"Sorry for fighting, Father," Ronald Malfoy said, throwing his arms around Lucius's shoulders when he and Narcissa arrived at Hogwarts to discipline their boys.

Lucius sighed wearily into the ginger hair mashed against his cheek and patted Ronald firmly with one gloved hand. "You had better be," he said. Ronald held him tighter, twisting both of them from side to side. Lucius raised a second hand to Ronald's back, "Yes, my boy, I know how they are. The Weasleys - I've let myself be overcome by them in the past as well."

Ronald stood back. "Flourish and Blotts in our second year. I remember. That was something."

"Something extremely unfortunate," Narcissa said from where she sat on the settee in Professor Snape's office, Draco's head in her lap as he stared dead-eyed into the fire, her fingers combing through his hair. "And it's nowhere near the worst they've provoked you."

Lucius cringed. "Again, my darling, I apologize," he said.

She shrugged off the apology, dark eyebrows lifted. Without taking her right hand from Draco's hair, Narcissa reached out for Ronald's hand with her left, drawing him to her. There was no room for him on the settee so he knelt beside her on the floor. She lifted his fringe to see to the red line of the mended cut on his eyebrow. "Whatever in the world were you fighting about? What was worth this, and worth risking your little brother getting hurt as well?"

Ronald's lips rolled inward, into a thin, hard line without a word.

But from her lap, Draco's voice spoke a listless, "Love potion."

Lucius made a slow, controlled turn on his heel, away from the fireplace and toward his family. "What?"

Ronald hung his head. There was no point in resisting now Draco was giving it up. "So you'll have heard that the twins are opening a joke shop in London after graduation, right?"

Lucius was scowling more deeply every moment. "Yes, and they're already boasting in business circles about bringing Milletus-based love potions back to market. If true, it's highly controversial - foolish and dangerous. Ronald, you are not to have any part of it."

He was on his feet. "Of course I won't, Father. No part in that love potion, nor in love potions of any kind."

Narcissa nodded but frowned. "Those are fine convictions, son. Yet I still don't see how they warrant a public row at school."

Draco sat up on the settee. "Tell them your theory, Ronald. You'll never know anything more unless you talk to them."

Ronald answered Draco through gritted teeth. "No, I'm working it out in my own way. You know that. I'm working it out with - with the experiment." He said it with his hand clenched as if he was still holding on to Pansy's.

Lucius had no patience for the boys' secretive nonsense. He gave his long white hair a shake. "Milletus-based potions, are the twins developing them or not? Tell me at once. I saw their parents at this year's alumni dinner and asked about it then, but they just seemed offended that I'd dare mention it."

Ronald eagerly followed the pivot of the conversation away from his theories about Molly Weasley's experience with love potions. "No, the twins won't have any more Milletus for at least a year, maybe longer. When they went to the Prewett estate to dig up the roots this fall, their mother caught them at it and burned everything up. They couldn't stop her."

Narcissa gave a delicate little snort. "Yes, thank the stars for Mrs. Weasley's quick wits when it comes to Milletus plants."

Lucius cringed again.

"You were wise to oppose them, darling," Narcissa said, taking Ronald's hand again. "But there's no need for you to be so involved in Weasley business. Their mother seems to have them in check for now. And never forget that, while we have always encouraged you to associate amicably with them, they are your family in flesh only. In law, in mind, in spirit this is your family." She swept her arm across the room. "Now walk me to the Entrance Hall floo, Ronald. Father has estate business to settle with Draco tonight which I will not linger for. I would like you to escort me out in his place."

Arm-in-arm with Ronald, Narcissa left the office. At the door, she stopped, turning back to find Draco's face, staring at him until her eyes glistened. He looked back at her, his own eyes large and dark and exhausted in the firelight. "Mind your father, Draco," she said. "And never forget how completely we love you."

The intensity in her parting words was Draco's first hint that things were about to become much more grave. The second was when the door at the rear of the office opened, and Professor Snape swooped into the room, black robes flapping like the wings of an enormous bat.

"Severus, thank you for assistance this evening," Lucius began.

He answered with a small bow. "Please, Lucius, make yourself comfortable. Your tension is unsettling for the boy."

It was kind but untrue. Draco was accustomed to his father's tense, aggravated manner. It was a mood Lucius Malfoy had been mired in ever since the end of the Triwizard Tournament.

"I mean to unsettle him," Lucius said to Snape. "He ought to be unsettled."

"He ought to be in awe," Snape corrected him. "Tell him why."

Lucius took a deep breath. "Draco, it's all true. What Potter says he's seen - in the graveyard at the end of the tournament. It's true. The Dark Lord has returned."

Draco's blood surged, his jaw falling open. "It's true?"

"It is," Snape confirmed. "As we speak, he is gathering power, organizing, mounting a strategy to infiltrate the Ministry from within while it is in the hands of that insecure, power-hungry, easy dupe - that Fudge and his appointees."

Draco blinked. "Umbridge too then?"

"Yes," Lucius said. "As everyone knows, Umbridge is here to put down Potter's stories and reinforce public faith in the Ministry. In order for her mission to succeed, there must be no sign at all of the Dark Lord's return. Not in the school, not anywhere."

"Her mission here at Hogwarts is two-fold," Snape went on. "First, she is to discredit Potter, confirming him as a liar not only to be ignored but despised. Second, she is to discredit Professor Dumbledore, and ultimately, to replace him as headmaster, giving the Ministry full control of the school and its pupils."

"Both of these missions," Lucius continued, "support the Dark Lord's. The Ministry does not realize it, but it remains a fact."

"The difficulty we face," Snape said, "is that Professor Umbridge is not likely to succeed. She is cruel, patronizing, and glaringly disingenuous, making her terribly unpopular with teachers and students."

Draco could sense what was coming next. He made a desperate attempt to deflect it. "Filch likes Umbridge quite a lot," he said.

Lucius shook his head. "I'm sorry, Draco. It's not enough. We need to create support for her among the students."

Snape took it up again, as if they had rehearsed this entire speech turn by turn. "There are only two students powerful enough to lend her a swell of support. One is Potter, who is obviously useless in this. The other is yourself." Snape drew himself up as tall as he could. "The Dark Lord calls upon you, Draco Malfoy, to serve him in turning the tide of student sympathies in favour of Professor Dolores Umbridge."

Draco winced, dropping his head into his hands.

"Yes, Draco. It will not be easy," Snape said. "You will not sway all of the students but perhaps most of Slytherin house. Play it up as an extension of your animosity for Potter. It is always unfailingly believable. Whatever Professor Umbridge does, help. Give her your full support."

Draco still hadn't raised his head from his hands. Lucius sat beside him on the settee, his hand on Draco's chin, tilting it upward.

"The Dark Lord is on the move, Draco," he said. "It's already begun. He may come to rest very near to us very soon. The closer he comes to the family, the less able I am to keep us - " He paused, glancing warily at Snape. "The closer he is, the more we all become affected by his power, for good and for ill. Draco," he said, "you are called not only to serve the Dark Lord, but to serve our entire family, and the rest of the Malfoy line extending on into future generations."

Their calls were overblown - ridiculous in their ways. These two men, in his life from the very beginning, embellishing every bit of it with drama and intensity he both admired and despised. At the moment, Draco couldn't bring himself to look at them. He blinked, his eyes fixed on the door Narcissa and Ronald had just passed through. His mother and brother - he loved them. He envied their distance from his father's business . And he had no choice but to join in protecting them.

With Harry off the quidditch team, it became easier for Hermione to persuade him to begin his secret, supplemental defense classes. On the first Hogsmeade weekend, they met with a band of other students to form Dumbledore's Army.

Ronald came alone, of course, judging it wise to leave Draco out of any activity led by Harry and Hermione. He knew their father would hate it too, but didn't want to dwell too long on why that might be. Cho Chang was there, batting her long, dark eyelashes at Harry while he fielded questions about his history of fighting Dementors and dark wizards. The Weasley twins were along as well, ignoring Ronald but beaming with pride at Harry, the brother they would have preferred to have in his place.

Hermione had nearly perfected her protean charms, the galleons that would burn like Death Eaters' dark marks when DA members needed to exchange messages. They weren't ready to hand out yet but the jinxed parchment she'd prepared for everyone to sign their names to was ready. She really was scary.

Apart from that, the only diversion from the grind of OWL preparation was the opening match of quidditch season. Ronald seemed miserably guilty to still be playing when Harry and the twins had been permanently disqualified. He had gone to Angelina to resign, at least for the rest of the year, until the twins graduated. But she had sensed what he was after and cut it short with threats and glares. She had barely managed to fill the three vacancies on the team in time for a few weeks of practice and was loath to go through the headache all over again.

It meant that on the morning of the match, Ronald was terribly, uncharacteristically nervous, his complicated loyalties even more complicated than usual.

"Ronald, stop fretting," Harry told him as they sat at breakfast, Ronald not eating anything. "You won't be doing right by anyone if you freeze up with nerves and lose the match."

Ronald nodded toward the Weasley twins, who were blowing sarcastic kisses at him from their end of the table. He tried to swallow through his dry mouth. "I don't think those two would agree with you."

Harry kicked Ronald's toe underneath the table. "Don't mind them. They reckon they've got nothing to lose at this school anymore, not even the quidditch cup, but they certainly don't speak for everyone."

Ronald groaned into his untouched, rapidly cooling bowl of oatmeal porridge. "Is Hermione coming to watch, or has she finished with quidditch now that there's only me playing?"

"Of course she's coming," Harry said. "Your friendship doesn't have to be compounded with mine to make it worth her while."

Ronald groaned again. "Our friendship."

Outside the Great Hall, Hermione was rushing down the stairs, late for breakfast after a detour to the library for one more source for her latest transfiguration essay. The DA was taking much more of her time than she'd expected. She would really rather use the hours today's quidditch match might demand on anything else but sitting watching all the little balls flying around. But Ronald had been suffering so much since the fight with his brothers she couldn't abandon him now. Still, she had a book tucked inside her cloak and maybe she could use a Disillusionment spell on it and read it during the match without anyone noticing.

That's what she was thinking until, from the stairwell to the dungeons on the far side of the Entrance Hall, Draco Malfoy emerged dressed for the morning's match. She knew then she would not be able to look away from the match after all. This was true even though she hadn't seen much of Draco lately - or maybe because she hadn't seen much of him. He seemed to be avoiding her ever since she'd wounded him by jumping to the wrong conclusion about his role in the fight with the Weasleys.

He didn't deserve rough treatment then but he might deserve it by now. Draco had started a new grating movement among the Slytherins of standing up for Umbridge. They were already her favourite house to dispatch when the Gryffindor tower alarm sounded after curfew, but they were her preferred house in every way now. Where it used to be Umbridge against the entire class, there was now a faction of students, led by Draco, which not only didn't oppose her, but put down those who did.

All of that made Hermione particularly angry with herself when she froze on the spot in the Entrance Hall, staring at him. She was unprepared for the lurch in her heart at the sight of him in fitted white trousers and protective leather quidditch gear for the first time since he'd kissed her, weeks before.

To make it worse, something drew his eye in her direction, and for a moment, they stood looking at each other across the otherwise empty hall. He seemed to shudder at the eye contact, as if slightly ill, breaking it to leave her without a word as he went in to breakfast.

After a moment, she followed, falling into the empty space on the bench beside Ronald.

"Not eating?" she said.

He grumbled unintelligibly.

She felt his forehead. "You're not feverish," she said, her palms pressed against his cheeks, cradling his face like his mother would do when she was trying to read his temperature with her hands. He looked up at her, still miserable but with a tenderness she seldom saw on his F-boy face. She patted his cheek a final time and set about eating.

Harry kept up his pep talk, Ronald still sighing and trying to eat. She watched the pair of them. As Harry chattered about plays and strategy, he kept glancing toward the Ravenclaw table where Cho Chang was wearing a Gryffindor scarf, one she may well have got from Harry himself. Ronald listened, his pale ginger eyelashes sweeping his cheeks with a demureness that made him lovelier than usual. All the Ronald fans in school could see that. Even the Draco fans wouldn't be able to deny it.

Hermione was not a fan, she was a friend. She was a friend because Ronald was not only tall and athletic and lovely but also sweet, loyal, and kind when he wasn't trying to snog everything in sight. And frankly, there hadn't been any reports of Ronald romancing and immediately tiring of anyone yet this year.

She watched him folding his napkin and laying it over the food he couldn't stomach. Maybe he was finally growing out of his F-boy ways, and she wondered, not for the first time, what it might be like to kiss him. It was not a thought motivated by idle curiosity or true desire. It was just that, ever since the kiss with Draco, she'd been hoping that perhaps the reason kissing Viktor Krum was nothing like it had more to do with Viktor being a particularly bad fit for her rather than Draco being an astronomically good fit.

She had been thinking of testing the hypothesis. If she kissed someone else and felt more like she did with Draco than with Viktor, it would be proof that Draco was not special - they were not special together - and she could convince herself to forget him once and for all.

The thought occurred to her again as she sat with the boys at breakfast. If Draco could make her melt into him by simply touching his nose to hers, it meant the hypothesis testing kiss didn't need to be a dramatic moment with a lot of saliva involved, or even lips. A light kiss in a public place might be all that was needed.

Harry wouldn't thank her for even a small kiss in front of Cho Chang. But Ronald, nobly single at the moment and in a terrible emotional state, might benefit from a small kiss of encouragement before a difficult match. At any rate, the high emotional stakes of the quidditch event was giving her the excuse she needed to test her hypothesis.

Without asking, she closed her eyes and pressed a warm, soft kiss against his cheek. "Good luck, Ronald," she said. "See you out there, Harry."

Ronald watched her swing her leg over the bench and leave, tracking her movement as if seeing her through a dense mist. His eyes were wide, his mouth open, his fingers rising to touch the spot on his cheek where her mouth had been. He kept watching, his eyes not wavering until the back of her bushy head disappeared through the entrance doors.

Not even the commotion at the Slytherin table could draw his attention away. Not the "Oh!" of Daphne Greengrass as she rushed to dab a napkin in Pansy Parkinson's lap, sopping up the juice Pansy had just spilled all over herself.

The match was vicious, just as Angelina warned her team it would be. Ronald felt slightly confundused on two occasions - nothing that made him give up a goal, but a few tugs that made him look silly in front of the entire school.

The game's announcer, who was also the Weasley twins' best mate, Lee Jordan, was sure to point it out to anyone who missed it. "Gryffindor's Malfoy is not looking quite himself today, doing some lurching between the rings," Jordan crowed into the megaphone. "Oh, and what's this? I wonder the referee didn't call keeper interference on the last play."

On the pitch, Ronald was repositioning his helmet, his head thrashing back and forth, looking for the lightning fast broom that had nearly collided with his.

Jordan explained what had happened too quickly for Ronald and most everyone else to see. "Would have been a rare sight to have a seeker called for keeper interference, but there goes Slytherin's Malfoy again, swooping fast from behind, right up over the rings on Gryffindor's Malfoy. Let's play a good game, lads, and here's hoping there's no trouble in paradise."

Draco pulled himself up, high above the pitch, out of Ronald's range.

"And Slytherin's Malfoy better keep his head in the game," Jordan was saying, "or brand new Gryffindor seeker, Ginny Weasley, will run away with this one…"

In the end, Ginny did exactly that.

Draco was last to leave the changing rooms after the match. Ronald was waiting outside.

"Congratulations," Draco said, failing to keep the tone of his voice flat but succeeding in not turning to look his brother in the eye as he walked out of the fieldhouse.

Ronald stepped in front of him, walking backwards up the narrow pathway, forcing his way into his brother's face. "You might have won the match yourself if you hadn't been so preoccupied with trying to knock me off my broom."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't you? Jordan only went on about it over the megaphone for us all." Ronald bobbed in front of Draco as he tried to slip past him. "Draco, what is wrong with you? Ever since the fight with Harry and the Weasleys, you haven't been right, but today you're barking mad."

"So you're with Granger now," Draco said. It was not a question.

"What?"

"You're a couple now. Everyone saw the pair of you at breakfast."

"That?"

"That is fine, Ronald, but what did I tell you?" Draco went on, his voice rising, finger pointing. "What was the one thing I told you when you began your - experiment with Pansy Parkinson? I told you to be careful with Pansy's feelings. No matter how tough she acts, she's not just a prop."

Ronald gaped at him. "Tough? A prop? No, she couldn't be sweeter."

"And still," Draco said, "without any warning to her, you're off snogging other girls in public."

"Draco!" Ronald called over his ranting. "Wait up. First of all, that was not snogging, you daft git. That was a pre-game peck on the cheek for luck, obviously. It was - nothing."

Draco scoffed. "Then why did that 'nothing' leave you sitting there stunned for a full five minutes afterward?"

"I was surprised, alright? And this wasn't just any 'other girl,' as you say. This was my dream girl."

Draco sneered. "Please, Ronald."

"Look, no matter what I felt about it, Granger and I are not together," Ronald went on. "Yeah, it was weird that she kissed me. It's not like her. But nothing's changed between us - nothing I know of. And I couldn't warn Pansy, could I? I had no warning myself. How was I supposed to react?"

Draco was shaking his head, marching toward the castle again. "Not my problem."

Ronald went on anyway, calling after him. "I couldn't very well slap Hermione across the mouth and storm away offended as a show for Pansy."

Draco stopped, spinning to face Ronald again, scoffing at him from where he stood above him on the pathway. "Is that what you wanted to do?"

Ronald's face blanched. "No, but - but help me, Draco. I got kissed by my dream girl today, with everyone watching, and it wasn't - the connection - it wasn't…"

He couldn't finish. Draco's angry posture slackened. "Don't, Ronald. It doesn't mean you're cursed," he said. "This isn't a proper test of whether you're wrecked by a love potion."

Ronald looked up at him, his face full of fear. "Isn't it?"

"No, of course not," Draco said. "You were caught off guard, worried about the match and the Weasleys and everything. You weren't in a receptive frame of mind. The feelings between you didn't have a chance to develop. And it was just on the bloody cheek. Don't panic, Ronald."

Ronald's tense shoulders loosened. "Right. No panic. I'll stick to the plan. Kiss Hermione properly after lessons with Pansy." His eyes bulged wide again. "Pansy - what am I supposed to do now that she's mad at me?"

Draco blew out his breath. "Hurt might be a better description of it. Hurt and embarrassed to be hurt. So don't make a big deal out of it, or she'll only feel worse. Explain what happened at breakfast with Granger, tell her you still don't feel anything, and ask Pansy very nicely if she'll keep - helping you."

Ronald was nodding furiously. "Right. Yes. We've got an appointment tonight. If she comes, that is" He grabbed Draco's wrist, twisting it to read his watch. "Gotta run. Thanks, mate." He loped away, moving quickly toward the castle as Draco stood and watched him go.

Ronald wasn't with Granger. Draco hadn't liked thinking he was, but he didn't like the relief he felt at knowing it either. It had been weeks since Draco had touched Granger. Whatever ridiculous reaction happened between them, it must have burnt itself out by now. This ludicrous pang of jealousy had to be the last of it, and now it was finished. He drew in a deep, cleansing breath.

Starting up the path himself, Draco walked on alone. He had almost reached the stone steps when he stopped as something sparked in front of his face - blue lights like a Lumos spell come unmoored from the end of a wand. He jumped, drawing his own wand, looking into the brush on the side of the footpath for the source of it.

"Malfoy."

"Granger?"

She stepped out of the thicket, pulling broken twigs out of her hair.

"Granger, I'm in no mood to talk with you," he said, turning his suddenly flushed face away from her.

"Good," she said. "What I need from you requires no talking."