Late in the afternoon after quidditch tryouts, Harry was in the Gryffindor common room, just opening up the Marauder's Map to catch up with watching Malfoy's marker after spending the day away from it, when Ron came back from the showers.

Harry glanced up at him. "Ron, wipe your face. You've got something on it."

He puffed up his chest, asking in his loudest indoor voice, "Have I? What's it look like?"

Harry shrugged. "I dunno. Splotchy, like maybe you fell asleep on the purple half of a puking pastille and melted it onto your face."

Ron tapped his jaw near the splotch, as if he was thinking carefully. "Odd. I haven't been near a puking pastille since the twins moved into town. Look harder, mate. Shape doesn't look familiar, does it?"

Harry left off unfolding the map. "Well, splotchy isn't exactly unfamiliar on you, you being a ginger and all."

Ron punched his arm. "Thanks."

"Go look for yourself," Harry told him. "Whatever you do, wash it off, yeah? You look like a sticky five-year-old."

Ron ducked into the bathroom. His hair had dried in a right mess but before it had, the water dripping from it had kept running down the sides of his face and jaw, streaking through Pansy's lipstick, causing the mark, which had started as a perfectly shaped, pretty pair of lips, to morph into the mess Harry had just described.

Ron swore as he wet his fingers to scrub the rest of the mark away. She was going to kill him when he told her they'd have to do it again. But at least they'd have to do it again. And maybe this time he could convince her to do it more softly, maybe even a bit sensuously, giving the pigment a chance to warm up and cling to him properly instead of just stamping him like a train conductor. Honestly, Fred and George must have something in the shop that could print lip marks all over him better than Pansy had managed to thus far.

Well, except for the one time, with the love-charmed inter-house dancing at the Yule Ball. She'd marked him up so well during that number he had to spend the rest of Christmas holidays wearing mufflers indoors. He stood frozen over the bathroom sink, remembering that dance too long and too well, until he had to splash his whole face with cold water.

Out in the common room, Hermione had just got back from - somewhere. Harry had stopped her to pull grass and a few thin, yellow leaves out of her hair before her roommates spotted any of it.

Ron scowled at them as he came back into the room. Bloody Malfoy in the golden willow again. "Oh sure, you notice something like that on her right away," he bawled at Harry.

Hermione frowned at him. "What're you on about, Ronald?"

"Nothing," Harry hurried to answer. "What he meant to say was 'happy birthday.'"

Ron's eyes bugged in horror at himself for not remembering to mention it yet. "Right. Yeah, seventeen." He whistled. "Wow, proper adult."

She scoffed. "Try telling my parents that."

"What?"

"Eighteen is the age of majority in Muggle Britain," Harry explained.

"No way."

Harry jumped, as if he'd just come up with something brilliant. "Hey Hermione, if you're an adult witch now, then wouldn't it be indecent if you were to be - um - involved - with a minor - like, um - romantically?"

Hermione crossed her arms. "Nope. Not always, such as in cases where the adult and the minor are extremely close in age. Trust me. I have researched the question thoroughly."

Ron clapped Harry on the back. "Nice try."

She was taking her leave of them, heading up to the girl's dormitory, the way she always did when the subject of Malfoy was raised, however obliquely.

"Don't fret too much. I'm doing my best to break it all up," Ron said.

Harry raised both of his eyebrows. "How's that?"

Ron shrugged. "You'll be able to tell once it actually starts to work."

"Well, don't try too hard. It's sickening and everything, but it is a kind of insurance. I mean, Malfoy's not about to get very far with Death Eater schemes if he's spending his afternoons rolling around in the grass with Hermione, is he?"

Ron tore the map out of Harry's hands and boxed each of his ears with it. "Shut up, will you."

The sun was slanting low, about to set when Hermione reached her room. Crookshanks was stretching on her bed, and she lay down beside him to rub her face in his coat while he purred a greeting. She reached into her collar to find her birthday present.

"Look at our gift, Crookshanks," she said, holding her amber pendant in the light. "Look, it's so pretty. That's because it's you. Crookshanks - look, over here, no, open your eyes - look at it. Oh, you wicked old thing."

It was early Sunday morning, the sky dull grey, no movement from the students at all, just Filch leading a visitor to the dungeon office still occupied but Professor Snape. The visitor was someone with every right to be inside the castle, a parent, an elegant woman dressed in lavish brocade robes with a hat and veil pinned to her gleaming blond hair.

"Severus," she greeted him. "I've come alone."

"Managed to escape your sister is more like it. Come in, Narcissa." He flung open the door to admit her. "What - is it? Surely you don't dare to ask any more of me. Already, I have held back - nothing."

She cleared her throat. "To be sure. However, what I intend to say - it is in our best interests that you hear it, and that you hear it within the safety and privacy of these walls. It pertains to all three of us."

"Very well. Proceed."

She took the seat in front of his desk. "I fear that the Dark Lord," she began. "He grows impatient with Draco's progress."

"Are you quite sure?" Snape asked. "Death Eaters are made, not born and your boy has borne his Mark for only - "

"For nearly two months, yes it's still early."

"And the Dark Lord knows this, of course. Calm your nerves, Narcissa. And do not accuse yourself. Trust in the Dark Lord."

"Excuse me, Severus, it's not like that," she said. "The emotional connection the Dark Lord enjoys with all those who bear his Mark - he has warned me that when he reaches out to Draco, what he sense leaves him disturbed. Draco's thoughts and feelings - they are heavily veiled, and what he does reveal is too light and boyish, too fresh for someone who has taken on such a serious role. And that," she stopped and forced a cough, "that lightness should be giving way to more adult ambitions by now."

Snape pinched his hair into place. "Do not forget that the boy is a gifted natural occulmens. Unforeseen, but not unheard of in one so - young. I have tested him and I cannot always read him myself." Snape glared at Narcissa with the resentment of someone excluded from a secret that the person he is talking with clearly knows. "Draco must be protecting - much."

Narcissa's eyes were welling with tears but she met Snape's glare with one of her own, offering him nothing.

Snape sat back in his chair. "I will counsel Draco to let down his guard and open his mind when the Dark Lord approaches him."

"Wait," Narcissa said. "Not yet. I don't want the Dark Lord to see him clearly until we've resolved a rather troubling situation."

She told Snape about the love token discovered on Draco's arm the night he was branded with the Dark Mark, how it had flared to life in his flesh, and then burst even brighter outside of it, how it had flown into hundreds of lights, and one had sunk right into her own heart.

"All the composure, all the fear that held me rooted in that seat, watching my boy - it broke apart when the light hit me. I fell on my face, out of Bella's grasp, crying, and I felt - oh, it sounds so stupid - but I think for an instant I felt what Draco feels for that girl. I recognized it."

Snape rolled his eyes.

"It is holding back Draco's development as a Death Eater," she went on. "And if it goes on, it is going to get us all killed."

"Now, now, Narcissa, love affairs do not compare to the power of the Dark Lord. Your husband and yourself, for instance, do you not have a fabled love story of your own, yet Lucius was fully able to enter the Dark Lord's service?"

She lifted her chin. "Lucius was already a deputy before courting me. Our marriage came afterward."

Snape rose from his seat to face the small, high window in the dungeon wall behind his desk. Yes, of course. Lucius Malfoy married Narcissa Black during the first war. Draco had been born weeks before Potter, near the end. And ever since his marriage, Lucius had been the kind of bumbling mess who couldn't even snatch a glass orb from school children without pulling half of the Ministry of Magic down on his own head and winding up in Azkaban.

Snape sneered to himself. Maybe Harry Potter, the insufferable boy who lived wasn't solely responsible for every setback in the Dark Lord's plans. Perhaps the blame was best shared with Lucius Malfoy, the spineless husband who loved.

Narcissa would not sit watching Snape's back as he sneered at her family any longer. "Who is the girl, Severus? Draco hides her identity but you have been in this school all this time, watching. You must know who the witch is who inscribed that token on Draco's arm. She needs to be sent away from Hogwarts - gone. If she continues to hold Draco back, and he fails to satisfy the Dark Lord, all of our lives are forfeit."

Snape tented his fingers, bowing his head into them. The witch was Granger. Of course it was. But she was a conspicuous student, linked to Potter in all of his more infamous exploits, favourite of Minerva McGonagall, liable to raise alarms even in the Muggle world if her parents were to miss her, or sense anything amiss with her. Even more so than other students, she could not be easily shifted out of the way. He needed more time to puzzle over what to do.

"Parkinson," Narcissa blurted. "I reckon it must be her, unless you can think of anyone else."

This was better. This would do. Snape nodded. "No one else."

"Yes, Draco and the Parkinson girl have been something of an item since he first came to school." Narcissa was nodding. "Pretty, dark-haired, pure-blood. Daughter of Prender Parkinson."

Snape took his seat again. "It is a fearful thing, Narcissa, to throw a young girl into the path of the Dark Lord. Are you quite sure?"

Narcissa hesitated, then nodded, squaring her shoulders. "Yes. Yes, I'm sure. Thank you for confirming my suspicions, Severus. I'll see to it myself - "

"Allow me to investigate," he interrupted. "Make no move against any Hogwarts students without my clearance. Do you - understand?"

She let her posture fall. "As long as no harm will come to Draco."

Snape crossed his arms. "You - in - sult - me," was all he said as he sent Madam Malfoy away.

The Dark Lord sat fuming in the drawing room of Malfoy Manor. He loathed Sundays.

Bellatrix Lestrange held his wand-hand in hers, his palm upturned as she ministered to it with a cool jet from the end of her wand, clicking and cooing as she blew on his skin with her breath. His palm looked unchanged from its usual cool pallor but it didn't feel quite right. It had been warm and itchy ever since the night he had marked Draco Malfoy, the night he'd cast the witch's love token out of the boy's flesh.

"Enough," he hissed, jerking his hand out of Bellatrix's grip.

There was a crack as Narcissa reappeared in front of the cold, ashy fireplace, her head bowed.

He hardly looked at her as he said, "You have the name."

"I do," she answered. "Parkinson."

He laughed. "Prender Parkinson's girl? Who would have thought a Parkinson would have that kind of magic in her at that age? Are you quite sure?"

It was the same thing Snape had asked. She hesitated long enough that he waved his hand and said, "No matter. If it's not the Parkinson girl, we'll dispose of her and try another."

Narcissa's cheeks flushed. "Severus asked that we not act against any more Hogwarts students without consulting him first."

The Dark Lord snarled. "Severus has been at that school for too long. He is sentimental and will not be consulted."

"Not be consulted," Bellatrix echoed, laughing.

"Wormtail," the Dark Lord bellowed, "set more sentinels in Hogsmeade. When next Miss Parkinson leaves that infernal fortress they call a school, we will have her."

In the Great Hall, Ron was piling cakes on Hermione's plate. "When your birthday's on a weekend, it lasts for both days. Everyone knows that. Now eat at least seventeen of these," he was saying. "One for every year."

"I will eat one, because that's what adults do."

"What adults do, is they never have to say out loud that they're adults. And that's not the only way you're going about this all wrong already. You - will you stop watching the Slytherin table, both of you." Ron kicked Harry's toe under the table. "Honestly, I'm almost starting to feel sorry for the git. Let him alone for a little."

"He's coming," Harry announced, eyes back on the map. "Though - his path. Looks like he's kind of weaving from one side of the corridor to the other, like he's walking on a ship in rough seas."

Ron raised both his eyebrows. "Poetic."

Hermione grabbed at the map. "Is he sick?"

"How should I know? You know the map doesn't work that way."

Hermione's feet began to bounce beneath the table as she watched the door.

"He's not moving any closer. Just stopped," Harry said.

She sat for a moment more before making a slightly strangled sound and springing to her feet, head down, as if it made her departure less conspicuous, marching toward the open doors of the Great Hall.

Ron's eyebrows were still raised as he said, "Dramatic."

What came next was perhaps the most drama heightening thing that could have happened. In a rush of black robes, Professor Snape had risen from the teachers' table and was sailing down the centre aisle, as if he was racing Hermione for the doors. They met on the threshold and disappeared from view.

Outside the doors, collapsed against the wall, was Draco Malfoy. His face was transparently pale, slick with a cold sweat, his eyes half-closed. Hermione was on her knees at his side, his head cradled in her arms.

"Draco? Draco, what's wrong?"

He was muttering something - fast and unintelligible, almost like a spell, one she didn't know. His hands thrashed, tearing at his jumper, as if he was trapped inside it and desperate to get free.

"Draco, it's me." Could he hear her voice at all? "Professor Snape, what's happening?" she pleaded.

"Stand aside, Granger. Leave him to me."

"Should we get Madam Pomfrey?"

"What can she do?" he asked. "He needs a particular kind of treatment, he needs it immediately, and he needs it away from here."

Snape was struggling to arrange Draco's arm across his shoulders so he could hoist him to his feet to walk away. Hermione found it odd that Snape wouldn't simply immobilize him. Instead, they tussled with one another, no magic exchanged between them, Draco resisting and panicking, until Snape grew frustrated enough to hiss, "You fool, leave your clothing in place."

They were up on their feet, lurching toward the exit, bound for the point beyond the main gate where Snape could apparate away. Though Snape had fought to stay quiet, the scuffle in the Entrance Hall had drawn a small crowd. Flanked by Crabbe and Goyle, Pansy stood watching Draco stumble away. Ron and Harry had come as well. They moved to where Hermione still knelt on the stone floor, now alone.

"It's dark magic," Harry was saying as Ron raised Hermione from the ground. "Snape is taking him somewhere they can use dark magic that can't reach full power here."

"Mate, now's not the time," Ron said, one arm squeezing Hermione around the shoulders, his eyes focused across the room, at the group of Slytherins silently watching Draco and Snape tripping out the door.

Outside, the cool autumn evening air had a mildly reviving effect on Draco. "What is he doing?" he was able to ask Snape through gritted teeth. "It burns so bad. If he wants me, why doesn't he just take me?"

"No one can apparate in and out of the castle, of course, not even through a Dark Mark. You feel the call of the burn in your arm but until you get outside the protection of Hogwarts, you cannot answer, even if it means your own destruction. Come, Draco, you were once a clever boy. How did it get to this? You nearly exposed yourself in the Great Hall during a meal."

Draco swore, twisting free of Snape's hold. "Let them see it then."

Snape grabbed him by the front of his shirt. "We are about to step outside, where the Dark Lord's call will take you to him in an instantaneous, blistering blast of power. Before that moment, I caution you to remember your responsibilities, marshal your emotions, and shut - up."

Draco took three deep breaths before launching himself past the gates, tumbling without any warning to Snape into the range of the Dark Lord's pull on his Mark. Snape barely caught hold of his sleeve in time for them to be dragged away, together.