In his dungeon office, Severus Snape stood aghast between two students, both of them sprawled on opposite sides of the stone floor. The first was Draco Malfoy, wandless after hurling his into a shelf crammed with bottles, shattering several, their contents splattered on the wood, smoking and fizzing. Draco didn't see or hear it, his eyes clenched shut, his voice a tearless sob.

The other student was Harry Potter, rolling on his back with laughter. The sound chilled Snape. The laughter did not sound like Potter. It did not sound like any young person. It hardly sounded like a person at all. It sounded like - no it couldn't be.

Frantic to end it, Snape swooped at him, grasping Harry by the front of his robes, pulling him to standing, both of them shaking. "Potter!" he called out. "Stop that at once. Open your eyes. Potter. Harry Potter!"

The infernal laughing had almost completely faded. Harry was coming back, as if out of a stupor, mumbling as Snape held him upright.

In the new quiet, the door to Snape's office clicked closed. Draco had retrieved his wand and was letting himself out.

Snape swore and dropped Harry into a chair. "What was it, Potter?" he snarled. "What did Draco see? Tell me or I shall find it in your mind myself."

Harry looked exhausted, perhaps spooked, but not sorry. "I'd just been talking about it, so it was right there when he rushed in. Maybe you should have expected this, Sir."

"What was it?" Snape's voice was loud, furious, but somehow, Harry wasn't afraid in the least.

He answered simply, "It was the graveyard, last year, at the final task of the tournament."

Snape's eyes widened. "How much did he see?"

The strange coldness that had seized Harry was ebbing away, leaving him unsettled. He swallowed as he said, "He saw Cedric get attacked, and Voldemort return…"

Snape stepped closer. "Yes, and did he see the others?"

The others - Harry knew who he meant. Snape didn't care about Draco seeing any of the Death Eaters Voldemort summoned to the graveyard but one. He nodded. Yes, Draco had seen his father groveling for mercy from the Dark Lord.

Snape sniffed, "And yourself. Were you quite yourself during the exercise, or did you feel - overtaken?"

"What do you mean, Sir?"

"The laughter."

Harry knew it was strange, and dangerous to talk about sharing Voldemort's feelings to someone he did not trust. He would wait to talk to Ronald and Hermione about it later - maybe Sirius. For now, he merely squirmed as he asked. "What about it?"

"Did it spring from your own anger, your own useless hatred of your classmate?" Snape asked. "Or was it from - him?"

Harry's mouth opened, but he didn't answer.

Snape threw both his hands up. "For stars' sake, Potter, practice between our lessons. If slips like this don't convince you that nothing is more important than your study of Occlumency, then I don't know what would. Should you mistake anything as more important - any other classes, infatuations, illicit clubs, anything - I will see that they are taken out of your way."

Summoning Harry's book bag, Snape sent it crashing into the boy's stomach. "Now get out."

Snape found Draco in the courtyard, sitting in the cold without a cloak, the pale flesh around his lips darkening to blue. "Come inside, Draco," he said. "I will answer your questions as best I can indoors. Your mother will not like to hear that you're suffering needlessly with cold."

Draco did not move, except for to shiver. "He was there with Potter, in that graveyard - Dad was. I already knew the Dark Lord was back. You were there yourself when he told me. But Dad was there the night it happened, standing in the circle. I saw his face there. I heard his voice."

Snape dropped to sit close to him on the cold stone bench along a leafless, late winter hedge. "Understand, Draco, that he couldn't refuse to come without putting his life in danger. Through the mark in his arm, the call is irresistible."

Draco's head drooped to look at Snape's left arm, hidden in his sleeves. "You're marked and you weren't there. I would have seen you."

He folded his arms as if to hide them. "I couldn't have left the school during the tournament. The Dark Lord knew this and excused me. He must often make such allowances. His power to oversee us, divine our movements, our intentions, our desires, is not perfect, but it is knowing enough to be fearsome. It is why you must be trained before you meet him."

Draco's voice was rising. "Is it? You mean to say your Dark Lord knows what all of you mean? What you want? Then I can't wait to meet him. Maybe he can tell me what my father is truly thinking - who he is."

Snape closed an arm around Draco's shoulders, hushing him. "My boy, your father made momentous, irrevocable decisions as a very young person which he could not have possibly understood at the time. As did I. As did most everyone in those times. He is now dealing with the consequences of those choices while trying to insulate his loved ones from them."

Draco scoffed. "Loved ones. Mother wasn't in the graveyard with him. There was a place for her sister, but not for Mother. How can she love him, after everything he's - all the - and with Ronald and his - "

Snape shushed him again. "She does love him, deeply and truly. And you may too, Draco. It's alright for you to continue loving your father."

Draco was sobbing now, not ready to talk about himself, keeping with the subject of his mother. "How can she love him? Someone as good and true as her..."

Snape's hand grasped the back of Draco's skull, pushing the boy's face against Snape's shoulder. It felt like long ago, when Draco would flee into the garden after getting overexcited and needing to be scolded at manor events. He was never punished harshly, but he always took it too much to heart. Snape would catch Narcissa's eye, wait for her nod, and follow Draco to comfort him, like this.

"Do not lionize your mother, Draco," he told him now. "She is not a saint but a flawed, complex person like any other. You do her a disservice when you deny her that humanity."

"No, she can't love him. I don't know how…" He trailed off into more sobs against Snape's shoulder.

Snape sighed. He had a personal conviction to always tell students the truth, and he kept to it even now, even with this boy. "She does love him. Not because she doesn't understand him, but because she does understand him. She cannot trust him, but she can love him. And so can you."

Draco coughed in new pain. "If she can't trust him, who can she trust? Does it have to be me? Already?"

In spite of his own pain, Draco sensed Snape's posture growing rigid at his question. He pushed himself free from Snape's hold, looking into his face. He blinked, his eyes clearing. "It's you," he said. "Mother trusts you. She loves Dad, but she trusts you."

Snape's head dipped in a single nod. "Yes. And the inverse of that is that she can't trust your father, and she can't love me. Not in the way you fear, Draco. Put it out of your mind."

Draco blinked. "You're all the same, aren't you? Tell me. How did Molly Weasley fall pregnant with Ronald?"

Snape dropped his arm from Draco's shoulders, sneering. "I assure you, I was not party to that."

"But you know," Draco pressed. "A potioneer like yourself. Of course you know. Even we know, Ronald and I."

Snape's eyes narrowed, still disbelieving.

"You'll find out all my secrets as the Occlumency lessons go on," Draco said, wiping his face. "I might as well tell you now. We brewed a paternity potion in Granger's basement over the holidays. I nicked what I needed from the greenhouses and from your classroom. Dad is Ronald's literal father, and Mrs. Weasley - he loves her, at least a little, or else - "

Snape was on his feet, pacing the gravel path in front of the bench. "Molly Weasley is your father's old friend from school - "

"Oh, like yourself and Potter's dead mum?"

"No, not at all like that!" Snape roared.

Draco startled, leaning away from where Snape stood over him, until the hedge crunched against his back.

Snape was recovering his composure. "Molly Weasley's connection to your father is nothing like a love affair - not like the one he has built his life around with your mother. And I warn you, Draco, do not judge the rashness of our youth when you did not live in those times yourself. We all did what we thought we had to in order to survive, and to bring your generation into the world."

Draco was now standing as well, eye to eye with Snape. "We, Sir?" he said. "Did you say we?"

Snape spun away, breaking their eye contact.

"If you think I could resist trying the paternity potion myself, you're mistaken," Draco said. "I know who my father is. But I think I know why you've always been in my life, propping me up even through my mistakes, following me into cold courtyards, soaking up my tears."

Snape had moved several paces away, standing with his arms folded over his chest, his chin held high, his eyelids low. He made no answer.

Draco stepped forward to bring them face to face again. "You aren't my father, Sir. But you could have been. Maybe you should have been."

Hermione came into the vanished room, answering Draco's call on her galleon, calling out questions of her own.

"I've just seen Harry. What was Snape thinking? Doubling up your lessons?" she said. "No warning, no nothing. I don't know how he could've expected anything less than a disaster, going about it that way. Harry is so upset, he refused to come along with me to work it out."

Draco dragged her into an embrace more roughly than he intended, silencing her ranting, bowing his face into her hair. "He's not the only one. I didn't want to see him. I only wanted you." His voice cut off raggedly, as if choked.

"Malfoy?" she said.

His answer was to hold her even closer, lifting her feet off the ground. She grasped the sides of his head, tipping it to an angle at which she could try to read his face. "What happened in the Occlumency lesson? What did Harry let you see? He wouldn't tell me."

Draco shuddered at the memory of it. "I need your help."

Her eyes were wide, scanning his face. She was nodding. "Yes, tell me how."

"When we're finished here, find Ronald and tell him what I'm about to tell you. I've barely got my feelings under control myself, and telling Ronald would mean reliving it all, watching him hear it for the first time. So I'm being a coward and asking you to do it instead. I'm sorry, but - "

She boosted herself onto tiptoe and kissed his mouth. "Stop. Just tell me what you saw."

They sat on the table in the centre of the room, Draco on the edge, with his feet on the floor, and Hermione beside him, her legs folded beneath her, facing his profile as he spoke. In much the same words he used to speak to Snape about it, Draco told her about Harry's memory.

"Crashing through Potter's mind, seeing his past - it was like standing beside him, almost as his other self. I could hear my father's voice in the graveyard. I could see his face when the Dark Lord unmasked him. He was frightened, but otherwise, he looked like he always does. He looked like me - someone who wasn't Potter's other self, but my other self."

Hermione rose to her knees on the table, her arms around Draco's neck. "You were not there. You were here with all of us, heckling Harry and fully expecting every one of the champions to make it back safely. Nothing that happened in the graveyard that night had anything to do with you."

He was shaking his head above the ring of her arms. "How could I not have seen it coming? I let it happen."

"Draco you were fifteen. You were away from home, at school." Hermione shook him, as if trying to clear his head herself. Her voice was loud, taking on a tone that never failed to provoke him to argue.

The volume of his voice rose to match hers, but he wouldn't look at her, his eyes fixed straight ahead. "By then, I already knew who started the riot at the Quidditch World Cup at the beginning of the year. I knew before it happened. He was one of them, my father."

"And he was acting on awful promises he made before any of us was born."

"While I did nothing to stop him - nothing to show him I knew he was wrong," he was speaking as if pained, words coming between heaving breaths. "Granger, while you ran for cover, hand in hand with Ronald and Potter, I stood and watched the riot. It may as well have been me behind my father's mask - "

She'd had enough. Still holding his neck and shoulders, Hermione swung one knee around Draco's waist. She straddled him as he sat on the table, one knee on either side of his hips, her feet behind her. In danger of falling backward off of him, onto the floor, she clung to him with her arms, holding tightly with her hands and thighs.

"Granger, what - "

Her chest crushed against his, she kissed him, hard, her mouth open, tongue driving at him. Words sounded in his throat but not further. He was speechless as, for the first time ever, her pelvis bore down on him, the warm crux at the centre of her pushing against the front of his trousers.

He gasped, pushing himself back, against the table, trying to retreat to his gentlemanly ways. But at the same time, his hands came up to grab her, one on each side of her ribcage. Perhaps it was just to keep her from falling. She didn't ask, but rushed into his hold, using his momentum as he tried to pull his lower body away from her to undermine his balance. With a grunt, he fell onto his back on the tabletop.

She fell with him, her kiss unrelenting, chasing down his puzzled attempts to say something, to question her. At every sound, every turn, she deepened the connection. She was in control now, no longer in danger of falling, her hands free to roam through his hair, over his shoulders, across his chest, down his sides, tugging at the fabric of his shirt.

It was too much. She knew it. But she had advanced on him like this as a demonstration, a chance for him to distinguish himself from his father, and prove his respect for her, his trustworthiness, maybe even something as archaic and indefinable as his honour. He had to know their relationship wasn't ready for this, and someone had to stop it, even if, at his core, he wanted it, and she'd lost herself to it.

She hadn't, really, but she'd created a dangerous situation all the same. Try as she might, Hermione could never plan for everything, including the intensity of her reactions to being this closely and powerfully connected to his body. Her desire for him was immense, real, a high, aching tension she could barely stand. Her body had a secret, ancient script that she'd never seen until now, and she was shocked to find she already knew it by heart.

She wanted her hands inside his clothes, sliding along his skin, but her mind knew how to tell her hands to wait. Her mind did not know how to speak to the baser parts of herself. They followed the ancient script, surprising her as she felt herself move against him in a way she had neither learned nor intended. Just once, she arched her spine, then released it, causing friction, low, not too insistently, but enough for her to sense a twitch answering back from him.

Draco tore his mouth away from hers, his voice calling between them. "No, you don't have to do that, Granger. Not yet."

She hovered over him, her breath panting against his flushed cheek. She swallowed, willing her body to fold up the script, be satisfied with her demonstration, let him escape. She was nearly limp as Draco rolled onto his side, shifting her off of him to lay on the table beside him. With their contact broken, he lay back, his heart pounding, his arm dropped over both of his eyes.

Her breath was still fast and shallow but she managed to speak. "Do you see, Malfoy? You are not your father. You are kind, respectful of Muggle-borns like me, not willing to use and mistreat us. You are in control of yourself, not greedy or selfish."

He laughed. "Stars, Granger, is that what you were trying to say with all of that?"

She breathed out a laugh. "Persuasive, yeah?"

He laughed again. "That was one hell of an object lesson. And," he said rolling onto his side to face her again, smirking, "one hell of a risk. What if I hadn't stopped it?"

She shrugged. "I trusted that you would." She poked his chest. "And I was right. That's how reliable you are."

He caught her poking finger, closed his hand around it and lifted her hand to his face to kiss it. "Don't do that every time I come unhinged. Sooner or later, the ending will be different."

The blush that had been fading from her skin returned as she said, "Yes, that's how I expect things to go."

He cleared his throat, sitting up, tugging on her hand to bring her to sit as well.

She grinned at him. "You must be convinced by now. Accept it. You are Draco Malfoy the pure, the trustworthy, the paragon of respect and equality."

Before he could answer, a third voice was sounding in the room. "Respect and equality? Playing pretend, are you Malfoy?"

Hermione stood as if at attention beside the table, smoothing her skirt and jamming her feet back into the shoes that had fallen off her feet when she jumped Draco.

"Harry," she announced as he came into the room just ahead of Ronald. "Look, don't you come in here unless you're going to play nicely."

"Ah, Mother Granger is back on the scene," Draco drawled. "I'm immune to her, but stars help the two of you."

"You have to be nice as well, Malfoy," she said.

"I'm nice," Ronald muttered to himself.

"Yes, you are. Thank you," Hermione said.

Draco rolled his eyes, irked more by this bit of praise than all the hand-holding he'd seen them do this term.

"Now listen," Hermione went on. I think I've figured something out about - about the laugh. The one Harry was doing at the end of the lesson today."

All three of the boys shuddered at once.

"You told them about the laugh, did you Potter? Delightful." Draco frowned, remembering.

"I'd already heard him do it myself," Ronald said. "in our room, especially at night. Harry feels You-know-who's emotions sometimes. It doesn't have to be a proper vision, or even when he's asleep. Sometimes Harry will just feel like him. Isn't that right, Harry? Especially when You-know-who is glad about something, like he must have been during the lesson today."

"Glad," Draco echoed. "What would he be glad about here?"

"That's what I was wondering too," Hermione said. "I think he was pleased that Harry was letting himself lash out at someone. It only makes sense that when he's feeling hatred, Harry is more vulnerable to Voldemort's emotions. Which means," she said, rounding on him, "that you have got to be careful, and think the best of people, forgive them and - and everything."

Ronald was scoffing now. "Harry's got to give up anger? Even for Snape and Draco?"

She looked at the floor as she took Draco's hand. "Maybe especially for them. Maybe that's what Dumbledore is trying to get Snape to teach Harry along with Occlumency - how to forgive, purify his heart of hate, or some such thing. And I'm not just saying that because a friendship between Harry and Malfoy would make my life easier, not to mention yours, Ronald. The truth is, the bad feelings between Harry and Malfoy are among the most disruptive forces in the school right now. That has to change."

"I've given up guessing at what Dumbledore is trying to teach me," Harry said. "If he cared so much, if it was really so important, he'd just tell me."

"Harry - "

"No, when you want someone to know something, you just tell them. Or," he said, glancing at Draco, "or you show them. That's what I meant to do today, Malfoy. I know it was awful and I admit that, at the time, I was enjoying watching you suffer through it far too much. But you had to know. I'd already heard you going off about protecting your family. And you can't begin to do that until you know how deep they're in with Voldemort."

Ronald jumped. "What's this?"

Harry and Draco exchanged a weary look. Draco took a deep breath. "Potter's memory, Ronald. It was bad. Hermione's going to tell you about it. I'm too exhausted. Once you hear it, you can judge for yourself if our family's worth protecting."

Ronald's face blanched so alarmingly, Harry was struck with a pang of compassion. "I wasn't questioning their worth. All I was trying to do was warn you. If your father is forced to decide between Voldemort and you - you can't assume he'll choose you."

Draco heaved another sigh. "Well, we'll never know unless we give him the chance to show us. Isn't that right, Potter? So the next Hogsmeade trip, off I go, back home to whatever's there."

Harry narrowed his mouth, nodding grimly, feeling suddenly foolish about his plans to be dating Cho Chang that day. "Snape agrees?" he asked.

Draco nodded. "Yes."

By then, Ronald had wound himself up enough to look like he might be sick.

Hermione saw it and pulled Draco to standing and pushed him toward the door. "Enough," she said. "I need to talk to Ronald before the pair of you come up with any more scary, gloomy, mysterious things to say."

Harry nodded, walking backward toward the door. "Ronald," he said. "You'll be okay."

Ronald had always sensed there was something particularly awful about the night Cedric Diggory had died, something Harry was keeping from him. His worst fear had been that it involved his parents. And while he was relieved to hear Narcissa had no part in the events of that night, learning Lucius was there struck him like a physical blow. He doubled over, his hands on his stomach.

"Ronald, I'm sorry," Hermione said, holding him, nudging him upright against her body. "Say something, Ronald. Take a breath. Anything."

Breath - yes, he needed to breathe. Ronald blinked his blue eyes - Lucius's eyes - and sucked in a chestful of air. As he exhaled, he leaned into Hermione, her feet scrambling to brace themselves beneath his weight.

"Ronald - "

Still struggling to keep him upright, Hermione peered around him. She thought she'd heard footsteps clipping toward them and she was right. There was Pansy, slipping her head and shoulders under Ronald's arm, coming face to face with Hermione.

"What's happened?" she was saying. "Draco told me to come. Said there was bad news."

At the sound of her voice, Ronald pivoted away from Hermione, lunging toward Pansy instead. Hermione leaned into her ear, whispering something about Death Eaters at the tournament and Lucius Malfoy - something Pansy had already assumed must be true. Her parents weren't Death Eaters, but pureblood gossip ran deep, assuring secret orders were never too secret. She had never mentioned what she'd heard about their father to Ronald or Draco, perhaps because she assumed they must have known.

"Poor lovely, dim, trusting boys," she crooned as she waved Hermione away. "Thanks, Granger. I've got him."

As Hermione let go of him, Ronald clamped both his arms around Pansy, rocking them back and forth.

Pansy turned her face to breathe. "Ron?" she pressed. "Ron, speak to me."

"Home, Pansy love," his voice rumbled miserably above her. "I need to go home."

She tangled her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck, raising her head to place a kiss in the hollow of his throat. "Sweet boy, you know you can't do that. Not right now."

He bowed to groan against her neck.

She smoothed her hands up and down his back. "We're both here. Let's make this room our home, yeah? I'll build a fire, hold your head in my lap until you fall asleep. We'll stay here together as long as you like."

He straightened up. "I'd love that. But what I mean is, I need to go see my mother - my literal mother, Molly Weasley."

Pansy frowned. "You do?"

Ronald nodded. "Yeah. I don't know how else to get the ground back beneath my feet. I mean, in these past weeks, I found my father, my brilliant, beautiful father. And then, just as quick, I feel like I lost him."

Her heart was breaking right along with his. She was kissing his cheeks. "You're not lost. You're here with me. We'll sort it out. I promise."

He held her face between his hands, looking hard into her dark eyes. His face was a thousand questions, and it hurt her that she could answer none of them. It wouldn't do.

"Ron," she said. "We'll go to her. On the Hogsmeade weekend, while Draco sneaks off to the manor, we'll Floo to Weasleys' from the Hog's Head inn. I'll take you. And even if it goes wrong, we'll be together."