Hermione rushed down the stairs first thing in the morning, desperate to get her house guests breakfast before her mother was bothered by them. It was no light thing to turn up for the holidays with two unannounced teenaged boys in tow. She had known that from the start and had promised her mother they'd be no trouble. But it was a hard promise to keep, especially now that the Malfoy brothers were a musky mass of arms and legs and day-old hair cream in her mother's front room.

Sliding in on her sock feet, Hermione found her mother already up and dressed, leaning over the back of the sofa, watching the boys sleeping on the floor.

"Mum, stop that," Hermione said in the sternest whisper she could.

"What?"

"Don't ogle them in their sleep. It's dead creepy."

Ann scoffed. "There's no ogling about it. These pretty babies - I'm observing them for research purposes. Come have a look."

Hermione meant to keep protesting but the words died in her throat when she got close enough to see the sleeping boys. They were sprawled awkwardly around each other, their breaths noisy and rough, their hair spectacularly mussed, and still they were simply too beautiful. If they could be merged into a single person, the pair of them might make the perfect boy.

"Take a breath, darling," Ann laughed gently, reading it all in Hermione's face. "Cozy, aren't they?"

They were sleeping awfully close together, Draco lying on his side with his cheek pressed to Ronald's ribcage, Ronald's arm outstretched, running over the top of Draco's head. They weren't exactly intertwined or cuddling, but there was no space at all between them. Draco stirred, turning onto his other side.

Asleep, without their waking personalities animating their faces, they looked more harmless, and much more alike than usual.

Ann saw this as well. "Alright here's the research. Draco's parents adopted Ronald, you say?"

Hermione nodded. "Yes. His biological parents are the Weasleys. You know that's why Harry and I are invited to the Burrow so often. Ronald is one of them, in his way."

Ann hummed. "Both Molly and Arthur Weasley are his parents? And the man we saw brawling with Arthur in that bookshop all those years ago is Ronald's adopted father?"

Hermione nodded again. "Yes, that's Lucius Malfoy, Draco's dad. Now he's Ronald's dad too."

Ann folded her arms. "You don't say. Well, if that's their story, I suppose we'll have to stick to it. Remarkable though, the resemblance, isn't it? Don't let their hair colours fool you. Oh, but if they insist it's a coincidence it is possible those Malfoys trained Ronald to set his facial expressions like theirs until he got stuck that way."

She turned and left the lounge, Hermione following. "Mum, that's not something people can do."

"Isn't it? How about those old married couples who start to look alike?" she said, grinning and raising an awful racket as she pulled a frying pan from the cabinet.

"They are rather like an old married couple," Hermione said. "You're cooking for them? You never cook before 6:00 pm."

Ann smirked. "No. Your father says he will. I'm just making enough noise to wake them up for it."

Sure enough, the boys were stirring in their sleeping bags. Draco had fallen asleep first so he woke first, throwing Ronald's arm back at him.

Ronald startled and woke up calling, "Harry!"

"No such luck. It's only me," Draco said. "Merry Christmas Eve, by the way."

Ronald was blinking, remembering where he was. "Christmas Eve," he said, sitting up. "I wonder what Mum and Dad are doing today. Or rather, what country they're in today."

"Greece, I think it is," Draco said, fighting to fix his hair without his wand. Yesterday's hair cream had turned on him during the night.

Hermione had come from the kitchen, asking the brothers how they liked their eggs. Over the years, she'd seen Ronald in all sorts of states of disarray, but disheveled Draco was an entirely new creature. She couldn't help but laugh.

"What?" he said, though he knew right away, both his hands frantically smoothing and tidying himself. "Is it that bad?"

Ronald snorted. "Always."

Draco punched his arm. "You did it, Ronald. Sleeping with your arm draped over my head."

Ronald lunged toward him, trying to subdue him with a violent hug. "It's not my fault I can't help myself. You're so cuddly when you're sleepy."

Draco was shoving Ronald off him, knocking him into the displaced coffee table, its legs grating alarmingly across the floor.

"Stop-stop-stop," Hermione whisper-yelled, hopping between them to push them apart by their shoulders. "Honestly, this house wasn't built for an overgrown pair of ill-mannered siblings."

"Ill-mannered?" they protested in unison.

"Yes. You've got to behave yourselves and mind your environment. What would your mother say?"

Ronald accepted the reprimand almost eagerly, but Draco huffed at her. "What have I told you about taking that maternal tone with me, Granger?"

Ronald blinked. "What have you told her? And when?"

Draco reached around Hermione's legs to give Ronald one final nudge. Hermione stood frozen between them. She'd stepped into their space and the smell of Draco's hair and whatever pheromone they'd both been exuding all night in their sleep was filling her head and making her stupid. How bad would it be if her mother came into the room to find her snuggled into their sleeping nest with them?

Awfully bad.

She settled for swiping her hand once over a cowlick on the crown of Draco's head. "If you like, one of you can shower upstairs while we're getting breakfast on."

"Me, I will," Draco said.

"Can you get the shower on by yourself?" she asked, thinking better of it immediately. "I mean, of course you can. Even Malfoy children only do magic at school. Go on then."

He hesitated, the brothers regarding each other a little sheepishly.

Ronald raised himself onto his knees. "We have to talk to her about it, Draco. Today. You've got to face up to it."

Draco stood, looking down instead of up at Hermione. He began with a deep breath, as if about to explain something long, complicated, painful. "Since you've mentioned it, Granger, magic at home is different for us. The house we've always lived in - it has a sentience about it, and it anticipates what we need and serves us. Small things like opening doors and turning on water, keeping us safe from accidents - Malfoy Manor takes care of that for us. It's old magic our ancestors charmed into the house hundreds of years ago."

He wasn't boasting. He was trusting her with a revelation.

She blinked up at him, questioning. "Your ancestors. To share ancestors, the pair of you would have to be…"

Ronald heaved a huge sigh. "Yes. Go on. Tell her the rest."

"She wouldn't be shocked, Ronald. You didn't hear them talking, before you woke up," Draco said, smiling somewhat apologetically at Hermione. "Dr. Ann is sharp enough to suspect it after one day. And Granger here has already noticed our noses - "

"Pansy too," Ronald admitted.

"Pansy?" Hermione repeated. "Look, just say it. It's not right to leave me guessing."

Draco shook himself. "It's hard to say it, since I'm not convinced of it myself. I still can't believe Dad would ever - but I am taking it seriously enough to do whatever we have to in order to rule it out."

Hermione nodded. "You've come here with a plan."

Ronald gave another deep sigh. "Yes, we've been talking about it all month but we worked out a plan on the train, while we were patrolling together. I think our parents had to know we'd do this eventually. The resemblance, the way the Manor responds to me like a blood descendant - there are other things too, parts of the stories they always told me that don't add up." He took another huge breath. "I've decided to figure out my paternity. Once and for all."

She was nodding, turning to Draco who was now standing slouched with his head in his hands. "In the restricted section all last month, with the potion books. You were looking for a paternity potion."

"Yes. The best ones take at least a week to brew. So we have to do it here, during the holidays, and we have to start it today. We'll need your help, Granger. And then," he glared at his brother, "we need to move on."

The bed in Hermione's room was fixed and the boys were moved out of the front room by the time the Grangers left to pick up Ann's Aunt Inez from the train station. There wasn't room in the car for everyone so Hermione and the Malfoys had the house to themselves for the afternoon. But all they needed was the basement.

"Where did you get all this stuff? I haven't even heard of half of it," Ronald said as they lined the components for the paternity potion on top of a disused workbench in the Grangers' cramped, low-ceilinged, concrete-walled basement.

Draco shrugged. "I found it."

"You nicked it."

"Look, Snape would have given it to me if I'd asked. But I couldn't ask, could I?" Draco snapped. "He'd have put it together in his head, figured out what we were brewing and why, then he'd have gone off and told Father what we were up to."

Ronald shuddered. "Scary."

Draco was working to kindle a small, smokeless floating flame with a wandless Incendio spell.

"There are matches down here somewhere." Hermione had just made the offer when the flame flared to life.

"No, we've got everything we need," Draco said. "And yes, it's thanks to the Hogwarts potion supply cupboard and greenhouses. Don't look at me like that, Granger. It would have taken forever to scrape all of this together anywhere else. Check the instructions. There are twenty-eight separate colour indicators alone."

"Well, you won't need all of them," Ronald began to argue. "All that effort for nothing - "

Draco raised his finger, pointing at his brother. "This slipshod attitude of yours is why you've never scored higher than Acceptable in potions."

Ronald smirked, "Slipshod…"

"Listen to him, Ronald. Any potion worth brewing is worth brewing right," Hermione said, settling an immaculately clean cauldron over the flame.

Ronald faked a look of terror. "They've teamed up on me - the two most insufferable students in school. What have I gotten myself into?"

"Like we'd let you touch any of this after all the trouble I've gone to," Draco sneered.

Hermione nudged Ronald aside with her hip. "What your brother means is, you needn't worry about helping until we call for you, at the end."

Ronald backed away, moving for the stool against the wall, at the foot of the stairs. "Right. Should I keep a look-out or anything?"

"No need for that either," Hermione said. "My parents like it when I keep myself occupied with projects."

"And they don't mind you lingering in the cellar making potions with some strange, nasty boy you brought home?" he asked, channeling his good friend Dr. Tim.

She turned to him, her eyebrows lifted. "Certainly not with you sitting here chaperoning."

Draco chuckled. "Cauldron's heated. Let's begin, shall we?"

It wasn't in Ronald's nature to sit quietly, but after the chaperone comment he didn't feel like he should wander upstairs, figure out the television, and leave them alone either. What would Tim say? He roved around the basement, pulling tools down from where they were hung on hooks along the walls, trying to sort out what they were supposed to be used for without cutting himself on the sharp bits.

Over and over, his eyes flicked to the workbench under the heavy, buzzing fluorescent light where Draco and Hermione worked with their backs to him. They stood close together, no light passing between the place where her arm touched his. When they weren't arguing, they were laughing. He wasn't sure which sound was more grating to hear.

As the afternoon went on, Draco stopped asking her to pass things down the table to him and started simply reaching around her to get what he needed. It looked something like an embrace, probably felt like one too. The third time Ronald saw him do it, Hermione looked up into Draco's face as his arm spanned her back, and their eyes met for just a moment too long.

"How's it coming then?" Ronald said, vaulting across the small space almost in a single step.

Draco withdrew his arm, wiping the outside of a vial with a towel. He cleared his throat. "We've added as many of the reagents as the substrate can bear for today. There'll be more to add tomorrow and every day for the rest of the week. But for now, we just have to complete the stirring."

"Which is no easy feat," Hermione finished. "It's going to be half an hour of careful, repetitious motion."

Ronald pushed his way toward the table. "Brilliant. I'll start us off."

"No." It was Draco and Hermione speaking in unison this time.

"What? You trust him with it and not me?" Ronald asked her. "That makes no sense. It's my potion, isn't it?"

"Ronald - " Hermione began.

But Draco was having none of it. "Why are you like this?" he was frowning. "It was you who pitched a snowball at my head and insisted I make this for you because you didn't trust yourself to get it right. Go upstairs and get yourself a snack if you're that cranky."

"I am not cranky, and I am not leaving you unchaperoned." Ronald sat down heavily on the stool, arms crossed.

"Suit your great kind self," Draco said.

Hermione was already stirring, one eye on her wristwatch. They'd agreed she would do the quarter of an hour of clockwise turns and Draco would do the quarter hour of counterclockwise ones.

She fanned herself with one hand. "The flame gets hot this close."

"Here," Draco said, moving behind her and gathering her hair in his hands, holding it off her neck as if to tie it into a ponytail. "I've always wondered why you come to potions class with your hair down. Not very practical. Though the more I find out about how sneaky you are, the more I suspect you do it to try to get Snape to feel sorry for you, looking like a poor bedraggled urchin in need of rescue and top marks."

She scoffed. "Oh no, Draco Malfoy. Don't you try that with me, talking as if you never have a hair out of place. That won't work after this morning."

"Oh, please," Ronald burst. "Enough with the flirting."

Hermione almost stopped stirring. "Flirting?"

"Yeah, that's right," Ronald said, standing up, advancing on them again. "Here, Draco. I'll hold Hermione's hair while you run up to her room and get a tie for it. No need to fret about a lapse in chaperone while you're gone. I'm trustworthy enough."

Draco scoffed, still smoothing Hermione's hair between her hands. "Trustworthy? That's why you won't need a chaperone, is it?"

"Accio hair tie," Hermione called over their voices. The air whistled as an elastic came flying down the stairs and into her free hand. "Stars bless Professor Flitwick for teaching us that. Now stand back and let me work, both of you."

They obeyed her, but not before Draco plucked the elastic from her fingers and twisted her hair into it.

Narcissa Malfoy was usually not one to stand at a window, bouncing on her heels, watching for guests to arrive. She preferred for visitors to be let in by the house itself as she waited, elegant and poised, in her drawing room. But tonight's guests were no ordinary company.

Behind her, Lucius paced at the base of the manor's grand staircase. "They're late," he said.

"They're not," she assured him.

"They are. Something's gone wrong," he insisted. "They've been caught and they're being interrogated as we speak, confessing where they were heading for refuge. The only guests we'll be receiving tonight will be Aurors with their wands drawn."

Narcissa spun away from the window. "Don't you know her at all? Her loyalty? She won't ever let them catch her again. And if they did, she would never betray me."

It was impossible for anyone other than Malfoy family members to apparate into the manor, meaning when the guests appeared it would be outside, in the snow, on Christmas Eve. No lights were lit in the manor this year, every window dark but for the small candle flame burning on the grand piano behind Narcissa. The house was a lifeless husk, no children, no holiday celebration, just awful suffocating tension.

There was the crack, loud as a thunderclap outside. Two figures were collapsing in a heap in the shadows of the leafless hedge along the path to the house. Narcissa burst through the door, eyes wide and frightened, barely holding herself back from running to them.

A screech went up from the pair - not a scream of fear or anger, but of exultation, wicked joy. And after it, the same voice was calling.

"Cissie!"

"Bella!"

A woman in rags tore herself away from the other figure. On bare feet, she ran at Narcissa, cackling, a mass of matted hair trailing behind her. The women collided on the steps of the portico on the front of the manor, clawing at each other's shoulders and backs, weeping and cheering.

"Inside, inside," Narcissa said. "Lucius, help Rodolphus. Bella says they broke his leg in the chase."

Lucius came slowly out of the house, his nervous pacing relaxing back into his typical saunter.

"Rodolphus," he said, greeting his brother-in-law as he slung his arm over his shoulder, lifting him, bearing his weight as he helped him limp toward the house.

"Lucius." Rodolphus Lestrange looked terrible and smelled worse, but he was all smiles, chuckling at the sight of the luxurious house looming over them after fourteen years of incarceration in that hellish tower prison on the sea.

This was the Malfoy Christmas this year, not the sunshine of bright and beautiful children, but the darkness of this pair of escaped fugitives, liberated by the Dark Lord to wreak havoc on the world that had, in truth, been good to Narcissa and Lucius.

He had only one question for Rodolphus. "He hasn't come with you, has he? Our Lord?"

Rodolphus glanced around the yard. "Not yet. But never fear. He has promised to be along in due time."

Christmas Eve was noisy and crowded at the Grangers' house. Aunt Inez arrived from the countryside to sit in a chair napping, and Ann's sister and her family came from across town to eat festive canapes and drink mulled wine and exchange trays of chocolates.

Everyone raised their eyebrows at the boys Hermione had brought with her from school, but Ronald soon won them over, friendly, open, adorably inept at their Muggle party games. That is, until one of Hermione's cousins insisted on challenging him to a chess match only to be beaten in three moves.

Draco said little for the entire night, keeping close to Ronald, looking paler and more melancholy as the reality that their parents were not going to apparate into the Granger's kitchen and give them a proper Christmas became unignorable.

When the guests had left and everyone else had gone to bed with headaches, Hermione wished the boys a Happy Christmas, gave each of them a hug - Draco's much stiffer and more strained than Ronald's - and sent them upstairs to sleep in her room.

Ronald lay awake on his back, blinking at the dark ceiling. "Draco," he said.

Draco lay on his stomach, his face buried in a pillow, as if he was trying to breath it into himself. He didn't answer.

Ronald shoved his shoulder. "I know you're awake."

Draco tipped his face out of the pillow. "What?" He tried to sound sleepy, dismissive. But the truth was he lay beside his brother wincing, his face braced as if about to take a punch.

The moment had arrived when Ronald would finally call him out for the way he'd been treating Hermione all day - touching her, looking at her, returning that look she got in her eyes when he reached behind her. It went beyond all the touching, and Ronald might have noticed that too. Brewing the potion with her in the tiny, damp basement had been as fun as a fast broom ride on a sunny day - perfect. It was as if she'd been thinking his thoughts, except when she wasn't and she was surprising him with her smarts, her odd sense of humour.

She was mad, and meticulous, and he hadn't been able to act any other way than as if he was in love with her. It had to be obvious, even to Ronald, that he fancied her. Now he would have to answer for falling for his brother's dream girl, and he had no idea how it was going to unfold.

He was certainly not prepared when the question Ronald asked first was, "Why'd you split up with Pansy?"

Still on his stomach, Draco pushed himself up on his elbows. "Pansy?"

"Yeah. What didn't you like about her?"

Draco flipped onto his back. "Nothing. She was brilliant. But - you know how it is."

"No, I don't."

"Well," Draco went on, "when a man and a woman are friends, and there's the least spark of attraction between them - they just have to try it on, don't they? Date for a while just to clear the air, if nothing else? They can't really be friends until they do. You go on as a couple until you realize they're not for you, and then you settle back into friendship with no arguments. Right?"

Ronald hummed, agreeing but still not satisfied. "Why was she not for you then?"

Draco sighed. "I don't know. Who ever knows?" He punched lightly at Ronald's arm. "Hey, it's alright if you've gone and fallen for Pansy. Brilliant, actually."

Ronald scoffed. "You'd say so, wouldn't you. Now that you're lovesick for Hermione, you'd say anything to throw off the competition, you traitor." The words were strong but his tone was mild.

Draco let out a long breath. There was no point in denying it. "Sorry, mate. I didn't mean to. She's just so - "

"I know. Shut up," Ronald said. "The thing is, while we were in the basement today, you lovebirds cooing over the potion while I just watched, it made me feel lonely. But I wasn't lonely for Hermione. It was confusing. At first I felt like I might be lonely for Mother, it being Christmas and all. And I do miss home so much I could be sick. But there was another kind of loneliness too. It wasn't for Hermione or for Mother. It was for her - for Pansy. I haven't even kissed her and I'm gagging to see her. It's stupid."

Draco patted him on the shoulder. "I don't suppose my opinion on it counts for much."

Ronald scoffed again. "No, of course it doesn't. If you're after Hermione yourself, you're going to encourage me in fancying in Pansy whether it's barking or not."

Draco laughed quietly, through just his nose.

Ronald turned onto his side, facing him. "Listen mate, if there's any way you can forget Hermione, do it."

Draco groaned, turning his back to Ronald as he kept talking. "I know it seems like it's all romance and drama, being Dad's little double and then showing him you're your own man by choosing a girl he can't abide. But it's doomed, Draco. Even if you can convince Hermione to take you on, you'll just tear her heart up in the end."

"I know, alright?" Draco burst. "I know. But maybe it's Pansy all over again. Maybe Granger and I just need something short-lived, light and fun between us, to clear the air so we can move on. Dad wouldn't even have to know. And then when Victoria Greenhouse, or whatever her name is, grows up, I can give Dad the legacy he's always wanted without any regrets."

Ronald sat up, fisting his pillow and bashing it over Draco's head. "Or with regret like you never dreamed possible, you daft prat. If you ever get her, it won't be for something light. And even if it's short, she'll cram her whole heart into it and leave gutted. So will you. Honestly, do you know Hermione at all?"

"Of course I know her," he said, hitting Ronald back with his own pillow. "I know her in spite of myself. I know her even though I've been trying to stay away from her all term. And look how that's turned out. Where has it got me? Here - here sleeping in her bed."

Ronald was hushing him. "It's not fair. I get that," he said. "We're only sixteen, for star's sake. It shouldn't be this complicated, girls ruined by a bunch of ridiculous politics."

Draco fell onto his back, the bed bouncing beneath him. "Well it is. And this whole Christmas apart from Mum and Dad - there's something ominous about it, threatening. Something's happening, Ronald. Something's changing. I have no idea what, but our parents doing a runner, Arthur Weasley's accident, Potter having visions, Umbridge and giants - it's all related, it's all horrible, and it's all got something to do with us."