"So," said Harry, as Leo Clifton led Hermione into the back room.
Draco practically jumped. He'd been watching Hermione smiling at Clifton, making polite conversation, the way her profile caught the bright lights of the studio.
Now he looked over at Potter, who was leaning on one of the displays of brushes and powders.
"So … what?" Draco said.
Potter raised his eyebrows. "So, you two have made up, have you?"
Draco looked away, cheeks warm, back at a poster of a giant alligator. "I suppose you noticed she was speaking to me in full sentences again. That Seeker's eye doesn't miss a thing, does it?"
"I noticed more than that," Potter muttered.
Draco stole a mortified glance back at Potter, who'd also gone rather red now. Why had he brought it up if it was just going to embarrass them both? For Merlin's sake.
Of course, Draco supposed, it would have been hard to miss the way he and Hermione had looked at breakfast. She'd come in to find him making breakfast before Harry had woken up. Fifteen minutes later, everything had been mysteriously burnt.
"I can't take anything you say seriously," Draco said, "when you look like that."
"Oh, like you look any better?" Potter said.
As one, they glanced into the mirror behind the counter and snorted. Draco wouldn't have recognised himself if he'd seen the face in a picture. In the end, Clifton had opted for a wig rather than dye to achieve the proper texture: a nest of black curls like a thunderstorm, which matched the facial hair that had been glued and gummed to the lower half of his face. Using cold, slimy putty and rubber fixtures, he'd given Draco a snub nose and full cheeks, then swabbed his eyebrows with black paint.
"You look like a sea captain," Potter chortled.
"You look like a Viking," said Draco. Potter's shiny bald head glinted in the studio lights, and the film that Clifton had applied to both their faces aged Potter to his late thirties at least, several prominent wrinkles in his brow, deep crow's feet in the corners of his eyes. Potter, too, had a beard; his was shaggy and dark blond, ending in a small braid.
Clifton had also, to Draco's horror, applied something to their eyeballs called 'contact lenses.' Draco would happily have gone his whole life without reliving the process, but he had to admit they were effective. Potter's eyes were now as dark as Snape's, and Draco's were a vivid blue.
"Let's get some lunch," Potter suggested, checking his watch. "He said it'd take an hour or two to get through her hair."
Draco agreed, and they went for curry in a nearby Indian shop that was ten degrees too warm. Draco asked occasional questions about the paintings on the wall, and the various machines the Muggles were using, which Potter answered without laughing. Mostly.
Muggle London felt a bit less overwhelming today, but maybe that was because Draco was so distracted. Every few seconds, mid-conversation, even mid-sentence, he'd think of Hermione and what they were doing, what they'd chosen to do. What he'd chosen. He thought of the way she tasted, like mild lip balm and something salty, and the way she'd looked at him that morning—like the sight of him made her happy, nervous, excited. It all washed over him again and again like an insistent tide.
His mind hadn't fixated this way since … well, since he'd had to think about the Vanishing Cabinet every waking second. But those thoughts had been all terror and stress. He hadn't known it was possible to be equally fixated on something that made him feel like this. He hadn't known it was possible to feel this way at all. It wasn't the smooth, smug satisfaction he'd felt in the days after he and Pansy had gotten together. When he thought about Hermione—when he thought of her melting into him in the dining room, the hesitance and then the heat, the way she'd angled him against the kitchen counter that morning—his heart seemed to stutter, and he felt disoriented, and then a delirious squeeze of disbelief followed, seeming to saturate everything around him with color.
He was preoccupied.
As it transpired, Clifton had underestimated the time required to tackle Hermione's hair. It was four hours before he emerged, grinning sheepishly, an unrecognizable girl at his shoulder.
The hair was the first, most obvious change; it lay over Hermione's shoulders as if Clifton had poured two bottles of Sleekeazy's into it. But the rest of her face was just as bewilderingly foreign. He'd built out her jawline, and heightened her cheekbones, and given her an aquiline nose and arched brows. With red paint on her lips, she looked exactly as haughty as she needed to.
"Well?" Clifton said. "What do you think of the leading lady?"
Hermione looked at Draco with laughing eyes, bright green now. He found himself smiling nervously, compulsively, the uneven smile he'd found on his own lips in the mirror last night as he'd washed his face. He'd tried to shake it away, to repress it, but it was something he couldn't control.
Potter let out a laugh. "It's brilliant, Leo."
"Take care of that wig, Stan," Clifton called after them as they left.
Soon it was half-four, and they had reached the peacock-blue door painted onto a brick wall that was the entrance to Circe & Clíodhna. Draco had heard a lot about the place, but had never actually been inside. He stepped directly through the wall, to the seeming unconcern of the passing Muggles, into the bar.
It was a long, dark, low-ceilinged lounge, its elegant walnut counter lined with brass trimmings. The only lamps were blue and indigo, giving the few people inside a ghostly cast. Glowing glass shelves hovered behind the bar, bearing liquor bottles of a hundred colors, and booths were tucked against the walls, divided by velvet curtains for privacy.
Hermione, who had entered before Draco and Harry, was already sitting at the end of the bar. Draco tried and failed not to look at her. She was toying with her hair interestedly, examining its new texture. The sultry blue light glossed the slope of the back of her neck, and his fingertips tingled with sense memory—the feeling of running his hand up into her hair. There was that disbelief again, making him feel as if he were hovering an inch or two off the black oak floor.
Potter ordered drinks, and they situated themselves in a booth in the back corner, which offered a good vantage of the rest of the bar. Half an hour later, a shaft of light widened across the room as the door opened, admitting five—ten—twenty people in Ministry uniforms, all laughing and chatting.
Draco saw him almost at once, blunt-jawed and half a head taller than the rest, with hair as flat-topped as a well-kept hedge. Marcus Flint, talking to a witch with dark red curls.
"There," he muttered across the table to Potter. "Now."
Potter stood, slid out of the booth, and made for the door, muttering apologies and excuse-mes as he slid through the crowd. As Potter passed Flint, Draco saw him grasp his wand in his sleeve and turn it subtly toward Flint, who hesitated on the spot, looking dazed. Draco grimaced into his gillywater and lime, hoping Potter hadn't overdone it. The Confundus was a delicate spell at the best of times, flexible enough to plant ideas or to wipe a mind temporarily blank. It was easy to overwork, and the last thing they needed was Flint's associates wondering why he'd suddenly started drooling onto the table.
After a moment, though, Flint's haze cleared. He slid into the booth with the other Ministry workers, but his eyes were now fixed at the end of the bar, on Hermione. Her hand was resting on the stem of a delicate glass filled with lavender liquid that occasionally spat violet sparks. Firewhisky and Madagascan Glassapple. The lure.
Not even ten minutes later, Flint approached her.
Draco tried not to watch it play out. He tried to act normal, to keep up with the small talk Potter was offering across the table. But his eyes kept straying. He could make out the low, breathy affect Hermione had given to her voice, and soon Flint was sitting next to her, unable to take his eyes off her.
Draco couldn't help noticing that Flint was more muscular than he was, and several inches taller. He noticed, too, that Hermione's body was inclined almost imperceptibly toward him.
Draco felt a hard, unexpected stab of jealousy.
He frowned down at his gillywater and lime, taken aback. He'd never been a jealous person before. Pansy had flirted with other boys all the time, especially Blaise, toying at making him jealous, but he'd always been so certain of her affection that it had wound up being like a joke between them.
But Hermione … she'd loathed him for six years. It struck Draco all over again how unlikely this was, even perilous. The last person she'd had feelings for had been Ron Weasley, for Merlin's sake—and the things that had once given Draco such confidence, his family and his status and his wealth, had dissolved. He was alone, adrift, supposedly dead. What did he have to offer anymore?
The jealousy gave way to worry, frustration, even embarrassment. Draco could half-see his unrecognizable face in the black glass table. He looked so ridiculous in his disguise, his forty-year-old sea captain disguise. He wanted to be himself. He wanted Hermione to be herself. He wanted to imagine them all the way out of the confines of what they were doing, out of their plots and risks and careful infiltration, into a world where he could walk up to Flint right now and say, I believe you're sitting in my seat.
He squeezed his lime wedge into the dregs of the gillywater, which hissed and spat and swirled like a miniature storm.
After what had probably been an hour, although it felt like a year to Draco, Hermione threw back her head and let out a cool laugh. His cue.
Draco stood with relief, approached the bar with their empties in hand, and after sliding them onto the walnut wood, let his wand slip into his grip. He let another Confundus hit Flint's broad back, then waited at the bar, listening.
"You know," said Flint, "the Ministry's holding an event next month. I think I'd like it if you came."
#
"I got some useful information out of him," Hermione called out from the bathroom. They were back at headquarters, and Draco was sitting with Potter in the cottage's front room, both their faces raw and tender from peeling off the false beards. They were stewing some Murtlap Essence in a small cauldron to apply to the irritation.
"Such as?" Draco called back.
"The restrictions on Diagon Alley have been lifted, for one thing. They think they've registered a critical mass of the population now."
"That's great news," Potter exclaimed, levitating the Murtlap out of the cauldron into two small bowls. "You can go to Madam Malkin's and get dress robes for the gala anytime. We won't have to bother with the paper falsification, and that's one less visit to Leo to pay for." Potter grimaced. "Maybe we won't bankrupt your parents after all."
"Exactly," Hermione said with a guilty smile, emerging fresh-faced from the bathroom, her hands filled with the bits of rubber that had, until recently, been her disguise. With her face back to normal, with her hair this way, she looked nearly the way Draco remembered her at the Yule Ball.
"And thank goodness, too," she went on, plopping down on the sofa, "because Flint's asked me to dinner at a restaurant in Diagon Alley next Friday."
"Where?" Draco asked.
"It's called Erialo. I'd never heard of it, but—"
Draco spilled some of the Murtlap on the rug. "Erialo?"
"Yes, why? Is it nice?"
"You could say that," Draco muttered, flicking his wand to Vanish the spill, trying not to picture Flint and Hermione leaning across a table in a candlelit corner. "My parents got engaged there. It's the most expensive restaurant in Diagon Alley. Flint must know someone on staff—you've usually got to book two months ahead of schedule."
"Well done, Hermione," said Harry, looking impressed. "He must really fancy you already."
She blew a strand of hair out of her face. "It wasn't exactly difficult. I just agreed with him about everything and acted like I'd never been more interested in anything than the flying formations of the Wimbourne Wasps in 1985. I didn't even have to use five percent of what I'd prepared for my cover story."
Draco continued applying the Murtlap to his cheek, feeling a bit too relieved that Marcus Flint hadn't suddenly transformed into a brilliant conversationalist.
They spent an hour discussing the possibilities of the dinner, until the redness had faded from Draco's and Harry's faces. When Potter went to bed, there was a brief silence. Draco gave Hermione a furtive look from his armchair, feeling oddly uncertain. The morning, and kissing her in the kitchen, felt a long time ago. He couldn't stop thinking about the way she'd leaned toward Flint.
She thinks he's boring, he reminded himself. She was just acting.
"I liked the drink," Hermione offered, breaking the silence.
"The Glassapple?"
"Yeah."
"Mm. Maybe you really are the woman of Marcus Flint's dreams."
He wanted her to grimace. He wanted her to say, God, I hope not.
Instead she laughed and said, "Well, at least he's not so mean-looking anymore. He used to have that scowl on all the time … but when he's not looking at you like he wants to wring your neck, it's not so bad."
Draco didn't know what he was supposed to say to this. He felt even more stiff and uncomfortable. Did Hermione expect him to agree? Why was she talking about the upsides of spending an evening flirting with Marcus Flint?
"Oh, really?" he said, trying to sound nonchalant. "Shall we start planning your engagement?"
Hermione looked over at him with surprise, and after a moment, disbelief passed over her expression. "Draco," she said.
"What?"
"Are you—" She laughed. "Are you jealous?"
"No," he said. Even to his own ear it was stoutly unconvincing.
Hermione looked bewildered, but pleased, too. "We need him to get to the Horcrux. That's the only point of this."
"I know that," he muttered. "It's just—he can … can buy you a drink."
Hermione's amusement faded into thoughtfulness.
"I liked the bar," she said after a moment. "I kept thinking … well, that it would be a nice place to go." She fiddled with a lock of her hair. "You know. Together. If, after … or if none of this were …" She paused, then shook her head. "I'm being silly."
"No," he said at once. "No, I was thinking that, too. That's what I meant."
Hermione smiled, and she was looking at him warm and steady, and Draco felt less uncertain.
"The atmosphere was nearly what I was picturing yesterday," she said. "In the dining room."
Draco propped one elbow on the chair's arm, rested his chin on the heel of his palm. "Really," he said with a lazy smile. "I thought that was supposed to be for 'preparation, not imagination'."
She smiled back. "It was. Apparently we're just not very good at following clear directives."
"Speak for yourself. I'm great at following directives."
"Are you?"
"Yeah."
Hermione let one hand fall to the sofa cushion beside her. "Then—sit here." The words might have sounded bossy, except for her slight hesitation.
Draco did as he was told. He rose and approached her, intensely attuned to the way her eyes followed him, then settled on the sofa next to her, close enough that their thighs brushed. "And?" he said.
"And stay there." She leaned toward him like a sapling in wind, and he expected her to kiss him, but instead her head sank against his shoulder, and she curled up against his side. There was that stutter in Draco's chest again. He found himself thinking about the way she fit against him, neatly, like a puzzle piece. She was warm, her nose still pink from where the prosthetic had peeled off. Draco's hand settled on her shoulder, hesitant at first, then more securely. His thumb brushed circles over her shoulder, down to her upper arm.
"These are pretty easy directives," he said.
"True." She yawned. "I suppose I'm tired of things being hard."
"Yeah," said Draco. "Me too."
#
November ended with the season's first flurry of snow, and with a positive outlook for the plan. Hermione went to dinner with Flint, which was deeply boring but technically successful, and Draco and Harry were both hired on by Lizzie Spizzworth, a tiny, excitable woman who enthused over their Anti-Spilling Spells.
"So proficient!" she exclaimed. "As if you spent your days doing nothing else!" Which, for the week leading up to their interviews, had been true.
Hermione was still nervous. She worried that Harry would say something about what was happening between her and Draco, that he might try to intervene. She even worried that Ron would suddenly reappear just now, at the moment with the most potential to injure him. She still felt guilty about Ron, sometimes.
But mostly she felt a quiet, disbelieving giddiness that she wished she could bottle and drink. Sometimes it made her want to laugh. Draco. Draco Malfoy was the person making her feel this way, the one who turned immediately when she entered a room and got that breathless, alert look about him, the one who engaged when she was rattling off ideas about chained charms, the one who could, with a brush of his hand against her thigh during dinner and a tentative glance, make her heart race.
They stayed up late every night in the front room, talking about international Wizarding politics and Muggle politics alike. At first he mostly listened to the latter. Then he started asking questions; then, eventually, he would make comments—that certain cities sounded interesting, or similar to Wizarding locations and customs. He asked about her family, every obscure cousin she had, and their jobs and their lives and their children, and she described details of her childhood, and at one in the morning they'd have sunk so far down on the sofa that they were lying parallel, and they'd fall together effortlessly, kissing silently, dreamily.
She became familiar with the look he wore after they'd just kissed for a long time, that glittering look, satiated but never fully satisfied. To everything she did, he'd react: if she brushed her hand against his waist, he'd mirror it, tracing his thumb over her hip; if she smiled into a kiss, he'd cup the back of her neck and pull her closer. He noticed everything, he was studious, he was both attentive and intuitive to a degree that made Hermione feel like she'd stepped into a spotlight for the first time in her life.
She was trying to have some self-control about the whole thing, but it was difficult, when she wanted him, and he showed her he wanted her, too—kissing her whenever they were alone, on the forehead or the cheek or the side of her neck, absentmindedly touching her shoulder when he passed her in the kitchen. During the day they'd make up stupid excuses to pull each other into side rooms, or outside, where their breath would rise around them as they kissed, where she'd stand on tiptoe and kiss him against the side of the cottage, and brush specks of whitewash out of his hair.
And there was this way he'd begun to smile sometimes, a kind of smile she'd never seen on his face before—like his expression had slipped completely out of his control. Usually when they were joking back and forth, it would happen. He'd lose his composure. It made him look different. A bit older, maybe.
At 10:45 p.m. on December 1st, they prepared to Apparate to Lillimont Lake. Harry had been unable to stop talking about it all day, wondering how many Order members would come, if, perhaps, the person who'd sent the silver doe would show themselves.
It was five to eleven when they emerged, breathing hard, from the darkness into the icy cold.
There was a single silhouette at the edge of the lake. The second they appeared, it spun, wand at the ready.
There was a short gasp. Then, with a trembling hand, Minerva McGonagall lifted the hood of her cloak. She was pale with shock.
"Professor McGonagall!" Harry burst out. As they hurried to her side, Hermione's heart pounded. It felt so strange to see the Transfiguration professor here, in the middle of the woods, not having seen a single member of the Order for months.
"Potter …" McGonagall whispered. "Granger? I …" She flinched as Draco stepped out from under the Invisibility Cloak, and stared at him for a long time with obvious disbelief. "Mr. Malfoy," she said weakly. "I don't …"
"Is anyone else coming?" said Harry eagerly.
Professor McGonagall pulled herself together. "I received a message with the time and place of this meeting. It wasn't you who sent it?"
"A message?" Hermione said, frowning. "Isn't the mail at Hogwarts being checked?"
"It didn't come by owl, Ms. Granger. It was sent by Floo into my office."
"That fits," Harry said, exchanging an excited look with Hermione. "Professor, we think someone at the Ministry has been secretly helping us. If they had access to an unmonitored Floo line, that makes sense. They have a doe Patronus, that's all we know. Can you think of anyone it might be?"
McGonagall's lips thinned as she thought. "I'm afraid not, Potter," she said eventually. "You're sure it was a doe? Not a goat, perhaps?"
"Definitely not a goat," said Harry, disappointed. "Well, keep an eye out."
"Of course. … But how—where have you been, Mr. Potter? The entire country—"
"Here," said Harry, pressing the slip of parchment with Ron's writing into her hand. "Read this."
She scanned the parchment, and her eyes widened.
"Hermione cast a Fidelius Charm," said Harry with pride, taking the parchment back.
McGonagall looked disoriented. "But what have the three of you been doing? Where is Mr. Weasley?" She made a sharp motion toward the parchment. "I trust I recognise his handwriting after six years of his essays."
"He was with us," Hermione said in a small voice. "You're right—he's Secret-Keeper. But …" A lump rose in her throat. "We haven't seen him in a month and a half. You don't know if he's at the Burrow, do you?"
McGonagall's face sank with consternation. "I'm afraid I have no idea."
There was a pause. Then Harry said, "As for what we've been doing, we've been working on something. It's important. … Something Professor Dumbledore told us to do."
McGonagall's eyes widened. When she spoke, she sounded breathless. "Albus left you a mission, Potter?"
He nodded.
"And you require assistance? That's why you've called this meeting?"
"Well … no," Harry admitted. "Not exactly. But we need to know everything that's been going on. We haven't been able to get in touch with anybody. … We've been stealing papers, but what's going on with the rest of the Order? What's going on at Hogwarts? Is—" His voice faltered. "Is everyone all right?"
Hermione saw the keen look in his eye and knew he was thinking of Ginny.
Hermione cast Muffliato, and McGonagall cast several Warming Charms. They sat on boulders near the edges of Lake Lillimont to talk, and to wait, in case anyone else arrived.
"Do you think the Weasleys might come?" Harry said hopefully, looking around the lake.
"I would very much doubt it," McGonagall said with a sigh. "The world outside Hogwarts has been effectively cut off from the world within, but the Carrows have made threats to Ginny Weasley that suggest the family is being constantly monitored. An Apparition from the Burrow in the middle of the night would be highly suspect, grounds for interrogation. … Hagrid informed me that he received a similar message, but Hagrid is unable to Apparate, and we felt it was too risky to have two teachers away from the school, lest our dear new Headmaster notice." Disgust tinged her tone.
"What's Snape doing?" said Draco, addressing McGonagall for the first time.
Professor McGonagall turned that piercing stare onto Draco. Hermione could see him stiffening beneath it, could see his defenses rising, as if he were a feral animal approached by a predator.
"He is changing Hogwarts to meet the wishes of his master," she said eventually. "We teachers still stand in opposition to the regime. As best we can, we try to bypass Snape, Filch, and the Carrows. … They've begun to use corporal punishment and outright torture for students who demonstrate disloyalty to You-Know-Who."
Her thin brows drew together, but a satisfied glint was in her eye. "They have also tried to recruit students to do their dirty work for them. However … to my surprise, I will admit … even students of their own house have made that particular tactic difficult."
Hermione glanced at Draco. He looked even paler than usual; she could just see the worry in the compression of his lips.
"Professor," Hermione said, "in September, when we were … well, pursuing this mission of ours, Draco and I wound up at the Ministry …"
She related their narrow escape, disguised as the Parkinsons. Professor McGonagall listened with her hands fastened over her knees; by the end, her knuckles were white.
"Yes," she said, her voice thin. "Yes, we all heard about that. It caused quite a stir at Hogwarts—although the students assumed, naturally, that Mr. Potter was your partner-in-crime." She sighed. "I'm sorry to be the bearer of this news, Ms. Granger, Mr. Malfoy. … But Ms. Parkinson's parents were taken for questioning about the event. They have been in Azkaban ever since."
Hermione's heart dropped. Draco had gone rigid on the boulder beside her. Hermione wanted to take his hand and squeeze it; as it was, she whispered the question she knew he couldn't manage:
"And Pansy? Her brothers?"
"Her brothers, as I understand it, were placed in the care of a great-uncle. Ms. Parkinson herself …" Now, to Hermione's surprise, a note of something like admiration crept into Professor McGonagall's steely voice. "Ms. Parkinson has become … unruly."
"Unruly?" Harry repeated.
"Yes. The Malfoys' supposed deaths, and now her parents' imprisonment on Death Eater orders, have affected her greatly. I believe she told the Carrows, if I am remembering the phrase correctly, that she would perform the Cruciatus on their instructions 'when the Dark Lord flapped into Hogwarts and made her'."
Hermione let out a choked sound halfway between laughter and incredulity. Harry's mouth was hanging open.
But Draco made no reaction. His face was stricken, immobile. McGonagall was watching his reaction like a hawk.
"Your friend Mr. Goyle," she went on, "then refused to discipline Ms. Parkinson, earning them both a substantial punishment. I kept them back after their next Transfiguration lesson to give them advice on reducing the aftereffects—and to let them know that I, and the other teachers, stood behind them."
Draco finally found his voice. "Stood behind them?" he said, his voice hoarse. "Stood behind—can't you do anything else? You can't stop the Carrows, or—?"
McGonagall gave him a pitying look. "Mr. Malfoy, if a teacher contradicted You-Know-Who's servants, what do you think would happen? Would you rather have Fenrir Greyback or Bellatrix Lestrange teaching your friends Transfiguration? I will not have myself removed from Hogwarts. … But I have told Ms. Parkinson and Mr. Goyle that if they need an outlet for insubordination, let it be my class instead."
Hermione stared at the elderly witch, as rigid as she had always been, seated on the boulder with her bun drawn back tight. The idea of Minerva McGonagall inviting insubordination from Slytherins in her class was as disorienting as anything they'd heard in months.
McGonagall paused, studying Draco intently. "I have since heard from Madam Pomfrey that a number of younger Slytherins have begun to follow your friends' example. Some, of course, have fallen in line with the Dark Lord's wishes. Others … well." She adjusted her spectacles. "Slytherin House appears to be confronting deep divides within itself, Mr. Malfoy. It is a time to find where our loyalties lie."
She said the last sentence with particular stress. Draco looked away, discomfort in his expression.
Hermione frowned, uncomprehending. What did he have to be uncomfortable about? Pansy may have stood up to the Carrows, but Draco had done ten times more in hunting the Horcruxes. And now he wasn't even taking credit for what he'd done?
It's not like him, Hermione thought. It wasn't like him not to advocate for himself.
She found herself blurting out, "We couldn't have gotten this far without Draco's help."
Professor McGonagall turned a surprised gaze on her. Draco's eyes flicked onto her, too, guarded.
"That is—" Hermione swallowed. "He's … he's been helping us with what Dumbledore's left us to do. I would have died in the Ministry if he hadn't been there. His loyalties are with us."
With me, she found herself thinking.
For the first time, McGonagall's expression seemed to soften. She looked back to Draco. "I'm glad to hear it, Mr. Malfoy."
His grey eyes flicked up to her, and he nodded once, still wordless.
Professor McGonagall checked a silver wristwatch. "I should return to the school," she said, rising from her boulder. "At the moment, I am supposedly having a nightcap at the Hog's Head … Aberforth is covering for me, but I should still—"
"Aberforth?" Harry blurted. "Aberforth Dumbledore?"
"Yes," said McGonagall bemused. "Why?"
"He lives in Hogsmeade? He's—he's in touch with the Order?"
"The barman," Hermione exclaimed. "I knew he looked related to Dumbledore when we were there for the funeral!"
Harry was on his feet now. "That's who's been in the mirror," he breathed, staring out at the lake.
They all just looked at him, uncomprehending. He looked back at them, eyes refocusing.
"I have a fragment of a two-way mirror," he said. "Sirius gave it to me, and I could have sworn I'd seen Dumbledore's eye in it over the summer. It must have been Aberforth. He must have the other one! Which means we can communicate with him!"
McGonagall, rather than growing excited, was watching Harry with a kind of sadness. "I'm afraid there isn't much to communicate, Potter. With the Order scattered this way … Hestia Jones and Dedalus Diggle disappeared shortly after a check-in on your aunt, uncle, and cousin. We've had no word from Kingsley, Remus, or Tonks, and if the Weasleys make any act of opposition …" She shook her head.
"No," Harry said fiercely. "It's not over, Professor. We're here, aren't we? We have a new headquarters, a safe place. You can get word to Hagrid, and we can let him in, too. We can get in touch with Aberforth. We can start pulling together again." He held up the piece of paper. "If anything happens, and you're in danger, come here, all right? If you hear anything new about Vo—about You-Know-Who, or about the Death Eaters' movements, come and find us. And when you can find a time to sneak Hagrid away, to let him know, too—"
"Come and find you," Professor McGonagall said. "I get the idea, Potter." But she sounded affectionate rather than brisk.
For a moment they stood in silence, McGonagall regarding Harry with a wistful kind of pride. Hermione realised that her eyes had filled with tears. "It's been years since I saw that address," she said finally. "James and Lily would have been proud."
Hermione looked at Harry, waiting for him to look bashful, or shaken. He didn't. There was a steely resolution in his face, and Hermione felt, in that moment, as if she was seeing someone other than the boy she'd met that day on the Hogwarts Express in first year.
"I know," Harry said.
#
"What was that?" Hermione asked Draco later that night, when they were up in front of the dying embers of the fire, his fingers loosely combing through her curls. "When McGonagall was talking about your loyalties."
Draco's hand stilled. "What do you mean?" he said.
She gave him a wry, unimpressed look. "You know exactly what I mean. Since when have you not been the first to defend yourself to everyone, all the time?"
Draco half smiled, but he couldn't form a satisfactory answer. The truth was, he couldn't pinpoint why he'd kept quiet—why, if McGonagall wanted to insinuate that he still harbored Death Eater sympathies, he hadn't just told her what he'd done since summer.
Maybe he felt like it wasn't very convincing if it came from him, that if he listed the ways he'd gone against the Dark Lord in the past several months, someone need only list all the things he'd done last year as a rebuttal.
Or maybe it was his new inability to stop thinking about those things he'd done at Hogwarts, and in his childhood. It had been happening more and more, the last week, as he settled more deeply into this new world—a world where he made conversation with Leo Clifton and stilted small talk with the Muggles at the registers in shops, where he asked questions about Hermione's family more and more naturally, where Bella's voice grew more distant every day.
When he wasn't thinking about Hermione, and the blind rush of kissing her—when he wasn't trying to make her smile—he thought about his younger self. He kept imagining that tiny eleven-year-old, walking through the halls and whispering to Crabbe and Goyle about whose families were blood traitors and Muggle-lovers, talking like he'd known anything about how the world worked. He knew McGonagall looked at him and saw that child. And maybe, in that moment beside the lake, he hadn't wanted to speak up for that child.
But then again, maybe he just felt like he didn't need McGonagall to understand. What was her goodwill to him? Was he supposed to lay his mind bare to win the favour of someone whose opinion was only of passing importance to him?
In that moment, when McGonagall's steely eyes had found his, probing, expectant, Draco had thought of Hermione instead, and everything she knew about the dark year, and his new thoughts. And he'd felt such a feeling of relief that she knew him, that there was nothing to explain between the two of them. When she'd spoken up for him, he'd wanted to take her hand right there, in the moonlight.
Time seemed to accelerate as the Ministry gala approached. At first it seemed miles away. They had three entire weeks, and Draco and Harry brought home their uniforms for the gala, which Draco loathed; they were about as well-cut as potato sacks. They had so much time that they got distracted during planning and talked about everything McGonagall had told them instead, about Hogwarts.
Then there were two weeks until the gala, and Hermione had gone to Madam Malkin's to order dress robes, and visited the Scavenger's Guild to buy her and Harry new, unobtrusive wands, and Flint had put her name on the guest list. Draco's thoughts about the new, grim Hogwarts began to take up less space in his mind. He began to think of how, in the not-so-distant future, he would walk up the sweeping steps of the manor and be home again, and thoughts of his younger self began to take greater primacy. He felt like he was being followed around by ghosts of himself.
One snowy night in mid-December, McGonagall Apparated into the cottage's front room, making them all shout with shock, and informed them that she would be able to bring Hagrid to Lillimont Lake by Side-Along Apparition over the Christmas holiday, so that he could read the precious slip of paper with Weasley's words written on it. This buoyed Hermione and Harry's spirits immensely.
That night, Hermione told Draco about how, in third year, when she and Weasley had been fighting nonstop, Hagrid had always been there to cheer and encourage her. And in the back of his mind, Draco saw himself lying in the Hospital Wing that year, embellishing his injury from that Hippogriff to get Hagrid fired, thinking it was so funny, and he felt that unease again, and a sinking feeling throughout his whole body, and he couldn't meet Hermione's eyes.
"What is it?" she said, lifting his chin with two fingers. "Where do you keep going these days?"
And the fact that she noticed, that she knew him so well as to spot even a moment's disengagement, made something in Draco hum. "I'm right here, Granger," he said, slipping his arm around her back and pulling her half-onto his lap. "No idea what you're talking about."
She smiled and kissed him. Kissed his forehead. "You'll tell me eventually," she said, toying idly with his hair, and he looked up into her face and said,
"Yeah, probably."
Then the gala was a week away, and Hermione came back from Diagon Alley with a bag from Madam Malkin's that she refused to let Draco look inside. There was no longer room to think about anything else but the gala. Every waking hour, they were reviewing all their contingency plans for every possible hiccup, every possible failure of every step in the plan, what to do if everything went wrong.
Even when he and Hermione were up late together, they couldn't seem to speak of anything else than the gala, the manor. Some nights they didn't speak at all. They just kissed, with increasing urgency, in front of the fire while the blue shadows of snow deepened outside, or in his room, sometimes laughing about the way the mattress creaked. And he'd hold her in the silence and feel something like panic spreading through him, thinking about how much danger they would soon be in. Were they really going to do this? Plunge themselves headfirst into the Ministry, surrounded by Aurors and Death Eaters and the entire Department of Magical Law Enforcement?
And then, suddenly, it was the morning of December 23rd, and Draco looked up from the armchair in the front room, wearing his black Spizzworth's uniform, to see Hermione walking down the stairs in her dress robes. He'd slept poorly the night before, but all thoughts of tiredness and even nerves evaporated at the sight of her.
She was walking carefully on the creaky steps, because the crimson satin fell down to her feet, which were clad in glittering black shoes. These were not the charmingly juvenile dress robes they'd all worn at the Yule Ball in fourth year, looking like children raiding their parents' formalwear. This was a gown fit for a society event, sleeveless and elegant, with an asymmetrical capelet that she unlaced and slid off her bare shoulders as she turned around the banister. Draco caught a glimpse of her back, the line of the robe dipping almost all the way to her waist, and realised his mouth had gone as dry as parchment.
Draco wished they had about six more hours before leaving, so that he could take in every element: the soft shimmering details at her hip, red thread embroidered sparingly upon red material; the delicate twin streamers of crimson fabric that laced up at her shoulders; the smoothness of the skin at the divot of her collarbones.
Hermione coaxed the volumes of her hair over one shoulder and stopped at the bottom of the steps. She glanced from Harry to Draco and smiled, though it was a hesitant smile. "Do I look all right?" she said. "I know he's going to change my face, but …"
"It's great, Hermione," said Harry. "You really look the part." He glanced over, but whatever he saw on Draco's face made him look away again at once. "It's almost time," he said, checking his watch. "I'll run upstairs and get the new wands, and then we'll go see Leo. Yeah?"
"Sure," Hermione said as he jogged up the steps.
The instant he was out of sight, the instant they were alone, Draco crossed the room in a half-dozen strides and pressed his lips to hers. A pleasurable little shudder went through her body that made Draco feel like he might actually go mad; his head was full of white lightning and his fingers slipped over her waist, over the smooth skin of her back, thrill after thrill shooting through him. There was nothing in his mind but how she felt, Hermione, how her hair sprang free of her fingertips and brushed the side of his face, how she let the capelet flutter out of her grip to take a fistful of his robes and tug him down into her.
Too soon, Potter's footsteps sounded close above them again. They broke apart, both breathing hard. Draco wanted to say something. He wanted to tell her how she looked, but he felt somewhere beyond words. As she looked up into his eyes, another feeling seared through him, one he knew better than any other. Fear.
And he saw it mirrored in her face. She was afraid, too.
Draco wondered at that moment if he was a coward. He'd always put himself first, and he'd never thought that was a particular problem, or a particular indicator of cowardice. But maybe he was a coward, because he thought about saying, We don't have to go.
It confused him. He felt as if he were backing down the path he'd begun to walk. Hadn't he resolved months ago, in his recovery bed after the Ministry, to hunt the Horcruxes, to restore his life?
And yet … looking at Hermione, he felt a new, spiraling sense of dread of the possibilities. The idea of her being hurt suddenly seemed so loud, so horribly present. He could be found out himself—he could be killed, just now, just when he was most of the way into a new world that he had barely begun to explore.
But if they just stayed at headquarters, he could change out of these ill-fitting robes, and they could have another night like Halloween, a dozen nights, a hundred; they could laugh and chat with Potter in the evenings, and pretend the world wasn't disintegrating on their doorstep, and later, when he was alone with her, he could kiss her just there, on the blade of her shoulder, just where her hair tumbled down.
Draco thought he might have done it—delayed and delayed and delayed. Stayed safe.
But he knew she never would.
A painful lump in his throat, he stooped, swept the capelet off the floor and back into her hand, and retreated to a respectable distance as Potter jogged back into view.
Hermione tried to pretend nothing had happened, though there was a rosy glow in her cheeks, and she kept casting furtive looks his way. As Draco looked at her, running through details of the plan to Harry for a thousandth time, he tried to galvanise himself. He thought of the Horcrux shimmering around Dolores Umbridge's neck. Three had been destroyed. If they hid here, they'd never find another, he knew that. And he remembered how she'd told him as he'd lain in bed, his shoulder pulsing with agony, The cause is our lives.
So he thought about Circe & Clíodhna, and Erialo, and events at his home. He pictured himself at Hermione's side, out in a world that was safe … but the image seemed a thousand miles away, a photograph at the end of an eternal unlit hallway. And when Hermione looked at him and asked, "Ready?" he knew she didn't believe the lie he told.
#
Standing at the manor gate, arm in arm with Marcus Flint, Hermione couldn't believe she was actually here.
They'd queued for a quarter of an hour, talking about Flint's week at work as dozens upon dozens of Ministry officials filed forward through the gates. Flint was dressed in dark green dress robes with silver clasps; every so often he looked down at her dress robes, his eyes fixed on her chest in a way that made her adjust her capelet with discomfort.
She thought of Draco, and his hand rough against her back, and the way he'd kissed her in the cottage with a kind of urgency he'd never had before—as if it were his last chance.
Her palms were clammy. She wiped them discreetly on her robes. Don't, she told herself. Everything is going to go according to plan.
The sun had set hours before. The wrought-iron gates, which stood wide open, were wreathed with tiny golden lights. Malfoy Manor itself sat at the end of a long, hedge-lined drive, atop a hill. The sight was ethereal and undoubtedly beautiful, but a haze of foreboding hovered over the place, too. It was imposing rather than inviting.
"Marcus Flint," said Flint, handing his invitation to a uniformed security witch at the gates. "And my guest, Marilea Linhardt."
The security witch glanced over a list that hovered before her. She was burly and stony-faced, the letters GG emblazoned on the breast of her uniform. Her wand was fastened into a wrist holster, one flick away from being ready to hex. Hermione glanced over the four others of the Greengrass Guard who stood at the gates, stiff and immobile, ready to react in an instant.
The new wand she'd bought at the Scavengers' Guild weighed heavy in her pocket, her only protection should everything go wrong. There could be no concealed bag of tricks here. The guards were searching everything. Even now they were opening half a dozen bottles of mulled mead to inspect their contents, despite a mustached wizard's furious protests.
The security witch returned Flint's invitation and nodded them through. Hermione didn't smile up at him; Marilea Linhardt did not show affection, only approval and disapproval.
"This place is one of the oldest Wizarding houses in the country," Flint told her, taking her arm roughly and without question. He spoke with bravado, as if he'd put the manor together himself.
"You've been before?" Hermione said idly.
"Yeah. I used to know the family who lived here before the Lestranges." Flint sounded, for the first time since he'd met her, a bit reluctant to speak. "They got mixed up in some … well, no one really knows the details."
Hermione gave him a sidelong glance, a raised brow. "Friends of yours?"
Flint was quiet for a moment as they crunched over the gravel. The soft golden lights illuminated the fluttering feathers of several albino peacocks, which roamed up and down the hedges.
"Yeah," he said. "And they were loyal to the end, mind," he added quickly, looking down at her, as if needing to ensure she didn't get the wrong idea. "They didn't turn blood traitor when things got … but that was when Dumbledore was still alive, so, things were more dangerous then. No one could have known what might happen." Flint seemed to have found his way out of the woods. He was nodding to himself now. "No one could have known," he said again.
Malfoy Manor loomed overhead now, a façade of worn grey stone spread with tall French windows, every pane rippled with age. Its eaves were decorated with statuettes, dragons and chimaeras that seemed to gambol and play forty feet above, and the windows were all flooded with inviting light. Hermione's sense of foreboding only increased. It was all she could do not to hold onto her wand in her pocket. She thought of Draco and Harry, who had come in with Lizzie Spizzworth's hours earlier, who were now, hopefully, nestled in the heart of the manor.
She and Flint swept up the long stairs and into a marble foyer that sparkled with decorations. Real, never-melting icicles gleamed from the banisters, and fairies with delicate, gauzy wings fluttered over the lintels of the broad doorways. A towering Christmas tree twenty feet high reached up to kiss the lowest dangling point of a chandelier, which hung from an intricately molded ceiling. It seemed unreal that this was the place Draco had grown up, that this wasn't a museum or a historically preserved site but the place that he'd played with friends, learned how to interact with the world.
She tried to look neither interested nor impressed. "You'll have to tell me who all these people are, Marcus," she said in Marilea's low, breathy tones, glancing around. It was a relief that she'd recognised nobody so far, a parade of unfamiliar faces in early adulthood to middle age. Now she did, however, see Rita Skeeter leaning against a nearby table, sipping a blood-red drink, photographer at her arm and Quick-Quotes Quill skating away on a notepad before her.
Flint thrust out his barrel chest, looking important. He scanned the crowd. "Those are the Greengrasses," he said, pointing to a couple in their forties. "They own the security company. That's Algernon Wolflaw, Office of Domestic Affairs … only a half-blood, but well-liked. He had a hand in planning all this."
He nodded to a young couple, two red-haired women in dress robes, one in black and deep purple, the other in grey and misty white. He lowered his voice. "Lidia Taylor and May DeRisa, Department of International Magical Cooperation. Some funny business with their family trees, but they wheedled out of supervision somehow."
"Charming," Hermione said, wondering if she should try and approach Taylor or DeRisa. If they ever did need papers forged, perhaps they could be useful contacts.
Flint was already pressing forward, though, his big hand too tight on her waist. "I'll introduce you to some of the others in Magical Games and Sports inside. Come on."
Hermione let herself be steered, and they followed the stream of people across the foyer into something like a ballroom. Crisscrossing hardwoods stretched fifty feet to a small stage where a band was arranging a series of eccentric-looking instruments, all with many more strings and pegs and curlicued shapes than Muggle instruments would have involved. The ceiling was high and arched, and along one wall was a hearth that could have fit a small bus, where a long, low fire was simmering. A banner stretched over the hearth that read, in sparkling green and red letters, 1ST ANNUAL MINISTRY OF MAGIC CHRISTMAS GALA FOR THE CELEBRATION OF MAGICAL UNITY. On the opposite wall, a matching banner read MAGIC IS MIGHT!
Hermione's unfazed expression must have slipped, because Flint was grinning down at her. "What do you think?"
She allowed a small, knowing smile. "Not quite the scale we manage in Dubai … but I've seen worse."
"Never impressed, are you? I like that in a witch."
Flint's hand slid from her waist onto her lower back, then dipped dangerously low.
"Would you care to find me a drink?" she said, stepping forward, away from his touch.
He looked displeased for a moment, but nodded and stalked off through the accumulating crowd, leaving Hermione at a small table in the corner. She let out a slow exhalation, scanning the room for Draco, Harry, Umbridge, or the Weasleys.
They'd decided their first task would be to find Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, to show them the address of headquarters. They were certain the Weasleys wouldn't linger at the gala long, but it was unlikely they would skip it altogether, when seeming like they'd assimilated into this new society was so important. She'd tucked the piece of parchment with the information into her bra; it itched whenever she moved.
Suddenly voices were murmuring. A kind of ripple seemed to move through the room, and Hermione followed the looks that everyone was sending back toward the grand entryway.
A chill flooded through her. They'd known she would be here, of course, she and her husband. This was their manor, now. Yet the sight of Bellatrix Lestrange, heavy-lidded and imperious, sweeping through the door with her husband Rodolphus, still made Hermione go very still. She remembered Bellatrix in the Department of Mysteries, lashing out with her wand, her spells flying with such mad power that they had splintered through layers upon layers of wood and glass.
On Bellatrix's other side was Yaxley, who—unless Hermione was much mistaken—looked thinner than he had at the Ministry. He also appeared to be limping. Hermione wondered how he and Crabbe had been punished for the events of the Ministry, and even as she thought it, Crabbe crossed the threshold too, enormous and imposing, though his face, too, looked drawn, and his gait was unsteady.
And there, behind them … Hermione couldn't help drawing a small, sharp breath. Vincent Crabbe was walking at his father's shoulder, Millicent Bulstrode beside him in dress robes of pale green. There was a defiant look on Crabbe's blunt features, as if he dared anyone to ask why his father might not be in perfect working condition.
Hermione knew she was unrecognizable. Yet when the rest of the group followed, she shifted further back into the corner. More and more faces she knew, all of whom could be dangerous. Garton Goyle, pale-faced and pockmarked, muttering something to his son Gregory with obvious irritation. An ethereally beautiful woman with obsidian-dark skin, ushering along Blaise Zabini, who looked prouder and more disgusted than ever. Then there was Theodore Nott, short and slender and sandy-haired, beside an older brother in Trainee Auror's robes. Pansy Parkinson was gripping Theo's arm, and Hermione saw, with a feeling of unwilling fascination, that a rain of fine cuts were laid upon her cheek, half-healed.
As the Slytherins dispersed out into the room, into many welcoming shouts from Ministry members, a disgusted voice muttered from the table next to Hermione,
"Let's all clap for our ruling class."
Hermione glanced over and received another shock. Standing at the table immediately next to her were two people. One was a plump, black-haired witch she didn't recognise, but the other, she did: Sturgis Podmore, broad-shouldered, with a thatch of blond hair. He'd gone to Azkaban their fifth year after being put under the Imperius Curse by the Death Eaters. She remembered studying his photo in the Daily Prophet.
He'd left the Order after his release from Azkaban to recover, but surely he was still sympathetic to the cause? And hadn't the witch accompanying him just insulted the Death Eaters? What if he had been in touch with other Order members?
Dare she say something?
The witch's dark eyes played over Hermione warily. Clearly she was worried Hermione had heard the comment. Hermione looked away quickly, not wanting to let on, but before she could decide whether or not to engage with them, Flint returned, holding two glasses of pale blue wine.
"Twilight-infused Sauvignon," he said, setting Hermione's glass in front of her. "I—"
He broke off, his eyes settling on Podmore and the witch. "Ah. … Podmore, right?" Flint grunted, sounding a bit suspicious but not outright unfriendly. "Obliviation Squads?"
Podmore nodded once. "Flint, I believe," he said, extending his hand. They shook briefly. "And this is my girlfriend Nora Prewett."
Hermione opened her mouth to introduce herself, but Flint was already doing it for her. "This is Marilea Linhardt."
Podmore and Prewett both extended their hands. Hermione shook, wondering if there was some way she could communicate with Podmore, some kind of code to indicate her loyalties, and to question his.
"Marilea went to school in Dubai," Flint went on. "Tell them about the MWA, Marilea. We're all Hogwarts here."
"Er—yes," Hermione said, her heart beating very quickly. "It's … well, from what I've read about your … about Hogwarts, the schools are quite different. We don't have a house system at all, and we've only been coeducational more recently; it was a witches-only academy until the 1980s …"
She kept speaking, but her voice wasn't cooperating. Marilea's breathy tones kept slipping, and she was herself again, rattling off facts from the front of a classroom. She felt like she'd lost the thread of her character, trying to make a decision about Podmore on the spot.
Flint, luckily, didn't seem to be listening to her words at all. He was scanning the room, his eyes lingering interestedly on some of the Slytherins who'd mixed into the crowd while he'd been gone. But Hermione met the witch's eyes and her voice faltered. The witch was staring, unblinking, into her face, her cocktail glass suspended millimeters from her lips.
This stranger knew Hermione's voice.
How?
It hit Hermione like a thunderbolt. It wasn't 'Nora Prewett' at all. It was Tonks.
Podmore had noticed something was off. His hazel eyes flicked from Hermione to Tonks.
"Flint," Podmore said suddenly.
Flint looked back to them. "What?"
"Crabbe was trying to flag you down," Podmore said, pointing to the very opposite end of the room, where both the elder and younger Crabbes were in conversation with Zabini.
Flint looked momentarily discomfited, and Hermione knew he was aware of the elder Crabbe's status as a Death Eater. He glanced down at Hermione. "I should—er, I'll speak with him alone. You don't mind?"
"Of course not," Hermione said. "I'll wait for you here."
The instant Flint had folded into the crowd, Hermione, Podmore, and Tonks drew in together, practically into a huddle.
"Wotcher, Hermione," Tonks whispered, her face filled with disbelief and something like respect.
"Hermione Granger?" Podmore whispered, his large brown eyes filled with worry. Tonks nodded.
"Tonks," Hermione said. "You're safe. You're all right. How's Remus?" Her eyes fell to Tonks's stomach, which was just as curvy as the rest of her body. "Why are you here?"
"Remus is fine. We've been moving from place to place," Tonks whispered. "We and Kingsley, we've been burning through sympathisers' houses before they can find us. We've been at Pod's place a week now, though, getting ready for this. We're trying to find the Weasleys. Get organised again."
Hermione turned toward the wall and slipped the parchment out of her bra, then showed it to both Podmore and Tonks. "Read this. Quickly," she whispered.
They did, their eyes widening. Tonks's unfamiliar face began to glow with a gutsy, very Tonks-like excitement. "Yes," she breathed. "That's the ticket."
Hermione's eyes flew to Flint, who was crossing the room toward them again with a deep scowl. "You can't tell anyone you saw me," she whispered, tucking the parchment back down her dress robes. "I was never here, do you understand?"
Podmore took a sharp breath. "Is he here?" He mouthed his name: Potter?
Hermione glanced around. No one was looking; no one was listening.
She nodded.
Podmore's hand flew to his mouth. Tonks's face lit up.
"We're here on Order business," Hermione whispered urgently. "Not a word. Do you understand?"
They nodded, and as Flint arrived at the table, Hermione stepped back and pulled her low, breathy voice back into place. "Well, it was lovely to meet your … friends, Marcus …" She eyed Tonks and Podmore with all the disdain she could manage. "But I'd love to meet some of your colleagues. Didn't you say the whole department would be here? …"
As she let him steer her away, she passed a bald, bearded figure holding a silver tray topped with tiny tartlets: Harry. Their eyes locked. As a guest swept a tartlet off the platter, ignoring Harry completely, he made their signal for everything on schedule, tapping his chin twice with a knuckle.
Weasleys? she signaled, a discreet flash of three fingers. Umbridge? a discreet flash of her pinky.
He twitched his head in a shake.
Hermione nodded. She longed to tell him about Tonks and Podmore—she wanted to let him know that Remus was safe, that Kingsley was safe, that they had two more allies—but she couldn't break away from Flint just now, or he would start to feel like she was avoiding him.
Her heart rate settled as Flint introduced her to colleague after colleague from the Department of Magical Games and Sports. The band began to play. For half an hour or so, Hermione finally got to use all the Quidditch knowledge she'd studied for, keeping up with a conversation about the Quidditch World Cup of 1974 in Syria. The mostly male department members kept giving her surprised and admiring looks, and Flint subtle thumps of congratulation, which irritated Hermione. No, she didn't actually care about Quidditch, but it wasn't as if real female Quidditch fans were rare.
But she tried not to get too involved. They were situated at a corner of the hearth where she could monitor the door. And at 9 p.m., they appeared in the threshold: Molly and Arthur Weasley, looking shabby and out of place. Many gala attendees paused to curl their lips at the Weasleys, or simply shuffled away, looking afraid to be too near them. Mr. Weasley was wearing a resigned look; Mrs. Weasley's round face was stoic.
"Excuse me, Marcus," Hermione said. "I need to find a bathroom."
He nodded, only half-seeming to hear her, and she forged quickly across the room, not wanting the Weasleys to get too far into the crowd. They were only a half-dozen paces into the ballroom when Hermione reached them and faked a small, unobtrusive stumble, spilling her Twilit Sauvignon onto the shoulder of Mrs. Weasley's robes.
"Oh, I'm terribly sorry," Hermione said, catching her balance on both Mr. and Mrs. Weasley's arms. She'd practiced the maneuver for upwards of an hour on Draco and Harry, and it worked perfectly. Caught off guard, they held her up, and she leaned in, saying close to their ears,
"It's Hermione. Follow me."
Both the Weasleys drew sharp breaths. To their credit, they managed to control their shock quickly, wrangling their faces back into something like annoyance.
"I feel dreadful," Hermione said more loudly, pulling back to usher them out into the foyer. "Here, let me clean that."
Rather than simply using her wand, she took a fistful of napkins from a nearby table and began to dab them against Mrs. Weasley's shoulder. They passed another stern member of the Greengrass Guard, then moved down a narrow side hall lined with oil landscapes in gilt frames, where signs indicated a bathroom. They stopped in the middle of the hall.
"No problem at all, dear," Mrs. Weasley said, letting Hermione continue to fuss as an older woman bustled out of the bathroom, rummaging in a large black bag.
The instant the woman was out of sight, the hall deserted, they slipped through a nearby door into a closet and dropped the act.
"You mustn't be here," Mrs. Weasley whispered, her face pale and suddenly terrified. "What were you thinking? You must leave now!"
"No time to argue," Hermione hissed, pulling the slip of parchment from her robes. "Read this."
The Weasleys did as they were told.
Mr. Weasley looked very serious as he glanced back up at her. He, like McGonagall, had clearly recognised his son's writing. "Is Ron here, too?"
Hermione's heart dropped. She'd expected it. She'd told herself to expect it. And yet this confirmation that Ron was not at the Burrow made panic flood through her.
"He hasn't been with us for two months," she whispered. "He hasn't been to the Burrow?"
Mrs. Weasley's kind face slackened further. She didn't seem able to speak, just shook her head.
"Nor to Bill and Fleur's?" Hermione added with a note of desperation.
Mr. Weasley shook his head. His chest was rising and falling, his breathing uneven. "I visited Shell Cottage last week," he managed to say. "It's where the family is meant to meet if something goes wrong. … Bill and Fleur are there alone."
Hermione felt her own breaths growing shallow, too. She tried to clutch at her purpose. She had to focus. She could worry later, when she was safe, when they had the Horcrux.
"St-Sturgis Podmore and Tonks are in the ballroom," she whispered, her lips numb and clumsy. "They want to speak to you. We're all trying to regroup. Pack your things when you can and bring the whole family to headquarters, and any tents you can find. You won't have to hide anymore … we can make a plan. I have to go."
"Wait," said Mr. Weasley, catching her arm. "The Malfoy boy. Is he still with you?"
It broke through her numbness. "Y-yes, why?"
"His mother found me outside the Ministry. I know where they're staying."
#
Draco felt as if he were in a nightmare.
He'd had dreams of home over the past few weeks with increasing regularity. In the dreams, there had always been something off about the manor, something he couldn't pinpoint, something about the angles, or the colors.
But simply moving through the halls from the East Wing to the main rooms, finding nearly everything just as he'd last seen it over the Easter holidays, was somehow a thousand times more disorienting. After missing his home for months, it was a kind of agony to be back here. All the spacious rooms and familiar furnishings, the former trappings of his life, still identically remained, as if he hadn't disappeared, as if he hadn't died, as if his absence meant nothing.
He hadn't dared go down to the west end of the house, to his room. He was already feeling almost feverish.
"You all right, mate?" said a spotty woman a few years older than him, balancing a pair of hors d'oeuvres trays as they exited the kitchen. "Someone say something to you?"
It was as good an excuse as any for his distraction, so Draco nodded.
"The guests in these places are always the bloody worst, aren't they," said the woman with a knowing wink. "Chin up. Lizzie always takes us out to the Leaky Cauldron the night after, her treat. We can down a litre of Firewhisky and swap stories about the biggest arseholes."
And she strode down the long green carpet that spanned the manor's main hall.
Draco carried a tray of clean glasses after her, past the sculpted bust of Callalya the Catastrophic, past the long painting of the Battle of the Hebridean Blacks. He emerged at the top of the staircase in the foyer, looking down at the plane of smooth white marble, the chandelier, the tremendous Christmas tree.
By the time he reached the bottom of the steps, he was sweating again. He'd worked in the kitchen so far, had managed to avoid going into the room ahead, which his family had called the hearth room.
It won't look the same, he told himself. They'll have cleared all the furniture away.
That was worse. With the furniture cleared, the floor would be exposed. He remembered the stretch of old carpet that ran along the hearth, rubbing into his cheek. He remembered the Muggle man at the Dark Lord's wandtip, the way his body had jiggled like a marionette, bare heels splayed upon the parquet floors. The Dark Lord had cut away his shirt, and cut lines into his skin, and the man had screamed, and then he'd been upside-down.
And Draco had stood there and laughed, his voice melting into the rest.
An hour later the man had been dead.
Draco had taken the Mark there, in that room. It had been agony, but he'd done it willingly, thirsty for the chance to undo his father's supposed mistakes. In the echo of voices from the gala he could practically hear his own voice now, everything he'd spat at the Death Eaters in these halls—all the jeering he'd tried to withstand by lashing out with insults at Muggle-borns and half-bloods and blood traitors. All the ways he'd chosen to belong.
Draco swayed at the bottom of the steps and looked through the open doors into the night, down the long twin hedges lit with tiny lights. There they were again, the ghosts that chased him. They were everywhere. Spots burst in his eyes. He saw his eleven-year-old self tearing down that gravel path, yelling at Crabbe and Goyle, Hurry up, for Merlin's sake—you two are so slow. He saw himself riding a toy broomstick over this balcony, zooming over the marble, and bragging to Pansy that she could never catch up. He saw himself at age fourteen, moping as he slid down the banister, making fun of Hermione to his mother, trying to mask his own insecurity that—yet again—a Muggle-born had outscored him in every test.
This place was his past. It was everything he'd ever been. And now he was separate from it, out in the open, in the new and quiet world. And if blood meant nothing, he'd acted that way for sixteen years for nothing. Every word, every thought, every action, had been for nothing.
In third year, just after slapping him, Hermione had called him foul. She'd called him evil. He'd tried to laugh about it later, but even then it had rung half-hollow. He saw himself through her eyes now, deriding the Gamekeeper who had comforted her. … He saw himself turning to his mother in Madam Malkin's and saying, hardly over a year ago, If you're wondering what the smell is, Mother, a Mudblood just walked in.
Draco couldn't breathe. There was a taste in his mouth like bile. He turned left unthinkingly, away from the threshold of the gala. He made for a side corridor, then tried to shoulder through a nearby door. It was locked, but he said through gritted teeth, "Alohomora," needing privacy, needing to be out of sight, and it came open. The passage beyond was dark and cold, a set of steep steps. He descended a few and whispered, "Lumos," and set down the tray of wine glasses, and leaned against the stone wall, letting out hard breaths.
The last few months, he'd grown more and more acquainted with self-doubt, but this—this was something else, this thick, treacly self-loathing, burning through his veins like magma. After these long months, learning to trust Hermione, to care for her, to fear for her—after these past few weeks, which had been an oasis of trust and understanding in the chaos of the last year—
Draco suddenly couldn't understand how she didn't still loathe him. How could she look at him without seeing all these things that suddenly, in retrospect, made him feel a shame so violent it was like panic? And what was he supposed to do, now that he was seeing his past self this way? He'd changed his mind, he'd changed his actions, but he was still contained in himself. He couldn't tear his old self out of his body. He would never be able to.
Of course McGonagall had looked at him with suspicion. For the rest of his life people would look at him that way.
Shouldn't they? he thought, suddenly feeling bitter and vengeful and full of hate. Since when had he ever looked at someone and forgiven them everything they'd ever done? Hadn't he held petty, stupid grudges, a thousand minuscule judgments? Why should he be any different? Why should anyone even care if he'd changed?
Then a sound made Draco jerk so violently he nearly toppled down the stairs.
"Hello?"
It echoed up from below, small and feeble.
For a long moment Draco could only stare down the dark flight of steps to their invisible end, his heart pounding even harder now. His thoughts seemed to have frozen, his mind suddenly blank.
"Is someone there?"
It was a girl's voice.
With a sense of sick dread compounding inside him, Draco began to climb down. Usually they stored extra furniture down here for their summer garden parties. Usually this place was dark and forgotten.
Now, as he neared the foot, he saw that a heavy door had been conjured into place, sealing off the space beyond. Draco's heart beat in his throat, and he held his wand aloft as he slowed, casting the light forward.
There was a barred window in the door. A face was staring out at him, grimy and starved-looking, eyes wide and pale in the gloom.
It was Luna Lovegood.
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