Malfoy's name appeared in flashing green, lit up on the message board of the Slytherin common room. He wouldn't have known the summons to Snape's office had arrived if Crabbe and Goyle hadn't come into their room, playing a game of stomping on each other's foot while not getting stomped in return. When Draco rolled over in bed to tell them to shut up, they took care of him by sending him off to Snape. What was he doing in bed two hours before curfew anyway?

He said nothing in reply, just rose from his bed like a sleepwalker, slipping into his dressing gown, the belt dangling untied at his sides. In this unusually disheveled state, his hair mussed from his pillow, he walked through the common room, the rest of his house gawking at him on his way out.

Must have found out about Pansy Parkinson snogging his brother in the Hogsmeade high street. Where was Pansy, anyways?

Draco didn't care what they thought. They couldn't have thought any less of him than he currently thought of himself. He'd shouted at Snape for sending Ronald to the manor. But the truth was it was his fault Ronald had gone. If Draco hadn't run and hid from what he saw in the Pensieve, if he had stayed and listened to Snape, it would have been him who'd met with the Dark Lord today. Draco wouldn't have almost got his brother tortured and maybe killed, and they might have been able to keep Harry's connection to the Dark Lord's mind a secret for a little longer - long enough to make something good out of it.

Heavy with all of this, Draco trudged out of one dungeon corridor and into another, making a point of creaking open the door to Snape's office without knocking first.

Snape sat at his desk, his head in his hands. "You've come."

"Yeah, here I am." Draco stepped inside.

"Sit. I apologize for the delay. Montague's parents have been here all evening, getting him settled in the hospital wing."

Draco slumped into the chair in front of the desk. "Right, of course."

Snape still hadn't begun, his head still held between his fingertips, his eyes closed, posture uncharacteristically listless.

Draco cleared his throat. "It's funny the thoughts we come back to, over and over. I've been in bed, angry at myself for what I let happen to Ronald and to Potter. And while I waited for you to call me back here, all I could think of was what I should call you when I saw you again."

Snape pursed his lips. "Sir will do."

Draco raked his hands through his own hair. "Will it? Seems a bit cold to me, considering I now know you're one of my fathers."

Snape let his hands drop away from his head, landing with a thud on the desktop. "You have one father. You saw the results of your paternity potion yourself. The only paternal colour was Malfoy silver."

"Please," Draco sneered. "The potion shows positive results only. Snape is a Muggle name. You're half-blood, Muggle-born on your father's side. As far as the potion goes, you would have registered as neutral, causing no colour change at all. How's that, Professor? Full points for your star potions pupil?"

"Lucius Malfoy is your father," Snape said with slow, precise articulation, leaning on his desk. "From your mother, you took half of all that you were at birth. Lucius gave you the other half. Whatever I gave - it was no more than a step in a spell. I'm like an ingredient in a potion that ran its course sixteen years ago."

Draco scoffed but said, "That spell - that Gravida Triadum, the pregnancy of threes. I read the page from my family book of fertility magic from over your shoulder in the Pensieve. I know exactly what it entails. Only an ingredient - I saw her on your bed. You didn't merely cast a spell. How dare you distance yourself from it? You and my mother, the two of you, you…"

"Once, Draco," Snape said, his pale face splotched red. "It was only once, during desperate times. She didn't know if she would ever see you father outside a prison cell again. You wouldn't have lived if it hadn't been done. Haven't you wondered why your mother bore no more children after you?" Snape paused to catch his breath. "It is because she can't, not without the same spell. But it was never repeated. Once you were born, there was no need."

Draco's voice tore out of him in a shout. "So you've never loved my mother?"

"Of course I love her," Snape shouted in return. "As I love your father. As I love you."

Draco and Snape sat across the desk from each other, their shoulders heaving. Snape's reply had been immediate, reflexive, given without pause or thought. It was as he always was with students: honest.

The pained, angry look on Draco's face had softened. Snape shook his head, relieved at the change in him but not understanding it. This was what the boy wanted, not for Snape to distance himself from what happened, but to confess how deeply and irrevocably it had affected him. He wanted to know that it meant something.

The silence between them wasn't quite telling enough, and Snape was speaking again. "During the war, I cost the best person I ever knew her family and her life. In that instant, I relinquished any claim, any hope I had of having a family of my own. I can never deserve it. And now, there is nothing to fill that emptiness except for the three of you."

Draco sat speechless, his eyes shut.

"As for my history with your mother," Snape went on. "I regret nothing, Draco. Nothing that gives you your life."

"And you've felt this way all my life?"

Snape answered with a single, slow nod. "Yes. And more so since SHE died."

"Potter's mother?"

Snape hushed him with a hiss.

"Then how - "

"I accept that this is difficult for you," Snape interrupted. "And I hate that you learned of this the way you did."

Draco huffed. "You never wanted me to find out. I heard you make her promise not to - "

"I was wrong," Snape said, pushing his chair away from his desk. "The time for secrets is ended. The time for living in families torn by crossed allegiances is over. Tomorrow, Molly and Arthur Weasley are holding a meeting of the Order of the Phoenix at their home to discuss Potter's connection to the Dark Lord, and the mess you and your brother are in now that he has taken notice of you. Your parents will be there as well."

At the news, Draco hopped to his feet. "They're changing sides?"

"It isn't that simple, Draco. There is much to discuss and decide - "

"Will all of my parents be there? Even you, Sir?"

"Draco, stop. You have one father - "

The boy swept to Snape's side of the desk, his dressing gown swirling about him as he grasped Snape by the lapels of his robe. "Don't keep yourself away from me anymore, Sir. Let me have you as my father, my second, indispensable father. The Dark Lord has my other parents. Please don't make me face him alone."

Snape stood, pulling Draco into a crushing embrace. "My boy. I never have. And I never will."

Emotional exhaustion was the order of the day. In spite of her own, Hermione sat on the floor of the Entrance Hall, at the top of Snape's staircase waiting for Draco.

"Let him be," Harry had said when she'd risen from the common room sofa, about to leave Gryffindor Tower even though she was already in her pyjamas. "Get some rest, Hermione. You don't need to be following him around, coddling him. He's not the only one here having a horrible day."

Harry was right about that. Understandably, Ronald had come back utterly knackered from meeting Bellatrix Lestrange and Voldemort for the first time. He was devastated that his father had exposed Harry's connection to Voldemort's mind. It didn't help him to know that he was likely about to give up the secret himself through Voldemort's Legilimency, and that his father had spared him suffering through it. But he never even got to try to protect Harry, and it irked him.

Harry had tried to comfort Ronald before he went to bed, pounding him warmly on the back, saying, "Leave it, mate. It's not like your Dad found out about it from you. And you know I'm rubbish at Occlumency - so bad I'm sure it was only a matter of days, maybe just a few hours until Voldemort figured the connection out all on his own."

"And like you said, Ronald," Hermione had chimed in, "at least the Death Eaters never found out Snape was stabbing them in the back by giving you lessons. They went right to assuming Dumbledore was doing it, and they already know he's against them, obviously. You saved Snape's cover. That's something to be proud of, isn't it?"

Ronald was muttering his reluctant agreement with all of this when Harry's mood had suddenly soured again. "Where is Dumbledore, anyway?" he'd said. "Why didn't Snape have anything to say about him even after Ronald told him all his secrets? He gave us nothing in return."

"Don't you see, Harry?" Hermione had said. "If Voldemort is sitting in Malfoy Manor at this very moment figuring out how to see what you see and feel what you feel, Professor Snape has to be extremely careful about what you see him doing or saying, or else. More than ever before, he can't say anything about Dumbledore or the rest of the Order around you."

"Stop," Ronald had moaned. "Enough with all the mad intrigues. I can't take any more tonight."

If we all live long enough, there comes a time in all of our lives when our parents bring us more trouble than they save us. Ronald felt like he'd reached that point already, far too early, and there was something heartbreaking about it, making him heavy and weary.

He stood up, stretching and yawning. "Wake me up if Pansy comes by, but not for anything else."

After Ronald had gone up to their room, Harry stopped pretending not to be in a bad mood. Hermione could sense that something awful had happened in that Occlumency class of theirs. She had felt the darkness of it in Harry and in Draco. Harry wouldn't tell her what exactly it was. Instead, he kept trying to say his mood was all down to a tiff with Cho Chang.

Hermione was a good friend, but she had her limits. And she knew staying with Harry to talk about Cho Chang, prying away at the real heart of what was bothering him, would not bring her as much happiness as leaving him in the common room to go find Draco.

That was how she came to be sitting alone in the Entrance Hall in her pyjamas and house slippers half an hour before curfew. She held her wand lightly between her fingers, it's end pointed toward the ground, as she practiced lighting the edges of an old prefect schedule on fire without using her wand at all.

Draco noticed the tiny fire as he came up Snape's stairwell and into the hall, squinting into the dimmed light of the lanterns. Hermione raised her head at the sound of his slippers scuffing to a halt.

"Malfoy." She extinguished the flame and was getting to her feet when he took her by the elbow and raised her to stand up into his embrace. "You're dressed for bed," she said, her hands smoothing his rumpled hair.

"You too," he said.

She breathed out a laugh. "Yes. I thought I was tired enough to go to sleep without seeing you first but - well, here I am."

"Thank the stars," he said, his face in her hair.

She hadn't hugged him in pyjamas since he'd stayed at her house in town, and she'd almost forgotten how soft and close it felt, how strong the traces of his pheromones were in the clothes he slept in, on the dressing gown he wore as he got out of the shower every day. She breathed deeply, filling her head with him, thinking back to that week of living together with her family in London. It was a short time, but vital - the time when she had moved past simple but powerful attraction to him and into a true, caring relationship.

But they weren't in her parents house. "Malfoy, we can't stand out here in the open. Someone's going to see us and go running to Umbridge."

He groaned against her ear and straightened his posture. "Right. Let's go sit in the dining hall. It'll be empty and dark."

The charmed ceiling was specked with stars, some of them falling and streaking, a false moon moving through the sky fast enough for them to see. They sat on the empty Slytherin bench, in the shadows against the wall. She held his hands while he told her about what he'd seen in the Pensieve that afternoon, and what Snape had to say about it.

"Why are my parents like this?" he finished. "First there was all that business about the Weasleys and that love potion pollen, and now I find out Mum can't stay pregnant without…" He couldn't say it. "I mean, I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised they've got such bad judgment. They've got the bloody Dark Lord camped out in the drawing room right now, for the love of stars."

Hermione twined her arms around one of his, her head on his shoulder. "Was what happened with Snape bad judgment though? It sounds like she put a lot of thought into it. She remembered to bring a book and everything."

"Granger, not everything we get from books is a good idea."

She clucked her tongue. "That's not what I'm saying. What your mum did - well, you're here because of it, aren't you? If we were in your parents' place, trying desperately to have a baby and getting our hearts broken when the pregnancies kept failing, wondering if all we had was one more chance before you went to prison forever, what would we have done?"

"What - we - if we - trying desperately to - what?"

She raised her head from his shoulder. "It's a hypothetical question, Malfoy."

He smirked. "You just proposed to me again."

"I did not!"

He placed a hand on his heart. "I'm honoured, but I already told you, sixteen is too young."

"Malfoy!"

He made a quick dip of his head to kiss her mouth. "I don't know what Mum was going through. I've never even thought about having a baby of my own. But I have thought about having sex, quite a lot, actually. And I can't imagine what it would take for me to be okay with sharing you with someone else."

Her face flushed. "Me?"

He smiled against her lips. "Of course you, you daft thing." As his mouth moved with his speech, he took hold of hers in a soft, wet, fleeting kiss. He kept his place at her mouth as he spoke again. "If you stay with me, eventually..." He nipped another kiss. "You and me..."

Her hands were on either side of his face, her lips chasing after his. "Oh, definitely." She didn't let him back away to speak anymore, her hands gliding up his jaws and into the hair at his temples, her mouth open as he descended on her, promising without any more words to take the rest of her in time.

He moaned into more speech. "Not sharing," he decided. "I'm too far gone to even see you riding a broom with anyone else, let alone casting a Gradiva Triadum spell."

She broke away with a crack. "That broom ride tonight was way too fast, Malfoy. I'd like to think I'm not someone who scares easily but…" She trailed off, shuddering.

He smiled. "You've watched enough quidditch to know how I like to fly."

"That's in a controlled environment, with rules and a set course and a referee. You shouldn't fly like that cross-country. It's - "

"Don't mother me, Granger," he said, gathering her up and scooting her into his lap. "You wouldn't mind it so much if you were a more adventurous flier yourself. Let me teach you," he said, nuzzling at the hollow below her ear. "Come with me, just like you did tonight, every day until it's second nature to you. You need to be eased into that kind of intense ride."

She gave a gentle shove against his sternum. "Stop trying to make it sound like debauchery."

"What's wrong with debauchery?" he smirked against her skin.

She laughed at him, let him tug at her earlobe with his lips before she sat back and looked him in the eyes. "I'm glad you're smiling. That's what I came down here to see. You don't have to be okay with everything, but I love that you can smile at me anyway."

He kissed her again, deep and sweet, until the ten minute warning bell for curfew sounded from the hall.

"Oh," he said, breaking away. "I need to tell you. There's going to be a meeting tomorrow, at the Burrow with the Order and with my parents. They're finally going to do something. Though I don't know what."

Hermione jumped where she sat in his lap, her mouth fallen open. "Your parents? At the Weasleys?"

He nodded. "Snape told me not to read too much into it, but it's a bold move on their part. Here's hoping their judgment is about to begin improving."

She nodded, still shocked. "Yes. And are they letting you come along? They've never let us come to meetings, not even Fred and George and they're practically adults themselves."

Draco shrugged. "No, I don't think so. Snape said Potter can't even know about the meeting."

Hermione winced. Harry keenly resented having secrets kept from him. And now she was one of the people keeping them. All the same, she agreed. "No, I suppose he can't. Not with Voldemort able to see what he sees. This is going to be so hard on him. But if Voldemort finds out your parents aren't so very on his side..."

"We'll all be dead," Draco finished.

She shuddered in his arms. "What about Ronald? What can he know about all this?"

Draco hummed. "I think he needs to know about all his parents getting together. Either one of us can tell him, as soon as we get the chance. But we can wait, maybe forever, to let him know about Gravida Triadum."

Arthur Weasley stood in front of the mirror in his bedroom, tying and re-tying the ascot at his throat.

"Why bother with that?" Molly said, pausing as she was about to rush past the open doorway. "We're in our own home in the middle of the week. No one is going to expect us to be dressed up."

Arthur squinted at his reflection, dusting his nose. "He'll be all fancied up though, won't he? We've been in that man's acquaintance since we were all eleven years old and we've never seen him anything but overdressed, have we - "

The question fell awful and unanswered between them.

Molly's face flamed red, mortified as she remembered the under- and overdressed states in which she'd seen Lucius Malfoy. She had nothing to say for herself, just made a little cough as she rushed off again.

Arthur swore at himself and followed her to the kitchen, approaching her as she stood at the counter setting out clean, empty teacups. He wound his arms around her waist. "Nothing to be nervous about, love," he said, careful not to disturb her neatly arranged hair. "I've already gone and stuck my foot in my mouth for the evening while it was still just you and me here. Now that I've got it over with, the rest of the night should go smoothly. Isn't that right?"

She turned to face him, her arms stretched to close around his neck. She rose on her toes and kissed him. "You've done nothing wrong. But thank you, dear. There is no man in the world kinder than my Arthur."

They were still in each other's arms when Alastor Moody apparated into their kitchen without a sound. At the sight of the Weasleys standing nose to nose, whispering sweetly to each other, Moody announced himself with a disapproving grunt and noisily pulled out a chair to sit at the table. At the same moment, the Floo flared to life as Kingsley Shacklebolt stepped through the fireplace. In the hallway, Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks were letting themselves in the front door. It had just clicked closed as the final apparation sounded, that of Severus Snape.

"Oh," said Molly, stepping away from her husband. "Well, isn't this nice. Everyone arriving right on time."

"Everyone?" Moody barked, his eye spinning to survey the room. "If this is everyone, does that mean the Malfoys are no-shows?"

"Give it time, Alastor," Kingsley urged. "I've just cleared the Floo myself. They would have had to wait for me."

"Sure hope they're coming," Tonks said. "That's my Auntie, you know. The one who isn't a mad fugitive, I mean."

Moody was grunting again. "Well, what's a wizard gathering in this country without some estranged family drama?"

Remus patted Tonks hard on the shoulder. "When was the last time you met up with Aunt Narcissa?"

She snorted. "Met up with her deliberately? Never."

"A-ha," said Kingsley, his hand at his ear. "Here they come now."

The Malfoys arrived in quick succession. Lucius was first, stepping out of the fire and into the kitchen with a familiarity everyone found rather unsettling. His eyes went immediately to the face above Molly's. "Weasley," he nodded.

"Malfoy."

Narcissa came next, glancing around the kitchen with an unfamiliarity everyone found rather unsettling. She turned to her hostess. "Molly."

"Narcissa. Lovely, please sit down."

Instead of sitting, Moody took a quick, enormous step across the floor, bringing him into Lucius's face. "So you've double-crossed your comrades to be here, have you Malfoy? You wouldn't turn around and double-cross us right back, would you?"

"Please, Alastor," Molly said, her hand on Moody's sleeve. "This isn't about the war for them anymore. It's about their children."

Narcissa nodded. "Thank you, Molly. That is it exactly." Her eyes roved around the faces of the rest of the gathering, startling a little at the sight of Tonks. When she spoke again, her voice was smooth and composed. "Thank you, everyone, for seeing us tonight."

"Please," Kingsley said, taking the meeting back from her. "Let's all be seated and see how we can help each other."

Lucius began. "We have been in contact with members of the group known as Death Eaters - "

"Contact? The Quibbler says you are a Death Eater," Moody interrupted. "Potter saw - "

"Let him speak, please," Kingsley said. Moody was quiet, but he barely kept his seat, vibrating with tension.

"The Dark Lord is hunting for a prophecy made by Sybil Trelawney the year our children and Potter were born - "

"They know it," Snape interjected. It was all anyone said about the prophecy. No one would tell the Malfoys that Dumbledore vouched that the prophecy was useless, and it was nothing but a red herring meant to distract the Dark Lord from worse mischief.

Lucius went on. "He wanted to kidnap someone important to Potter to lure him to the Department of Mysteries where Potter could retrieve the prophecy. Our son Ronald, the one we share with Arthur and Molly, was suggested as the lure, and also Potter's godfather, my wife's cousin, Sirius Black."

Again, they all kept silent of what they knew about Sirius.

Lucius coughed. "But none of that was necessary. Before any action was taken, the Dark Lord learned of his connection to Potter's thoughts and dreams. This spares my son and Black from kidnapping, but it gives the Dark Lord the power to lure Potter with a mere thought, real or false."

"Does it?" Moody snapped. "Does your dirty lord really know how to slip in and out of Potter's mind, just like that?"

"I do not know," Lucius said. "But I assume it will only be a short matter of time before he finds a way."

"It won't be that easy, will it?" Remus said, looking across the table to where Snape sat at Lucius's side. "Harry isn't defenseless. Not when he's been learning Occlumency, isn't that right Snape?"

"I have attempted to teach him, yes," he said. "But now that the Dark Lord may be looking out at me from Potter's eyes at any time, it is hardly safe for me to continue to do so. It could betray the Order."

Remus groaned into the table. "It's been months since you started. What happened?"

Snape pursed his lips. "It will disappoint you, perhaps, to learn that Potter is not as talented as you had always told him he was."

Remus scowled, his hand closing into the shape of a claw. "How did your other master find out about his connection to Harry?"

Snape's mouth curved into a truly horrible smile. "That will disappoint you as well. I see you've come without your unruly pet tonight, have you Lupin?"

"Enough," Kingsley said. "Please, Mr. Malfoy, continue."

Lucius took a deep breath, preparing to share the worst part. "When the Dark Lord plants an image of Black being tortured in Potter's mind, he wants me to lead a band of his followers to meet Potter at the Ministry, get the prophecy, and bring both it and the boy to him."

Molly looked like she might be sick. "A boy, the dearest friend of our son - you wouldn't," she said.

"Of course he wouldn't," Narcissa said, rather curtly. "That's why we're here. We need to find a way to defy these orders."

"You mean, a way besides simply growing a backbone and tell him 'no'?" Moody pounced.

"Simply? There is nothing simple about it," Lucius answered. "Not when the stakes are this high. Not when my children may suffer and die."

"Gentlemen, please," Kingsley said, calling for order. "Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy, would you excuse us for a moment, please?"

Arthur stood. "You can wait in my workshop, if you don't mind. Right this way."

The Malfoys had barely cleared the room before Moody was ranting. "Typical. Entitled. Expecting us to drop everything and save their kiddies without giving us anything in return."

"THEIR kiddies?" Molly snapped.

"They've hardly given us nothing in return," Tonks redirected. "The Malfoys have told us where and how the Death Eaters will be making their first sortie since You-know-who's return. At this point, their numbers may still be small enough that if it goes badly for them, he'll have to crawl out of his hole and appear himself to intervene."

Arthur scrubbed his face with his hands. "A mighty public fray - I hate it, but I'll be first to admit it may be the only way to force the Ministry to face up to his return and take it seriously. I have to listen to their complacent malarky all day, every day. The only way they'll admit he's back is if he pulls half their Ministry offices down around their heads."

Molly scoffed. "A public fray? So not only do we let them lure Harry into a dangerous ambush, we then involve You-know-who in it? Battle it out with Harry stood there in the thick of it, all but defenseless?"

"He is not defenseless," Remus said, believing it this time. "If his history proves anything, it's that. For a wizard his age, he's formidable."

Snape sniffed loudly.

Remus went on. "And he is under the special protection of the headmaster." He paused while the room fell into a pensive quiet. "We can trust Dumbledore not to abandon Harry to this creature. He is engaged in a hunt for something he deems vital to the final result of this conflict and has refused to let us distract him. But if Harry is threatened, Dumbledore will appear. He will save him."