Hermione desperately needed to talk to her girl friends. Unfortunately, she didn't really have any - none she could trust to help her talk through the mess she was in now, as she made her way back from the vanished fifth floor room well after curfew, her hands smelling of Draco Malfoy's hair.

She raised her fingertips to her nose, sniffing his scent from them before trailing them over her lips. Draco Malfoy - where in the world did he learn to - and like that - with her - and who would dare to call what she'd done with Viktor Krum by the same name as what had happened between herself and Draco just now? It would never happen again. That was for certain. But she was changed. She was post-Malfoy-kiss-Granger, and what was she supposed to do with herself now?

Cloaked by a Disillusionment spell, she arrived safely at the Gryffindor Tower as the Slytherin prefects Umbridge had deployed to chase her scurried through the corridors and staircases. Inside the portrait hole, Ronald appeared as quickly as if he'd been standing there waiting all along.

"You're back," he said, pulling her into a crushing hug. He was babbling over her head. "I had the most terrible feeling after you left. I never should have let you go without me, all because of a stupid charms essay, no matter what you said."

She spoke, too muffled against the front of his jumper for anyone to hear.

"What?" he asked, loosening his grip enough for her to turn her head.

"I said, did you finish your essay or not? This touching show of concern had better not be an excuse - "

"Yes, I finished it," he said, releasing her completely.

Harry was on his feet too, standing as if to separate them. "Did you find it? The vanished fireplace?"

"Yes, it's there, in the room, as expected. But we can't go tonight, Harry." She explained about Umbridge's new alarm on the portrait hole and the swarm of Slytherin prefects out hunting Gryffindors, hoping to find him.

"I said you should have taken my cloak, didn't I?" Harry answered.

She winced. "Yes, you were right. But even so, when we go back to the room, it should be well before curfew. There's too much at stake if we're found talking to Sirius. And they nearly caught me just now."

Ronald cracked his knuckles. "Draco better not have been involved. He must have been sent out with the rest of them."

Hermione grabbed his hands, prying Ronald's fingers out of fists. "Don't bother Draco about it. He was patrolling with them but he - he actually helped me get away."

Ronald raised his eyebrows. "Yeah?"

Her cheeks were tingling, and she knew she must be blushing. "Yes. He - he distracted that Montague beast."

Ronald nodded, looking slightly impressed.

"Don't mention it to him," she hurried to add. "You know how proud he is. Don't embarrass him by letting on you know he's gone easy on me."

"But I live to embarrass him - "

"Excuse me," Harry was nearly shouting. "How did a mission to contact the Order turn into a discussion of Draco's delicate ego?"

"Tomorrow, Harry," Hermione repeated. "We can't do anything more about it until morning. For now, let's all try to get some sleep."

That was what she said, though she was already raising her fingers to her nose again, knowing it would be hours before she'd be able to sleep.

If she was still a Hogwarts student, Molly Weasley would have been out past curfew herself. But with Arthur taking his turn guarding that blasted door at the Ministry for the Order all night there was no one to go home to at the Burrow. She stayed with her Aunt Muriel on the Prewett estate, tidying the house, cooking, keeping Muriel company.

Molly was home now, standing inside the kitchen door of the Burrow. For any other member of her family, finding the house so quiet, so empty would be strange. For Molly though, nothing could be more ordinary. Her three oldest sons were grown men. The younger children had been away at school for years. Ronald was lost. Even Arthur, who had always spent his days at work, now served these night shifts, the heroic dear.

Maybe she needed a pet. For decades she had joked that babies were her familiars, making replacing the little carrier pigeon she had while at school unnecessary. Sweet, cooing Ondine - there was no other pet like her. This was the thought she took with her up the stairs, to her bedroom, the first one Arthur had built, when it had been just the two of them.

Yes, Molly, think of dear little animal companions, think of early days with Arthur, the short honeymoon interrupted by sweet baby Bill. Think of anything but the twins uprooting Milletus plants on Aunt Muriel's land, anything but the visitor you were afraid of meeting there in the cemetery, for the first time since…

Here it was.

Molly fell sideways onto her creaking double bed as if she'd fainted away. But she was wide awake with all the memories, all the feelings of that awful time right after her brothers, Fabian and Gideon, were killed in the war. Her baby twins had just learned to walk and were havoc incarnate, relentless in their need for her care in spite of her mourning. She got so low Arthur took a short leave from the Ministry so she could sort herself out.

It was springtime, the weather whipping between perfection and wind and rainstorms. Whatever the weather, she had to escape the child-dominated pen of her house at least once a day. Arthur understood and was not offended. Though he did worry there might be something morbid and counterproductive about her spending hours each day at the Prewett's private cemetery.

She sat in the wispy spring grass alongside her brothers' newly dug graves, sniffing at the air, wondering when the Milletus would bloom, making the area unsafe. At the height of their pollen release, the Milletus on the Prewett land was strong enough, heavy enough in the air that it didn't need to be brewed up to have a love potion's effects. It didn't affect Muggles, but for wizards and witches it was potent if merely inhaled. This was why it was extinct most everywhere, wiped out to prevent madness and chaos. Uncle Ignatius had an agreement with the Ministry to let some high quality Prewett Milletus grow in this secluded area as a special preserve.

Everyone in the family knew to be careful.

As long as the wind kept up its brisk pace, there was no danger. But just in case, Molly decided, this would have to be her last visit to the cemetery until after the Milletus blossoms browned and fell harmlessly into the undergrowth.

Lucius Malfoy, however, did not know to be careful.

He must not have known.

What he did know was that he had slept hardly at all in two weeks, not since he came crashing into the cellar of his own house to find Antonin Dolohov and his goons blood-soaked and grinning over the bodies of the Prewett brothers. Molly had been told her brothers had been killed in Malfoy Manor. Whether anyone told her or not, she would have assumed that Lucius must have been complicit in it.

She was alone in the world now, and left thinking it was his fault. This was what Lucius Malfoy believed he knew, and it was driving him mad. He didn't dare face her, but if he left something on the Prewett brothers' graves to show his sorrow, his dissent she might hate him a little less. From the depths of his old school trunk he retrieved the small brass telescope he used to carry with him when he would meet Molly Prewett in the Hogwarts astronomy tower for tutoring. A piece of twine bound a small pigeon's feather to it. He kept the feather, closing it up in the trunk, and tucked the telescope into his pocket.

She jumped to her feet at the sound of his apparition in the cemetery. She moved quickly, worn out but as fit and lithe as she ever was from long days of chasing the twins.

Lucius managed to say her name before she could speak. "Molly, please..."

"How dare you show yourself in front of my face, and in all the places you could have chosen. The nerve of you, Lucius Abraxas Malfoy." She was red-faced and reaching through her knitted layers, groping for her wand.

"Molly, no," Lucius said, reaching her in a single stride, holding her arms at her sides as he encircled her with his own, pulling her back against his chest. "Listen to me."

She hated herself for crying so easily, so noisily with great shuddering sobs. "No, I will not."

"I ordered them not to. I told him 'no,'" he spoke into her ear so she'd hear him over her own voice. "I kept them alive for days, arguing for an exchange of prisoners. I had nearly convinced the Dark Lord. But Dolohov - he's an animal, and he's going about all of this all wrong. He does not have my support."

"What did you think would happen?" Molly wailed over her shoulder. "Did you really think you could control them? Did you think there would be no animals in their midst, and that you could save anyone once the killing frenzy started?"

He bowed his forehead to her crown, her hat fallen to their feet. "I'm so sorry, Molly."

"I know why you did this," she shouted into the trees hemming in the cemetery. "You did this for power, Lucius. To keep your little cult of manners and land and money intact. And now you can see for yourself that you have no power at all." She was breathless, weeping, held upright by Lucius's strength alone. "You are a fool."

He nodded against her head. "Yes. I am. I always have been." He shook against her, as if he was crying himself.

For the moment, the imperious Lucius Malfoy she saw in the newspapers most every day was gone. The drawling, preening peacock with Narcissa Black on his arm was gone. In his place was the boy from school who had tutored her in astronomy even though they both knew she didn't need it. He'd meet her in the tower, after dark. Sometimes Arthur would come with her and laze on the platform inside by himself, bored, snoring, as they bent over the outside railing together, their arms brushing, Lucius's head lowered to follow the same eye-line as hers as they tracked the stars.

Lucius had never made a decisive romantic move toward her. Of course he hadn't. She was Arthur's girl and he was promised to Narcissa, the little girl five years below them. It had seemed like such a vast, comical age difference at the time.

The last day of school, after their astronomy NEWT was finished and there was no need anymore, they found each other in the tower at the usual time. Lucius had smiled so pleasantly and asked so very politely to hug her goodbye. She was surprised by the request. She'd hardly seen him all term. He'd been spending more and more time with those older men who'd been hanging around Hogsmeade talking about the very worst politics, recruiting followers.

She'd hesitated, scanning the inside of the tower, as if she was waiting for Arthur to appear to chaperone. In his absence, Lucius held her close to him, much taller than her, not lanky like Arthur but massive and lean. He lifted her off the floor, his arms closed beneath hers, his chin on her shoulder. As he set her down, his rough cheek dragged through her hair, across her cheek. He stood her in front of himself and looked into her eyes, still so close.

He paused, waited, his breath on her lips. And as she sensed his chin jutting forward, toward her, she tipped her own chin back.

He stopped, laughing softly. "Of course," he said, brushing his nose against hers and letting her go.

It was one of the great mysteries of Molly Prewett Weasley's life. What would have been different in the lives of so many people if her good girl, faithful instincts hadn't made her recoil, and she had let Lucius Malfoy kiss her on the last day of school?

But no, that boy from the astronomy tower did not exist, not today. Lucius was here in the Prewett cemetery looking to assuage his guilt for his own reasons which could not possibly have anything to do with Fabian or Gideon themselves, and what they suffered in his house.

She sobbed again, and raised her foot to stomp on the top of his boot. He anticipated it and hopped out of her way, stumbling and falling to sit on the grass, her body twisting so she landed in his lap, looking up into his face.

The fall startled Molly's sobbing into silence. The cemetery returned to its usual dead quiet. The wind had stopped. The air was still and fragrant, the Milletus pollen rising out of the ground and falling out of the windy currents that had held it aloft.

Molly recognized the smell at once, her heart lurching with a new horror. She scrambled to get out of his lap. "Lucius, you have to go. Now."

He held her tighter. "Say you understand it wasn't me who killed them."

"Fine," she said, clamping her hand over her nose and mouth. "Imagine I've said whatever you want. Just go."

She felt her stomach lift and fall, like she'd flown a broom too fast over a sharp rise. It was starting. Desperate to stop it, she raised her free hand to cover Lucius's nose and mouth as well.

"Molly, what…?"

"For stars' sake, stop talking, you'll just take in more."

She was drifting, verging on giddy as he stared at her, alarmed, confused, still holding onto her as her struggling turned to breathy half-hearted pleading with him to leave. "Go, Lucius. Please," she said, even as she nestled her face into his chest.

As he watched her, the confusion in his eyes vanished. She pulled her face out of his robes just in time to see it pass. His fingers - by the stars, those hands - closed around her wrist, slid upward, covering her hand, pressing her palm against his barely open mouth.

After all this time, his mouth...stars help her.

The rest was a blur of potion induced, nostalgia enhanced, grief obliterating euphoria. Lucius Malfoy - he was so vile and so perfect - so ridiculous and potion addled as he threw her wand across the cemetery when she tried to cast a contraceptive spell, telling her to go on and get pregnant by him so he'd never truly leave her. She was enchanted enough at that moment to agree it was a better alternative to taking her hands off him to go retrieve the wand. She stayed with him, in a fantasy from her school days where her brothers were alive and she was no one's mother, no one's wife, just her own, and finally, his.

Why didn't Narcissa rise to meet him like this? She did love him. He knew that. Why was Molly so much more? Was it just the potion? Had all the children perfected her? Was it the history between them - the wait? Perfect as she was, she was soon tired. Eventually he saw it and it touched him deeply enough to force himself, even through the potioned air, to rein in his desire and let her sleep against his chest, under his cloak in the grass as he smoothed her hair and marveled at the sweetness of her. She was asleep but responding to him anyway, with sighs, tiny movements, caresses and kisses, the most peaceful and contented she'd ever been. In the haze of Milletus pollen, it felt real.

She hadn't slept long when the rain started, falling from clouds high overhead, dissolving the pollen hanging in the air and knocking it into the dirt, harmless. Molly twitched against him, blinking away the water falling on her face, taking in deep breaths of rain-freshen air. She coughed, wide awake all at once, shocked, horrified at herself.

She swore. "Milletus," was all she said, trying to summon her wand and her scattered clothes.

Lucius tucked his cloak around her, pulling the old brass telescope from its pocket. "Take it."

She jerked her gaze away at the sight of it. "I won't take anything from you."

"I'm afraid it might be too late for that," he said. "If you remember, at the height of this mania, we decided not to…"

Molly scoffed. "Decided, did we?" she was draping herself in her damp woolen clothing again as he sat only partially covered by his cloak, rain beading on his chest and back.

"Get dressed," she snapped at him. "I can't bear the sight of you." This was true. "And there's no need to worry about - leaving me with anything. The twins are still nursing at bedtime. It affects my hormones so I shouldn't be able to…" Even if it should be impossible for her to fall pregnant, she couldn't bring herself to say the words.

He nodded, letting out a deep breath. "Thank the stars."

"No, thank my children," she said. "Don't think I haven't heard the rumors about the roots of your master's evil. If you did - leave me with anything while under the influence of a love potion, they say it would be a monster incapable of love or compassion."

"Molly, no," he said. He was on his feet now, dressed only in his trousers, barefoot on the turf of her family cemetery. "It's not that simple. A potion conception doesn't have the dulling effect if there is real affection between the pair."

"My point exactly," she said, bending to extract her wand from a rosebush.

When she stood back up, Lucius was too close again. He was lifting her off the ground, holding her against the cold, wet, bare skin of his torso. This time, when he held her, face to face, he finished the kiss he'd started in the astronomy tower. He did it without a potion, sweetly and gently, sadly. It was the sadness that reached Molly's grieving heart, and for an instant, she closed her eyes and accepted it.

"Whatever comes of it, don't terminate it," he whispered into her ear. "Believe me, Molly, if there is a baby, he is full of love."

She huffed, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "He'd still be a monster, no matter what you tell yourself, you vain, twisted thing. And that is because I do not care anything for you." She said it with less force than she intended.

He smirked as he set her down on the ground. "Well, I suppose we'll know in due time."

Due time, she thought to herself as she lay in her bed in the empty quiet of the Burrow. She rolled onto her back and smoothed the dent worn into the springs by Arthur's body.

Had she told Arthur about the potion accident? Of course she had. She waited one day, until just after they had come together themselves, in this bed. She told him about everything except for the final un-potioned kiss goodbye. It was the completion of an old kiss, from before she married Arthur - nothing that involved him.

Molly and Arthur wept together while their little children slept. He assured her it wasn't her fault. She wasn't the first decent wife and mother to run into that kind of mishap. And if she was pregnant, the overwhelming odds were that the child was his, more of Arthur's leggy ginger boys, and it would be raised as such, with the same love his brothers had known.

And then Arthur had gone to the Prewett estate, in a dressing gown and slippers, in the howling dark of the night, and he and Uncle Ignatius had burned the land where the Milletus grew to nothing but stubble.

"So," Pansy said, sitting down too close and too hard next to Draco on the bench at breakfast, making him drop his toast into his milk. "When do we meet with Ronald again? He needs his lessons."

Draco groaned. "Can't you carry on without me, Pansy?"

She raised one eyebrow. "Lost your nerve already, Malfoy?"

He shuddered. "I've just been thinking, the farther I stay out of my family member's love lives, the better. And even a thick twit like Ronald will eventually figure out we've set up these lessons not so much to get him with Granger but to match him with you."

Pansy flounced beside him, exaggerating a pout. "But by then he'll be in love with me and he'll thank you for it."

"It's not about that, Pansy. It's about Ronald's trust. It means something to me and I," Draco looked across the Great Hall, to where Ronald sat next to Hermione, his head bent over her, talking and talking while she tried to read her newspaper. "I haven't been the best at honouring his trust lately."

Pansy sighed and perched her elbows on the table, picking at a bowl of sliced pale orange cantaloupe no one else wanted. "Aren't you noble?" she said. "Draco, what happened? You've exchanged barely a word with Ronald all week. You even told me to tell him you weren't in when he came slamming the quaffle on the dungeon wall."

"I was sleeping."

"You were moping."

Across the Great Hall, Ronald was leaning into Hermione's arm, still chattering. With her eyes on the newspaper, she was chewing a section of a yellow apple, her mouth held sweetly closed as her jaw flexed. Draco's pulse gave a single thud. Did she know that the kiss from the other night - that it was not - normal? He had told her it was nice but that was spoken purely out of panic. It was not nice. It had torn him apart, changed him.

And now he had to step back and leave her to his brother who had wanted her for three years already, who had confided in him, and trusted him with questions as basic as his very ability to love. Draco would ignore whatever it was he was feeling for Granger. It didn't seem possible but she might not have felt any of those feelings herself. He'd watched her every mealtime since that night, waiting to catch her glancing at him. Nothing, never.

There Ronald was now, leaning into Hermione as she showed him something printed in the paper. Potter was craning his neck to see as well, the three of them disappearing together behind the broad sheet of yellow parchment.

Trying not to sigh, Draco said, "It's nothing, Pansy. I'm just trying to do better by him, and taking some space to figure out how."

She took his head in her hands and pivoted it to look at her instead of the Gryffindor table. "Cheer up, Draco. Your brother adores you. The pair of you are legendary - Gemini, right here in our midst."

Draco grimaced. "Stop. Just go say hi to him yourself if you miss him that much."

"He won't thank me for doing that while he's with Granger now, will he?" she smirked. "But I will get back to him. If he thinks he can spend an evening eye-snogging me and then never speak to me again he is dead wrong."