cat does when they want to pretend their approach was all their own idea. As Draco had historically been a loner during these meetings – something the other prefects had been more than happy to allow – his choice of seating was immediately taken note of. Though Hermione could hear the whispers like hissing snakes, she roundly ignored them.

The Head Boy, Aidan Quinlan, was a very pimply sort of person with a mop of curly, blond hair, a large nose, and glasses. He mainly let the Head Girl run the meeting. Considered to be quite pretty by most of the male population at Hogwarts, Morag Francis had a petite figure, a flirty bob of nut-brown hair, and a winning smile.

"Our headmistress has tasked us with coming up with another event to help boost school morale," Morag announced. "After all the success of having the Halloween Dance, Aidan and I have decided to throw a Spring Fling and want you all to help us plan!"

This declaration was met with excited twitterings from most of the girls, but also a few groans from some of the boys. Simon Brocklehurst of the sixth year Hufflepuff prefects could be heard muttering, "When did 'prefect' become synonymous with 'party planner'?"

"It'll be fun!" the Head Girl chirped, determined to shut out the naysayers.

Hermione inwardly agreed with Simon. The moment the meeting was adjourned, she caught Draco's eye and nodded toward the exit; taking the hint, he rose and she followed him out. It was their evening for patrol.

Once sufficiently far enough away from the meeting place, Draco broke their silence with, "I have some good news for you."

"Oh?"

He reached into the pocket of his robes and pulled out a letter with an enormous seal of wax stretching across most of the front. It was broken, indicating it had already been read. He unfolded it now. "My friend got back to me."

"Already!" she cried with enthusiasm. "What does it say?"

"You are in luck."

"He has the Veritaserum?" she exclaimed. "Oh, Draco!"

Excited, she flung her arms around his neck. Catching her, he lifted her up and swung her around once, kissing her deeply. Chuckling, he set her down and Hermione thought she noticed his eyes were strangely shining with amusement. "Is this all it takes to win over fair lady?"

She laughed with abandon and stood up on her tiptoes to kiss him again.

Sobering somewhat, he explained, "He wants to meet us tomorrow night in Hogsmeade."

"Tomorrow!" she gasped.

"Yes. He's a busy man and will only be at his home in Paris for a few more days before business takes him back to the States."

"Your friend is American?" she queried, surprised.

"Yes, though my father initially met his family while they lived in France."

"Can you trust him?"

"He is one of the few people I would trust with affairs like this and expect that he will truly keep them a secret." Thinking a moment, he conceded, "Though perhaps I would not trust him with my life. He is a businessman after all."

Hermione frowned. "Well, luckily, we only need to trust him to get us the Veritaserum."

Draco hesitated, "There is the complication of meeting him in the village. If he had chosen Saturday, it would have been no issue, as it is already a Hogsmeade weekend for students. Unfortunately, he writes that he has several meetings on Saturday and can only spare Friday night…"

She waved this away in an imperious manner, "Leave that to me. I can get us out of the castle."

He raised a pale eyebrow at her in an expectant manner and she knew she was meant to further clarify herself.

"Well," she explained, "when you're best friends with Harry, you learn certain things about Hogwarts. There are secret passages that lead out of the castle…"

"The passage from the dungeons to the Quidditch Pitch will be out," he reminded her, "as there will be a game occurring tomorrow night… and if the secret passage you're thinking of happens to be the one that leads out of the Room of Hidden Things, I refuse to enter that room."

"It's not," she soothed, reaching up to brush a piece of platinum hair away that had fallen into his eyes. He bristled at her touch and she promised, "I would never ask you to go there."

Though he did relax somewhat, Draco continued to be visibly on edge. "Well, what then?"

"There are seven other passages out of the castle. Filch knows about three of them and the fourth is caved in. Our best bet is one Harry discovered in third year. There's a trapdoor on the other end that opens into the cellar of Honeydukes."

"That sounds like breaking and entering to me," he pointed out acerbically.

"The shop will be closed by that hour. In any case, we only need to reach the trapdoor so we know we are beyond the castle's anti-Apparition wards. We can Apparate from inside the tunnel."

After assuaging a few others of Draco's concerns, Hermione was pleased when he admitted it was a solid plan.

"Perfect. Tomorrow, when everyone is heading down to the game, meet me by the statue of the one-eyed witch on the third floor. We'll leave immediately if the coast is clear."

"You really want this Veritaserum plan to work, don't you?"

"Don't you?"

"It's a long shot, but if it works…" he trailed off.

"If it works," she agreed. And if it doesn't, I am working on another back up plan...

Clearing her throat, she broached the subject. "Actually, now that your owl is returned, I was wondering if you would let me use it to send a letter?"

He cocked an eyebrow at her, "One of the school owls does not suffice?"

"It's an international letter," she explained vaguely.

Draco studied her in a calculating manner. "Last term, McGonagall told me you had sent inquiries to various alchemists. Is this along those lines?"

She nodded.

"I'd be interested in the responses you got. Will you share them?"

"If you like," she acquiesced, glad she had set the sisters' letter apart from the rest. She wanted to be sure of this alternate course of action before she let Draco know of the details.

"Well, then, by all means…"

Once they completed their patrol, the duo headed to their private suite so Hermione could retrieve her letter, and thence to the Owlery in the West Tower.

The stone staircase was long and tightly circular, with tall steps that made sure their climb was not an easy one. As they approached the top landing, Draco placed a hand on the small of Hermione's back and bid, "Watch your step. It's usually icy here."

As the top landing was mostly exposed to the elements, there was indeed an icy sheen glistening in the moonlight over a vast expanse of it. Picking her way carefully over the parts that appeared less dangerous, Hermione stepped into the circular stone room of the Owlery at last.

It was rather cold and drafty inside, largely because none of the many windows had any glass in them, to allow the owls to come and go freely. The floor was entirely covered in straw, owl droppings, and the regurgitated skeletons of mice, voles, and other victims. As it was night, many of the messengers were out hunting; those that remained were making such a racket that it was difficult to hear anything over the din.

"Noctua!" Draco summoned.

With a great flapping of wings and a deep-throated hoot, a magnificent bird so large it looked as if it would happily have eaten Crookshanks for breakfast, descended onto the perch before them. It had mottled plumage, great black tufts top its head, and was clutching the top half of a weasel in its deadly looking talons. Hermione had seen this bird from afar, delivering mail to a young Malfoy at the Slytherin table, but she was unprepared for the hugeness of the eagle owl up close. For the first time, she noticed what the owl was missing: only one yellow-orange eye blinked down at her.

"What happened to his eye?" she wondered quietly, still somewhat in awe of the sheer power of the creature before her.

"Her eye," Draco correctly automatically. "Noctua is female. She lost it carrying one of my letters about a year and a half ago."

"How awful."

"I imagine, based on her appearance when she returned from that particular excursion, that you would feel less sorry for her if you had seen whatever attacked her." More than anything, he sounded proud of his bird. "She returned, letter intact, covered in blood… most of it not her own."

Noctua clicked her beak and stretched her left raptorial, as this was the foot that was not already occupied with her bloodied prey.

"I've got a job for you, girl," Draco told the bird. He held out his hand for Hermione's letter and for the first time, she wondered if this was not a bad idea. She tried to imagine Noctua returning anything to her, and found herself wondering if it were even safe for her to trust this bird; the feral look in that bright eye did not assuage that fear. All the same, she handed over the letter and Draco began attaching it to his messenger's leg. "I need you to take this letter to…"

He paused, glancing at Hermione for the destination.

"India," she supplied.

Looking scandalized at the destination – it was, after all, nearly a 5,000 mile journey – Draco only politely repeated, "Right, India. It's far, so finish up whatever you're eating before you go. You'll need your strength."

Noctua did not heed her master's suggestion, instead only ripping the head off the remainder of her supper and dropping the rest of the body onto the floor below. She swallowed it whole with little difficulty, then hopped over to one of the ledges for take-off. As she spread her wings for flight, Hermione thought her wingspan must easily have been around six foot, before she disappeared silently into the night.

"Draco? When Noctua returns… will you please let me open the letter first? If she brings it to you instead of me?"

Eyes narrowing, he baldly asked, "Why?"

"I promise I will share it with you, but some of it is… well," she struggled, "it's of a private nature."

"I see." After a moment, he inclined his head, "As you wish."

"Thank you." Feeling a certain lightness in her chest now that the letter had been sent and she now had only to wait, Hermione pushed up onto her tiptoes to kiss him.

"What was that for?"

"Thank you," she answered. "For everything."

She moved to turn away, but he held her in place, capturing her with another kiss, this time deeper. Feeling his tongue slide into her mouth, she welcomed him eagerly.

Several minutes later, when they finally broke apart, she joked, "Who knew a place covered in owl pellets could be romantic?"

He grimaced, "It isn't, let's go."

.

.

Author's Note: I'm sorry that this is somewhat of a transition chapter. I actually can't wait to post the next, because it was the most fun to write of all of them yet - but all this stuff had to happen first, and I'm assuming you all want a linear plot, right? Probably will help in the long run and all...

Thank you so much to everyone who left reviews. I have the best readers on FFN, and that's a fact. I did not use a beta on this chapter, so please excuse any mistakes.