It looked like rain.
Everyone crowded at the doors of the Entrance Hall to sign out, Filch taking his time, savouring this brush with power. If he dragged it out long enough, the Hogwarts student body might not make it to Hogsmeade before the clouds opened to soak them.
In the centre of the mass of people, Harry stood happily but sheepishly next to Cho Chang, hoping to settle comfortably into the first Valentine's date of his life before he died of awkwardness. Still, he was not so wrapped up in his feelings that he didn't glance over his shoulder, to the back of the group, where the Malfoy brothers stood whispering intently to each other.
"You'll come right back here as soon as your feet hit the fireplace grate if HE is there," Ronald said. "Promise me, Draco."
"I'm in no position to promise anything," he answered. "I have to take it as it comes."
Ronald paced back and forth in front of him. "I hate that. I'm coming with you."
"You're not," Hermione interjected just as Pansy took him by the arm with both hands, ending his pacing, keeping him at her side. "Your brother has been training with Snape for weeks to prepare himself for this. You can't just walk in there as you are and ruin the entire operation."
"Especially not when you've got your own part to play today," Pansy was saying. "This is your best chance to get to the Weasleys to find out about the - " She couldn't bring herself to say "the weapon." It sounded too stupid. She wasn't used to all this high stakes, do-gooder nonsense yet.
"Exactly," Hermione agreed. "Mr. Weasley was willing to risk his life to guard it at the ministry, so he must know something."
Ronald had stopped pacing, but he still stood in the Entrance Hall with his eyes clenched closed and his face upturned to the ceiling. His feelings were a tangle. He was worried about Draco going home, but also faintly jealous of him for getting to be there again after so long.
"And," Pansy reminded him, "it's not like there's no one at the manor to look out for Draco."
"It's true, Mum and Dad will be there," Draco said, hoping he was right. "And I'll be going through Snape's fire. He'll be waiting, watching too, if he can."
Ronald opened his eyes and stared hard at his brother, still not speaking.
"What?" Draco said. "Just go on your way."
Ronald let out his breath with a single nod.
Pansy threaded her arm through his. "Oh, by the way, Granger," she said, "the fake dating is off. Snape knows it was all an act now, so what's the point?"
Hermione gasped. "Parkinson, you can't just - "
"Sure I can," she said. "If you don't want anyone to know about you and Draco, that's whatever. Tell everyone you're single if you want. I don't care. But you're not the one with Ron anymore. That's me."
In spite of her unilateral ending of the fake dating, Pansy sprung forward and pecked a kiss on Draco's cheek. "Bye, Draco. You'll be brilliant, I'm sure. No one better."
He nodded his thanks.
"Right," Ronald said, clapping a hand over his brother's shoulder. "Take care of yourself. Give my love to Mum."
Hermione and Draco watched Pansy tug Ronald toward the end of the queue which Filch was finally, grudgingly allowing to move forward. The room was emptying, growing quieter as she and Draco stood facing each other, both of them dressed in weekend traveling clothes. She hadn't cried since the night Harry told her Snape had agreed to send Draco home, and she was resolved to keep it that way.
"Do we," she began, "do we just say goodbye now - here?"
Draco scanned the large, open space, still teeming with students and teachers.
"I mean," Hermione went on, "it's not impossible that this is, well, the last - um…"
Draco tried to smirk off the heaviness of their parting. "Walk me to Snape's stairwell. But don't look like you're walking me."
She let him get several paces ahead before she moved as if to go into the Great Hall before curving toward the entrance to Snape's dungeon. As she stepped down into the shadowy stairwell, Draco caught her in his arms, her feet suspended above the tread of the stone step below them. For a moment, it felt like she was falling and she let out a small, high yelp.
"Hush, you," he laughed, low and quiet as he held her face-to-face. "After five years with Potter, how are you still so bad at being sneaky?"
"I'm not." Her protest was weak, her arms closing around him, her face hidden against his neck.
He twisted in a half-circle, back and forth, a soothing motion. Her feet drifted out, almost kicking the wall. "You are a terrible sneak," he insisted. "There's another reason I'm glad you're not coming with me. Noisy little - " Draco left off teasing her when he felt her convulse in his arms. "Granger?"
She clung to him more tightly, her face still hidden. She blinked against his throat, dragging her warm, wet eyelashes across his skin. Her run of days without crying had ended.
He kissed the side of her head, the only part of her he could reach while they held each other like this. "Hermione," he whispered. "It's alright."
Her body shook with more tears.
There was, of course, no way for him to know if anything about his trip home would be alright. Instead he tried, "Don't be too sad. It has to be this way. We"ve already agreed. You'd do the same if you were me. Wouldn't you?"
She nodded.
"Right. So try not to cry - "
"Of course I'm trying not to cry," she said, lifting her face, kicking her feet behind her.
He was smirking at her again. "There's my girl."
She let her forehead fall against his. "Show off for me. Show me Legilimency. Before you go, show me what you learned. Do it to me."
He set her feet down on the step. "No, Granger. Not that. It's not nice. It's awful."
"Only if it's between you and Harry - "
"No, that's not it," he said. "Everything about Legilimency is an intrusion. It's not sweet or romantic or anything like that. And it's not Potter. Snape has been like a second father to me my whole life, and even when he does it, I get so angry I want to hex him into next Samhain. I don't ever want you to feel that for me - like I'm invading you - "
"You have my permission - "
"I said no, Granger. You can't consent to that. Legilimency is an attack. Always. That's what it's for. That's all it's for."
She sighed and wiped her face on his chest. "Fine."
"Trust me, I'm way better at Occlumency than Potter is. That's what Snape says. It will be alright." His fingers found her chin, tucked against his sternum. He lifted her face to look at his. "And also unlike Potter, I believe my parents will still find a way to protect me and send me back if things get too dangerous. You've seen it happen before yourself, when they got Ronald and me out of your parents' house at Christmas. They'll help me. Even if it means…"
The words faded before he could finish them. The awful fact was, he was putting his parents in danger by going home. But their standing up to the Dark Lord was long overdue. It would be better if they could resolve to do it for reasons of their own conscience, but if not, they could begin by doing it for him.
He was lost in these thoughts as she took to the step above him, her face closer to his. "Please be careful. I want to see you again," she said, and she kissed him, her hand on the nape of his neck, thumb behind his ear, smoothing his hair. He stepped into her, hands in the small of her back, pulling her closer.
Without her robes, his fingers made unintended contact with the bare skin beneath the hem of her short Muggle coat and jumper. The heat and texture of her jolted through his fingers. She jumped against him, higher and closer. There was so much of her he'd never touched, and if it was all as sweet as this tiny area, brushed with his fingers… It was all he could do not to plunge his arm inside her clothes, up the length of her spine as she arched into him.
"Mr. Malfoy."
It was Snape, speaking coldly, formally, scornfully to him from the open door at the bottom of the stairs. "This way, if you please."
Ronald watched wistfully as Harry followed Cho Chang into Madam Puddifoot's Tea House on the Hogsmeade high street. "Never thought I'd envy a bloke going in there," he said. "But it's better than being off to confront the woman who lied to me my whole life about who's my Dad."
Pansy made no reply. It was slightly terrifying.
Ronald was sputtering his own reply. "Not that I mean to say I wouldn't take you to Puddifoot's. I would. If you wanted me to."
She frowned. "Nah, it's a bit tacky for me. And being seen in there is just for showing off. No need for that when everyone from school is already looking at you and me today."
He took her by both hands and moved to stand in front of her. "You're satisfied? With just this?" he lifted their hands between them, kissing the impossibly smooth divots between her knuckles. "For Valentine's Day?"
She tried to scoff. "Satisfied for now, I suppose. You must understand, Ron, that by starting up with me while actually liking another girl, and then by upgrading to only pretending to like her, you've set the bar incredibly low."
He groaned. "Sorry. It'll be high from now on. Like, you want me to snog you right here? In front of the whole town? Because I'll kiss you anywhere." He flicked his eyes from her feet to the top of her head, taking all of her in, "And I mean anywhere."
She punched at his chest. "Lovely sentiment. But for now, let's just get in before it rains."
They set off down the street at a trot, making for the Hogs Head Inn. It was every bit as empty and scruffy as it had been the day Ronald had gone there with Harry and Hermione to organize the DA. No one questioned them as they approached the fireplace.
"It's called The Burrow," Ronald told her as he took a handful of Floo powder.
She looked puzzled. "Is it underground?"
"No, it's more like a tower, actually."
"That makes no sense."
With a smoking flash, Ronald was standing in the Burrow's kitchen. It was odd to be there without the smell of a lot of cooking and baking going on, but no one had known to expect him. It wasn't a big family holiday. This was what the Burrow was really like. Not a party, just a place.
There was sound and movement from the clock on the wall. The hand with Ronald's name on it was clicking as it shifted from "School" to "Traveling." Never once had he seen it point to "Home."
He was still staring at it when Pansy came flaming into the room, bouncing into his back They were dusting each other off as Molly appeared. She came into the kitchen expecting the unannounced visitors with Floo clearance to be from among her children, but not this one.
Her tone was cross, her head down. "So the pair of you are finally over apparating every time you leave a room, are you? Humble enough to use the Floo network again?" She must have assumed Fred and George had arrived - two flares at the fireplace, on the day she knew they'd been turned loose from school to go to Hogsmeade.
She stopped, gasping a little at the sight of Ronald and a pretty girl who wasn't Hermione Granger standing in the kitchen. She sang out a greeting and took his face in both her hands, kissing his forehead.
"Hope you don't mind," he was saying.
"No, no, of course not. This is your home too." She turned to Pansy, smiling a little less genuinely.
"This is Pansy Parkinson," he said. "Pansy this is my - Molly. Mrs. Weasley, that is." He turned back to Molly. "We've come to see Arthur's collection of Muggle artefacts. Hoping he could give us a tour."
"Yes, for a school project. Muggle studies," Pansy piped up. "The library at school is terribly out of date when it comes to Muggles. Nothing but books on butter churns and phonographs."
"Is it really?" Arthur had stepped into the kitchen. "Typical. Greetings, Ronald. And your friend - Parkinson, was it? You wouldn't be Prender Parkinson's daughter would you?"
Pansy cast a worried sideways glance at Ronald. "Yes."
"Prender Parkinson's daughter here asking about Muggle artefacts?" Arthur grinned. "Well, will wonders never cease?"
"Yes, yes, follow Arthur out to his workshop, dears. I'll get us some tea," Molly was saying, her hand on Ronald's back, nudging him along, always so pleased when he and Arthur took an interest in one another.
"Wait, Mum," Ronald said. "Before all of that, I'd like a word. Pansy can get started with Arthur. I'll be right there."
All at once, Molly knew. Coming here when the house was empty, bringing along a failsafe distraction for Arthur, the scared, sad look in Ronald's eyes - she knew why he had come here. The colour drained out of her face, the rosiness of her cheeks gone.
Ronald worried she might faint and stepped forward to take her arm.
Arthur stopped in the doorway. "Molly, dear?"
"It's alright, Arthur," she said, flexing her fingers on Ronald's sleeve, on the fabric of the fine coat Narcissa Malfoy had bought for him. "I'll send him out when we're through."
They left as Ronald pulled out a kitchen chair and eased Molly into it. He sat close, her hand still grasping his arm.
"I don't know how to start," he said. "You've always been so good to me. Arthur too. I'm grateful. But over the holidays, Draco, Hermione and I - we brewed a paternity potion and - and …"
He couldn't bring himself to finish, but he knew he wouldn't have to. And anyways, Molly was the adult, she'd made this mess. Let her speak to it first.
Her head hung low, not looking at him. "So it's settled, is it?" She drew in a huge breath, making her taller than he was used to. "What we're about to talk about, I always knew it was an inevitable conversation. But I assumed it would come later in your life."
She looked up long enough to offer him a melancholy smile. "I underestimated you, Ronald. I thought it wouldn't be until you became a father yourself, and held a perfect, helpless, beautiful baby in your arms, that you'd realize…" She stopped, tugging a handkerchief from inside her sleeve, dabbing at her eyes. "That you'd realize there is no way I could have let you go from this family where you would have been perfectly happy, and given you up, my darling baby, to - " her breath hitched with the leading edge of a sob, "to anyone except your own father."
She bowed over her lap, weeping almost soundlessly into her handkerchief, as if trying to keep Arthur from hearing. "Of course Lucius Malfoy is your father. All of wizarding Britain thinks I'm a monster for handing over a surplus son to punish the Malfoys. The truth is it was a tremendous sacrifice, even though it was me who suggested Dumbledore petition the Wizengamot for it. I wanted the war over, permanently."
She sat up, but still wouldn't look at him. "I stood to lose so much if war ever came again. I wanted the Death Eaters properly reformed, changed for the better, not just shuffled off to a hellish island to be tortured. I wasn't wrong about that. Just look how badly it's all turned out, now that Bellatrix Lestrange and the rest are on the loose, and more evil than ever after years in jail, handing out Devil's Snare in hospitals to choke poor Broderick Bode to death."
She shuddered, as if she was cold. Ronald moved to stand, to fix her some tea, but she stopped him with a hand on his elbow, and put the kettle on herself with a flick of her wand.
"No," she went on. "I knew Lucius well by the time I sent you to him. He'd been a model husband and father to Narcissa and Draco for over a year. And she was a lovely mother, and so sad that Draco was her only chance to be one. I knew Lucius would reform only if he was permitted to stay out of prison, to be at home with his family, thinking of how close he'd come to losing everything. He fought your coming at first - embarrassed and suspicious - but Narcissa wanted nothing more. She loved you at first sight. Everyone did, but her especially. And she needed a sibling for Draco, something she couldn't provide herself. After all he'd put her through, Lucius owed her that much. I owed her that much..."
"So Mum knows," Ronald confirmed. "She knows she's raising Dad's son by someone else?"
Molly hiccuped into a nod. "We've never spoken of it directly. In fact, whenever Lucius raises the subject of your paternity, I tell him I can't be sure. I tell him there's still a chance you might be Arthur's. But I've always known, Ronald. No potion required. I've always seen no one else but Lucius when I see you. It must be the same for Narcissa."
With that, she reached out and touched his face, her palm formed to his sharp, Malfoy jaw. She tapped the end of his long, pointed nose with her fingertip.
The kettle was whistling on the counter, high and demanding, but Ronald could not stop thinking of Narcissa. "So Mum knows that - you and Dad - that you - "
"Yes, so does Arthur. We both told them within days of the accident."
"The accident?"
Molly took another deep breath, and as the tea fixed itself on the counter, she explained her encounter with Lucius in the Prewett cemetery the afternoon the Milletus pollen was in the air.
"I knew it," Ronald said.
She described what happened unadorned, nothing like a love story. He had to ask after it anyway, and in the most startling way possible.
"Why did you let me live?" Ronald said. "If I was a love potion accident, between people who didn't love each other - I should have been a monster. You should have terminated me - "
Molly clamped her hand over his mouth. "Stop," she said. "The truth is, I did threaten your father with that. When I said it, I was shocked and mortified at what had happened, and I wanted to hurt him. But I never meant it. And I never truly feared you'd be damaged."
Ronald's eyes widened. "You mean - "
"No, we weren't in love," she said. "But we had been something like close in school. All the girls in our year fancied Lucius Malfoy. That was nothing special. It was more than that with me though. I'm not sure why. He was kind to me. Tried to kiss me goodbye on the last day of our last term. Seems it never quite left me. Such things tend not to. I'm not sure what it felt like from his side, but he stopped me, after, as I was about to leave the Prewett cemetery that day, and he promised me you would be undamaged - if there was a you."
She leaned forward to pat Ronald's knee. "It was enough, wasn't it? You're not damaged in the least. That girl out there keeping Arthur occupied, you're in love with her, aren't you?"
"Uh, yeah." He leaned back as his teacup floated past his chest, moving from the counter to the table. "How do you feel about Dad now? If I may - I mean - I suppose you don't - "
Molly stood and took Ronald's face in her hands again. She searched it, looking for something. Maybe it was Lucius.
"I am not in love with him," she said again. "But he is a part of me. A strange, sad part. One I lost without ever really having it. We will always share our lives because we'll always share you. And I still have a hope that he can be saved through what I gave him - through you. The entire country stands to benefit from that. And I continue to hope for it, even though Bellatrix and the rest are now at large, and Harry tells us You-know-who is back. There is still hope."
Ronald raised his hands to take hers, drawing them away from his face to hold them in both of his. "Mum," he said, "if I'm going to save Dad, merely existing isn't enough. I need to act. And before I can do that, I need to know what it was Arthur was guarding in the Department of Mysteries when he was attacked by the snake."
Molly sat back in her chair with a creaking thud. "Act? No, no acting. You're just a boy for now, Ronald. In due time - "
"There isn't time. We can't wait," he said.
"We?"
"Yes, Draco and I. Harry and Hermione too - a whole bunch of kids at school actually. We're not being trained properly so we're trying to figure out how to do something about all this on our own."
"A whole bunch?" Molly interjected. "Fred and George, Ginny too?"
Ronald swallowed. He should have anticipated this. There was no point in denying it. "Yeah," he said, almost like an apology.
"Ginny is fourteen!"
"And brilliant, Mum. Talented. She might be the best duelist we have. And Fred and George are geniuses. If they wanted to, they could bring the whole school to its knees with just a box of their fireworks or their sickness pastilles. There's nothing they can't do," he said.
She was too stunned to be angry, or to say anything at all.
"We can't go back to just waiting for the world to come undone," he went on. "You may as well help us, warn us of wrong moves, if you can. Like infiltrating the Department of Mysteries. Harry is obsessed with that place - dreams of it every night, and sometimes even when he's awake. And Draco - Draco is at home as we speak, trying to find out what we can do to save our Dad. He's gone there even though everyone suspects Bellatrix is there too now - "
Molly shook her head, her eyes wide. "No, he can't go there. They'll be waiting for him. Someone needs to stop him."
"It's too late. He's there. That's how desperate we are. So please," Ronald said. "If you can't help Draco, at least tell me what is down there in the Ministry? Do we risk trying to find it? Is there any use in it?"
"No," Molly blurted. "Please, don't go there. It's nothing. A bluff. It was all a distraction to slow You-know-who, to keep him occupied searching for something useless until we could convince the Ministry he is indeed a threat once more."
Ronald sat back, aghast. "Dumbledore sent Arthur down there to guard nothing? He risked his life for a bluff?"
She nodded. "That's the absurd truth of it. There was a prophecy made the year you were born. It's stored in the Department of Mysteries. When it was first made, You-know-who had - a spy who heard only half of it. But that information was what led him to the Potters, and his first brush with death. He thinks if he hears the whole of the prophecy, he'll be able to kill Harry once and for all and come to full power."
Ronald blinked. "And that's not true?"
She gulped at her tea. "Dumbledore doesn't think so. Of course he doesn't. The interplay between prophecy and free will is complicated. It's never simple, never just a matter of hearing magic words about some unalterable future event and 'poof' there it is. Greatest Dark Wizard of our time, my arse."
"Well, even so, does anyone know what the rest of it says?" Ronald tried.
She huffed. "Yes, Dumbledore knows. And the seer herself, stars help her. That's how we know it's not important."
"But it is important enough for Arthur to - "
"Yes, it was a calculated risk that may not have been worth it. And you'll notice no one is guarding it anymore. So forget it. Forget the Department of Mysteries. There's nothing for Harry there." She drank her tea, hungrily, like it was medicine. "But do not forget that the only reason You-know-who wants it is to kill Harry. He'd be just as happy to kill him before he hears the prophecy, if given the chance. And so," she set her cup down with a clatter, "the most important thing all of you can do is to stay safe. Do not engage You-know-who in any way. Pester Harry to practice his Occlumency, to use his free will to separate his destiny from You-know-who's."
Ronald sighed, his head thrashing on his neck.
She patted his knee again. "I know young people hate it, but sometimes the best course of action, even in a heated conflict, is to be still."
Ronald's emotions burst. He sprang to his feet, pacing beside Molly's kitchen sink. His voice was loud and sarcastic. "Oh, you mean like all of you kept still when you were young? All of you putting safety first? Feelings never anything but perfectly in check?"
"Ronald, dear - "
"No," he said. "We're not going to sit and wait while Dumbledore nudges us around a chess board, some of us sacrificed for foolish gambits that don't play out. And no, I don't believe my father came to you on the Prewett estate to apologize for my uncles. He came to you because his wife kept losing pregnancies and he needed to assure a Malfoy heir out of a woman with pure-blood, proven fertility, and who was enough in love with him to prevent love potion damage. Maybe he was hoping you'd come up with another set of twins for him."
"Ronald," she roared back at him. "It wasn't a potion. It was an environmental accident. It was the vegetation on my uncle's land that enchanted us. Lucius couldn't have known - "
He barked a scornful laugh, loud as he answered. "Maybe you don't know my father as well as you think you do. I'm tired of it. Tired of all of you telling us how to make it through a time like this. In your own time, your generation knew nothing but rash, dangerous action. And now you've got the nerve to try to tell us 'no'."
"Yes, we were rash," she hollered back at him. "And look where it's got us? Nothing was solved, just postponed. And our punishment for that is to live to see it descending all over again, but on our children this time."
Ronald was raising his head, opening his mouth to say more, when the Floo flashed green behind him. It flared but no one appeared, the light around it bending, straining. There was a rush of wind and heat before the fireplace coughed a wizard out onto the floor.
"Lucius!"
He looked up at her from the floor. "Molly," was all he said.
Even through his lingering anger and his new surprise and worry at seeing his father appear, Ronald noticed the look that passed between Molly and his father, and felt it tear at his heart. Had they always looked at each other like that? With sadness, with longing?
"I've come for Ronald." Lucius said, the light from the Floo dying as he got to his feet. He didn't look Ronald in the face as he closed his fist in the back of his son's coat. "You. Back to school. Now."
Ronald leaned away from him. "Draco. What's happened to Draco? You shouldn't be here when he's - "
But Lucius wouldn't speak another word. There was no time for Ronald to argue, not even to say that Pansy was being left behind. Lucius had already turned on the spot and Apparated both himself and his firstborn away.