When Hermione insisted they stop in the kitchens to get Draco something to eat on their way to Snape's dungeon office, he wondered aloud if she was trying to stall the meeting.

"I certainly am not," she argued. "I don't love meeting with Snape, but I do love finding out things. It's one of my favourite things, actually." She slid an arm inside Draco's robes, curling it around his ribs, which were getting easier to palpate through his clothes all the time. "But just one of my favourites."

He squeezed her tightly, pulling his robe over both of them in the dim, empty late evening corridor.

Bundled against him, Hermione fell into step with him. "No one's been taking care of you lately, Draco, and as the grownup in this relationship - "

"Hermione, no - "

"I am taking responsibility for your welfare."

He groaned. "Enough with the coddling of the underaged wizard. I've aged ten years this holiday."

"That is exactly my point," she said. "What the adults in your life have put you through this year is inexcusable. You've forgotten you are only sixteen and still entitled to a caregiver - "

He let go of her to cover his ears with his hands. "Caregiver? You must stop - "

She kept hold of his torso and kept talking. "And if no one else is rising to the task of meeting your basic needs, I will, and gladly."

He dropped his hands from his ears, laughing in a low growl. "My basic needs? When you put that way, and it doesn't sound too bad - "

"And foremost," she went on, "you are entitled to be fed a meal every evening. I've been able to hear your stomach rumbling for the last half hour. You should have kept that apple instead of vanishing it off to only the stars know where - "

He shushed her, looking over his shoulders.

But she wasn't finished. "You should see yourself. You've got dark circles under your eyes, and a bruise on your jaw from a fight this morning, and a bump on your head from another one this evening, and I cannot keep your going on snogging energy alone. You need food."

"Fine, we're going to the kitchens," he said.

At some point in their walk down from the seventh floor, Crookshanks had taken leave of them. They hadn't noticed when exactly he turned his brush tail to them and disappeared, probably into a passageway that would have been too dark for them but which suited him fine.

As Draco ate dinner leftovers stacked into a sandwich, Hermione grew restless, pacing, trying to imagine what else Snape had to tell her. She had assumed no one in the school understood Mitrian charms as well as she did after reading and re-reading everything about them in the ancient and elaborate library. Not even Draco knew everything she did about them. She'd made sure of that.

Perhaps Snape was ready to admit what she'd already suspected: that he had purged all of the books on horcruxes from the Hogwarts library - books which would have had references to other corporeal charms in them, including the Mitrians. If Snape was hoarding books, and he was now ready to share, she'd have access to new information, possibly even what she needed to know to use the charm to vex Voldemort. Snape had made Draco believe they could make a difference in the mounting fight against him, and there must be a good reason for that.

By the time they were standing in front of the door to Snape's office, her nervousness had turned into eagerness and it was Draco who was tense. "Just one bit of advice," he cautioned her as he lifted his fist to knock. "Don't mention Harry's mum unless you absolutely can't avoid it. I already rubbed Snape's face in it and I'm not sure he'll tolerate much more."

Inside, Snape wasn't stalking and spinning through his office, but sitting at his desk, still and somewhat faded. "Malfoy and Granger," he announced as they sat in the chairs facing his desk. "Tell me, Draco, where in this unfathomable mess you would like me to begin."

Draco cleared his throat. "It's me who'd better begin, sir." He made his confession, telling Snape everything about the vanishing cabinet on the seventh floor, from Graham Montague's misfortunes with it to the latest test, when it transported an apple to London and back.

He finished, flinching, ready for Snape's fury - for his disappointment that Draco had got so close to compromising the safety of Hogwarts just to save his miserable family, for his anger with Draco for going so long without accepting help, maybe even for a soaring lecture about how the resistance to the Death Eaters would be decimated if anything happened to harm the headmaster.

Instead, Snape merely sighed, deeply and throatily. "So this is how they've been meaning to do it, all this year." He tipped back in his chair. "A more sophisticated plan than your debacle with the necklace, but not by much. Once again the Dark Lord makes a dangerous plaything out of the house of Malfoy."

Snape tented his fingers, bowing into them, his hair falling forward until his face was lost from sight. "Do you know whether your father knows about the cabinet plan, Draco?"

He blinked at the unexpected question. "I don't believe so, sir. Unless mother's told him."

Snape hummed. "Your mother was informed about the cabinets, even in her disordered present state of mind. A foolish risk. Typical of a Malfoy, perhaps, but uncharacteristic of the Dark Lord. More evidence that this scheme was never truly meant to succeed. You see," he paused, his jaw cocked, "what remains to be determined is not whether the headmaster will die. Of course he will, and this makes the question of precisely how he will die somewhat moot. The only matter of any real import, the real question," his speech slowed again, "is that of who will kill him."

Hermione looked suddenly sick. "He - Dumbledore - he's going to die?"

Snape spun his chair in frustration. "Everyone's going to die someday, Granger, particularly those who, like the headmaster, turned one hundred years old while you were still a baby."

"That's not what I meant - "

"We will speak no more of it," Snape called over her protest. "In the beginning, The Dark Lord gave Draco the task of assassinating the headmaster by whatever clumsy methods he could muster as a way to punish his father for prematurely allowing for the opening of the Chamber of Secrets and for botching the raid on the Department of Mysteries. That much was obvious to everyone. Madam Malfoy complicated matters by taking - steps to protect Draco, including obligating me to help and defend him, an obligation he complicated with his stubbornness. She ought to have stopped her meddling there."

Draco couldn't let Snape go on. "I'll allow that Mother is responsible for getting the bumbling Hogsmeade accomplice involved, but don't blame her for the vanishing cabinets. That method was my own idea."

"Yes," Snape sneered. "And haven't you become the victim of your own cleverness? Now you truly are at risk of winding up confronting your headmaster here in his own school where, even with a host of Death Eaters sneaked in at your side, there is very little chance you could harm him against his will. Well done, Draco," he said, sneering more bitterly than ever. "You've managed to provide the Dark Lord with a viable alternative plan."

"An alternative to my family's death sentence? Yes, yes I certainly have."

"There was no need for it. Not when I would have protected you."

Draco barely kept from springing out of his chair. "How? Pardon me, sir, but I fail to see how, in the face of the Dark Lord and all the Death Eaters, one teacher could have saved us all alive."

Snape waved both his hands, as if whisking Draco away, moving on, turning to Hermione. "And here is another victim of their own cleverness: Miss Granger, who, under the influence of ten counter-curse potions, crafted and cast an effective, if modified, Mitrian love charm, and now finds herself occasionally fainting dead away, magically bound as she is to the Dark Lord."

Draco threw himself between them. "Help us then," he interrupted, answering for Hermione who was stunned to see a student, even Draco, talking back to Snape like this. "Tell Hermione what you told me in London. I know we deserve to be scolded. I accept it. But please, sir, finish up and tell her the rest."

"Oh, but now there's more to tell you as well, Draco," Snape said. "If you'd informed me about the cabinet sooner, I would have been able to see it months ago, but as it is…" His words trailed into a sigh. "The killing curse, the same one you were commanded to use on the headmaster, it rends the soul. It tears it. Because of this, the Dark Lord's soul is torn ribbons. It is something he did knowingly and deliberately, a calculated risk we don't yet fully understand. If Potter could stay on task, we might know more, but as it is…"

He trailed off again, forcing a cough to refocus himself, away from Potter, back to the students in front of him.

"As I was saying, that raw, frayed edge of the Dark Lord's soul is what made him as powerful as he is, but it also created a vulnerability. The bonding power of the Mitrian charm mends torn edges, and when the Dark Lord put himself in contact with your charm by attempting to vanish from Draco's arm, it fused with him as well as both of you."

Hermione gasped. "I was afraid that was it."

Snape sneered. "He is, of course, disgusted. And he is also suffering pain and weakness in his wand hand. It's urgent that he free himself and in order to do so, the bond must be torn again. Doubtless, he would gladly tear his own soul, but as he is caught in a subordinate position within the charm's bond, he does not have that power."

Snape flicked a glance at Hermione and Draco. And though Hermione was gaping with shock at the news of being in a position of power over the Dark Lord, he tutted and said, "Don't look so smug, Granger."

She closed her mouth.

"Since he lacks the power to sever the bond," Snape continued, "one of you must be torn - or else eliminated. We have used a Fidelius charm to hide the identity of the caster from the Dark Lord, meaning he cannot eliminate the caster and her familiar."

"Crookshanks?"

He ignored the interruption. "And Draco, to your credit, you have bargained successfully for your life thus far. Which means the Dark Lord seeks to tear your soul not with your own death, but by making you a murderer. If you fail, and die in what is very much a suicide mission to kill the headmaster, the bond will be damaged, perhaps enough for the Dark Lord to free himself."

Snape rose from his chair, leaning over his desk. "And if you succeed, somehow, your soul will be gashed open, the Dark Lord will be free, the headmaster will be dead, and Draco Lucius Malfoy as we know him - " another long pause, "will be lost."

Hermione let out a shaky breath. "Sir," she began, "there's something I haven't told Draco about Mitrian charms - "

"You are speaking of the matrimonial potential of the charm," Snape finished for her. "I thought his assumption that you didn't know about it was unlikely. As for Draco, I have already explained it to him myself. He knows what would be required of him, and he is willing."

She turned toward Draco, gripping the arm of his chair. "You knew? You knew all along that the charm I gave you could be expanded into a powerful marriage spell, one that might injure the Dark Lord? And that's why you kept asking me to marry you?"

He shook his head, his eyes on his knees. "No, I just learned about the marriage part over Christmas. And it's why I stopped asking you."

She swallowed, turning back to Snape. "You-know-who has given Draco a time limit. If the cabinet isn't working by the end of the term, he's going to start killing the Malfoys. I - if you give me access to the books I need - the ones from the REAL restricted section - I might be able to craft a matrimonial spell in time. "

Draco grabbed at her hand. "You can't be forced into marrying me because of some stupid war. That was never what I wanted. There might be something else - "

"Enough with the chivalrous antics, Draco," Snape interrupted. "That's very well, Miss Granger. I do keep a small collection of books on corporeal magic here in my office. You may work on the charm only - only here in my study. We will begin tomorrow. Now, good evening to you both."

There was silence for a moment as Hermione and Draco realized that, despite all the unanswered questions in their minds, they were being dismissed. When the door closed behind them, and they'd climbed the stairs back into the Entrance Hall, Draco fell against the wall, as if physically exhausted. Hermione looked at him, his head tipped back, eyes closed, lips parted. She wanted to throw her arms around him and hide her face in his chest. But instead, she hooked her forefinger through his.

"I get it," she said. "You're sixteen years old, and I'm the only girl you've ever dated, and your parents will - "

Draco's eyelids flung themselves open. "What?"

She was still talking. "And it might not be inevitable. Like you said downstairs, there might be something in those secret books in Snape's office - a solution besides a matrimonial charm. I'll look for that first - "

"You daft girl," he interrupted, tugging her finger with his, pulling her against him, pressing a kiss on the top of her head. "You think it's me who doesn't want to marry you? I don't want you forced into it, but that's hardly the same thing as not wanting…" He couldn't finish. "Look, this isn't how my next proposal happens - you and me arguing at the top of a dungeon stairwell. My proposals were always somewhat serious before, but now - they're not something to trifle with, so I won't."

She hardly ever said it, but she looked up at him now, tired and teary, her mind a whirlwind, and she told him one of the few things she could still be sure of. "I do love you."

She rose on her toes and he bent to kiss her, softly and sweetly in the torch-lit hall. "I'm so glad," he said. "Keep doing that. We'll sort the rest out from there."

Ron awakened in the blue morning light of the first full day of the second term of his sixth year thinking vaguely but pleasantly about love. He sat up in his bed, rubbing his eyes, blinking around the room at the rest of his roommates, all of them still asleep.

Stretching his legs, his foot knocked against a box that had appeared, as if by magic, at the end of his bed during the night. Just like anyone in a new love affair worth its weight, he was not at all surprised to stumble upon signs of how treasured he was, and he smiled at the gift, not questioning its presence or the affectionate good will that must be attached to it.

He was hungry but there was still an hour until breakfast, so he lifted the lid to help himself to two or three chocolate cauldrons - the fancy liqueur types, which his parents usually kept stashed away for just themselves.

He ate in a dreamy, contented haze, thinking about how cherished he was - more than cherished, adored. Four, five, six chocolate cauldrons and he was loved, deeply, profoundly loved. And by the best girl ever, the one with the dark hair and - what else?

She was probably missing him right now. He had to get up - to go see her before their separation made her sad, the way it was making him sad. He had to see the love of his life. But where would she be right now? Harry had the Map. He'd wake him up and ask him to check it for her. Harry would understand the urgency - anyone would. After all this was no mere schoolgirl Ron was in love with. This was her.

This was Romilda Vane.