Draco stood in the upper window of 12 Grimmauld Place, looking out at a street from which he could not be seen. The street itself was quiet but with the window cracked open to the cold air, he could hear traffic in the distance, the buses Hermione had used to find him and to leave him today. From the high window, he was thinking of his father in Azkaban. Their lives were converging again, and not for the better - somehow never for the better - as both of them stood apart from the world, behind locked doors, unseeable, alone.

Needing to think of something else, Draco's mind went back, to just hours before when Hermione had been here with him. With one arm hooked around his girl, Draco had slept for most of the day as she dozed and read beside him. When he was awake, she had kissed him and held him and talked. From the sofa in the drawing room, they had looked up at the cobwebs on the peeling ceiling, black with mildew in the corners, and agreed that if they ever had a house of their own, it would not be anything like 12 Grimmauld Place.

"You think Potter will ever live here?" he had asked her.

She had frowned. "I don't know. It's strange," she'd said. "My very best friends and I - Ron and Harry - we never speak of more than a few months into the future. I was pining for Ron Weasley for nearly two years, thinking about him almost constantly, and though I could tell you all about the quidditch team he supports, his favourite sweets, the colour of his bedroom curtains, I have no idea what kind of life he wants after school. I know Harry wants to be an Auror someday only because McGonagall made such a fuss over it in front of everyone. But other than that - I have no idea what either of the boys want for themselves when they're adults."

Draco had nodded. "Potter probably just wants to be alive. Maybe that's it - all the uncertainty and danger makes the future too remote to talk about."

Her gaze had drifted across the ceiling, as if looking for something. "It can't be that," she said. "Because things have never been more uncertain than they are now, but I'm lying here talking to you about where I might live in the future. And it feels real, and right."

He had smiled, resting his cheek against her stomach as she lay on the sofa and he sat on the floor. Without lifting his head, he laced his fingers through hers. "So do you accept?" he said. "What I keep offering you, me forever as part of your future - do you accept?"

She had tried to laugh off his proposal, as she always did. But this time, she couldn't quite manage it. Instead she sighed and said, "Not yet."

For the time being, it had been good enough - progress. He'd said, "Let's stay here together, in Potter's manky old house. It can be a bit like when we were locked in the library together in fourth year. We'll just stay here and dance and read and love each other until someone notices we've gone and breaks through the door to drag us out."

She had sat up when he said it. "And that will be in about an hour, when my parents start looking for me for tea."

As if waiting to hear the word, Kreacher had come through the door at that moment, pushing a trolley piled with food. As ordered, he was keeping Draco fed. With Hermione there, Draco had an appetite, eating more of what Kreacher brought than usual.

The food, sleep, and affection were nourishing, but after she'd gone, the darkness settled over him. He thought of her charm in his arm. It used to give him comfort but now it was a fearsome thing, exposing her to harm. It had to be removed. But if the Dark Lord himself couldn't remove it, then who could? Draco needed to get back to Hogwarts, to the restricted section of the library. In all their reading on Mitrian love charms, they'd never looked into how to get rid of it altogether. There had to be a way.

Or maybe it was more important to go back to the Manor, apparate inside unnoticed somehow, find Snape there, and see if he knew that activating the charm harmed Hermione, and why.

Anything would be better than simply sitting here, adrift in an unplottable liminal space.

He turned from the window, coming down the stairs in his heavy black cloak, moving for the door despite knowing that once he left this house, he wouldn't be able to find it again without someone who knew its secret.

"Going somewhere, Draco?" It was Snape, standing at the bottom of the stairs, removing his gloves beside the still empty frame of Walburga Black's portrait.

Draco said nothing but, "Professor…"

Snape scanned him from head to foot. "You're looking - rested." The same could not be said of Snape. He looked as if he hadn't slept since he had left Draco here days before.

Draco shrugged off his cloak. "How is Mother?"

"Better. Only lightly sedated. She sends her - best wishes."

Draco stood nodding on the rug.

"No need to be cagey, Draco. I assume Granger has been here. You've nothing to hide."

"Yes, sir."

Snape was moving toward the kitchen, where Kreacher was fixing him something to eat. Draco followed. "Sir, we need to get rid of this charm on my arm. When the Dark Lord summons it, I'm not hurt but Hermione is. He's involved in it somehow."

"Yes, I know."

Draco was venting as Snape arranged himself at the kitchen table. "I trusted too much in Hermione's skills the night she first inscribed it. It wasn't fair to her, and it's all my fault. She's brilliant, but she was under the influence of all those potions that night in the hospital wing. I knew that and I should have known something like this could have gone wrong. I was out of my mind too, devastated - what with Father..."

He trailed off, his head in his hands as Snape bit into a cold beef sandwich. He chewed, sipped his tea, letting Draco go on uninterrupted.

"And what's with those nutty old monks?" Draco said. "How could they craft a love charm with room for a destructive third party to come tearing through it? Terrible spell. Cruel."

Snape swallowed, dabbed his mouth with a napkin. "You are too harsh, Draco. The imposition of the third party was something neither Miss Granger nor the Brethren of the Exalted Order of Mitrians could have anticipated. It comes down to the Dark Lord himself. He is an unprecedented figure. There's been no one else like him. Due to the lingering effects of soul rending spells of the Dark Lord's own, he was in a singular state the night he attempted to vanquish your charm. If he didn't recognize his own vulnerability, there is no way you nor Granger could have anticipated it. No one could have planned on it."

Draco sat up straight, alarmed. "Soul rending spells - like what?"

Snape took up the second half of his sandwich. "I cannot discuss it with you. The headmaster has made it his exclusive business - his and Potter's. Perhaps he will tell you more when term recommences. Suffice it to say, that by his own doing, the Dark Lord's soul is no longer whole. Meaning that, when it encountered the magic of the Mitrian charm, with its immense power to bond souls, the Dark Lord's already fractured soul could not resist its pull, and it bonded him to the charm. And by extension, it bound him to both of you."

Draco had blanched whiter than ever, leaning on the table to hold himself up. "I bound Hermione to the Dark Lord?"

"After a fashion, yes, you are the tie that binds them to each other."

He groaned into his hands. "Well, why does summoning it hurt her and not me?"

Snape brushed his fingers against each other. "That I cannot say. The Dark Lord has a different status in the charm than the two of you - a lower, weaker one which may be what accounts for the damage he sustains whenever it is summoned. And which certainly accounts for his rage at having brought it upon himself. He cannot accept a position of lower status in any form."

"Have you seen it?" Draco asked. "His damage - what is it?"

Snape looked uneasily about the room but went on. "Mere irritation, at first. Then scarring on the hand that held the wand when he tried to vanquish it from your arm. And when he attacked you with his wand most recently, a stiffness and withering of the hand set in, painful. He is, of course, livid and wants the charm undone in the swiftest, least complicated way."

"By killing the caster, killing Hermione," Draco finished, miserably.

"Yes. Her familiar as well."

It was so absurd, Draco nearly laughed. "Crookshanks?"

"Whatever she calls it," Snape growled. "You would survive. The Dark Lord would as well. And you would remain bonded to him only through the Dark Mark, as we all are."

"What if I was killed instead?"

Snape sneered. "How gallant of you."

"I mean it."

Snape threw himself forward, black eyes burning. "Don't you see, Draco, that if you are killed, I fail in my Unbreakable Vow, and I die as well? I am a soldier in this conflict and I will lay down my life in its service. But not for one girl alone. Your love charm - who it hurts who it saves - all of this concerns me only insofar as it either weakens the Dark Lord or endangers your life, and through the vow, mine. The girl is beside every one of those points. Do you understand?"

"No, I don't," Draco answered. "And I don't believe you either. Don't act like I can't tell what turned you away from the Dark Lord in the first place. It was one girl alone: Lily Evans."

"Silence - "

"In this, Professor, you and I - we're the same. And because we're the same, I know that once you realized how carelessly the Dark Lord could hurt her, could kill her, you turned against him. Father told me it was a momentary lapse, just grief and you were loyal to the Dark Lord once again. But he doesn't know like I do, like we do. Because of Lily Evans, you are the Dark Lord's enemy forever."

"I said, silence."

Draco leaned across the table, meeting Snape, speaking into his face. "No, not anymore. You have helped me save Hermione for this long because you didn't save Lily. It's sacred and I honor it. I admire you for it more than for anything else you've ever taught me or done for me. So tell me how to save my girl. How do we un-bond ourselves from the Dark Lord with Hermione left alive? It's not enough that she be kept secret. She needs to be kept safe."

Snape sat back, smoothing his robes, not looking at Draco. "You will never mention Lily Evans to me again."

"As you like it, sir. Now what do we do?"

Snape raised his teacup to his lips but slammed it down on the table when he found it empty. Draco refilled it as Snape shook his hair out of his eyes and said, "If we cannot end or weaken the bond, we must make it so strong it transforms into something else, something for just the two of you. The monks intended the love charms to seal betrothals made in times of war, when the loved one needed protection. They were preparatory - intended to have other charms added upon them in due time, charms of," he paused, a long pause even for Snape, "charms of matrimony."

Draco set the teapot down nearly hard enough to crack it. "Brilliant. Bring her here. Bring her parents, Potter, anyone you like. Add the matrimonial charm. Make her my wife."

"Calm yourself, Draco. I do not have the matrimonial charm. As I said, I can bond you in a conventional wizard marriage but it may not be enough. The Mitrian matrimonial manuscript, however, was lost centuries ago. We may be able to recreate something close enough to it, just as Miss Granger modified the original love charm, but as of this moment, nothing like it exists."

"Let's get back to Hogwarts and make it then."

"We will, but it will take time and patience." He rapped his folded napkin against the top of Draco's head. "And it will take the work of the original caster herself, which means," he paused again, "that you, Draco Malfoy, the under-aged heir of an ancient house overrun with Death Eaters, son of a convict, your flesh already compromised by a Dark Mark, must convince Hermione Granger to consent to marry you, and not for magical or military purposes, but for love alone."

Snape finished with a snarl, a vicious sadness that tore at Draco's heart.

It was through his family that Draco knew Snape's history. His father had told him how he had rescued a weak, friendless, but genius boy Snape from a notorious band of Gryffindor bullies including James Potter. Snape was close to Lily Evans and it made him Potter's target.

Draco had imagined it before, Snape's school friends - that Avery and Mulciber - reacquainting Snape with an older friend he hadn't seen since his graduation, Lucius Malfoy, wealthy, tall and beautiful and smart, keeper of Dark magical artefacts and secrets they couldn't learn at school. He was recruiting promising students for a new movement led by Lord Voldemort. He was dangerous, powerful, irresistible. No one understood the pull of his father better than Draco.

The impossible piece of the equation between Snape and Lily Evans hadn't been magical or military but that fact that he became someone she could not love. Snape abandoned her for friends who flattered him, protected him from Potter and the rest. Lucius Malfoy was as much of a wedge between Severus Snape and Lily Evans as James Potter was.

But this wasn't the case for Draco and Hermione. Love was not what was missing between them. He nodded firmly. "Yes, sir. She will consent to marry me. I'm still working on it, but I'm nearly there."

"Yes, well aren't you Lucius's arrogant, pretty, adored doll of child?" he snapped. As the words left him he fell backward, as if shocked at himself, stung by his own venom, his eyes on his lap, away from Draco's startled face.

A moment of quiet passed between them before Draco stood up and walked around the table to Snape's chair. "Allow me to take your cloak, sir. And please go upstairs and get some rest. I promise I won't leave. And Bellatrix is more protective of my mother than you might expect. There's no need for you to go back to the Manor right away. Please, sir. You're exhausted and starting to fray. Rest here for a while."

Snape did not resist as Draco slid his cloak from his shoulders as he rose, folding it over his arm. He nodded to Draco but said nothing, climbing the stairs and disappearing with the creak and click of a bedroom door.

Ron sat on his bed in the Burrow, tossing a ball against the wall and catching in over and over. From the floor below, someone who could have been any of his brothers was hollering up at him to stop all the pounding.

"Knock it off, Ron," Harry joined in. "I know you're frustrated, but try to relax and enjoy the rest of the break, yeah?"

Ron huffed. "Easy for you to say. It's not like you started dating the fittest girl in school just to be separated from her right away."

Harry couldn't help himself. "Parkinson?"

Ron scoffed again. "If she's not the best one, I'd like to know who is."

Harry laughed rather darkly. "The finest girl in school is definitely not your type."

Ron sensed something nefarious. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing."

He drew his arm back, aiming the ball at Harry's head. "Say it, Harry."

Either way he was going to get hit, so Harry said it. "That would be your sister."

With his seeker reflexes, he was able to catch the ball before it pelted him in the head. But then Ron was reaching for a heavy book. That was when a crack sounded and each of them jumped backward as Kreacher appeared in the room. Ron groaned and lowered the book. "It's for you, Harry."

"Kreacher, what is it?"

The elf reminded Harry that he had asked him to watch Draco Malfoy (though he had taken Walburga Black's portrait's lead and was now calling him the Young Master, Heir of the House of Black) and he had come with something to report.

Harry sat down, cross-legged on the floor, at Kreacher's eye-level. "Well done. Go on then."

Kreacher replied that Young Master was enjoying Harry's hospitality very much.

Harry gaped up at Ron. "What's he on about? I'm the one who's always a guest. I don't have the luxury of offering anyone else hospitality."

"Headquarters," Ron blurted. "I think he's telling us that Malfoy is staying at headquarters. It's your house now, after all. How the bloody hell is Malfoy staying there? How can he even see it?"

Kreacher was muttering something about Snape taking dinner with them tonight, along with Young Master, Heir of the House of Black's particular friend.

Harry was frowning. "Snape. Snape took him there. How could he?"

"And he's not alone," Ron added. "He's got Snape and someone else too. Well speak up, Kreacher, who's the third?"

Kreacher regretted that both Young Master and Professor Snape had forbidden him to say.

"Order him to tell you, Harry, as the real master of the house," Ron pressed.

"You hear the way he's talking about Malfoy. He'll never betray him. Or if he does, he'll punish himself just about to death over it." Harry turned back to Kreacher. "Tell me what the three of them are doing."

Kreacher blinked his large, round eyes. Talking. They were laying about, eating and talking.

Harry pressed him with questions for the better part of an hour and eventually learned that Malfoy had angered his own houseguest and Snape had taken him from the Manor to Grimmauld Place to keep him safe while things quieted down at home.

"I don't understand," Harry said. "After everything that's happened, why is it me who's giving them refuge? Snape and Malfoy - let the pair of them be terrorized by Voldemort for Christmas. Why do I have to put up with it?"

"Because Snape's with Dumbledore, remember?" Ron said. "What was it you told the Minister of Magic when he came by here on Christmas Day, bold as brass? You said you were Dumbledore's man. And that means stomaching Snape."

"Which means stomaching Malfoy?"

"Well, if You-know-who is mad at him, maybe he did something right for a change."

"Or maybe he's in trouble because the hexed necklace plot went wrong."

"Harry, leave it, please. Listen to Lupin, listen to Dad, and leave it."

"Look, there are Death Eaters - retired or not - eating and sleeping in my house at this very minute. How can I be expected to just sit and do nothing?"

Ron waved an arm at Kreacher. "Send him back with orders to pay attention and tell you everything he hears them say from now on. You're in the perfect position to eavesdrop, even if it is second-hand through the Young Master Whatever House of Black fan club here. He still has to tell you the truth when you ask, right Kreacher?"

There was some ugly muttering about blood traitors before Kreacher accepted Harry's instructions and vanished from the room.

Harry still had the ball Ron had thrown at him clutched in the palm of his hand. He sat down on his camping cot and proceeded to fire it at the wall, over and over again.