Narcissa had lemonade out and waiting for them on the patio. The Auror in residence was making herself scarce, though Draco had no illusions that meant they weren't being spied on. Still, it made the gathering more pleasant and he sat at the table and sipped from his drink and tried to make idle chit chat.

Harry Potter seemed a little in awe of the place. He kept glancing up at the soaring walls as if he couldn't quite believe it. "Better than the last time you were here?" Draco asked at last. The way Harry was goggling at the French doors made him uncomfortable. It made him want to make snide comments about closets and Muggles because being cruel was what he did when he felt out of place and they'd just spent a game maybe almost flirting. Maybe. Though of course he was imagining things. He slouched and took a sip from his glass.

"Yeah," Harry said, looking away from the endless small glass panes, each with a translucent reflection of the four of them at their table. "That thing with the Snatchers made my last visit a bit lousy."

Draco sank lower in his chair. He'd been mistaken in what he thought he'd seen because of course he had. And even if he'd understood Harry Potter's little hunch, some people were just voyeurs. God knew he'd seen enough of that with the Death Eaters to harbor no illusions about the range of people's perversions. Just because Harry liked seeing his girlfriend kiss another man didn't mean anything. It wasn't about him.

Nothing ever was.

"Yes," said Narcissa primly. "The Snatcher incident was a bit unpleasant."

"All worked out," Harry said.

"Which is what matters." Narcissa poured a bit more lemonade from the pitcher into her glass. It hadn't been empty and the movement looked uncomfortable, as if she were searching for something to do with her hands. She didn't drink when she was done, just folded those hands in her lap. "I understand your Muggle family is well?"

Draco flashed a startled look at her. Harry stiffened next to him, and even unflappable Ginny frowned. "Not so well, then?" Narcissa asked.

"Too well," Draco muttered. Even if Harry didn't want him, it wasn't as if he couldn't still be outraged the man had had a horrible childhood. He was just being sympathetic to a man who'd saved him from prison. Sympathetic to a friend. Nothing more. "Bastards," he added. It was no stretch to think of Muggles as scum. He'd heard variations on that line his whole life.

Harry let out a tiny exhale and Draco slid a foot across the floor silently until the toe of his flying boot rested against Harry's instep. He was just reassuring a friend. Harry closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them his face was a mask. "We aren't close," he said, "but I think they are unharmed."

"How are your family," Ginny asked Narcissa. "Your sister recovering after the war?"

Draco knew he shouldn't cheer her on for that jab, but Harry's shoulders were still hunched together and his knuckles were white around the lemonade glass. "I keep meaning to introduce myself to Aunt Andromeda," he said. "Family is what matters most, isn't it Mum?"

"It is," she agreed. She frowned a bit, then smoothed her face out as wrinkles appeared. "Family is often so complicated."

"I'm sure your relationship with your sister is very complicated," Ginny said, giving the slightest bit of contemptuous emphasis to the final word.

Narcissa smiled wanly. "Well, yes," she said. "My parents forbid contact. Something I would never do."

"Bully for you," Harry said.

"But I was thinking more of Draco's great grandmother," Narcissa went on as if Harry hadn't interrupted. "Her portrait is up on the fourth floor and I walked past it just this morning. Lovely woman."

"Fascinating," Harry said. Sarcasm seemed to be where he went when he was on edge.

"She married a Malfoy – "

"Why her portrait would be here, I suppose," Ginny said.

" – and they had a good friend who lived with them all their lives. A Selwyn I think, though his last name wasn't on the portrait plaque."

Draco's glass was halfway to his mouth when he heard that. He set it down and looked out over the expanse of lawn. It was green and perfect. What magic couldn't do, a dedicated gardening staff could. Malfoys never did anything by halves. Things they did became the fashion. They were the leaders of the upper crust in a way the inbred Blacks only dreamt of being, in ways the impoverished Weasleys had no hope of achieving. "A good friend," he said. Did that mean what he thought it did?

"Just think," Narcissa said. "You might be related to the Selwyns."

Ginny set her lemonade down and leaned back in her seat. "Really?" she asked.

"Oh yes," Narcissa said. "Of course, people were far more willing to live and let live in those days. Discretion was important as, of course, was minding your own concerns. You simply did not ask about other people's lives. Today, alas, everyone wants to know the minuscule details of everyone's dirty laundry."

"I'm used to being in the papers," Harry said sourly.

Narcissa gave him a pitying look. Draco assumed at first she was sympathetic, or at least contemptuous of, his endless appearances in the gossip columns. From their school days, Harry Potter hadn't been able to breathe without The Daily Prophet reporting on it. God knew, he'd helped with that. It was the speculative look on Ginny's face that made him realize he wasn't quite keeping up.

"Mother," Draco said slowly. "Are you saying great-grandmother Malfoy was in some kind of ménage-a-trois?"

"Oh, people used to do all sorts of things," Narcissa said, deftly avoiding answering the question. "I've been cleaning out and I found quite a cache of diaries. Most of them are rather dull, of course. 'Had to speak to the elves about the butter again,' or 'Ordered five yards of the new fabric' but every once in a while, included as though it were no more remarkable than the price of dairy, you find, 'Sarah and her husbands coming over for dinner Thursday so must remember to have Claudius slaughter a lamb.'"

"Husbands," Ginny said.

"Quite," Narcissa said. "Would anyone like some more lemonade? I'm going to go fetch some more biscuits but I'd be happy to get another pitcher if any of you would like some?"

She stood with her eyebrows raised into a look of patently false inquiry and, when Draco waved her off, she slid through the doors of the terrace, into the Manor, and disappeared.

She'd never fetched a tray of biscuits in all the time he'd known her. That she knew where the kitchens were wasn't exactly a surprise – you could hardly not know the layout of your own home – but he would be surprised if she'd ever spent more than ten minutes in the room.

"How long do you think that will take?" Harry asked.

Ginny gave him a look that suggested he was the most aggravating man to ever cross her path.

"What?" he asked. "What am I missing?"

Draco ignored that. Harry Potter's peculiar ability to notice tiny details about one thing while missing another entirely was not unknown to him. "Have the last biscuit," he said. "Potter."

Ginny smiled at them both. It was a look that would send any sensible man running for the proverbial hills. It was an almost feral smile, and one that was delighted with itself. She planted her elbows on the table, a movement so deliberately rude Draco twitched, and rested her chin on her hands. "Your mother is a delight," she said. "We really need to get her and my mum together one of these days."

The idea of that going anything other than utterly poorly made Draco shake his head. "I think," he began.

"No," Ginny said. She pointed a finger at him. "You don't. You react."

"That's not fair," Harry said.

"Do you think we should have a public wedding," Ginny asked.

"We're already married," Draco pointed out. He was a bit miffed about her comment he didn't think. "I think what we're trying to do is get divorced so you and Chosen One over here can get married without having me thrown in prison." Or her, either. The Ministry could be a bit difficult about fraud these days and he'd do anything to keep her from getting punished for trying to save him.

"No," she said. She pushed her tongue into the side of her mouth and though he knew she was just thinking it took his mind to places she surely didn't intend it to go.

"Your girlfriend is difficult," Draco informed Harry, mostly because saying Your girlfriend is making me think about sex while I'm sitting on my own back porch, my mother sure to come back any minute seemed like a bad idea.

"She's your wife," Harry said.

Speaking of another person who made him think about sex.

"You know," Draco said. "Maybe we should just go home." He made a show of rubbing at the injuries he'd gotten in detention though, in truth, even a few days on the potions Harry had supplied had mostly cured him. What twinges remained certainly hadn't slowed his flying down. "I think I might have -."

"Yeah." Ginny stood up. "Home sounds good. I could kiss it and make it better."

Draco supposed he should have been expecting something like that. He looked at Harry but Harry had become fascinated by the grape shears. He was opening and closing them as though he'd never seen anything quite so interesting. Honestly, sometimes it was as if he'd been raised in a barn. Who didn't know what grape shears were?

"Maybe," Draco began.

Ginny patted him on the chest. "Yes," she said, before he could figure out what he'd been going to say after that drawn out maybe. "Play hard to get. It makes you cuter."

Harry swallowed a snicker but when she smiled at him he flushed. It made the scar on his forehead stand out. Looking at the famous lightning flash emblazoned on Potter's head made Draco think of the scars that ran across his chest. Ginny must have seen the way his expression went from outraged and embarrassed, like that of a cat who'd been caught missing the leap to the counter, to something much darker. Sadder. Lost again.

"Draco?" she asked, all humor gone.

"I think I need to lie down," he said. He avoided brushing up against Harry Potter as they apparated back to Harry Potter's flat in silence. He climbed the stairs in silence, and sat on his bed without speaking. He watched the sun move across the floor. It went through one of the wide boards, then a second, and then Ginny was pushing the door open. She sat next to him without asking.

"Harry wants to fuck you," she said.

Draco had no idea how to respond to that.

"And I'm guessing the feeling is mutual."

"It's not," he said.

"Did you know people blink more when they lie?" she asked.

He buried his face in his hands and tried to count to fifty. It had been a trick he'd used during Death Eater meetings in the Manor, and then again in prison when the people who'd eaten at his mother's table took to beating him up. He could hear his breath hitch and feel his shoulders shake and none of this was going the way he had expected it to.

"I did not know that," he said at last.

She laced her fingers through his. "This could be easy," she said. "All you have to do it let it."

"I don't know how," he said.

"Let me show you."

He turned his face to hers. The freckles that were stars on her arms were galaxies across her cheeks. She'd saved him. He'd thought once he could love her for that alone. Maybe he was making this harder than it had to be. It wouldn't be the first time he'd overthought something.

She tasted of lemonade. Tart and sweet and more than he'd ever had the right to hope for. When he pulled away he searched her eyes, looking for the trick. It wasn't there. "Let me love you," she said softly. "Let us both love you."

"I'll try," he said. His arm burned where the Mark was, and something echoed that in the corners of his eyes. "I'll try," he said again. He brushed his lips against the edge of her ear and, because he was still a prat and a selfish arsehole, he added one more thing before he returned his attention to her mouth. "The first kid is mine, though."