All Severus Snape saw was Draco Malfoy crouched outside the Forbidden Forest, alone and shouting. Snape had been running down the hill with Potter's friends who'd been held in Umbridge's office, but at the sight of Draco's distress, his speed took on a rash, inhuman quality. He was a blur, a streak of black flying more than running down the slope, crashing to his knees at Draco's side.

The boy wasn't hurt, but he was more wild with fear than Snape had ever seen him, ranting nearly unintelligibly and waving into the darkening sky.

"You couldn't stop them?" Snape said, focusing Draco's fury on himself, and unsticking his feet from where Hermione had fastened them to the ground as she left him, making her heartbroken flight with Ronald and Potter.

Draco coughed, his voice hoarse. "No, she's gone. They're gone."

"How many of them?"

"We need to follow them, Sir - "

"How many?"

"Three. Potter, Ronald, and Granger." Draco snarled loudly, his fists clenched. "Come on, Sir. I can't just stand here useless, like my father."

Snape flinched. "Enough, Draco. We cannot follow. Your father will be among the Death Eaters to meet them at the Ministry. We can only hope he'll control the situation, with the Order's help."

Potter's friends arrived now - Neville, Ginny, Luna all running along the edge of the forest calling for the missing students. Draco and Snape ignored them.

"The Order's help?" Draco echoed.

Snape scowled. "Yes, the plan is for Potter to be protected and rescued by the Order once the Ministry is forced to stop denying the Dark Lord's return. Ronald and Granger's arrival will have complicated that now. And we received word this afternoon that twice as many Death Eaters than first anticipated have been assigned to the mission. The Order is scouring the country for more willing and available combatants. Molly and Arthur Weasley have joined and are trying to contact their grown sons - "

"Who are barely older than Ronald and me. Let me go, Sir."

"Not the twins," Snape hissed in reply. "The eldest ones. And I will not send you. How many children can you expect your father to protect from a horde that not only outnumbers its opponents but includes beasts like Bellatrix Lestrange and Antonin Dolohov?"

Beside Draco, Neville cringed at the mention of Bellatrix Lestrange, his red face suddenly ashy. But Draco's head jerked with recognition of the final name.

"Yes," Snape said, as if drawing strength from Neville's show of fear. "The man who murdered Molly Weasley's brothers in the cellar of your Malfoy family home, he will be there."

Snape had been too honest to be persuasive. His talk about the danger of the Death Eaters was meant to convince Draco he was outclassed and must stay away. Instead, it convinced Draco of how badly he needed to go and help.

"Come on, Sir," Draco said, tugging on Snape's arm with both of his hands. "We can't stay here. They need us at the Ministry."

Snape snatched his arm free. "And how do I help at the Ministry without betraying the Order? How do I stand up to fight with them while maintaining the Dark Lord's trust. Espionage is not for the emotional and the lovesick, Draco. It takes the strength to put one's feelings aside. It takes real love."

Draco swore, denouncing the Dark Lord, denouncing his feelings. "None of it matters if they die."

"Draco!" Snape was gripping his arms, shouting into his face. "If I allow you to follow them, I exacerbate the very situation I have remained here to prevent."

"I can't just stand here!"

Snape let go of him, spinning in a circle. "The best I can offer is to take you with me to the manor. I was to go there to help your mother."

"You're sending me off to my mother!" Draco railed.

"It is no small task," Snape shouted over him. "She will need to clear out Pettigrew when the Dark Lord leaves, not to mention the snake. And if there are any wounded, they will be brought there for treatment. You are skilled enough now that you may be of some assistance with that. In fact, your immunity to the snake may prove most helpful. As I am neither a Malfoy nor a Black, unprotected by any household charms, the creature may pose a significant difficulty for me."

"What about us?" Ginny Weasley demanded.

Snape startled at her voice, forgetting she was so close.

"Professor, you said my family is going to fight them, to help Harry. So I should be there too," she said.

"Certainly not," Snape roared. "Now return to the castle - "

"Yes," Draco said. "Ginny, go back to your dormitory, to Hermione's trunk, and bring the perfume bottle you'll find there. I added our family's essence to it - the silver ingredient from the potion we made at Christmas. It should protect Professor Snape from the snake. Please Ginny, we share a brother. I don't trust anyone else who can get into the Gryffindor girls' dorm."

Ginny rolled her eyes but accepted, and together, they followed Snape back to the castle.

Deep below the immaculate pavements of Whitehall, Harry, Hermione, and Ronald stood in the Department of Mysteries, in the Hall of Prophecy, in an aisle between the high, silent, shadowy shelves, number 97.

Sirius Black was not there. Voldemort was not there. Hermione had been right about Harry's vision being a ruse, but she took no satisfaction as she realized it. By the light of her wand, she squinted along the aisle, between the towering shelves of glass orbs, as Ronald and Harry read the hand-inked labels.

They were not alone, there in the darkness. The entire building looked empty, sounded empty, but it did not feel empty. In the sickening quiet of what the young people now knew was a trap about to spring, Ronald spoke Harry's name, reading it from beneath an orb about the size of a snitch.

This was the object Voldemort wanted, what Arthur Weasley had suffered a near-lethal snake bite to protect, the sham Dumbledore was using as a bluff to distract and confound the entire Death Eater movement.

"Harry, I don't think you should touch it," Hermione said as he reached for the misty grey globe.

But whenever Harry was frustrated or threatened, he became reckless, like he was right now. "It's got my name on it," he said, lifting the orb out of its brass setting and weighing it in the palm of his hand.

A smooth, imperious voice sounded in the darkness, speaking from behind a mask glinting with lights emanating from a dozen wand tips. "Very good, Potter. Now turn around, nice and slowly, and give that to me."

Behind Harry, Ronald gasped. "Dad?"

"Oh, it is, isn't it?" said a high, mad voice from just past Lucius Malfoy's elbow. Her face unmasked, Bellatrix Lestrange stepped into the light, delighted with this dramatic development in what she had expected to be the easy mission of taking a bauble from a boy. "It's another Malfoy. My Malfoy. The one who can be handled with no pesky kinship taboos."

She was moving past Lucius, toward Ronald, the tip of her tongue wetting her lips.

"Don't you touch him," Hermione snapped, stepping in front of Ronald, his head still fully visible above hers.

Bellatrix cackled. "What's this, Ronald? A second girlfriend? Is this the side girl, or was that the one I found in your mind, hiding in the boys' toilets with you, your hand all the way up - "

"Quiet, crone," Rodolphus barked from the shadows. "We're wasting time."

She stomped her foot and spun to glare at her husband.

"Get back," Harry said, holding the orb over his head. "You all stay away from me and my friends, or I smash this - this thing."

Bellatrix cackled again. "He doesn't even know what it is. Comes tearing in here like a fool after a dream about poor Sirius, and he doesn't even know what for."

Harry was stalling. "So what is it then?" he asked, edging his foot toward Hermione's to signal to her that he planned for them all to run for it.

With a wave of his wand, Malfoy removed his mask and began to explain at length about Sybil Trelawney and July of 1980 and all sorts of other wispy traces of Harry's history which were actually extremely difficult for Harry to simply ignore.

But Malfoy himself was distracting. With the rest of his party standing behind him again, none of them could see his expression as he spoke, the look of fear, of apology, of pleading on his face, his eyes locked on Ronald's. He went on and on, weaving an unnecessarily convoluted story, giving the Order more and more time to find the fighters they needed for the operation not to be a total loss.

"Enough!" someone snarled, interrupting, springing forward to crowd past Lucius in the narrow aisle. The students didn't recognize him by sight, but he was Antonin Dolohov, more of an animal than ever after being treated like one for twelve years in Azkaban. "Just snatch it from him, Malfoy, you great fancy priss."

"Patience, Dolohov," Lucius crooned. "Such a delicate object requires a delicate transfer. Isn't that right, Potter? So now, let's hand it over."

"Dolohov," Ronald echoed. "Dad, that's Dolohov. The one who - he - "

"You're holding back for the sake of your boy," Dolohov sneered. "You're not fit to lead this mission, Malfoy. You're not fit for anything but hosting the Dark Lord's dinner parties. Stand down."

Lucius tutted. "Holding back for this boy? This rustic ginger disgrace? Son of a blood traitor, sent by the Wizengamot to vex and surveille me as a life sentence? I think not, Antonin. I'd just as soon make him a welcome home gift to my dear sister-in-law."

Bellatrix was cackling again, a loud clattering sound that trailed into an incantation. "Accio proph - "

"Protega!" Harry managed to say before she could finish, shielding himself from her spell, keeping her from summoning the prophecy out of his hand. "Try that again and I'll smash it!"

Malfoy glared at his comrades. "I told you! Delicate!" he said. "Now Potter, I know you are not unintell - "

Harry stepped on Hermione's foot, the signal for all of them to level Reducto spells at the rows of shelves, sending them crashing into a chaos of shattering glass and the droning of seers' voices. In the dust and ghostly vapours, they lost sight of the Death Eaters and fled deeper into the Hall of Prophecy, rounding a gap in the shelves that were still standing, coming back toward the entrance.

Outside the hall, the department's many rooms flashed by them as they ran - rooms for love, space, time - all too big, too unknown.

"This one," Hermione said, skidding to a stop as she yanked open the door labeled "Thought."

"Hermione, no," Harry said even as he followed her inside.

The din of shouting and shattering glass was muffled by the closing of the massive wooden door. The Thought Room was empty but for a few desks and a massive tank roiling with dark green fluid.

Ronald pushed at one of the stout, heavy desks, trying to shift it in front of the door as a blockade.

"Stop," Hermione said. "The door opens outward, Ronald. Blocking it won't help."

"Well we can't just wait in here to be caught," Ronald chirped back at her.

Harry took the prophecy from his pocket, holding it in the light of the small green-shaded lamps hanging from the ceiling. The lights never went out in the Thought Room. "Should I just smash it? Right now?" he said. "Mrs. Weasley said it was a bluff after all."

"Yeah, but you saw Dad's face back there," Ronald said. "He was stalling. Everyone knew it. And his expression - he was trying to tell us something. His face didn't match his words at all."

"Especially what he said about you," Hermione said, the words bursting from her as if she'd been suffering with them inside of her. "Ronald, you musn't believe a word he said about you being a life sentence. He meant to deceive them. There's something else going on here. They must have told Draco a bit about it to get him to act the way he did at school. But as always, it wasn't nearly enough."

"Right, of course," Ronald said. He took the orb from Harry, tossing it lightly in his hand. "So something's up, but what? But what does Dad want us to do with this?"

Harry lifted his eyebrows. "If it doesn't matter if they find it, maybe we should just hide it, or put it somewhere so difficult to get it keeps them all tied up and we can get safely away."

Ronald grinned. "That's it." He hopped up onto the desk left at the base of the tank. Up close, he could see that the tank wasn't just full of the green liquid. Murky, pearly shapes moved through it, like prowling sea creatures. He extended his arm over the open top, above the waving green liquid. "I'll tip it in here. It'll take them ages to fish it out, and it looks like they might have to fight off something nasty to get to it once they figure out it's in here."

Before Harry could answer, a thick wet band, like a length of kelp washed up at the seaside, flapped out of the tank and coiled around Ronald's arm. He yowled and jerked, sending the prophecy not into the green depths of the tank, but shooting into the air. It took every shred of Harry's seeker talent to scoot underneath the prophecy and catch it before it was smashed on the floor.

Hermione was standing on top of the desk next to Ronald, blasting at the kelp with her wand, fighting to free him. It wasn't actually seaweed but a tentacle protruding from the base of a disembodied brain which had been bobbing in the tank. Neither the brain nor the tentacle were very big, but they clung to Ronald's arm with the strength of a colossal squid.

"Harry, help us!"

Maybe it was only a matter of time, or maybe it was all the noise it took to free Ronald from the tentacle, but all three of them were still standing on the desk in the centre of the dimly lit room, completely exposed when Antonin Dolohov burst through the door of the Thought Room.

Ronald was still reeling from the brain attack, doubled over his wounded arm. Hermione turned to Dolohov, her wand aimed, her other hand shoving Harry hard toward the door at the back of the room. "Go!" she said before shouting a silencing spell, stopping Dolohov from casting a proper hex.

Harry was through the door, into the Death Room with its single, towering, whispering archway covered by a drifting veil. He didn't see Dolohov launch a purple whip-like curse at where Harry himself just been standing, on top of the desk, into the space Hermione had filled when he left. He didn't know that she had collapsed into Ronald's one good arm, his body sheltering hers as the Death Eaters sprinted by them, all of them chasing after Harry and the prophecy.

"Hermione," Ronald called to her as he held her. "Hermione, wake up. We need to go." Panic was rising, tingling sharply through his fingertips and along the back of his neck. "Hermione!"

"Is she breathing?" It was Lucius, the last of the Death Eaters to find his way to the room. He pressed two fingers against Hermione's neck, finding the pulse in her carotid artery. "She's survived it," he said. "But she needs help. Get her back upstairs, to the Floos, and take her to the manor. By the stars, my boy, what have you done to your arm?"

Ronald balanced Hermione's limp body over his shoulder, bending her in half at her waist, holding her legs against himself with his good arm. He teetered out of the Thought Room into the Death Room, making a show of running away from Lucius. But no one noticed. Ronald had been expecting to see Harry captured and surrounded by a horde of gloating Death Eaters, but instead he found a battle. The Order had come: Kingsley Shacklebolt, Alastor Moody, Tonks, Lupin, Sirius Black himself, and finally, Arthur Weasley and Molly.

Ronald made his way painfully, clumsily through the fray, unable to see anything on the side where Hermione hung over his shoulder. There were shouts, Bellatrix's manic cackling, flashing spells and hexes. He couldn't see Harry, couldn't defend himself against anything, but in a moment it wouldn't matter. He was nearly at the foot of the stairs leading out, back to the lifts to the main hall and escape.

All at once, a seering red light flashed much too close to him. Sound came along with it - a shriek. It was the worst sound Ronald had ever heard, grief and fear torn from the centre of the earth. He couldn't stop himself from turning to look toward it.

His father spoke its name. "Molly!"

She had thrown herself in front of a spell meant for Ronald, and now she lay bleeding profusely from a gash that ran from one of her shoulders to the other.

"Ronald, go!" Lucius said, falling to his knees on the floor beside Molly. "Go, get out! Don't let it be for nothing."

He hefted Hermione higher on his shoulder and clambered up the stairs, making his way through a fog of tears for the main hall.

Back in the Death Room, Lucius Malfoy was calling across the battleground. "Arthur! Arthur, she needs help. You need to take her away."

Arthur glanced at where Lucius knelt beside Molly in a pool of blood. He hissed a sharp inhale but couldn't speak or make any movement toward his wife, not with Harry and the prophecy tucked behind him, three Death Eaters fighting Arthur at once, fighting him for his life.

Sirius was rushing to help Arthur. "Take her yourself, Malfoy," he called back, Arthur still under too heavy of a barrage to speak. "Lucius, there's no one else. We're outnumbered."

He looked down at Molly's pale face, her head tossing, her lips murmuring. He gathered her up and followed Ronald out the door. Ronald - he would be in the lifts now, about to Floo back to the manor with the Dark Lord still inside. Knowing he couldn't wait any longer, Lucius pressed his wand to the mark on his arm.

"Stars help you, Potter," he said.

"Ron," Molly muttered against Lucius's chest as he shouldered his way into a lift.

"He's alright," Lucius said, sinking to the floor with Molly still clasped in his arms as the box rattled and banged its way up to the main hall. "Be still, Molly. You're hurt."

"Yes. It's cold," she said.

He held her more tightly, closer to himself, his cheek against the crown of her head. "We're going to get help," he said. "You'll be better soon."

She had strength enough to shake her head. "No. No, go back for Harry."

"Hush, Molly. Arthur and the rest are with him."

"Lucius?" she said as if she had only just realized she was with him.

"Yes," he said. "It's just you and me, running away."

Her hand fluttered, as if she was trying to raise it. He held her fingers in his, both of their hands red and slightly sticky with her blood. She was reaching for his face, and he pressed the pads of her fingers to his cheek. Her voice was low, raspy with pain. "That day," she said, "when I said our baby would be a monster, and that you were twisted and vain - "

She coughed, a fresh trickle of blood blooming through her robes.

Lucius hushed her. "I know, Molly. You don't have to speak."

"You are vain," she resumed, her voice a whisper now. "But when I said I didn't care anything for you, it wasn't true. It has never been true."

He bent over her head again, a tear falling out of his eye, his lips pressed to her forehead. "Thank you, Molly, for Ronald. He is love itself. And he is all of ours."

The lift slammed to a halt with much more noise than usual. Lucius rose to his feet, realizing the crash was not the sound of the lift at all, but the clamour of a massive spell set off below them. He shivered as he lifted Molly Weasley and strode toward the Floos.

The Dark Lord had come.

They were sitting in the drawing room at Malfoy Manor - the Dark Lord, his servant Peter Pettigrew, his host Narcissa Malfoy, her son Draco, and his teacher and particular favourite of the Dark Lord's Severus Snape.

The massive snake sat as she usually did, coiled around the legs of the Dark Lord's armchair. "What's this, Nagini?" he rasped. "Are you ill, pretty? I haven't had to call you off dear Severus at all this evening."

Narcissa cleared her throat. She knew it was the perfume Draco had given Snape keeping the snake away. She had smelled it on him immediately, brushing her nose against his neck as he came through the Floo. "Severus, however did you - "

"Draco," was all he'd said, holding her at arm's length as the Floo flared to admit her son.

Now, she offered Snape's excuses for him. "Perhaps she senses my lord's anxiety over the mission at the Ministry. A faithful familiar can be so sensitive."

"Oh, I have no such anxiety," the Dark Lord answered, almost a chuckle. "I troubled myself to give our Lucius an especially inspiring talk before sending him off tonight. He will be most motivated to succeed this evening. Don't you agree, Draco?"

He could have no way to know anything about his father's inspirational talk with the Dark Lord, but Draco suspected it was probably more like a list of grisly threats. He nodded all the same. "Yes, Sir."

"Yes, my lord," Severus corrected him from where he stood behind the sofa.

"Yes, pardon me," Draco hurried, "my lord."

"Ah, you really are a most diligent teacher to this boy, Severus. Almost like family. Isn't that right, Narcissa?"

Her head bobbed as she swallowed. "Yes, my lord."

He was chuckling again when he fell abruptly silent. His papery grey lips curling away from his teeth, a ghastly sneered. "They're calling me," he hissed, glaring at Pettigrew. "Why are they calling? There is no need for me - " He interrupted himself again, clutching his head this time, over his eye as if in sudden pain. "The prophecy!" his snarled, dashing out of the room, the snake unwinding itself from the chair legs to slither after him.

Pettigrew and Snape came along as well, both of them pulling back as the Dark Lord threw the front doors of the manor open, stormed to the end of the lane, and disapparated with a clap like thunder. Snape followed him outdoors, but instead of apparating, he turned a corner, around a hedge, out of sight.

"W-where're they off to?" Pettigrew said, whinging to himself. "Off leaving me alone here, unprotected..."

Pettigrew was indeed left standing at the foot of the grand staircase. But he was not alone. Narcissa Malfoy had stepped out of the corridor, her tall, fit son at her side.

"Well, well, Peter," she said. "Here we are."

The doors the Dark Lord had left open slammed shut. At the noise, the snake turned and hissed, furious to find no one the household charms would allow her to bite except for Pettigrew, and the Dark Lord had forbidden her to bite him - for now.

Narcissa was smiling prettily, tapping her wand against her palm. "The way they've both run off, it seems like your master may have had some trouble in town."

"My master? He's yours as well."

"Is he?" she beamed, turning her left forearm up, raising her sleeve to show the pristine smoothness of her unmarked flesh. "No, Peter. This is my house. I am its master. Or, if you're going to insist on being patriarchal about it, you may consider my son its master."

The snake drew herself into two coils, one twisted around Pettrigrew's calf, the other writhing, rearing her head up to a striking pose. With the snake around his leg, Pettigrew's nose began to twitch. He bared his front incisors, his eyes darting, glassy, about to change.

Narcissa cast a spell to petrify him, just as he was too far into his animagus transformation to block it, but not so far that he could scurry away.

"Did you know?" she asked him, "When this house was built, in the fifteenth century, it was enchanted with anti-vermin magic. Yes, in six centuries, Malfoy Manor has never had a single mouse or rat. Certainly not a snake. And without outside interference, that magic," she said, "still holds."

The doors opened again. Narcissa levitated petrified Pettigrew outside and dropped him hard on his face into the gravel.

Left behind, the snake was livid, freezing in the cold air coming through the doorway, striking at empty air, coiling and snapping.

Narcissa tossed her wand to Draco and backed up the stairs, pushing her sleeves over her elbows again, preparing to rid her house of the snake with wandless magic since Draco couldn't use his own wand out of school. This was no ordinary snake, but the Dark Lord's familiar. It would demand both of their efforts at the very least.

The Malfoys rained spells on the snake. It sparked and spit, striking at Draco, forcing him to the top of the grand piano. At last, it could do nothing but twitch and hiss. Draco took it by the tail, sprinting across the smooth marble tile to the front doors, the snake's belly dragging with a long, scuffing sound that made him wince all the way. It snapped its jaws at him one final time as he hurled it out into the cool night.

The doors flung themselves closed again as Draco stepped back inside, wiping his hands on his trousers. The snake hadn't been slimy, but touching it had made him feel filthy all the same.

Now that Pettigrew was gone, Snape was joining them again, coming in through the kitchen. Narcissa had taken her wand back from Draco and was waving it along the lintels of the doorway, as if she was painting them, chanting an elaborate spell, one to strengthen the usual spell that kept intruders out of the manor. If the Dark Lord or the Death Eaters came back now, the way would be closed to them.

No one could come or go without permission except for Malfoy family members and those they brought by the hand with them. Narcissa was sure of it. And that was why she gasped in alarm, clutching at Severus's hand when the fireplace behind the piano flamed green.

It was Ronald who came through, his arm swollen and oozing, and over his shoulder, behind his back, hung a head of wild bushy hair.

"Granger!" Draco bounded down from the piano, rolling her off Ronald's shoulder, cradling her in his arms, calling into her face, stroking her cheeks. "Wake up, love."

"She's been hit," Ronald said, shaking his mother away as she reached for his wounded arm.

"Who was it?" Snape asked, bending over Draco to pull Hermione's eyelids apart, watching her pupils.

"Dolohov. It was purple, formed like a whip out of his wand. She took it right in the chest, under her heart from the looks of it."

Snape startled. "And she's alive?"

"Yeah, she managed to silence him before he could say it out loud. Saved her own life, as usual," Ronald said, his chin shaking, this mother's compassion for him as she examined his arm shaking his heroism apart. "And - and there's - "

"She doesn't look saved," Draco interrupted, feeling Hermione's cold forehead with his lips. "Mum, leave Ronald for now, please - "

"Right. My stores are upstairs," Narcissa said. "Draco, bring her."