In the heavy, cold early spring rain, the sound could have been mistaken for a thunderclap. In reality, it was Lucius Malfoy side-along apparating his son Ronald, appearing with a crash just outside the grounds of Hogwarts castle.

"Dad, we have to go back," Ronald said. "I brought someone with me to the Weasleys. I can't just leave her there."

Lucius shoved him along the path at their feet. "You can leave her. Molly will take care of it. What you need to do is get yourself safely back to the protection of the school, immediately."

"But she doesn't - "

"Go, Ronald. You can argue once you're within the boundaries, if you have to."

Ronald heaved an exasperated sigh as he stomped past the pair of standing stones set on either side of the pathway, marking the beginning of the area no one could Apparate in or out of.

"There," he said, rounding on his father. "Are you happy?"

"Am I happy?" Lucius echoed.

For a moment, Lucius was silent. He stood on the path, his hair soaked dark with rain, falling in ropes around his face. His jaw was tense but open, his shoulders rising and falling as if he had just run all the way from the Burrow to the school.

In the silence, Ronald shifted, tilting his head. His father had never looked at him this way before. He was fierce, but not quite angry, the tension in his mouth not unlike a smile. And the difference in his eyes - wild and fraught - what was it?

Lucius was seeing Ronald for the first time without any doubt that the boy was his natural son. All at once, he broke into something like a laugh, rushing at Ronald, crushing him in his arms, slamming his son into his chest.

"Dad?"

Lucius's hands grasped at him, palming the back of Ronald's head. Lucius's breath stuttered and hitched in the half-laugh against Ronald's wet cheek.

"Dad?"

Lucius's voice sobbed. "Yes. Yes, my son."

Ronald raised his arms to return his father's rough embrace. "Dad, what's happened? Have you seen Draco? Is he - "

Lucius stood back, looking intently into Ronald's face. "He's with his mother, exhausted but unhurt, last I saw him," Lucius said. "I need to get back to the manor to make sure, but - " He pulled Ronald's forehead against his, their skin icy cold. "You're safe. I wasn't sure. I'm so glad I got to see you, knowing more perfectly who you are. Glad - overjoyed."

Ronald's eyes widened. "Draco's told you about the potion?"

Lucius nodded against Ronald's head. "Yes. I was nearly sure but - to know, to hear that you are mine. It's selfish, and for your own safety I should wish you had nothing to do with me. But the truth is Ronald, I have never been more pleased."

Ronald broke into a smile, laughing in reply.

Lucius let go of the boy's drenched ginger head to pat him hard on the shoulder. "Now quickly. Up to the castle."

Ronald took three hurried steps up the path before turning back in time to see Lucius stride past the standing stones, and vanish.

Snape stepped out of the fire and onto his office hearth, Draco Malfoy hanging limply along his shoulder and back. He flicked his wand to transform the chair in front of the fire into a sofa and lowered Draco onto it, checking his fingernails, his eyebrows, and anything else that might have been damaged in the risky maneuver of taking an unconscious person who couldn't speak the destination himself through a Floo.

Draco's hair was grey with soot and his scarf was missing, but otherwise he seemed exactly as he had been when Snape sent him off.

"Ronald…" Draco muttered.

"He's fine. Your father went to him. Don't fret over it, Draco."

He quieted, his face hidden in a musty cushion. There was one more thing to check before he could be left alone to sleep off the rebound effect of the Occlumency fortifying potion. Snape sucked in his breath and pushed Draco's sleeve to his left elbow, baring an unburnt, unmarked arm. Snape's breath rushed out in relief.

It hadn't happened. Not yet.

He sat back hard on the wooden chair next to the sofa, listening to Draco's deep, easy breathing. How had Lucius done it - left Draco and Narcissa at the manor to chase after Ronald and Molly? Where did he find the resolve to make a decision like that, and so quickly? He must have known Snape was watching, and he'd intentionally left the manor by breaking the wards on the fireplace when he could have simply apparated, making way for Snape to enter.

Lucius and Narcissa, those beautiful fools, unable to raise their sons without the aid of himself and Molly and Arthur and, this Christmas, without those Muggle Grangers. Maybe, Snape thought, that's how it is for all successful families. Perhaps that was their secret. He certainly had no personal knowledge of what successful family life was like. His parents hadn't enlisted anyone to help raise him. They could hardly be bothered to raise him themselves.

His heart rate returned almost to normal, Snape rose from the chair to settle in behind his desk where a stack of seventh year essays on healing potions waited to be marked. Miserable reading, but there's no antidote for panic quite like mediocrity.

When Draco awoke on a sofa he didn't remember ever seeing before in Snape's office, he was alone. Through a small, high window, he could see that the sun had set, but he didn't know how late in the evening it was. Sitting up, blood rushed into his head, pounding against his skull. It felt like that morning after the manor's New Years Eve ball, when he and Ronald were ten, and they'd decided they were old enough to be drinking the spicy red punch from the adults' bowl. What the stars had been in that fortifying potion?

He called out for Snape, but no one answered. Maybe he was at dinner. Or maybe it was much later and he was asleep in bed, somewhere beyond the closed door at the back of the office.

Draco found the clothes he'd been wearing that morning, ages ago, and stuffed them into his bag before letting himself out. He was thirsty and turned at the top of the stairs toward the kitchens.

Where was everyone? He understood why his parents couldn't come to check on him. They'd trusted him with Snape to care for him in their place, but where was he? If they'd already been brought back safely, where were Ronald and Pansy? And where, he thought with a pang, was Granger?

Maybe she'd heard that he'd failed to keep Ronald's paternity a secret from the Dark Lord. She was a smart girl, maybe she'd come to the conclusion that he'd let it slip while preoccupied with hiding his relationship with her. Maybe she was sitting with Potter somewhere, right now, working herself into a noble frenzy where she had to end things between them in the interest of the greater good. Hadn't Potter been on about the very same kind of thing, during the holidays? Ronald had said he'd been talking about leaving wherever they were staying with the Weasleys in London to go back to that awful Muggle aunt of his, cutting himself off from everyone for their own protection.

Of course it was a rubbish idea. Making each of them alone and unprotected was exactly what the Dark Lord would want. Someone had talked Potter out of it, but would anyone step up to do the same for Draco - for the son of a Death Eater sheltering fugitives and the Dark Lord himself? Potter would be only too happy to cut him out of the Order of the Sanctimonious, greater good or not.

Imagining all of this was making Draco furious. In the kitchen, he gulped two glasses of that infernal pumpkin juice and ate the sandwich a very nervous looking house elf made for him. He felt grimy from the Floo travel and dirty on a deeper level, as if the touch of the Dark Lord on his hands and arm had contaminated him. He shuddered and threw away the last few bites of the tart he'd been eating as a hurried dessert.

He left the kitchen through the rear stairwell, the one that always smelled like boiled potatoes. He had snogged Hermione here the first week they were back from Christmas holidays. He'd met her halfway up and kissed her as soon as he could reach her. She'd asked him if she was a bad kisser, and he'd told her of course she wasn't and backed her against the wall to let her reassure herself - right there.

Was this what the castle would look like to him now - every room and corridor a monument to some moment he'd shared with her? How was he going to stand being here - being anywhere if she'd decided they were through?

He didn't just feel dirty now, but sick, and his steps slowed as he reached the top of the stairs. Back in the empty Entrance Hall, its lights dimmed for late evening, he looked up the marble staircase as far as he could without moving any closer to it. He could go chasing after them - those Gryffindors in their tower - but his feelings were a difficult mix of being unworthy to approach them, but also too proud.

And on top of everything, his head was still aching. Without deciding, he slid down the wall at his back and sat on the floor, his head in his hands, eyes closed, the heels of his hands pressed into their sockets, counterpressure to the pain radiating from inside.

"Malfoy!"

He dropped his hands. There she was, Granger, folding a large parchment like a map, and jamming it inside her bag as she trotted across the Entrance Hall toward him. His heart lurched, its pulse hitting painfully on the inside of his forehead. She didn't look happy to see him, her brows pinched together, her mouth a hard line.

"What are you doing on the floor?" she asked, dropping to her knees beside where he sat, talking fast. "Snape said he'd let us know when you were awake. But when we checked on you with the - anyways, you weren't in his office anymore. Are you alright? Can you stand?"

She held his face between her hands, brushing her fingers through his hair, loosening a light dusting of soot. "Look at the state of you," she said. "Have you eaten?"

He nodded. "A bit."

She released his head to feel along his shoulders and arms. "Did they hurt you?"

He let his chin droop toward his chest. "It's just a headache." To prove it, he moved to stand, stopping when she pressed a hand to his chest to hold him down.

"Ronald told me you couldn't keep his paternity a secret from them," she said, almost too quietly to hear.

He slumped into the wall again. "Right."

She withdrew her hand, folding it with her other one in her lap. "It's my fault, isn't it? Our secret must have distracted you and kept you from protecting your own brother." She shifted her knees on the hard stone floor. "I get it. You're mad at me."

Draco sighed. "It's not you, Granger. The Dark Lord - he wouldn't have stopped with the Legilimency until he found something he could use. If it hadn't been Ronald's paternity, it would have been something else. Or maybe the paternity might have taken a little longer for him to find, but he would have seen it eventually. It's not you though. It was me. I wasn't strong enough. Occlumency with him was nothing like training with Potter and Snape. The Dark Lord is relentless, violent - horrifying."

Her arms were around his neck and she was whispering earnestly in his ear. "I'm so sorry, Malfoy. Don't go back there. You don't have to. Please - "

He braced his hands on either side of her ribcage. "It's my home, with my family in it. Eventually I'll have to - "

"No, you won't. We'll get Dumbledore's help, or something. Just don't go. And don't be mad at me - "

He scoffed through the mass of hair engulfing his face. "Dumbledore, he can't even keep the ministry out of his own school - "

She wasn't listening. "Even though I ruined everything for you today, don't go off on your own. I am sorry. It should be me Voldemort is after now, not Ronald. I can't go back and change that, but even though it's happened this way, don't go. We're all stronger if we stay together. Dividing you from Ronald and Harry and me and everyone else is exactly what he wants. Please." She paused for breath. "Draco, don't leave me."

He pried her grip loose enough for him to see her face in the low orange light of the lanterns hung far overhead. Her expression was twisted, as if she was steeling herself for impact.

"Leave you?" Draco said.

She nodded, eyes still closed. "You've been avoiding me since you woke up. You've decided to act out that stupid, heroic cliché where you abandon me to keep me safe, like a Muggle superhero comic book - "

"A what?"

"I hate it, Malfoy. It's hackneyed and patronizing and it plays right into Voldemort's plans. I won't have it - "

His hand rose between them, covering her mouth, the rest of her lightning fast tirade muffled against his palm. "Granger, will you please listen to me," he said. "I'm sorry to shut you up, but I am trying to understand. I have questions."

She nodded without a word, eyes wide and dark over the edge of his hand. He lowered it. There was her mouth, quiet and closed, sweetly waiting to answer his questions. He sprung forward, not speaking but kissing her, his arms closing around her and pulling her against him. A tiny squeal of relieved delight sounded inside her mouth and she returned his pressure, answering his movements with her own.

It had only been a few hours since he kissed her goodbye, but it felt like years. He was a different person now, one attacked by the Dark Lord and left famished for goodness, for her. But he needed to speak, and he left her mouth open and wet as he spoke against her lips without quite breaking the kiss.

"It is impossible to make a hero, cliched or otherwise, out of a spoiled brat like me," he said. "I never give up what belongs to me."

"And you're saying that's - "

"Shh," he hushed her. "It's your turn to listen. Think back to what I've already told you. In the corridor upstairs, on our first day back from holidays, I said I was nothing if not yours."

She breathed a happy laugh into his mouth.

"You remember?"

"Mm-hmm," she purred.

He kissed her lightly, on the tip of her nose. "Good. And by not arguing, you admit that in return you are mine."

She sighed again, her voice sweet. "Mine," she echoed.

It was a beautiful sound, and he pressed her with another deep, ravishing kiss. "So," he finished, "don't go jumping to conclusions about me leaving you."

She nodded, nestling her face against his neck. "I won't if you won't."

He tipped his head back, pausing, swallowing hard. "When I woke up in Snape's office and no one was there, I almost convinced myself you were never coming for me."

She smoothed his robes against his chest with her cheek. "Silly Malfoy. It was Snape. He wouldn't let us in. But I was silly too, I suppose. I should have known better than to come looking for you with Harry in tow."

He huffed. "Potter?"

"Yes, Potter," she said. "As soon as you're ready, he and Ronald are waiting upstairs for us. Ronald found out something big from Molly Weasley. Something that affects what we'll have to do next."

Draco groaned into her shoulder. "This is my life now."

"It's not so bad. You already like Ronald and me. I'm sure you and Harry will be pals soon." She was smirking, disbelieving.

He rolled his eyes. "Whatever we do, we can't risk sitting here snogging where someone might see us. Off we go."

"So she just stormed out?" Ronald gaped at Harry.

Harry spun around to pace the length of the vanished room again. "Yeah, right out into the rain, like in a bad Muggle rom-com movie. While everyone in Puddifoot's sat and glared at me." Even though Hermione had spent a good part of the afternoon explaining to him what had gone so very wrong on his Valentine's date with Cho Chang, Harry still didn't quite understand.

"You're better off without her, mate," Ronald said. "Loads too much drama with that one."

Pansy faked a gasp, pivoting where she sat on the table beside Ronald to hook her legs over his. "Here I thought you liked drama."

"Stars, no," Ronald said, folding his hands over her knees. "Can't seem to avoid it, but I wouldn't say I like it. I mean, if I could have got Dad to drop the theatrics and slow down enough to bring you back with us from the Burrow instead of making us wait for Arthur to plod over with you, I would have much preferred that."

"It wasn't theatrics," Harry said. "Voldemort thinks he has a right to your service now he knows you're a Malfoy by blood. You had to get where he couldn't reach you as fast as possible. For once, I agree with your father on something."

"Well, it wasn't very chivalrous," Ronald said. Pansy beamed at him, curving her arm around his waist and settling her face against his shoulder. "I would never choose to leave you behind," he said, his mouth against her fringe.

"Oh, for stars' sake," Harry interrupted. "Recently dumped best friend standing right here. Give it a rest, would you?"

Pansy gave him a rude gesture instead.

Harry was still glaring at her when Hermione and Draco came through the false wall. "Perfect, just who I wanted to see," he groaned.

"Feeling's mutual, Potter."

"Now be nice to each other," Hermione said, taking up her usual position between the two of them. "Everyone here has had a rather terrible day and we ought to be gentle with one another."

Four sets of eyes rolled in unison.

Harry advanced toward Draco. "You've met him today, have you? First time?"

Draco gave a curt nod. "First time I can remember, yes. He wants to mark me, but says I have to prove myself first."

Harry frowned. "What does that mean?"

"Well, picking my brain with Legilimency for starters," Draco said. "Snape's Legilimency is nothing compared to his."

"Don't I know it," Harry fumed.

"I can't let him do it again," Draco said. "It's too much. He's already got hold of the memory of Ronald reading his paternity potion. I managed to keep your connection to him secret, Potter. But the next time he comes at me - I can't promise I'll be able to hold him back. My Occlumency is good enough to keep me calm, to let me lie in front of him, but once he's in my mind it's…"

When he couldn't finish, Harry supplied the rest for him. "When he's in your mind it's hopeless."

A grave look passed between them. "No hope at all," Draco said. At last they'd found common ground, only it was awful.

Draco spoke. "I need to find something else to satisfy him that I'm useful besides Legilimency."

"Well, it won't be the weapon at the Department of Mysteries," Ronald said. "Molly confessed that it's nothing, a bluff, some prophecy from sixteen years ago that Dumbledore has heard and doesn't care about. But You-know-who doesn't know that and he's obsessed with it. That's what the Order is using it for, to keep him preoccupied so he doesn't act on any worse plans."

"So we don't need the prophecy ourselves," Hermione concluded. "But it helps us by distracting him."

Ronald nodded. "Yeah. But other than that, Molly had no advice but to hide here at school and nag Harry to practice his Occlumency. That's the only thing You-know-who wants besides the weapon. He wants Harry."

Draco pressed his hands to his aching head. "No, that can't be all. He wants Potter dead because he thinks he's standing in the way of other goals. What are they? Imagine Potter is already dead, what then?"

Ronald fidgeted where he sat on the table. "Can't say I like this exercise."

"He's right though," Hermione said. "Sorry, Harry, but why does Voldemort want you out of the way? If you were gone, who would he come for next?"

"Dumbledore," Harry said. "I've heard them say it - that Dumbledore is the only wizard Voldemort ever feared. He'll be next after me."

"Well, what if we could skip the prophecy and Harry, and hand Dumbledore over to Voldemort straightaway?" Hermione said.

Everyone was talking at once, asking how and why they could do such a thing.

"We couldn't force him, of course," Hermione said. "Dumbledore would have to choose to put himself forward all on his own. He is indeed the most powerful wizard in the country and that is precisely why we need to nudge him out into the open."

Harry was shaking his head. "No, he won't act on a nudge. He's already got some plan. Even if he would spare a few minutes to have a word with me this year, he'd never choose to change things up. All the members of the Order say the same, even Sirius, when he's pressed. They want us to trust his plan."

Ronald scoffed. "His brilliant plan? The one that got my step-father chewed by a snake while guarding nothing of any consequence in the basement of the Ministry?"

"The plan that has him sat up in his office while Umbridge undermines the entire school?" Pansy added.

Harry took it up. "Yeah, the plan that's got Sirius and me hiding in our cozy safety zones, waiting for who knows what while Dumbledore himself won't even glance at me?"

"The one that's set my parents and me and now my brother squarely in the sights of the Dark Lord, like acceptable collateral damage?" Draco finished.

Hermione took his hand. "I know what we have to do," she said. "It's not going to be pleasant or easy, and it's going to take all of us."

Ronald beckoned with his hand. "Let's hear it."

She took a deep breath. "The next time the DA has a meeting, we get caught."

Harry scoffed. "No, absolutely not. We've come so far. Even Neville - "

"That's just it, Harry," Hermione interrupted. "You've taught us all the way up to patronuses. You've been brilliant. But it's run its course. So next time, Draco tells Umbridge there's a secret meeting going on, we all run off, you get caught, and we make sure they find the parchment where we all signed our names. The one labeled 'Dumbledore's Army.'"

"But then everyone is exposed," Harry argued.

She shook her head. "If you get caught leading a forbidden student group, you'll be expelled. You'll be out there on your own, all alone where Voldemort can find you. With the list, it makes it look as if Dumbledore has organized us. He's the leader, and he'll have to answer for it himself. He'll do it in order to protect you, Harry. And he can handle himself if he gets driven out of the school. What's more, with him gone because of something Draco did, Voldemort might be satisfied and ease up on the Malfoy family."

Harry sat down on the floor. "We can't just get Dumbledore fired. It won't be the same here without him."

"Maybe that's why we have to do it," Hermione said. "If Dumbledore becomes Voldemort's target instead of you, maybe people will wake up and take this seriously. You're a kid everyone can ignore. And while they do, Voldemort keeps growing stronger, unchecked. The Ministry and the Daily Prophet are unwittingly helping his cause. Even Minister Fudge, awful as he is, honestly thinks he's doing the right thing. He's that deluded."

She sat beside Harry on the ground. "Something big needs to happen. Something revolutionary. And for once, it would be nice if we chose what it was ourselves instead of waiting for Voldemort to choose it for us."

Ronald stood up from the table. "She's right. She's always right." He walked to where Harry sat and extended his hand to heft him off the floor.

Draco did the same for Hermione.

"It's going to make you look bad, Malfoy," she said as she rose toward him. "All of this and the fact that Harry did an interview for the Quibbler with Rita Skeeter today where he named your father among the people at the graveyard last year."

"He had to," Ronald said. "It's not like people won't be expecting it. Would have been suspicious if Dad was left out of the story, really. You-know-who would have been wondering if it was a sign he was in it together with Harry."

Draco nodded, speaking directly to Hermione. "I don't care how it looks as long as you and Ronald know the truth. I'll do it. I'll be the bad guy. At this point, I really can't be anything else."

She held him tightly around the neck. "I'm sorry all the same," she said.

For once, Harry did not grimace at their embrace.

"I'll do it too," Pansy said. "Give me the list, Granger. I'll get it to Umbridge when the time comes. Draco will be busy chasing Potter the night you get caught. Got to make it dramatic and believable now, don't we boys?"

Hermione pawed through her bag until she found the DA parchment. "It's jinxed. I can't give it to you or I'll be marked for life. But if I drop it on the floor, you should be able to pick it up." She stood with the parchment in her fingers, ready to let it glide to the ground. "Harry?" she said. "Tell me to go ahead. I won't do this unless you agree to it."

He shuffled his feet, looked over the tops of his glasses at the blur of her face and at Ronald's. He trusted them, hated that this might hurt them, but didn't know how else to make the change they needed - that everyone needed. Trying to avoid eye contact, he looked at Pansy and Draco. They complicated everything, but they seemed sincere, properly stoic and scared.

"Yes, Hermione," Harry said. "Do it."

The parchment drifted to the floor at their feet.