AN: I'm a fan of some lovely magic Delancey654 invented for their Dramione fic "The Ginger Malfoy." It's a paternity potion that works by colour indicator, and if you've read "The Ginger Malfoy," you'll recognize that potion being embraced, celebrated, and borrowed for this story. Thanks to Delancey654 for creating this potion for us.
Exhausted, Draco slept all the way back from the ski hill, not with his head tipped against the frosty window, not leaning politely against Hermione's shoulder, but flopped sideways across the backseat with his ear and cheek on her leg, cushioned by her thick ski gear. Tim might have been more annoyed with him if Draco wasn't also snoring, a breach in his typical composure and elegance that showed he wasn't aware of what he was doing. He had fallen asleep on Hermione unintentionally, and deeply enough to not be enjoying it too much.
Ann laughed over the sound of his rough, noisy breathing. "The poor darling, he'd be scandalized if he could hear himself."
Tim glanced over his shoulder. "That's a solid sleep cycle. It's going to ruin his bedtime."
"Dad, he's not an infant," Hermione said, suppressing a giggle.
"No, but he might be a vampire," he smirked. "You had that werewolf teacher, darling, there must be vampires too, perhaps that ghastly pale one who does your chemistry classes."
"Snape?" She laughed hard enough for Draco to stir and throw an arm over her lap.
Tim allowed him that too, pleased as he was with Draco for taking over his and Ann's role of cajoling Hermione to actually ski while on a skiing excursion. They had been a bit alarmed the first time they got to the bottom of the hill and couldn't find her, but they soon spotted her drifting leisurely down the intermediate slope with a very patient snowboarder coasting beside her.
"It's more fun to come down with someone clueless, like you, instead of with my parents calling out technique corrections to me," she'd told him. "You still don't know a thing about technique, do you Malfoy."
"Seems like it's more about going by feel to me," he'd admitted. "Just like riding a broom. Quick lesson, some safety rules, and then you just feel around for the rest."
She'd shuddered. "I don't go by feel."
He'd curved his mouth into a smile and his board into an arc crossing dangerously close to the tips of her moving skis. "I can work with you on that."
"Malfoy, not so close."
As Draco slept in the back of the Grangers' car now, Hermione let herself rest one hand in his hair as she looked out the window, at the dark motorway. She was doing the thinking she promised to do - thinking about what would happen to them after they left the peculiar in-between world of her Muggle home.
As they crept through traffic, closer to home, Draco sat up, rosy with sleep, scrubbing his face and apologizing to everyone. It was well into the evening, but too early for bedtime, and they still had the day's four reagents to add to the potion.
At home, Draco heaved a mighty sigh as they went up the stairs to change for dinner. And though Hermione braced herself for him to say something staggering or tragic, all he said was, "I wish I'd brought more to wear. Without any wands or - er, domestic helpers - I've got no way to clean my clothes. Didn't think of that while packing."
She rounded on him somewhat gleefully. "Muggles clean their clothes without magic all the time, you daft thing," she said. "When you're ready to do the potion, just bring your laundry with you to the basement. Ronald's too."
In the basement, Draco stood with a quidditch t-shirt in each hand. "I don't get it," he said. "The red clothing can go in with the green, but the black can't go in with the white?"
"Yes, it's a rule." Hermione said, dropping the white school uniform shirt Draco had worn on the train, realizing finding a tag with washing instructions on a wizard-made shirt was futile. "I can't tell what temperature of water we're meant to use. If we don't get it right, we might shrink everything."
He blinked. "There're no shrinking jinxes on our clothes. They're the very best - "
"I'm not talking about jinxes, Malfoy. I'm talking about - "
"More Science? Finesse?"
"Yes, laundry finesse, if you like," she said as she leaned down to stuff his shirt into the hole in the front of a large, white, metal box.
"Well, if anything of mine shrinks," he said, stepping close enough that she'd be right under his nose by the time she straightened up, "I'll just give it to you to wear."
She gasped as, without any warning, he slipped his Slytherin quidditch practice t-shirt over her head. He'd been wearing this shirt to bed every night since he'd been there, and it smelled like him at his sleepiest and cuddliest.
"Malfoy!" she scolded when she caught her breath.
He fluffed her hair out of the collar and smoothed the shoulder seams over the long-sleeved t-shirt she had already been wearing with the palms of his hands. "There. Just wanted to see you in it," he said. "Go on, stick your arms through the sleeves so you look less like I'm wrapping you up to kidnap."
She did so, with fast, choppy motions, as if under protest, but also trying not to smile.
Draco hummed. "Yeah, I thought I'd like that."
She craned her neck to look behind herself. "I've got your name written on my back, haven't I?"
"Mm-hm. D. Malfoy," he said, fidgeting with the hem that fell to halfway down her thighs, almost precisely where his not-always-quite-asleep-as-everyone-assumed face had lain during their trip home. "You look - really nice."
She huffed. "Nice like your Beauxbatons girl? That Gisele?"
He smirked. "You remember her name."
"I don't suppose you've forgotten Viktor Krum's name," she said, folding her arms across the Slytherin logo on her chest. "Do you write to her? All ma cherie, ma blonde, ma belle Gisele - "
"Do you write to Krum?"
She tossed her head. "Yes, I do. He writes fluent, lovely English. Speaking is much more difficult than writing - "
"Ah, oui. Tellement plus difficile," Draco smirked.
She swatted his arm. "It's just a shame hardly anyone knows what Viktor is capable of."
Draco growled. "Yes, everyone adores Krum for his written prose."
"Look, I know I'm not beautiful, like Gisele," Hermione burst.
Draco tugged at her wrist until she unfolded her arms and let him take her hands. He stroked her knuckles with his thumbs. "Fine, Granger. I prefer you to be beautiful like you anyway."
Something in her hated how much she reacted to hearing him say it. Her breathing stuttered, her cheeks flushed, and for a moment she couldn't look at him. In all their months of flirting and kissing he had never made any mention of her looks. It was as if it didn't matter, which was nice. But the fact that he truly did like to look at her, whether she was a beauty or not - that was nice too.
She cleared her throat, enjoying the compliment but unable to accept it properly. "This shirt is ridiculously too big for me."
Draco cinched the fabric to her body as he took her by the waist. "Then do that shrinking thing with it. I'll get a new shirt at school."
She was smiling now as she said, "If we start shrinking your clothes, you'll run out of things to wear and wind up spending the rest of the holidays borrowing from my dad's wardrobe, That is not something any of us would enjoy."
He groaned a protest into her hair.
"Now, I am going to take this off, wash it in cold water, and hope for the best."
Her arms were above her head, and Draco was guiding the end of his very long shirt down the lengths of them when Ronald appeared at the top of the stairs.
"Bloody hell, Draco!"
Hermione hushed him, thrusting Draco's shirt back at him. "Quiet, Ronald, it's not - "
"Everything alright down there?" came Ann's voice through the heat register in the basement ceiling.
"Fine, Mum. Thank you," Hermione sang back.
"What is going on?" Ronald whisper-yelled as he stomped the rest of the way down the stairs.
"Calm down. It's Muggle clothes washing," Draco said. "Get your kit off and put it in the white box."
The Malfoy brothers' whites - which Ronald had divested himself of in private - were spinning in the Grangers' washing machine as the boys and Hermione stood over the cauldron to add four new reagents to the paternity potion they'd been toiling over all through the holidays. The first three additions went in unceremoniously but at the fourth, Draco grew serious.
"Right. This is the crystallized rhubarb flower," he said. "Watch."
They all leaned closer as he weighed the crystals on a little brass scale and dusted them into the cauldron with a tiny brush, blowing the last of them off its bristles. Before he could begin to stir, the potion turned a clear, vibrant red, like a candy barley toy.
"Remember this colour," Draco said. "If we get to the end of all this and then, on contact with a strand of Ronald's hair, the potion goes back to this colour, it will mean the father is a Weasley. Arthur Weasley, it would be safe to say."
Ronald nodded, swallowing. "Right. Red. Like everyone has always said."
Hermione frowned. "I see now. Four reagents once a day for seven days. Twenty-eight reagents, one for each of Britain's pure-blood families."
Draco gave a sheepish nod. "Yeah. I'm sorry, Granger. It's an ancient formula, but the most precise one considering everyone involved. I didn't invent it. I don't like it."
"What would it do in contact with a strand of my hair?" she asked, bending over the cauldron, as if daring one of her hairs to fall into it.
He shrugged. "It works on a white list. If it doesn't detect any of the twenty-eight elements it's looking for, I assume it does nothing. The potion would stay the brown colour it's supposed to be by the end of the brewing."
Hermione blinked, drawing back from the potion. "White list. Brown. Mudblood."
Ronald flinched. "Hermione, don't. Just ignore it. It's stupid."
Draco snatched the stirring rod from the table, wiped it clean, and began the clockwise stirring, the red fading back into flickering waves of colour.
"Gently, Malfoy," Hermione said, taking the rod from him. "There's no point being angry at the potion itself and splashing it all over."
He stood back, sighing.
"You're uncomfortable," she said. "You're seeing this now, from as close to my perspective as you can, maybe for the first time. But I see it all the time - the prejudice against the Muggle-born is part of so much of wizard life. Why do you think I have to struggle and study so much? Me and all the other keen little Muggle-born kids, like Colin Creevey? Well, because there's nothing in place to guide or orient us. We have to find out for ourselves what people like the pair of you have known without knowing and enjoyed the benefits of all your lives."
Ronald was moving to take the stirring rod from her now. "Then don't let that filthy mess sully you, Hermione. You're too good for it."
She shook her head. "No. I am the witch here. And there is no potion, no matter how ancient and vile, that can chase me off."
Ronald glanced at Draco over the top of Hermione's head. And Draco felt it again - the same thing he'd felt watching Longbottom and his parents through the glass of the closed ward. What he'd felt when Hermione was petrified, and when Cedric Diggory came back dead in Potter's arms.
There was no neutral.
But if he was going to take a stand against the Death Eaters without offering up Ronald, he would have to be slippery, subtle. He wished he knew exactly where his parents stood in their allegiance to the Dark Lord. If there was any duplicity in them, it would give him more of a chance to navigate all of this. And he was waiting, still waiting, for the fearless, brilliant girl stirring away at the potion, to let him know if she would help him to survive.
On a sofa in the drawing room of Malfoy Manor, Rodolphus Lestrange was reclining, dozing, waiting for his femur to regrow properly. He hadn't missed Christmas when the Malfoys had let it pass without any festivities, having grown accustomed to not celebrating holidays while in jail. Bellatrix Lestrange hadn't missed it either, but she had noticed Lucius and Narcissa passing the day with sighs and longing glances out their diamond paned windows at the frozen, empty grounds.
She had let them mope. But that was two days ago now. The silence, the lack of chaos, the long grey days, were beginning to wear on Bellatrix. She crept up behind Lucius's armchair, coiling herself around the edge of it, almost snakelike, and crooned into his ear. "Why so glum, Lucius? Still lonely for your angel Draco baby at Christmastime?"
Narcissa didn't look at him, but she did turn her eyes up from her book, staring straight ahead, into the fire. Lucius recognized it for the warning it was not to reveal anything to the Lestranges about either Draco or Ronald.
He refolded his newspaper. "Bored, Bella? Finding the fugitive life anticlimactic? Annoyed at our Lord for keeping you waiting here?"
She stood up straight, affronted. "No one waits upon our Lord with greater patience than I do," she snapped.
Lucius chuckled. "No? What about him?" he said, jerking his pointed chin toward Rodolphus. "Say what you like about him, but he's a veritable saint when it comes to patience with the Dark Lord. Isn't that right, Rodolphus old boy?"
"Huh?" he bellowed.
Bellatrix sneered at the sound of her husband's voice. "Isn't it time for his next dose of sleeping draught, Cissie?"
Narcissa sighed, rising to her feet. "As you wish, Bella."
When her sister was clear of the room, Bellatrix sank to sit on the rug at Lucius's feet, edging her shoulder between his knees. "Where are your sons?" she demanded in a loud whisper, like a hiss.
He shifted his feet to nudge her away. "You are not a parselmouth and I am not a snake."
She snarled, raising herself onto her knees, her hands on each arm of his chair, speaking into his face. "The Dark Lord could be here any time. We don't know when. But on arrival, he expects complete allegiance from the houses of Black and Malfoy. If Draco is not here and prepared by then, we will be judged as withholding him from our Lord's service."
"Draco is already working within Hogwarts to see that the Ministry's plans to neutralize Potter proceed unhampered by the meddling staff there. It is service enough for a boy his age." Lucius said.
"That is not for you to decide," she snapped back, hopping to her feet, pacing by the hearth. "When you took the Mark, you pledged your life to him. All of it, even your children."
"As I said, Draco is in our Lord's service and has been since he was eleven years old. In that way, Cissa and I have given far more to our Lord than you have. What more does Draco have to give?"
"Everything!" she screeched.
Rodolphus smashed a cushion over his own ear and groaned. "Shut it, witch."
Her look of rage was twisting into a malevolent grin. She spoke softly. "A better question might be, what more do you have to give, Lucius?"
He stood up, circled his chair, tipping back the rest of the wine in his glass. "I have withheld nothing. Just because I didn't follow you to Azkaban - "
"No, no, no, that is not what I mean," she laughed. "I mean to ask how you have dared to hold back a son all this time - not Draco, your other son."
Lucius set his empty glass down on the mantle without a sound. "I have no other son."
She laughed, loud and hideous. "Stop it, Lucius. We're all family here. No secrets."
"Ronald Weasley is the son of blood-traitors and here as part of a sentence ordered by the Wizengamot against our will. He is my personal Azkaban, and he will be cast off from us when he is of age, next year."
She was laughing again, louder than ever. "You and Molly Prewett, up in the Hogwarts astronomy tower while her sick boyfriend stood guard."
"Silence, Bellatrix. That is not - "
She was cackling louder than ever. "Poor old Weasley probably can't perform. All of those tall, fit Weasleys could be yours, couldn't they, Lucius? Oh, you'd like that - "
"Of all the crass, filthy - "
She lunged at him, grabbing him by the front of his robes with claw-like hands, interrupting him. "Get Draco," she said. "No more distractions. No more excuses. Bring me to where he is. Where have you hidden him from our Lord?"
Narcissa was re-entering the room with Rodolphus's draught. "Unhand my husband, Bellatrix," she sighed, meeting Lucius's eye for barely an instant, taking control. "Draco is with the Weasleys for Christmas."
Bellatrix pushed Lucius toward the fireplace. "Cissie how could you let him? Arthur Weasley is maimed by our Lord's familiar. Do you mean to say Draco is in London, at the hospital with the rest of them?"
"Arthur Weasley was discharged from the hospital as of yesterday. You can check for yourself, but I have the information from the most reliable of sources. The whole family should all be piled into that teetering shack of theirs by now," Narcissa said as she eased the draught between Rodolphus's lips. "Go on and fetch Draco from them if you like. Those kinds of accommodations are well and good for the Wizengamot's boy but they're no place for our darling."
Lucius spoke his part. "But Cissa, it wouldn't do for the Weasleys to see Bella at large."
Narcissa wiped the draught from Rodolphus's chin. "Well then you'd better go with her, Lucius my dear. Find Draco for her and keep her hidden and safe as you do."
"Indeed I will," he smiled, and with an abrupt jerk, Lucius snatched Bellatrix by the elbow and disapparated.
With a yank and a twist they were standing in a dark, snowy field. Bellatrix wrenched her arm out of his grip. "What is this?"
"This is the Weasley home, of course. There might be a concealment charm on it, but we're here all the same." He lit his wand and advanced down the lane, toward the Burrow itself.
"They've scarpered," Bellatrix said, glaring up at the dark windows as they came into sight.
"Appearances can be deceiving," was all Lucius said as he charmed the front door open. He had mastered breaking through the Burrow locks years ago. Molly knew it and still hadn't warded them against him, as if she wanted him to be able to get inside if Ronald ever needed protection, as he did now.
As the door drifted open, Bellatrix hung back. "Too easy. It's a trap."
"You can't trap a house with children coming and going from it," Lucius said. "What's more likely is Mrs. Weasley left in a great hurry when Arthur was injured and hasn't been back to secure the place yet."
"In that case we should be looking in London - "
"Patience, Bella," Lucius crooned. "Even if we went to London, we'd have no idea where to begin to look for them."
"Yes, we would," she snarled. "They'd be with that disgrace of a cousin of ours. Bloody Sirius - "
"Whose house is hidden by a Fidelius charm and out of our reach. We'd be there following black dogs through the streets for weeks before anything turned up. No, we may as well look around here for a start." With that, he stepped into Molly's kitchen.
At the sight of the quaint, cramped room, Bella's curiosity overcame her, like a wicked, stray cat. She strolled about, brushing by clean dishes stacked on the countertop, knocking them to the floor, smashed. Lucius followed, mending everything with Reparo spells.
"Come, come," he scolded. "Be a good guest. We wouldn't want to leave traces of you here, wanted criminal that you are."
She was about to cross into the landing at the bottom of the stairs when the clock caught her eye. "Ah," she said, "I've heard of this. Mother Weasley's spying clock. Looks like Arthur is out of both mortal peril and the hospital, as Cissie said. This Charlie is at home, wherever that is, clearly not here. And everyone else is marked as traveling, except for," her face folded into a deep, perplexed frown, "our Ronald who is at 'Dentist.' Dentist? What in flaming, bleeding stars is that?"
No sooner had Lucius disapparated for the Burrow with Bellatrix than Narcissa checked to make sure Rodolphus was snoring before disapparating herself.
She came to herself on a street full of densely packed houses, all of them tiny by her standards. She had come to London without pausing to get a winter cloak. It was hasty but she was just a heartbeat below panic, freezing in her robes. And now she was lost, and searching in her pocket for the slip of parchment Severus Snape had given her with the address to the Grangers' house scrawled on it.
When Draco and Ronald had left for the holidays with the Granger girl instead of staying at the school, Snape contacted Malfoy Manor immediately. Lucius and Narcissa hadn't liked it but they had allowed it, desperate as they were to keep the boys hidden and to not attract attention to them.
But they had to risk it now that Bellatrix and her master were looking for the boys. The Dark Lord had no qualms about rampaging through Muggle London, making it an unfit, unprotected hiding place. Lucius was stalling for time, distracting Bellatrix at the Burrow he knew to be deserted while Narcissa found them and sent them back to the safety of Hogwarts. Bella was mad, driven beyond all reason and compassion to please the Dark Lord. If she got that disgusting Pettigrew to use his rat animagus senses to track the boys' scent, he would discover them here, in this Muggle neighbourhood, helpless and exposed.
It had been a quiet day at the Grangers' - no ski trips, no rides through London with the twins behind the wheel of a semi-magical car that kept levitating at stop lights. Potion-making was finished for the day, and the Grangers and their house guests were sat in front of the television. Ronald was sulking about still having heard nothing from Pansy Parkinson, Draco was trying to edge closer to Hermione without being detected while Tim monitored his progress quietly, ambivalently from across the room.
All five of them jumped at the rapping at the door.
"It's a bit late, darling," Ann called to Tim as he left the front room. "Do be careful."
Tim peered through the peephole in the door. Outside was a stranger. She was ludicrously overdressed in a long, ornate gown but shivering in the cold. She was not much younger than Tim himself and her hair was silvery blond, just like that of the boy sidling up to his daughter inside.
The boys recognized her voice speaking to Tim in the open doorway, offering apologies and introductions. They gaped at each other, wide-eyed. A moment passed between them - brief but heavy. She shouldn't be here. Both of them understood this. And along with it they understood that they stood at a fulcrum, tipping toward a life unlike the one they had known up to this point.
But all they said was, "Mum!"