The time had come for Cassie's father to bring her home. Out of respect for his in-laws and Ann's distaste for apparation, Draco arrived in their back garden, walked to the front like a typical visitor, and knocked on the door just after tea. As usual, the Grangers had not been told about the magical mishap with Hermione's memory. If Dr. Huang's procedure failed and they could think of nothing else to try to fix her, Draco would tell them then. For now, he had come alone, posing as someone not in crisis, to meet his own daughter. The most difficult part was to not glare murderously at James Potter as he went about it. Apologies and thanks were made to Ann and Tim before Draco, forgetting about his mother-in-law's equal distaste for disapparation, took each of the young people by the wrist and returned to the flat.

They arrived in the kitchen at home, where Paul couldn't help but laugh as Draco didn't quite manage not to fling James Potter's wrist back at him as he let go.

Hermione rose to her feet, her arms outstretched. "Cassie, darling, what are you thinking, leaving school early? Why couldn't you come with Paul?"

Cassie stepped into her mother's embrace. Everything came out in a great rush. "I wanted you to see me living without magic. It's fine. You see? You need to use me, Mum. Don't use Dad. I'm the donor to fix your memory. I don't have much magic, hardly any, and what I do have is rubbish. I get stuck outside doors. I can hardly levitate a sheet of parchment. It's all useless. I don't even want it. Take it away, Mum. Use up all of mine and be better again."

Hermione settled her face into Cassie's hair. "My lovely girl. Draco, it's as we thought - as we feared. And of course, the answer is no. We will not use you, darling."

Draco laid a hand on Cassie's back as she hid her face in her mother's shoulder. "Castora, when this began, I told your mother there were only two things in this world I would not give to make her well: one was Pollux and the other was you."

She didn't let go of Hermione as she told him, "You won't give me up, Daddy. You'll just let me stop. I'm not magic, not really. It's exhausting to pretend. I hate it."

"Cassie, we've seen your magic - your sparks, the way you can make yourself unseen even when everyone's looking at you, your natural legilimency - "

"I'm not a legilimens, Daddy," she said, intentionally interrupting her father for the first time in her life. "I'm sorry. Without magic, I have to pay close attention to people - how they look and feel, imagining what they're thinking - and so I do. That's all. It's nothing."

"It is something," Hermione said. "Magic development takes its own pace. Don't fret about what everyone else in your year can do. Remember Professor Longbottom's story? He's not exaggerating. I was in all his classes. He was awfully unskilled, right up until he was everything we needed."

Cassie was sniffing, fighting not to cry. "I've spoken with Professor Longbottom. I haven't asked him yet, but I think I can help him make something good from all of this. We can change Hogwarts to keep magical families together no matter how people's abilities are different. We can make a place there for me and all the other kids who turn out to be squibs."

The entire room cringed at the word. When she wasn't around, Paul had used it to describe Cassie himself. Hearing her say it now made him want to punch himself in the face.

"Cassie," Draco was first to say, "you are not a squib."

"Who cares if I am?" she challenged. "What we call it won't change me. But I can change something. I have Professor Longbottom to help me and - " she looked across the room, at the boy standing quietly, uncomfortably, averting his eyes from the Malfoy family like they were a star approaching supernova. She went on. "Everyone who saw the newspaper today saw how James Potter looks at me. What would they say if they knew that he knows better than anyone how bad my magic is, and even so, he can still see me - the way he does? People will understand that look. They'll remember it. And it might help them to accept their own squibs and be happy."

She turned her attention back to her mother. "But all of that can wait. Right now, all I really want is to fix Mum."

Hermione took Cassie by the chin, looking into her eyes. "Listen to me, Castora. The procedure has changed since we last talked. That's what your father and I were bringing you back to tell you this weekend. Right now, Dr. Huang is at the institute setting up a big charmed crystal box. It's a magical apparatus for collecting and concentrating our energies. We've contacted friends and family who can conjure patronuses and we're going to capture and use their energy as a donor instead of any one wizard or witch themself. It's never been tried before. It might fail. And if it does - we might have to try something else."

She paused to kiss Cassie's forehead. "At this moment, I am not looking for a donor. Your father is safe. We do not accept your sacrifice. But you are the most beautiful, brave girl I know. And after this is over, no matter how it ends, we will meet with Professor Longbottom and whomever else we need to talk to about the changes you'd like to see at Hogwarts. They are wise and humane and I adore you all the more for them."

Cassie crushed her mother in a hug. They were about the same size now, but Cassie squeezed her with all the abandon of a little child.

Dr. Huang's crystal magical energy containment box took up most of the open floor space in the Malfoy Memory Institute. Its walls were thick and clear, unfaceted, reaching almost to the ceiling. It was closed on all sides but one, where patronuses would be delivered, left to reverberate off the other five walls long enough to transfer their energy outside the box. Next to it was a large chair, something like the ones Muggles use to extract blood for donors. One of its arms was long and stiff, and to it, Hermione's wand arm would be connected. The process would be demanding for her, requiring her to use her wand to maintain an unbroken magical link to the box until all of the patronuses had been spent and her brain waves had returned to being like those of a healthy witch.

Since they were young, and had grown up during peacetime, never having to produce a patronus, Paul and Cassie were assigned to remain at their mother's side, sustaining her and keeping her lucid and focused during the process. The adults gathered at the institute would conjure and contribute patronuses, one after the other, for Hermione to draw strength from. It was impossible to calibrate the procedure. Hermione sat in the chair with Dr. Huang's electrodes and his Muggle-inspired encephalogram machine connected to her head, but this was to measure and monitor effects, not to control them. There was no way to know how much magical energy would be needed to raise the peaks of Hermione's brain waves, and so Dr. Huang's strategy was simply to generate all he could.

The crowd assembled at the open end of the crystal box had already gone through their reunions and thanks. It was time to begin.

Dr. Huang raised his wand. "准备！"

Hermione took Paul's hand, and with her other hand, she cast a thin, burning link of magic from her wand to the box. The first patronus cast was Dr. Huang's rooster. It went thrashing into the box, ricocheting angrily between the walls, the force of it sent a jolt through Hermione's arm, and the needle on the readout of the encephalogram machine spiked.

Griselda saw it first. "Yes!"

Dr. Huang nodded. "继续!"

Harry Potter cast his next, a stag, huge compared to the rooster, almost too blinding to look at. Ginny's horse followed it. Then Seamus, who'd come all the way to London just to help, added his fox. Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy conjured in their peacock and peahen pair. George Weasley sent in one half of a magpie pair. Angelina provided the other half. Luna Lovegood sent a rabbit hopping into the mix, followed closely by Gregory Goyle's toad, a favourite trick for his daughter.

Griselda didn't see it this time. She was bent over the readout. Dr. Huang had traced a line on the paper, showing the level it would need to reach before they could expect a change in Hermione's memory. It was nearly high enough, and there was just one more patronus to add.

The magic crackled and roared, like an electrical storm caught inside the crystal box. Hermione fought to stay connected to it as the energy rocked through her wand. Paul steadied her arm. "Come on, Mum. Hold on. There's more."

Draco stepped forward. Over the flashes of white light, the noise, he looked to his family, clustered around Hermione's chair. If he cast his patronus and it wasn't enough, there was one more thing he would try. Without any further negotiation, he would step into the box himself. He was sure he'd survive it - nearly sure - and whatever magic the procedure lacked, it could draw directly from him, come what may. His eyes still fixed on his family, he called the incantation and loosed his ferret into the box.

Paul held his mother's arm and Griselda bent over the machine. The peaks had spiked higher, but it wasn't quite enough. They didn't know what to say, but when they looked up from the readout, back at the adults streaming patronuses from their wands, it was clear that this had come very close, but failed.

Draco took a step, and all at once, everyone knew what would happen next. With his freehand, Harry grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt, holding him back. It was a reflexive, protective gesture, and as the force of Draco's resistance grew, he would let him go. For now, he called, "Draco, wait. Let it work."

Griselda watched the needles on the machine, tears forming in her eyes. Come on, Madam Malfoy...

Paul couldn't look away from his mother, his heart sinking. "Castora," he said. "Cassie, don't…"

What Paul could tell without seeing was that Castora was sprinting past her father. She had almost tumbled into the box herself when James caught her around the waist, keeping her back, pressing his forehead against her temple to plead into her ear, "Please, love, not yet."

James Potter had been trained in patronus charms. Of course he had. His, however, was not an ordinary one. The first time he had produced it, his father had sunk to his knees, weeping. It was a phoenix. His father promised him it portended something momentous in his future, and asked him not to cast it where anyone could see unless a life was on the line. This event was a tragedy for the Malfoys but none of them was facing death. James kept his promise to his father, and slid Castora Malfoy's nearly weightless wand from his sleeve.

"I can do it with you, Cassie," he said. "You and me together, let's add the last one."

She choked out a sob. Draco stopped struggling against Harry's hold. Paul looked away from his mother.

James kissed Cassie's face. He pressed the wand into her palm, covering her hand with his own, pointing it toward the opening of the box. "You have to say it with me, Cassie," he said. "On the count of three…"

There was a shower of loose, chaotic sparks spilling into a vortex and becoming a beam of white light. Just when it looked like it might dissipate into darkness again, out of the light flew two tiny wrens, diving into the heart of the crystal crucible.

It was enough.

Gris cheered as she read the instrument and Hermione, exhausted, dropped her wand to the floor. Paul gathered her up, looking into her eyes. With barely enough strength left to move, she touched his face with both of her hands. "Baby," she said. "When you were first born, your eyes were grey, like your father's."

And with that, she fell to sleep.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry launched its inaugural "S" Class for non-magical children of magical families at the beginning of Castora Malfoy's final year. The class was small and not without stigma, but under Headmaster Longbottom's leadership and through a public campaign headed by the Malfoy and Potter families, it had come into being after years of prejudice and ostracization toward people historically known as squibs.

At Cassie's graduation ceremony, as she crossed the stage to shake the headmaster's hand, and accept the first ever Arabella Figg Memorial Scholarship, the entire S Class rose to their feet, cheering. Her parents were in the audience, Hermione cradling her tiny grandson, the newest little master of Malfoy Manor, Lucius Granger Huang Malfoy. His mother, Griselda, was fighting to stay awake through the ceremonies after a long night with Baby Luc. Paul rubbed her neck and shoulders with one hand, his fingers roving underneath her hair, to where she kept it shorn close to her head at its innermost layer.

"He didn't make it?" Hermione asked as they greeted Cassie after the ceremony.

She just shrugged - the ideal partner for an Auror, the kind who could let them go. But Draco had a hand on Hermione's arm, nodding over her shoulder, steering her away. Cassie looked to where her father had been nodding in time to see James as he scooped her up, arms around her thighs, lifting her over everyone else in the crowd.

"Potter!"

He turned her around in a circle and let her slide through his arms, back to standing on her feet but pressed close to him. Through her graduation robes, his frame felt lean and hard, like he'd been suffering through his training. He was grinning anyway. "It's been months," he said. "Are you still mine?"

"For the love of Boggarts," she dismissed his question, kissing him on each cheek before finishing on his mouth.

He hummed. "Love those sparks. Finest magic ever."

"Come see the baby," she said.

"Can he do anything yet?"

"Nothing at all. That's the beauty of him."

Gris was nodding and yawning enough that Hermione insisted they return to the Manor where she and Paul lived so she could sleep while the rest of them fawned over the baby. But as luck would have it, the baby went to sleep with his mother for once, and the Malfoys, true to their natures, as magical creatures or otherwise, dissolved into pairs, isolated throughout the vastness of the haunted manor. Lucius Senior and Narcissa settled into the armchair in the library, Paul and Griselda were asleep in their room, James and Cassie, who hadn't seen each other in weeks - well, you can imagine - , and finally, Draco and Hermione found themselves laid out on the bare wood floor beneath the chandelier in the drawing room.

"Brilliant idea, darling," Draco said. "Nice hard surface: great for the spine."

She laughed at him. "Sorry. Bear with me. After all this time, after I forgot all about it once, I wanted you to show me how you did it."

"What?"

"The chandelier trick, from that day you couldn't let them kill me, during the war. How did you bring it down as if it was an accident, so we could get away?"

He sighed. "I just wanted it. I wanted you safe so badly, it was like I couldn't stop it. The house gives me what I want. That's what it wants."

"Show me."

"I have to want it."

She rolled toward him, breathing against his throat, opening her mouth to kiss his neck. "Please, Malfoy. Save me. Let me live long enough to fall in love with you." She worked her lips down his neck. "And then long enough to fall in love with you again." She kissed back up his neck, along his jawline, to his mouth. "Please…"

Above them, the plaster began to crack.