AN: Had to edit to add a note to say how much I appreciate the reviewers, especially the regular ones. You are the best! Love, love.

Professor Snape crunched over the gravel outside Malfoy Manor, striding, in spite of the sleet, toward its black doors. He scanned the garden for signs of Draco and didn't see him anywhere. Relieved, he parted the doors to find Narcissa Malfoy seated near the foot of a grand staircase, rising from the piano she had not been playing to meet him.

"Severus, at last. Have you brought something for the Dark Lord's ailment? He hides his discomfort well, but - "

"He is not ill," Snape interrupted. "His is merely annoyed, and the less said of it, the better for all of our sakes."

"Of course," she nodded. "And Draco," she called after him, "have you seen him this evening? Is he quite alright?"

Snape indulged in a sneer. "Yes. Despite the tragic events played out on the road from Hogsmeade today, Draco is safe. And it is no thanks to you and your idiotic accomplice."

"Severus, I've done everything I can - "

"And the results have been disastrous notwithstanding," he hissed. "Desist, Madam, and allow me to fulfill my promises without interference."

In a swirl of black robes he moved along the hall, pushing past Wormtail lurking in the doorway of the drawing room. Snape bent to his knees beside the Dark Lord's chair.

"Leave us," his master growled, and the room emptied to just Snape and himself.

The Dark Lord snarled as he quenched the firelight to near darkness. "The instant Lucius Malfoy was arrested, we should have killed his woman and his boy. There is nothing to be gained from this ridiculous delay, and much to be risked."

He extended his palm to Snape, who dabbed it with the thick yellow balm he had prepared. "It's still not too late to do it, Severus. The boy is marked. I could summon him now and have him and his mother and any lovesick witch who'd like to die beside them slaughtered and hanged over this hearth before morning."

"It would be satisfying," Snape agreed, "particularly after today's events. However, as the boy's headmaster himself has acknowledged, a young operative within the castle is a great weapon. May I suggest that the value of this weapon may yet be realized?"

The Dark Lord huffed. "That school has taught you patience, perhaps to a fault. But tell me, Severus, do you believe that even after a thousand years, a child of Lucius Malfoy's could succeed in a mission of any significance? Or is this boy doomed to share his father's talent for exposing and endangering our designs?"

"To be sure," Snape continued, "the debacle with the girl in Hogsmeade today is regrettable. But it does raise the pitch of fear and shows the boy has a certain ingenuity and enthusiasm for our work. If I may say, my lord, I am no Lucius Malfoy. Give me time to teach the boy properly, to tame him before we decide whether to dispose of him."

The Dark Lord grumbled as he withdrew his hand, slick and fragrant with the balm. It penetrated and numbed the magic in his hand - his own and the witch's.

"Further," Snape continued, "the death of the charm bearer might worsen the present difficulties with your wand hand. We require the charm caster first."

"And where was Miss Parkinson during this outing?" the Dark Lord snapped. "The failure to collect her in Hogsmeade is another one of today's disappointments."

Snape's face was obscured by his hair as he bent to repack his satchel. "She was complaining of a head cold and not given leave for traveling in the inclement weather by our mediwitch."

"A head cold? You couldn't heal her and send her off?"

"I was not consulted, my lord."

He swore. "Bloody coddling school." He rubbed at his palm. "Young Malfoy's love charm, it was activated today, late in the afternoon. The witch who cast it - Parkinson or whoever it may be - she called it forth. This was for the second time since I marked him. I sensed it."

Snape leaned closer, over the arm of the chair. "By what sensations did you know it?"

There was a moment of silence, as the Dark Lord considered his servant's trustworthiness. "By a sense of fire, and of madness."

Snape fell ever so slightly backward.

"It is an unforeseen effect of my own success," the Dark Lord went on. "In perfecting the power to fragment and preserve my soul, creating the horcruxes this headmaster pursues at this very moment, my soul developed an affinity for magical elements outside of itself. Just as my magic sticks to other's, the magic of others appears to stick to me. This childish love charm would never have touched me were it not for that. Now that I know this, future attachments can be prevented. This one, however, remains to be cut away."

Snape's lips quivered as he asked, "Surely, the girl's charm grows weaker, surrounded as it is within your own far superior magic."

There was another pause, cold and terrific.

"It does not."

As the Dark Lord spoke, the fire in the hearth crackled higher, greener, roaring. "Tell no one. And take the girl."

Ron stood in the dungeon corridor, opposite the wall where the door to the Slytherin common room should be visible, but wasn't. Quaffles are not known to bounce but he was throwing one against the stonework forcefully enough for it to fly back at him, over and over again. He hadn't been at it long before the door materialized, open and framing a bunch of irate Slytherins howling about the racket.

"Go get Parkinson then," he bawled at them, still hurling the quaffle.

"Stop, stop, stop," she said, shuffling into the corridor in slippers and a dressing gown. "Stop barraging our home, Weasley, or they'll all be shunning me again."

"Serves them right for not having a proper door to knock at, or a bell to ring," he said, tucking the quaffle under his arm.

She pulled the door closed behind her. "Tell it to Salazar Slytherin a thousand years ago."

"How are you feeling?" he asked. "Any better? You've rubbed your nose red."

"Like you care," she said, folding her arms. "I know for a fact this cold wasn't brought on by any virus. Either you or Malfoy have hexed me with it to keep me inside the castle and out of Hogsmeade today."

"That's quite the conclusion to jump to," Ron deflected. "Common colds are - common enough, aren't they? There's no way to say anything besides a virus is to blame."

She swatted his arm and lowered her voice. "I know it's not viral because if it was, you'd have it too, wouldn't you Weasley?" She stepped closer to him. "In fact, if it is indeed a virus, I could still pass it to you right now."

His throat bobbed as she tilted her face upwards.

"Lozenges," he croaked, pulling a crumpled paper bag from his jacket. "I've brought you lozenges from town. They're so effective, Fred and George haven't even bothered to formulate a reversal for their Fever Fudge. They just rebrand these. Here, get one down ya."

She snatched the bag from him. "I will not thank you for these."

He stood up taller. "And I will not apologize for your cold. Did you hear what happened on our way back? What we saw?"

She left off unwrapping her first lozenge. "With Katie Bell? You were there too?"

Ron made a scoffing sound. "Of course we were there. We're always there."

"It wasn't Draco, you know," she hurried to say. "He was in detention."

"I know. We had to go over all of that with Harry. I don't think the curse was meant for Katie either. Sounds more like she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and someone took advantage of her. I hate to think what - well anyways, it's lucky you were safe in here all day." He was so sincere he petted the top of her sleek, dark hair, as if she was a slightly dangerous cat.

She looked up at him through her eyelashes. "You're not saying the curse was meant for me, are you?"

He shrugged as he dropped his hand from her head. "I dunno. But why else use a necklace if not to trap a girl trained up to like sparkly things? But it was badly done - exactly the kind of mess we've come to expect from Death Eaters. Unless they picked that necklace because they were crafty enough to figure out that a girl making love charms for Malfoy is bound to have awful taste."

She smirked, blinking up at his face. "You've windburned your cheeks out in the weather today. They're red."

He swallowed again. "Ginger life." He stepped closer, almost whispering. "I hate to say it, but Malfoy is right. Stay in the castle, Parkinson. And start thinking of some excuse to stay over Christmas. I will too. We'll keep each other company."

Her cheeks flushed but she said, "Weasley, I can't just hide here until the Death Eaters go away. They are not going away. This must be dealt with in a way other than shutting me up, like a princess in a Muggle fairy tale."

He sighed. "Yeah, there's no hope of shutting you up."

She punched his arm.

"That's - ow - Parkinson, that's not what I meant!"

"Whatever you meant, get out of here." She shoved him toward the stairs with both hands. "Go back to your tower and let me sleep off the rest of this cold hex."

"Wait, just let me take one lozenge, yeah? In case I do end up catching something from you."

She dug one out of the bag for him. "You're welcome to have one but it's been days since - it happened, and if you don't have a cold by now - "

She looked up from the bag to find his neck bent low enough for his face to be close, his breath on her nose and mouth. Her nose was already clear enough to be able to tell he smelled like sweets and the dried sleet and rainwater still clinging to his hair from walking outside all day. She closed her eyes as she inhaled - and then there were voices behind him, loud in the stairwell.

He straightened up quickly, plucking the lozenge from her fingers, and turning away.

She slumped against the wall, rough stones snagging on the fluffy loops of her dressing gown, and watched him go. He moved differently than Draco, not with the lithe almost weightless movements of a quidditch seeker but with the powerful, bracing force of a keeper. She saw it as the Slytherin third years coming down the stairs the same time he was going up threw themselves out of his way. He wasn't massive like Crabbe and Goyle but he was a force of nature all the same.

She pressed her forehead to the wall, asking herself, "What the hell, Parkinson?"

It was nearly curfew when Draco reported to Professor Snape's office, as ordered. Nervous and guarded, he approached the door, yet he was still unprepared when Snape spun around in front of his desk as soon as Draco pulled the door closed and spoke a single word almost too fast to be understood.

"Legilimens."

Draco scrambled to raise the mental turbulence he needed to blur all his thoughts into noise, but there was no time. Snape was with him already, in his head, his memories - on the silky skin over Hermione's spine, then recoiling, drawing back far enough to see her unmistakable head of hair bent over Draco's marked arm, as she kissed the love charm to life, its lines glowing blue through the gloom of the afternoon in the Room of Hidden Things.

Draco barked out an anguished yell. It sounded within his mind as well as his throat, thrusting Snape out, sending him staggering against the edge of his desk, lips parted and angry.

But the damage was done. "As I thought," Snape said, righting himself. He lunged to take Draco by the wrist. "Show me."

There was no point lying to him about it now. "I can't show you. Only - she can do it."

"And you'd better tell her not to," Snape hissed, throwing Draco's wrist back at him. "Every time this charm is activated it draws the Dark Lord's attention and his ire."

Draco gaped. "It does?"

"It does. And in so doing, it puts all of you in a very dangerous position. It must be stopped. Do not trouble the Dark Lord any further - not with your ludicrous half-cocked assassination attempts and not with your childish love games."

Draco didn't seem to be listening, standing as if stunned, gripping his left forearm with his right hand through the sleeve of his cardigan still covered in cat hair.

Snape spoke into his ear. "Take me as your advisor. I know your mission and I can help you succeed. I swore to your mother with your aunt as witness that I would protect you in this. Let us save you from yourself."

Draco's mind and feelings were reeling. If anyone in this school could succeed in killing the headmaster, it wasn't yet him, and it didn't need to be a gang of Death Eaters let inside through a repaired vanishing cabinet. Snape was capable of it - always had been. And this was why there was no room for him in Draco's plans. His plans were still unformed - a mess of conflicted loyalties between his family and the rest of the world. And though he didn't know what exactly his plans were yet, they did not include the elegant murder of Albus Dumbledore at the skilled and devious hands of Severus Snape.

He turned his head toward his professor, the clamour of his occulmens powers blaring a defense. "I'm sorry, sir. I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."

And with that, he left.

"The Room of Requirement," Harry said, stretching on the sofa in the common room. "That's where Malfoy goes when he's off the Map."

"I could have told you that," Hermione said.

"Yeah, but you didn't," Harry snapped.

She looked up from her arithmancy book. "I was getting to it. I only just learned it today."

Harry was refolding the Map with less care than it deserved. "You were with him there today, after McGonagall, weren't you?"

"Yes, Harry," she said, stiffening. "Don't say it like you've caught me at something. It should hardly be a surprise by now."

Ron shuddered openly, satisfied to hear Harry telling her, "Honestly, Hermione, I don't know how you do it. You overthink everything but this. It makes no sense."

She tossed her head. "I think about nothing more than this. And yes, it doesn't make sense. It's love. And it's the only chance Draco has left."

Ron cringed harder than ever. "Love in the same way you love Harry and me, right?"

"No, Ronald."

"But you're alright there, aren't you Ron?" Harry said, rounding on him, grinning. "I can see you on the Map too, down in the Slytherin dungeon with Pansy Parkinson."

Harry was loosening up, acting normal instead of peeved and paranoid. Ron chased after it. "Hey Harry, last year, with Cho, how did you know it wasn't just - physical?"

Hermione laughed.

Harry was left shrugging. "Can't say I was ever sure of that."

"Nah," Ron protested. "You two had loads in common: quidditch, the DA, and everything."

"Yes, never an awkward lag in conversation between the two of us," Harry replied, bristling with sarcasm.

"There's more to romantic compatibility than shared pastimes," Hermione added.

"Look, I'm not here to hear it from Madam Malfoy."

The boys didn't see her jump at the title.

"We're talking about Parkinson, yeah?" Harry said. "I guess you could figure out what it is you like about her - apart from the fact that she's been willing to kiss you the odd time, I mean. Maybe start there?"

"See, that's it," Ron said, "I can think of loads of reasons not to like her - Slytherin, snob, rude - but…"

"It's the wrong question," Hermione burst back in. "Spare me your Madam Malfoy barbs and listen to someone who can maintain a delicate relationship. Ronald, you're trying to work out your own feelings so don't start with her, start with you. Do you feel more than excited when you're with her? Do you feel happy?"

His gaze drifted off, into the firelight. "Yeah."

Hermione nodded. "Well done."