"It's here," Sirius announced, walking into the library holding a hanger, from which a garment sheath dangled. He marched over to Harry, who was sitting cross-legged on the sofa poring over a rolled-up magazine, and promptly handed it to him. "See when you spill wine on your one good tuxedo shirt again, Harry James Potter. The dry cleaners said it was a nightmare to get out."

As if to agree with Sirius, the sound of a car rolling down the street rumbled into the library, undoubtedly the dry cleaners' clunky delivering car pulling out of the driveway of Grimmauld Place. Feeling admonished, Harry sheepishly received the clothes hanger and draped it over the back of the sofa, erasing all the guilt from his face as he folded his knees back to his chest and returned to his magazine.

Sirius groaned when he saw how quickly the shirt had been discarded. "Goodness me, I tell the boy to take good care of it and he puts it away immediately. How are we supposed to look presentable for the opera tonight?"

"You sound like your mother," Remus muttered from his customary armchair by the library entrance, and that was enough to yank Sirius from his melodramas and earn a few titters from the library crowd.

"God, don't say that around Kreacher. He'd have a stroke trying to reconcile me with his beloved mistress," Sirius said. He looked away from Remus and swept the room with his gaze. "Speaking of which, has anyone seen him recently?"

On the sofa, Hermione, Ron, and Harry all shook their heads no, comically resembling a row of bobbleheads in some souvenir shop display shelf. "No," Ron said, "not since–"

He cut himself off there, feeling a hot flush of shame in his cheeks. He knew that the knocked-over bust hadn't been his fault, but still, he couldn't help but feel bad about it. In his own recollections of it, it wasn't Kreacher's poker that had tripped him, but his own clumsiness, and the sting hummed under the surface with a similar pain as every time Lady Amelia had rebuked him.

Sirius, perceptive as ever, fixed his gaze on Ron and seemed to read his thoughts. "It wasn't your fault, Ron, I promise you. I didn't care about that brutish bust anyhow. It's just Kreacher out to get you." He gave Ron a reassuring smile and didn't look away until Ron returned it, weakly. Then he shrugged: "Ah, he's probably holed up in his room anyway, trying to glue the shards back together with his tears. If they haven't dried out already, the old dustbag."

"Be nice," came Remus's grunt from the far armchair again.

"Advice wasted on him," Sirius retorted.

"Can we move to more pleasant things?" sighed Harry, who hadn't flipped over a page in his magazine for a few minutes.

"I second that," said Remus gruffly, folding the newspaper he was reading and removing his glasses from where they perched atop his nose. "I'll start. Is everyone excited for tonight?"

"Oh, absolutely," Hermione jumped in almost immediately, and Ron could feel her excitement pick up her heartbeat just from holding her hand. It was pleasantly strange, just how finely his body had become tuned to the slightest changes in Hermione's. A byproduct of constant physical proximity, no doubt— and Ron wouldn't trade it, no sir.

"Ever heard Puccini?" Remus said, a hint of delight turning up the corner of his mouth.

Hermione shook her head. "Never live. My father's more of a Wagner man." The mention of her father, fleeting as it was, sent a ripple of some unplaceable feeling through her chest. Was it guilt? Was it missing? In any case, it was fleeting indeed, and gone just as soon as it'd materialized.

"Ah, there's nothing quite like Puccini," Sirius said, walking over to Remus and beginning to settle down on his lap. Remus's eyes widened as he yanked his newspaper out of the way, but he still sent an arm out to steady Sirius's back as his arms wound their way around Sirius's neck. "Remus and I got to see La bohème at La Scala, and when I tell you I had tears in my eyes from the first act–"

Harry groaned and placed his hands over his ears. "Not this story again."

"I have to agree," said Remus, shoving Sirius playfully off his lap. "Now get off me, you're crumpling up my paper with your ass."

"See how they treat me in my own home?" Sirius said, back into mock melodrama mode, shifting his gaze toward Ron and Hermione, who couldn't help but snicker supportively. "But you'll see, Hermione. I'll bet it will make even Ron cry, and then you'll see, you'll all see—"

The beginning of what appeared to be forming into a long-winded, theatrical speech was swallowed by the sound of tires rolling on the pavement right outside, the low rumble of an engine distinguishable clearly through the library windows that looked out directly to the street. Sirius frowned. "Now, who could that be? I'm not expecting anyone."

"Maybe it's the dry cleaners again?" Harry offered up. "Could be a mix-up with the shirt, or they came to drop off something else you forgot?"

"No, those chaps are professionals," Sirius said, his nose still scrunched as he ran through the hypotheticals. Then the doorbell, crystalline, pealed loudly through the house, and the marble seemed to amplify the sound that bounced off it. "Well, it's definitely not the dry cleaners," Sirius said. "They always knock. They never ring."

Evidently intrigued, Sirius moved out of the library and toward the door, with the air, Hermione noticed amusedly, of a dog on the trail of some unidentified scent. The four of them in the library exchanged a glance as they heard Sirius's footsteps get farther away, then the jingle of the keys as he retrieved them from the hook, and then the click of the locks as he wrestled with them. "We'll know soon, anyway," Remus said, a hint of amusement in his voice as he listened to the locks click open. "Now where were we?"

"Something about Puccini–" Hermione began, but her words came to a brusque halt and tangled in her throat. Far away, from the direction of the voice, came a shrill voice that was dreadfully familiar.

"Where is my daughter?"

It felt as if Ron's blood had frozen solid in his veins. No. It couldn't be. She couldn't have found us all the way here. Next to him, Hermione's hand had gone ice cold in his own. All the ease of just a few seconds prior had combusted, hardening into a tense terror that rooted all four of them to the spot.

Sirius's voice came from the door: "My dear lady, I have no way of knowing—"

"Cut it," came Lady Amelia's bark, and Hermione flinched as it reached her. The mother she knew, even at her worst, she would've never thought capable of speaking to Sirius in anything other than a croon. "I know she's here. Her and that good-for-nothing handyman."

Whatever fear Ron had felt before was nothing compared to the wave of it that drenched him now. On the couch, he and Hermione might as well have been statues: time had slowed, and he couldn't feel himself breathe or even blink. The world rushed past his ears with a whooshing sound, as if making him aware of what scant seconds he had left before it all came crashing down.

Sirius hadn't given up, though he'd changed tactics: "Amelia, surely we can talk this out–"

But his words were lost in the muffled sounds of a brief struggle, and this time it wasn't the steady thuds of Sirius's loafers that broached the marble floor of the lobby, but the venomous little clacks of Lady Amelia's heels. Not far behind were three other pairs of footsteps, all male, heavy but hurried as they tailed her. But they didn't reach her before she swung into the library and stood, accusatorily, at its entrance. Her stance wide-legged and her nostrils flaring, Hermione's only coherent thought in her terror was that she looked like a crazed bull.

Hermione's only impulse was to stand from the couch and stand, immobile and without any real aim, between her mother and Ron, only one thought latent in her mind: can't let her get to him. Into the frame of the doorway, a pair of steps behind Amelia, stumbled Orlando, Lord Philip, and Sirius, and if the situation hadn't been so dire they would've comically resembled three stooge-like actors who had almost missed their cue to go onstage.

Lady Amelia paid them no mind, even as they flanked her. Though she had directed plenty of murderous thoughts toward Ron in the last few days, now she spared no such glances in his direction, directing her blazing eyes only in the direction of her daughter. When she spoke, it was in a clipped tone that reminded Hermione of the dry chop of a guillotine when it falls. "Get in the car."

Perhaps it was because in her mother she could see the end of the last couple months, of the bliss they had constructed, that the word came out without Hermione really having to think about it. "No."

It seemed like nothing could infuriate Lady Amelia further, but the unbecoming twitch at the corner of her mouth that sprang, as if it had been coiled, when she heard the word said otherwise. "No?" she lowed. Like a lion stalking closer to its prey, she broached the distance between her and her daughter in an instant, and seized her by the wrists. "You ungrateful child. I've done everything for you, and this is how you repay me? You run out on a wedding that's been paid for, disgrace our name to everyone we know, and make Rosebury a national laughingstock. All for what? Because you wanted to play house with a dirty servant."

On that last word, she dug her nails into Hermione's wrists and twisted her grip; Hermione stifled a cry as she felt something in her left wrist begin to give under her mother's pressure. But even on that last word, Amelia still didn't look at Ron, who was sitting helplessly on the couch where Hermione had left him. He'd tried to get up as soon as Amelia had grabbed Hermione, but Remus, silent as a shadow, had turned up behind him and placed a steadying hand on his shoulder. "Leave it," he'd whispered. "We'll only make it worse." If it hadn't been for Remus's hand, Ron would've already leapt to pry Amelia's hands off of Hermione, and it was only Remus's hand that kept him from trying again when he saw the pained expression burst on Hermione's face.

Lady Amelia didn't seem to pick up on it, and she continued to increase the pressure infinitesimally. "I almost wish Narcissa hadn't called me. It would've been a relief to have to know nothing more of you, after what you did to your father and myself. But you couldn't have the decency to run away properly, could you now?" The twist continued, and small red beads of blood began to spring from where her nails continued to bury in the pale skin of Hermione's wrists. "No, you had to stay close enough that you could tarnish us."

"Amelia, you're hurting her," Philip said cautiously from the door, wary of the possessed look on his wife's face as she continued to twist their daughter's hands in her grasp. But not even that pulled her out of it, and Hermione winced visibly: she was holding back tears, resolute not to give her mother the satisfaction, but with every further bit of an inch her mother twisted that resolve slowly crumbled, and the cry began to build at the back of her throat. Frozen to the spot by the magic spell of Remus's hand, Ron felt a similar cry of despair begin to rattle in his chest, powerless to do anything to stop it. It was only Orlando's shout that roused Amelia from her madness: "Mother, you're going to break her hand! Let go of her!"

Startled by her son's voice, Lady Amelia came out of it, but instead of just releasing Hermione she tossed her to one side, as if clearing her path of obstacles. Propelled by the lingering momentum of the tension, Hermione stumbled forward, toward Orlando, who hurried forward to collect her in his arms before she fell. Trembling, Hermione reclined against her brother, cradling a battered left wrist in her other hand.

Seeing her almost fly across the room, Ron now broke from Remus's hold and scrambled to stand, determined to go to her, but Lady Amelia, with hawkish sharpness, sensed his intention. "Stay back!" she yelled, and now all her attention was turned to Ron. The sheer force of the loathing in her look was enough to stop Ron dead in his tracks, a different kind of holding spell than Remus's. "Haven't you done enough harm already? Don't you dare take a step closer to my daughter."

His tongue felt large and stupid in his mouth, and he couldn't have uttered any words, but he would've disobeyed, he would've taken one more step, if he hadn't seized upon Sirius's face behind her, and heeded his words: "Ron, stay where you are."

Lady Amelia gave him one more hateful glance for good measure before turning her fire back on her daughter. "Get in the car, I said."

Again, Hermione's defiance broke through, wavering but resolute, through the buildup of tears that threatened to break the dam at any second: "N-no."

Her mother surveyed her angrily. Again, the twitch at the corner of her mouth. "You've made me say it twice. Don't make me go for the third time. I'll drag you out of here by the hair myself if I must. Get. In. The. Car."

"Hermione, let's just go–" Orlando started, but Hermione had turned her limpid eyes on her father. Suddenly, it was as if the tableau had reduced only to the two of them, and the rest of the spectators in the library were but props fixed to their spots.

Lord Philip's weak hazel eyes latched to her daughter's almost reluctantly. Hermione thought she read a shred of pity in them, and her voice dropped to a whimper. "Daddy, please," she whispered, and she would've dropped to her knees if the desperation in her plea hadn't already been so evident. "Please, don't make me go back. Don't let her cart me off, daddy, please."

For a moment, time breathed almost still. Lord Philip held his daughter's gaze, her eyes that were so similar to his own, her eyes that he had seen gleam with intelligence, with mirth, with wit as his only daughter grew up in his halls. This grief, however, he'd never seen fill them. His gaze softened, and for a hopeful moment, Hermione could swear that the words she longed to hear were forming in his tongue. But just as quickly as the glimmer had come, it shattered, and Lord Philip broke his gaze away from her, looking dejected and suddenly years older as he delivered the decree with all the finality of a headsman. "I'm sorry, my daughter. But you heard your mother."

Now the cries came in earnest, and the trembling in Orlando's arms intensified as the sobs moved through his sister's chest. "No," she whispered, in utter disbelief, and her gaze darted between her father's downcast face, her mother's smug triumphant one, and Ron— oh, Ron most of all, his freckled face contorted with the same agony that bore into every inch of her. "No, no, it can't be, daddy, please..."

"Come on," Orlando said gently, his face just as sorrowful as he began to lead her out of the library. Hermione kept muttering 'no, no' as she was shepherded out, looking toward Ron. It was the intensity in her face that broke him: she was a damsel in distress clamoring for her knight in shining armor, but he couldn't go to her; no, no knight was he, just a handyman fixed dully to his spot, watching the woman he loved be dragged away from the illusion of their future they'd allowed themselves to be swept up in. As Orlando led her from the library, he didn't break eye contact, mouthing 'I love you' and hoping she'd catch on to it before Orlando got fully through the lobby and her face disappeared from his sight.

Lady Amelia supervised coldly as her daughter was taken from the library, and didn't stop looking until she heard the click of the front door that signaled they'd gone outside. Then, satisfied, she trained her eyes on Ron, and if he had thought there could be anything worse than the blazing fury with which she'd addressed her daughter, it was the icy loathing that she now directed at Ron. "You're fired, of course," she said. "Gramsley will retrieve your things to send to you. You are not to come close to the estate. If you step so much as one foot in it, I will personally make sure that you pay for it."

That was all she deigned say to him, and without even directing a look or a nod toward Sirius or the rest of the company, she spun on her heels and went the way Hermione and Orlando had, her husband in tow. Again the click of the door as they exited, then the rumble of the car as it started, and then the sound of tires on stone again as it drove away, the engine's lowing getting increasingly distant.

And then the house was submerged, for the first time in months, in absolute silence.

"So, the Granger girl has been found." Lucius's drawl invaded the drawing room of Ashcroft Manor as he walked in, and as they heard it, Draco and Narcissa were pulled from the absentminded sort of stupor they'd been lazing in, punctuated by the crackle of the hearth at the far wall. Narcissa looked up from her embroidery and Draco from his reading, and regarded Lucius with the attention he sought. He stood in the doorway, tall and imposing, his white-blue eyes fixed on a telegram. He read from it as he continued delivering his news.

"Shacking up with that handyman in London." He crumpled the paper with one hand and tossed it into the fire. "Guess you won't marry her after all, Draco."

Draco, who had experienced a multitude of emotions since hearing his father's announcement, now felt a strange mix of guilt and relief. When his father had walked in and announced that Hermione had been found, he'd been sure the next logical step was that Draco was to marry her as soon as possible to keep her from bolting again, and that had made the leaden dread of two months back plummet his stomach. But now, he felt the levity of relief that he wouldn't have to, though it was intermingled with despair for Hermione: if Lady Amelia had agreed to break off the marriage, it must be that she was truly livid at her daughter, and Draco didn't want to imagine how she was taking it out on Hermione, who must be heartbroken as she was.

"Was she at Grimmauld Place, after all?" Narcissa ventured, her gaze back on her needlework. She was oddly calm for the instigator of this whole affair, the receiver of the original telegram that had contained the watershed information.

"Of course," Lucius said, and the bit of smug triumph was evident in his voice. Of course it was: in his mind, this proved that Lord Black was every bit the traitor he had always slandered him as. Hell, Christmas might as well have come early! "Kreacher's information was perfect."

Suddenly, the last two months of radio silence from Harry made perfect sense to Draco. No wonder he hadn't communicated, if he was harboring the runaways at home; he was noble, and would've wanted to take every measure to ensure his protection. The childish hurt he'd felt was evaporated, consumed by a new wave of appreciation— and an overwhelming urge to call him.

Seized by the impulse, he closed his book and began to rise, still debating whether his final destination should be the writing desk or the telephone, but utterly determined to reach Harry either way. But Lucius, who had moved from the door to stand in front of his son, stopped him with a hard hand on his shoulder.

"Just where do you think you're going? We have to talk about where we go from here. You are still of marriageable age, in case you forgot." It was that pointed phrase that revealed the unsaid: and I want to stamp out this Potter scandal as swiftly as I can. The familiar dread was back and stronger than ever now, but through it came a clear streak of thought: of course Lucius was so eager to solve this debacle again, because with Hermione out of the picture as a prospect, Draco's promise to marry her was void, which meant there was no such stand-in to prevent his relationship with Harry. No wonder Lucius was so bent on finding a solution, any solution, to snuff the potential scandal brewing in his son. But if it was any solution he sought, well— then Draco might have an idea.

"Let me go to America," he blurted, and the resolve in his voice surprised not only himself but also both his parents. Aware that he commanded their attention, he continued. "For business. I need a break from all this marriage thing, father, and I know that you're trying to make business there in case this whole situation with Germany starts getting tense. Let me go."

Lucius's eyes had narrowed into slits, but a catlike glimmer in them revealed he was considering the proposal. Draco made the most of it while he was still ahead: "And I might find someone there, too. People whisper here already, but not in America. With some luck, I could nab a New York heiress, and then we'd be set." Lucius was still listening, and Draco knew it was time for the finishing hit. "I know Ashcroft's in financial troubles, father. I know the investment in Riddle Estates all those years ago bottomed out. Why else would you have endured all those months doing business at Rosebury, taken advice from Lord Black on expanding into London? America's a fighting chance, father. Let me go."

Draco's proposal hung over the drawing room like an axe whistling at the top of its swing, suspended there as it pondered coming down. He thought he detected fear in his father's eyes, a fear he'd never seen before, and which seemed particularly acute against the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner. Even Narcissa, her needle frozen in mid-stroke, hung onto her men with every drop of expectation.

"Fine," Lucius acquiesced at last, trying to twist his evident fear into a snarl. "You can go. But you leave on the first ship out next week, and in the meantime we'll smooth over all the details for your departure."

Draco wanted to throw his arms around his father, to whoop for joy and thank him tearfully, but he maintained his cool as he stared his father straight in the eye— feeling himself become a man, his own man, as he held his composure and his father's gaze. "Thank you."

Enough was said, and with a solemn nod, Draco began to walk out of the drawing room, still destined for the writing desk (a letter, he'd decided, a letter would be safer and more romantic than a call) but with more news to share in it, and maybe even an invitation. The smile played on his thin lips as he began imagining how Harry might take the news, how he might say yes to a question jotted casually but which was actually at the heart of the whole letter, and oh, by the way, Harry, how would you feel about a vernal trip to New York...?

Lucius, sensing him slipping and not liking it one bit, called after him just as he was about to cross the entryway: "I'm not doing this for you, Draco."

Draco turned slowly, and when he looked at his father, it was with cold detachment. "But when have you ever?"