The drawing room was utterly dark except for the white wand light Draco held to his face. It might have been laughable, like a Muggle boy telling horror stories around a campfire. Only this wasn't a jolly campfire, it was the room where the greatest horror story of Hermione's life had unfolded on the night she was tortured here by Bellatrix Lestrange.

Typically, Draco looked much more like his father's side of the family. That was the haughty but handsome face Hermione knew as the first one she had ever kissed. This new face of his, glowing in the dark drawing room was one she didn't know. In the shadowy half-light of his wand, he looked just enough like his Aunt Bellatrix to make all the blood rush out of Hermione's head, pricking in the ends of her fingers. She took a step as she staggered away from him in the dark, her foot landing with a sound of crushed, cracking glass.

At the sound she felt something dart past her, silently. Charlie was no longer holding her hand and she reached out to find him. A finer, colder hand took hers, and as it did, Draco's white light went out. There was a thud and more cracking of glass and something like old dry wood. Malfoy's voice let out a grunt of pain, but with an odd edge to it, almost like laughter. It was cut short just as it started to sound triumphant, lost in the sound of knees and elbows, and maybe someone's head tumbling against the floorboards.

Over the sound of panting, Charlie was speaking through gritted teeth, a stream of quiet obscenities, and then, "You light this room back up. Right now, Malfoy, or stars help me…"

"He's got Draco down," Astoria was saying, her voice astonished and somewhere close to Hermione. It must have been her hand Hermione was clutching in the dark. "How can Charlie have taken Draco down? No one but Malfoys can use magic in here."

Hermione shouted a laugh. "Charlie doesn't need magic to subdue a Malfoy."

"Now!" Charlie hollered in the still-dark room, the word reverberating off the walls.

Draco finally spoke, his voice strained as if his chest was compressed. " 'Toria, the lights. Quick."

Warm yellow light flared in the sconces on either side of the fireplace. The room revealed itself - the mantlepiece, the draperies, the armchairs, all exactly as they were years ago. In the room's centre, Draco lay face down on a dusty floor strewn with jagged bits of crystal, splintered wood, bent metal, and broken plaster. Charlie was crouched on the top of him, his knee in Draco's back, his hands holding each of Draco's arms flat to the floor.

At the light, Draco managed to turn his head to look at Astoria. "You see, darling. I told you bringing them in here would make us all closer together."

Hermione had let go of Astoria, her fingers now pressed into her own temples. "What are we doing here, Malfoy? What do you want? Why can't you just explain yourself without the stupid dramatics?"

"You try explaining yourself with your face mashed against the floor and your ribs about to break," Draco said, his breath getting shorter. "Come on, Weasley. You can see we're all safe as houses. Let me up."

Charlie looked away from him, to Astoria who looked like she was about to burst into tears, and then to Hermione, who only rolled her eyes. "Fine. Let him up, Charlie."

Charlie stood, ignoring the hand Draco raised when he turned over, an invitation to help him stand up. His back turned to Draco, Charlie was taking Hermione by both hands. "You alright, love? You're awfully pale. Are you faint again?"

"Sorry, Granger," Draco called over her answer, standing and rubbing his jaw as if it had been knocked out of joint. "Yes, I should have been more forthcoming, but in the past, earnest conversations between you and I have tended to - overwhelm us."

"Do you want to be put back down in the broken glass?" Charlie demanded.

Draco cringed in spite of himself, but he countered with, "It isn't glass. It's the finest crystal from a priceless heirloom chandelier, destroyed here years ago and left without so much as a single mote of it touched since then. That is, until Weasley wiped the floor with me just now."

Still holding Hermione's hand, Charlie spun around to face him. "That's enough," Charlie said. "We don't need your library this badly, Malfoy. Between the two of us, we read six languages and we can find what we need elsewhere. Good evening."

"No please!" Astoria had bowed her face into the billowing sleeve of her white dress. She was dabbing her eyes with it, struggling to speak through tears. "Please don't go. Draco, make it right. How will we ever get them to help us if you drive them away?"

With a single, long step Draco was at her side, wiping her tears with the back of his hand. "I'm sorry, darling. I'm sorry. You know what a lunatic I am when I'm on edge."

"But this is so important to me - "

"I know, darling. I know." He pulled her close, kissing the top of her head. "It is for me too. When something's important, I just get worse. I'm sorry."

Charlie watched them, relieved to see Astoria comforted, confused at Malfoy's sudden change in demeanor. Hermione leaned against her husband, breathless, looking hard at Draco. It was back. His resemblance to Bellatrix Lestrange was gone. His haughty Lucius Malfoy face was gone. And in its place was the face of the real Draco, one hardly anyone had ever seen. In their school days, she had only seen it twice, each time she drew back from kissing him. It was earnest and tender. As he closed his eyes and breathed against the crown of Astoria's head, Draco looked like someone desperate to give love and goodness in spite of himself. He looked like someone hurt, someone she wanted to help.

"I'm sorry," he repeated one last time, stroking Astoria's hair.

"It's not me who needs an apology," Astoria said as she looked up to stroke his cheek. She nodded toward the Weasleys. "Why don't you begin?"

Draco took in a massive breath of dusty drawing room air. "Do accept my apology," he said. "And hear me out. This next bit - it isn't easy to say. I've been planning how to do it for ages. That's why the chandelier has been left unrestored. I needed you to wait until you'd seen it again for yourself, Granger."

She sniffed, still unsure of him. "It's Weasley."

He nodded. "Yes, of course, Madam Weasley." Odd as it was, he spoke the name respectfully now, without making fun of her.

Her hand fidgeted in Charlie's. "Calling me Hermione would be fine."

Draco gave a nod, clearing his throat and opening one hand, his palm facing the floor. A stray crystal leapt up into his grip. He held it between his fingers, raised in front of his face. "You may have noticed I need no wands or incantations to control the locks, the lights, any inanimate object within this house. It's always been like this, even before I was of age."

He held the crystal in the lamplight, flashing a glint of white light off its surface. "The Malfoy family's power over this house is not well known. Perhaps if it was, then you might have asked yourself harder questions about how it was you escaped from here the night the werewolf brought you in with Potter."

Hermione blinked. "I have asked myself questions. Of course I have. Dobby died getting us out of here, and why? For what?"

Malfoy winced. "Yes, exactly," he said. "Questions about the elf, our Dobby. I assume Weasley knows the whole story. No need to go over it?"

"None at all. It's a family legend," Charlie said.

"It's a wizarding legend," Astoria added.

Draco huffed. "Everyone knows the story, and yet no one asks themself how it was possible that a house elf, or anyone, for that matter, could do anything to damage this house while all three living members of the Malfoy family simply stood here and watched them do it, as if we were powerless to prevent it."

Charlie's head perked up, his eyes on Hermione as she opened her mouth, about to speak. But what was there to say? She'd seen Draco manipulate the house himself. He wasn't lying about that. "But I saw Dobby do it," she protested anyway. "You can't tell me I didn't see it."

"I'm not trying to tell you any such thing," he said, taking a step toward her. "I just ask you to remember that I could have stopped him. Even without a wand, it would have been nothing for me to keep that chandelier anchored in the ceiling, or to dash it into the fireplace so Aunt Bella could keep handing you over to…" He couldn't finish, swallowing hard as Astoria laid a hand on his back. He shook his head, regaining his composure, blurting out the rest. "I couldn't let the werewolf have you. I let the elf take you away instead. With all of my upbringing screaming at me to stop the elf, I chose to let him carry on, get you out."

Mouth still partly open, Hermione was shaking her head. "Answer me this, Draco. Apart from Dobby's sacrifice, what I've wondered most about that night was how the chandelier could fall on me in such a way that it didn't kill or maim me." She turned to Charlie. "Ron's said the same, hasn't he Charlie? Every time he tells the story, Ron says that when he dragged me out from underneath the chandelier the last thing he expected to find was me alive and well with all of my limbs intact. Look at it, lying there completely destroyed. How did I survive that?"

Charlie nudged the edge of his shoe against the twisted metal nearest his foot.

"That was Draco too," Astoria answered. "He let the elf drop the chandelier, but then Draco charmed its fall so no one would be harmed."

"No one but Griphook's broken leg," Hermione muttered.

Draco's head fell into his hands. "These were split-second decisions, alright? It was the best I could do."

Astoria shot a frown in Hermione's direction as she wrapped an arm around Draco. "It was well done, darling. You saved your schoolmates and did it discreetly enough for the Dark Lord not to destroy your family for it. You were as heroic as anyone in such an impossible situation could have been."

Charlie cleared his throat. "Look, this is a lot. Hermione and I need to take a moment alone. We'll be out on the terrace."

Draco shook himself, as if waking up. "Yes, of course. But there's no need to go all the way back outside. You won't be disturbed in the library. And now that Hermione's seen the chandelier…"

He said no more, his eyes closing again, both of his hands outstretched. There was a grinding, scraping sound, the timbers in all four of the room's walls creaking, the floor and ceiling shaking. Under Draco's power, the chandelier was untangling itself, wood knitting itself together, glass unbreaking, metal untwisting. As it reshaped and reassembled itself, it was rising from the floor, crystals clinking against one another. An aperture opened in the ceiling like a hatch in a submarine. The centre pole of the chandelier sank into it before the opening closed itself neatly, tightly around it.

Draco opened his eyes to see the chandelier repaired and re-suspended above them. With a snap of his fingers, it was lit up, the room bright and warm with its dozens of tiny flames. There was the faintest whiff of burning plaster dust in the air. He lowered his arms, brushed the last of the dust from the front of his jacket. He was standing taller, as if he'd just set down a tremendous weight.

"Over there, that door connects to the library," he said, gesturing to a corner that had been too dark to see into a moment before. "Have your moment, Weasleys. Astoria and I will wait for you here."

Charlie clasped Hermione to his chest as the door to the library closed behind them. "We don't have to stay here a moment more if you don't want to," he said. "No matter what he's just told you, you don't owe the Malfoy family anything."

Hermione all but collapsed against him, letting Charlie's strength hold her up. "It makes sense, Charlie. The ancestral magic of this house, my lack of injuries that night - he's telling the truth about our escape. All these years I've spent learning not to hate him - it was hard work. Why didn't Draco just tell me all of this from the start? Why didn't he tell Harry?"

"What, and ruin his villain mystique? Honestly, I don't know. Why does Malfoy do anything? The more I know him, the more I'm convinced he's completely mad," Charlie said, shaking his head, breathing a quiet laugh through his nose.

Hermione tipped her head back, looking into Charlie's face. "But you don't dislike him."

Charlie rolled his eyes, sighing.

"He's growing on you, isn't he?" she said. "Like that big, awful Iron-belly dragon I named after him back at the sanctuary. You can't help but like him somehow. And I think he likes you, in his way. Astoria certainly does."

Charlie sighed. "Yes, she does. And since Malfoy is the husband of a woman I have felt great sympathy for recently, I want to believe he isn't a bad person. I'm inclined to see some good in him, though he doesn't make it easy. In fact, I'm fairly sure he's made it impossible. Whatever I don't hate about him, it's not enough to convince me we should be involved in - in whatever it is Astoria was begging him to get us to help them to do."

She blinked at him. "You're not even curious about what they want from us?"

Charlie let go of her, his head bowed. "I might have been once, but I'm not anymore. You see, love, while you were getting ready this morning, I finished reading the chapter of that fertility book marked with the ribbon. It was left at the page of a spell called Gravida Triadum, which as you might guess is - "

As if perfectly timed to interrupt him, the door of the library flung itself open. "Sorry to burst in so soon," Draco said, leading Astoria into the library by the hand, neither of them at all sorry. "The drawing room fireplace burns hotter than I remembered. It's been too long and I've gone and made the room unbearably warm. Hope you're feeling better, Hermione, and don't mind if we join you in here."

Charlie wouldn't be derailed. "Look, Malfoy. Tonight has been swell and all but - Gravida Triadum," he said, speaking the name of the spell in a loud, clear voice like a barrister making an accusation in a courtroom.

Astoria snatched her hand out of Draco's and swatted him with it. "What did you say to them?" she demanded.

"Nothing!" Draco answered. "Gravida Triadum? Why in the stars are you bringing up that, Weasley?"

"The book," Charlie insisted. "Don't tell me it was an accident that you left a marker in the book at the Gravida Triadum spell."

"Did I?" Draco said.

"What? Are you going to blame her?" Charlie glanced at Astoria. "It must have been you. And then we just happened to wind up with the book? No, you were intentionally drawing our attention to it. Don't be coy, Malfoy. You were warming us up to the spell. But - I'm sorry, Astoria. You're lovely and all, but there is no way we would - "

"Enough, Weasley," Draco interrupted, loud, alarmed.

Infuriated with their indirect talk, Hermione stopped asking for Draco to explain himself and produced the reducio-ed fertility book from her pocket, restoring it to size and slamming it on the large, square table in the centre of the rug. She was turning over the pages, looking for the bookmark and the spell herself.

"Go on and admit to Hermione what Gravida Triadum is while you still can, Malfoy," Charlie warned. "Admit to my wife that you brought us here hoping I'd cast a fertility spell on Astoria to keep her pregnancy from failing. And be sure to tell Hermione it's a spell that has to be cast by getting me to sleep with your wife."

Hermione stopped flipping pages in the book, her hands suddenly numb, her eyes wide with shock. Astoria whimpered and fell to sitting in the armchair. And Draco burst into laughter.

"Shut it!" Hermione wailed at him, crossing the floor and grabbing the lapels of his jacket. "How dare you try something like that? And just when you and Charlie might have become friends."

"I didn't try anything," Draco said, his laugh gone now that she was close. "I wouldn't do that. Not to my marriage and not yours, not to you."

She let go of him, staying close all the same.

"Yes, Gravida Triadum," he began, "is exactly what Weasley says it is. But I can't bring myself to use it. My parents, on the other hand, were in a more desperate situation, in the teeth of war and all that."

He looked at his feet. "The bookmark is theirs. Just like Astoria and me, my parents kept losing pregnancies early on. Mother studied every fertility spell book in Britain and then, while my father was in Auror custody, being questioned over some trouble he'd caused, Mum panicked. She was afraid she'd never see him again, and terrified that her pregnancy with me was her last chance to have a child, an heir. She didn't trust it not to fail. And if it did, she'd be left all alone, with just Aunt Bella for family. And so she went to the last young, healthy, single, unrelated wizard she believed she could trust, and they cast a Gravida Triadum spell to make sure I'd live to be born."

Draco smoothed his hair back from his forehead, baring a sharp widow's peak. "I'll bet you can guess who it was." He folded his arms and frowned deeply. With this expression, he did indeed look like someone they all knew.

Hermione gasped. "Snape?"

Draco nodded, his hair falling back into place. "Explains a lot, doesn't it? All those times he let me do whatever the blazing hell I wanted, everything he risked and lost to keep me safe. No, he's not my biological father. Anyone could see that can only be dear old Lucius. But Snape is one of my magical fathers, the third in the Gravida Triadum spell to which I owe my life."

"You see, that bookmark had nothing to do with you, Charlie," Astoria said, her voice low and soothing. "Please believe us. This Triadum business was never what we wanted from you - or from your wife."

Hermione startled. "What?"

"Yeah," Charlie said. "I couldn't bring myself to mention it before, but since the spell is magical and not a medical procedure, the sex of the third person in the Gravida Triadum doesn't matter. The spell could have just as easily been cast by Malfoy sleeping with - with…"

"With me?" Hermione said, backing away from where she was still standing too close to Draco.

He tilted his head to peer down at her, his low laugh sounding as she retreated. "Wouldn't that have been something?"

"Stop it, Draco. Some things are beyond joking about," Astoria said before Charlie could threaten him with more violence. She was on her feet, taking the fertility book in her own hands. "If we read a bit further, we'll get past the spells for couples and for triads and into the Gravida Sympatico section."

"Sympatico," Hermione repeated, her hand rising to her abdomen.

Draco clucked his tongue. "Yes. So very clever, Gran- Hermione."

Charlie stepped to Astoria's side, bending over the book, reading frantically at the runes. "A spell where one pregnancy is brought in to affect another?"

"Exactly," she said. "A spell where the vitality of one couple's pregnancy can enchant and strengthen that of a second couple's."

"Vitality?" Hermione chirped, a note of fear in her voice. She crossed her arms over her stomach. "If there's a transfer of vitality to the second baby, what happens to the vitality of the first one?"

Charlie was nodding, flipping the page, frowning and muttering as he read.

"It depends on the spell," Astoria admitted. "In all honesty, some of these are so ancient they're barbaric. In this one, for instance, the first child wastes away and can never be born. It was meant to save royal babies with entire nations depending upon orderly lines of succession to keep peace and maintain alliances."

Charlie turned the page so quickly it nearly tore.

"Disgusting, elitist rubbish," Hermione said. Charlie was so engrossed in reading, he didn't look up to see her backing away from the table, arms still clutched around her middle.

"Yes, it's vile. But there are other spells, better ones," Astoria said, turning the page herself. "In many of them, a direct sexual exchange between all four parties is optional. And if they're cast carefully, properly, both babies can end up stronger than they would have been otherwise. It can actually be quite lovely. Look at this one, Charlie."

He blew out a breath, rubbed his eyes, and read on.

"This is the one I was thinking of for the four of us," Astoria began.

"The five of us," Charlie corrected her. "Where's the bit about the first baby being unharmed?"

She grinned, folding her arms, confident he'd agree the spell was perfect. "It's there. Safety for all five of us - six, if all goes well. And it should. We have everything we need already. That's why we chose you. One of the couples needs to be already expecting. Both of those parents must be particularly strong in magic and body and heart. And the ties between the couples must be..."

She didn't finish. Across the room. Hermione had stepped backward into a small, round pedestal table heaped with books, teetering beside an armchair. It rocked and tipped, and as she spun around to right it, she lost her own balance. Draco had been watching. He caught the table with his house magic, and reached for Hermione, stopping her fall as he caught her in the crook of his arm.

When Astoria and Charlie looked up from the book to see the commotion, Draco was holding onto Hermione, leaning into her face to look at her, eye to eye. "You once told me to come to you when I was ready to ask for your help."

He paused, letting her remember, finding her way back to the compassion she'd felt for him when she found him after Harry's attack in sixth year, alone in the Hogwarts astronomy tower. The connection was easy to find, heavy and powerful, affecting not just the pair of them but Astoria and Charlie as well. Charlie started forward, as if he was about to vault over the book and the table and tear Hermione away. But he stopped when Astoria dropped a hand on his arm.

"And so now," Draco went on, eyes still locked on Hermione, "this is me, ready. This is me asking. Us asking. We're asking you and your husband - help us."