Draco and Hermione stood wrapped in his father's warmest winter cloak just inside the gates of the Hogwarts grounds.
"Is it alright if we stay outside a little longer?" he asked her, his forehead pressed to hers. "Privacy is hard to get inside the castle, and we need to settle something."
Her heart gave a thud. "Yes, of course. Let's sit somewhere sheltered, at the very least. The golden willow?"
They followed the path away from the castle, toward the lake, moonlight reflecting from the hoary white ice frozen to its surface. Draco kept Hermione bundled against him inside the cloak, and at first, she mistook their closeness as the reason for his awkward gait.
"Draco, you're limping."
He grunted, frustrated with himself for letting her notice. "Just a little. I'm sore but not injured."
She stopped them from moving any farther down the path, lighting her wand to look him over. "Oh my stars, Draco. You can hardly stand. What did he do to you? We need to get you straight to the hospital, or to Snape - "
"Snape was there when it happened. He watched the whole thing and assured me I'm alright. There's nothing anyone can do for me but let me sleep it off. And I am not going to bed yet."
She ducked beneath his arm, draping it over her shoulders, bearing some of his weight on herself as they resumed their walk, demanding to be told exactly what happened to him.
He blew out a long breath. "The Dark Lord punished me for making a racket after being told to be quiet. My mother and I had some things to negotiate, and it got a bit out of hand. Typical Malfoy family drama, really. Don't know what else he expected when he moved in."
It was something like a joke but Hermione did not find it amusing. "He scolded you for being noisy? Like a shirty kindergarten teacher?"
"It was for the defiance, not the noise itself," Draco said, smirking now. "Though we were extraordinarily disruptive. Felt extremely liberating, actually. There was a grand piano involved. And the house went and imprisoned a room full of Death Eaters including the Dark Lord himself for three entire minutes while we carried on. So after all of that, he couldn't let our disobedience go unpunished, especially with so many witnesses. Think of what that might have started. No, one of the Malfoys had to answer for it, and it couldn't be Mother."
They had reached the tree. He leaned heavily on it, panting slightly as her questioning went on. "Quit stalling, Draco, and tell me what he did to you."
"It was the Cruciatus curse," he admitted at last. "Don't panic, Hermione. It was just on my legs, nowhere with any vital organs."
"Still, Draco," her voice was shaking. "How could they let him - and Snape just stood there?"
"Naturally. It's what he always does," Draco said. "No matter what happens, he can always force himself to stand there and watch. It's why he's so good at this double-sided game. And why I'm so bad at it."
It broke her heart to imagine it. She comforted both of them by fussing over him, using her wand to melt the frost from the grass underneath the drooping boughs of the leafless tree, before easing him to sit on the warmed, dried ground beneath it.
"Torturing young boys - he's a consummate monster. He's crucio-ed Harry and all - a full-body Cruciatus curse, levelled at him right after he saw Cedric get killed," she said, helping Draco bend his wounded legs, keeping them snug and covered by his cloak. "Harry said it was like being stabbed with a thousand white hot knives."
"Did he?" Draco shuddered. "It was like a burning for me too, but pulling and tearing rather than stabbing, like a blindingly intense muscle cramp all over my legs and feet - awful but undamaging. I'm weak and sore, but I'm unhurt."
"I'm so sorry," she said, tucking herself back inside the cloak with him, pressing her palms to his cold cheeks and kissing him with a gentle, slow sweetness. He wasn't sure if it was magic or not, but as she drew her face away from his, it was as if she was drawing his pain away with her, leaving him with the feeling of being about to drift peacefully off to sleep after a terrible day.
Inviting as it was, he leaned away from sleep, back in Hermione's direction, determined to stay awake. He looked around their cold but sheltered spot by the lake, imagining it lit with sunshine. "Remember when we were here together on your seventeenth birthday?" he said. "That was a nice afternoon. Normal, quiet time together, though we've never really been a normal, quiet couple. We've had hardly any days like that this year."
She hummed. "What about the day we spent together in Harry's house in London during the holidays? The circumstances were strange but it was just you and me, quiet and fairly normal all day long - not running or scheming or pretending anything. Kind of a domestic paradise - or at least a fantasy of one."
He kissed the top of her head. "I could live like that."
Normally, she would have given a smile and a quick word of agreement. But the mood was different tonight, not a time for flippant responses. She tipped her head back to try to see his face in the darkness. It seemed important to be able to read him. Unsatisfied, she took a scrap of parchment from her pocket - the prefects' schedule, which she could easily replace - crumpled it into a ball, and lit it on fire. It burned slowly, suspended in the air beside them, orange, warm and bright.
In the soft light of her spell, Draco took both of her hands, cupped them between his own and breathed on them, opening his hands again to kiss each of her knuckles.
"Hermione," he began. "I won't say that the benefits our love charm might have for other people shouldn't be factors in planning our futures. And I won't say that I wouldn't rather be having this conversation when we're older and it made more sense. What I will say is that I know I'll never meet anyone who is braver or wiser or better in every way that matters to me than you. No one will ever be as beautiful to me. No one will ever make me as happy as you do. Your ability to accept me as I am is - I don't understand how you do it. But right now, it's the key to what little is still good in my life."
She mewed a sweet sound. "Draco, don't praise me for that. It's easy for me to love you - inevitable, irresistible. It's necessary for my own happiness. It's not some act of noble longsuffering. I love you just because I do." She bent her head and kissed his hands in return.
And then she noticed the ring. The small platinum ring pushed against the joint of his ring finger, she touched it with her fingertip.
She nodded. "The monks - "
He hushed her, pulling her face against his shoulder, kissing her ear before whispering into it. "I don't want to talk about how it might be done or why it has to happen this way. At this moment, this is only about us." He sat back so she could watch him as he took the ring from his finger and slid it onto hers. "You'll marry me, won't you Hermione? I'm already yours forever. Come home to me a little earlier than you might've liked, but do come. Please..."
It might have been enchanted, but the ring fit well. In the dim light, Hermione couldn't tell the colour of the stone, only that it glinted within the shiny band. Draco's head was tipped close to hers, his breath stirring her hair, fast and shallow in time with his racing heartbeat, as he waited.
She laced their fingers together, the ring - her ring - clicking against his signet.
"I will."
Draco's posture straightened. "You said 'yes'?"
She laughed softly, boosting herself onto her knees and turning around to face him. "Of course I said 'yes'." She leaned into him, her lips on his, until the back of his head came to rest against the tree's smooth, cold trunk. Her kiss was deep and alive, her mouth working over his, her hands in his hair, breathing his scent into her nose, her pulse thrumming in her throat. His mouth was warm and knew how to answer hers, his arms around her body, holding her as close as he could.
Her eyelashes fluttered against his cheek as her mind indulged in ecstatic thoughts she'd never let herself fully explore before. Draco Lucius Malfoy was going to be her husband, joined to her for the rest of their lives, imprinted on her skin, their magic intertwined, harmonized. She would share her body with him, as if he was her second, auxiliary self. In return, she would touch and love all of him. If she ever had children, they would be his, her blood merged with his and made the same, only...
"Your parents," she said, breaking away as Draco chased after her, breathless. "Your birthday isn't for months. We'll need to get their consent. They need to - "
"Already signed it," he said against her neck, kissing from her jaw to her shoulder. "That's what all the noise was about at the Manor today. It was tense, but in the end, she did sign it."
She tipped her head back, giving him access to her throat, signalling that even though she was talking, he should not stop. "My parents," she said. "They gave me those pills, so they're resigned to the idea of you shagging me - "
He moaned greedily against her neck at the mention of it.
"But they're not Mitrian monks. They're Muggle Baby Boomers. They don't equate sex with matrimony. They're going to hate this," she said, lowering her chin. "And in the Muggle world, they'd still be able to stop us, since I'm not eighteen."
"Then don't bring it into the Muggle world," he said, leaving off kissing her neck as she whimpered in protest. "You're thinking too much like an enlightened Muggle-born witch who has to reconcile both worlds. Stop that for once. Just tell them we've entered into some lovey-dovey wizard bond that's got nothing to do with Muggle law but means we're," he cleared his throat, "REALLY close. Just don't use the word marriage. And then when we're in our twenties, or however old they'd like us, they can throw us whatever kind of Muggle wedding they want, with their Muggle law, and we can act like your Madam Malfoy days begin then."
She widened her eyes. "So very cunning."
"Yes, well, goods as advertised," he said, taking her lips again.
She smiled into the kiss, but had to draw herself away again. "So that's the progress you made today. Now I need to tell you mine."
He sighed and sat back against the tree trunk. "Right. Go on then."
She told him about her interview with the Fat Friar.
"Pansy thought of it?" he beamed. "Well done, Pansy."
Hermione didn't get jealous very often, but at this exclamation, she came close.
She went on to tell him about the spell not having been crafted with a way to end it. It was indeed intended as a foundation for the matrimonial rites, and that though the rites would sever the Dark Lord from them, his closeness would likely give him an opportunity to wound them as he left.
"But does it work the same way for us?" Draco asked. "Could we use this as an opportunity to hurt him? Not just through the process of severing him, but through a direct attack?"
Hermione shrugged. "I can't imagine how to do that. In all these years, the only one to ever hurt him has been Harry."
Draco jerked, forgetting the pain in his legs for a moment. "Potter," he said. "Remember in the hospital wing, when we activated the charm and he was suddenly flattened by a headache?"
Hermione gasped. "There's not only a third person caught up in our charm, Draco. There's a fourth. There's Harry. Can that be true?"
Draco was nodding. "It makes sense. Harry is connected to the Dark Lord. Snape's told us so and we saw evidence of it ourselves that day in the hospital."
"Dumbledore has told Harry the same," Hermione confessed. "Draco, what do we do?"
He sat silently, shaking his head.
"When we do the rest of the charm the - the wedding, that is," she said, stumbling over the word, "we'll need Harry there. We'll need him there to make sure he's safe, and to go after You-know-who. If anyone is going to be able to use the occasion to make an attack on the Dark Lord, it will be Harry."
Draco smirked. "Looks like Potter is going to be our best man after all."
Hermione frowned. "It's not funny, Draco. It's bad. Harry hates the idea of us getting married. You should have heard the way he sassed the Friar about it today. It was awful."
Draco gathered her in his arms. "Oh, he'll come around. I'm more worried about Crookshanks cooperating, frankly."
She was still frowning.
Draco pressed his fingertip between her eyes to smooth her furrowed brow. "Come on, Hermione. There's nothing Harry wouldn't do to harm the Dark Lord. And whether Potter helps or not, we have to go ahead. There's no other option. The Dark Lord knows you get hurt if he activates the charm himself, and he brought me in today to threaten us with precisely that."
Hermione heaved a loud sigh.
Draco went on. "He is happy to kill you and willing to harm himself to the point of needing to be resuscitated by his followers if it means getting out of this charm. It's something else we have until the end of term to sort out before everyone I love starts dying over it."
She blinked at him. "Thank you for not making that your proposal."
"And thank you for saying yes before I had to bring it up." He kissed her again, tenderly. "Don't ever think I proposed to you for any reason more important than always wanting to be with you."
She nestled her head beneath his chin, her face in the hollow of his throat. "So since you're the expert on ignoring Muggles, do we invite my parents to the ritual or not?"
"Definitely invite them," he said. "It's not safe for them to be out and about, unprotected when we go head to head with the Dark Lord. Bring them in for their own safety."
"They'll be cross about having to close the surgery over this," she said. "Oh, that's another thing. I need you to formulate a star chart so we can pick the right date for all of this. I'll be busy composing the incantation."
Draco's face brightened. "I get to choose the date?"
She tutted. "The stars choose the date. You just read them."
He was already getting carried away. "I want to choose your dress too," he said, making that greedy moan against her neck again. "Wear the one my mother sent you for the Yule Ball. You know it, the periwinkle blue one with the crystals. It came all this way but you never got the chance to wear it for anyone but me."
She couldn't keep from smiling at him. But she said, "Draco, that dress has long, fitted sleeves. How are you going to make an inscription on my arm through a sleeve, no matter how pretty it is?"
"We'll get around it somehow," he growled.
His breath was tickling her and she yelped a laugh, her voice reverberating over the broad empty expanse of the lake. The noise startled both of them, bringing them back to where they were - at school, still students, with a curfew to meet.
Draco sat up, away from her neck, attempting to smooth her hair back into place. "Well, it wouldn't do for us to start our lives together by freezing to death under a tree, would it?"
She shook her head, righting herself. "No. And it's going to be a long, painful walk back to the castle for you, so we'd better get started."
She stood up first, helping him lumber to his feet. He leaned on her shoulder and she turned her face to him to confirm he was ready to leave. He raised a hand to touch her face. "Look at you," he said. "It's beyond belief. I am beyond happy. I am - "
"Recovering from a Cruciatus curse," she finished. "And it's my responsibility to get you home."
He closed his arms around her. "Your responsibility," he repeated. "That's my girl, for life."