Draco held onto Hermione, snatching her out of the air as she was about to trip over a table in the library of Malfoy Manor. His eyes were locked on hers as he caught her. "You once told me to come to you for help. It was long ago, and I should have done it then. Well, I'm ready now," he said. "This is me asking. Us asking. We're asking you and your husband - help us."

Charlie couldn't bear any more. He stepped away from the spell book spread open on the table, out of Astoria's reach, her hand falling into empty air where it had once gripped his arm. He took hold of Hermione himself, stabilizing her in an upright stance instead of the unsteady, tipped posture in which Draco had held her. She clung to Charlie as he restored her balance, her face pale, her manner uncharacteristically quiet.

It gave Charlie the resolve to say, "No more help today, Malfoy. This is as far as we go."

Astoria was at his heels. "Charlie, please. At least read the rest of the Gravida Sympatico spell with me. It's ancient, rare, secret, and you won't be able to read about it anywhere else. Come and see that we don't want to hurt or compromise either of you. Everything sounds so needlessly intense when Draco says it. That's just his way. At least find out what exactly it is we're asking before you tell us no."

Charlie hung his head. "I have finished reading it. And we haven't told you no," he said. "But we can't tell you yes either. Not yet. Asking us to decide in a matter of a few hours if we'll form the other half of your fertility spell, bringing our baby into it... It's too much, Astoria. We need to stop and think. We need to wait."

Her eyes were wide and shining, mouth twisted. "I'm pleading with you," she said, her voice level but full of sorrow, "from Esther to Chester. Please help me find what you saw me lose on the first morning I knew you."

Hermione winced, turning her face toward Charlie's shoulder.

With his wife's arm still linked through the crook of his, Charlie took both of Astoria's hands in his. As he did, Draco clamped his arm around Astoria's shoulders. The four of them stood connected, suffering, desperately trying to communicate what they needed to each other.

Charlie's voice was tender, low and soothing. "Wait just a little, Astoria. Let us go home, clear our heads, study it out. The space will be good for the pair of you too. After spending this very odd day with us, you might want to change your minds as well."

"Quite the contrary," Draco said, his voice in the same calm register as Charlie's for once. "It's all far more perfect than I first imagined."

It was not a taunt. It was sincerity. And as his words ended, Hermione felt something stir inside her. For the first time ever, she had felt her child move its tiny, fragile body within hers. From the movement, a vibration seemed to rise from her abdomen, warm and pulsing through her chest and down her arm, toward Charlie.

She saw his expression change as the magic from her body entered his. Head swiveling away from Astoria to look at her, Charlie spoke. "Hermione? That - is it…"

Astoria let out a little cry, like a laugh only more joyful. The magic had passed through Charlie's hands and into hers. She threw her head back, as if there was no ceiling overhead and she was smiling directly into the stars. Enraptured, she answered Charlie's half-asked question. "It is!"

Draco was farthest from the source of the magic but it seemed to hit him most forcefully, as if it hadn't dissipated but magnified as it moved through each of them, growing stronger and brighter. He gasped and staggered, clutching with his free hand for the oak trim on the back of the armchair to keep himself up. The air hummed in his ears for a moment as the magic spiraled through the gnarled old woodwork, grounding itself, passing out of him.

"Great stars…" was all he was able to say.

Charlie dropped Astoria's hands and stepped back. Draco was righting his posture, scrubbing his face with his hands.

Astoria was beaming. "You felt that," she said, still addressing Charlie. "We all did. There wasn't even a proper spell, no potions or incantations and still - these children, they know what they want."

Hermione was holding her stomach, guarding it as Astoria went on.

"It's perfect," Astoria was saying. "You know that. It's pure. It is POSSIBLE for us to take a Gravida Sympatico spell and make it work. You all know it's true."

"Enough, Astoria," Draco said, still paler than usual. "Let them go. They'll be back. Hermione isn't about to give up on the reading she needs to do in our library. Recovering her parents, her family - that is a project I understand very well."

He extended his arm and a book came flying from a high shelf and into his open hand. "You're not the only one of us to lose parents in the war, Hermione. Even if you never do the same for me, I will do what I can to help you get your family back."

He quieted Charlie's protest by slamming the book against his chest as he passed it to him. "Here," Draco said. "This is the book on Occlumency potions Potter failed to copy properly. The bookmark," he said, "is in the chapter on potions made from dragon by-products. The second book needs to stay inside the manor, but you can come see it whenever you need to."

Hermione took the book from Charlie, dignified as she nodded and told Draco, "Thank you."

"And so you can come and go as you please," Astoria said, drawing her wand. "I'm giving you both clearance to use this Floo."

Hermione flinched as Astoria tapped her shoulder, then Charlie's, like a queen knighting them.

"Such trust is not extended lightly," Draco said. "And such is the trust we have in you."

Charlie had spent much of his leave from the dragon sanctuary refitting the Grangers' London house for wizard life. Part of that was unearthing the fireplace boarded up in the wall of the lounge and connecting it to the Floo network. He strode out of it just after Hermione did, landing at her back, clasping his arms around her and pressing his palms to her stomach.

He was whispering in her ear. "It all started when you felt the baby move. You did, didn't you?"

She pressed her hands to his, easing him closer to where she'd sensed the baby, turning her head to speak against his face. "You're not supposed to know until I tell you," she said through a smile. "How are you doing that?"

He turned her in the circle of his arms. "I don't know. I don't understand a lot of what's happened today. But I'm not complaining about this." He bent and kissed her, gently, soft and lingering. When they came apart it was with a sigh, all the tension of the day with the mad Malfoys ebbing away.

They were both still thinking of them, wondering if it was some synergy in the connection between the four of them that made the baby's presence palpable and powerful to people besides Hermione herself. But neither of them wanted to speak of it. They wanted this moment for themselves, for their own family.

Hermione's eyes brightened. "Let's check Wizard's What to Expect," she said. "Is that what it's called? That book Percy gave us that you've been reading nonstop? Does it say anything about fathers sensing infant magic?"

Charlie hummed, spinning around in the centre of the room to look for the book without letting go of her, her skirts flying out behind her. "There it is." He summoned the book and collapsed onto the sofa, still holding Hermione. She let out a squeal as they landed in the upholstery, the creak in the springs now a screech.

"Charles Weasley, there isn't going to be a single original piece of my parents' furniture left undamaged by the time you're through with this house," she said, nestling into his arms on the sofa anyway.

He growled against her neck, his fingertips slipping beneath the hem of her shirt, warm and rough against her skin. "Don't start calling me Charles now or we'll never get any reading done."

She brushed her nose enticingly against his, but straightened her clothes and opened the book, thumbing to the index to find everything the book had to say about fathers. It didn't take long for them to realize they weren't going to find what they were looking for. Hermione had a stack of books upstairs but they were more technical, less focused on relationships, no help.

"What about this?" she said, flipping to the book's dust jacket. "Look, it says if we have any questions, we can contact this number on the fire network and the makers of Wizards' What to Expect will give us the latest pregnancy and childbirth news and information.

Charlie frowned. "It's just a way to sell us something - more books or a line of nappies or teething wands or some such thing."

"Oh, don't be like that," Hermione said, patting his cheeks. "And here I thought you were Wizard What to Expect's biggest fan."

"It's a useful book, yes," he said. "But that doesn't mean I want it to come to life in our fireplace grate."

"Come on, Charlie," she said, slipping off the sofa and scooting across the floor to the fire. "If we don't like it, we'll disconnect. Simple as that."

He gave a heavy sigh. If his suspicions were true and his connection to the baby's first movement was somehow related to the Malfoys, he didn't want to confirm it tonight on the advice of some book salesman. He was enjoying this version of the story better, where it was special magic for himself, Hermione, and the baby.

He followed her across the floor all the same. "Hermione, there's no need - "

But she had already spoken the fire coordinates from the back of the book into the grate. The flames flared green and then orange and the call was connected. Instead of seeing a head through the flames, the cover of the book appeared, made not of paper but of fire. It rotated slowly as a voice spoke to them.

"Thank you for calling Wizard What to Expect's helpline. This is Perry speaking. How may I help you?"

Hermione cleared her throat. "Yes, good evening. We're sixteen weeks into our first pregnancy and - "

"Wait," Charlie called into the fire. "This is WHO speaking?"

"I beg your pardon," the fire answered back. "This is Perry Wazlib, from Wizard What to Expect."

Hermione opened her mouth to speak again but Charlie touched her arm, shaking his head, hushing her.

"Say something else, Mr. Wazlib," he called into the fire.

"S-something, um, else," the fire answered back. "Is everything alright, sir?"

Charlie's head fell into his hands. Hermione might have been alarmed but he was laughing to himself, raking his hands through his hair. "I knew it," Charlie muttered to Hermione. "Didn't I tell you?"

"What?" Hermione mouthed back at him. "Is it the Malfoys again?"

"Malfoys?" Charlie scoffed, nearly breaking out of his whisper. "No, but listen to that voice. I know it like it was my own. Stars, it even sounds like my own."

"Would it be more convenient for you to contact us at another time, sir?" asked the voice from fire which, now that Charlie mentioned it, did sound not only familiar, but similar to his.

"No, everything's alright," Charlie answered. "Now stand back, Percy. It's Charlie here. And we're coming through."

By the light of the fire they had just traveled, Hermione and Charlie sat on the sofa in Percy and Audrey's lounge. Audrey sat in a rocking chair holding Molly as she slept. Did Audrey ever put her down, Hermione wondered. Something in her shuddered a little at the thought of being so constantly occupied. But Audrey never looked discontented.

Percy set cups of tea on the table beside the sofa for Charlie and Hermione and settled himself onto the ottoman at Audrey's knee. "So you've found us out," he said.

"Yes, looks like I've gone and exposed the entire Wizard What to Expect empire," Charlie smirked. "Congratulations, mate. It's a best-seller. You're the Gilderoy Lockhart of pregnancy manuals."

This amused Audrey and they got to experience her seldom-heard laugh. It wasn't that Audrey never laughed, just that in the racket of Weasley family gatherings, it was difficult to hear hers above the rest.

Percy cringed at the mention of Lockhart, and the memory of his Head Boy year at school when he lost Ginny for days on end. "Well, we didn't write it for glory, did we Audrey."

She shook her head over the baby's shoulder as she rocked.

"I'd been telling people I suspected you of writing it," Charlie said. "Mostly, I was joking. It was Ginny who first took it seriously."

Percy huffed. "Ginny? I'm surprised she read it."

Charlie was stammering. "Well - erm - "

"So what moved you to write it?" Hermione said, rushing to change the subject. "I never knew you to have any specialty with reproduction and development, Percy. Was it your interest, Audrey?"

She went to speak but fell quiet when Molly stirred in her sleep, struggling as if to lift her head and wake up.

"We wrote it out of necessity," Percy said in a low voice. "You'll remember that George was married after us but Baby Fred was born before our girl. That's because Baby Molly wasn't easy to come by. It took months of intense research and complicated preparations to get her here."

Hermione clucked her tongue. "Percy, you were still a father after just two years of being married."

But Charlie whistled. "A protracted wait in the Prewett-Weasley family."

"Exactly," Percy said. "We must have read every fertility spell book in Britain before we found what we needed to charm ourselves with a viable pregnancy. It wasn't easy. And in the process, we became experts who wanted to save other families the grief we went through ourselves."

A shiver ran through Hermione. Read every fertility spell book in Britain - that was precisely how Draco had described his mother's struggle to stay pregnant with him. Charlie was thinking the same. They shared a look as he squeezed her hand.

"Look, Perce," he began. "We need advice from someone we can trust completely - "

"And Bill is out of the country," Percy finished with a wan smile.

Charlie dropped a hand on Percy's shoulder. "That's not it at all. We need advice from you, and from Audrey. That's why we connected to the helpline fire in the first place."

Percy accepted it. "Right. Go one then. We'll do our best."

Charlie took a deep breath and asked Percy to tell them about fathers' prenatal sensations of infant magic.

Percy jolted in his seat on the ottoman.

"You're experiencing father sensation at sixteen weeks?" Audrey said, barely above a whisper over her fitfully sleeping baby.

"Yes. Rather remarkable ones. Is that early?" Hermione said.

"Yeah," Percy said. "Mothers can barely feel their infants at sixteen weeks. But fathers? It's all but unheard of - under normal conditions."

Audrey hummed, getting bolder the nearer they came to her expertise. "Normal conditions," she echoed. "What else was happening when you felt it, Charlie? Surely you weren't simply sitting around watching the Grangers' telly-viser when suddenly…"

Hermione squirmed and looked to Charlie, leaving it to him to decide how much he wanted his family to know about their recent contact with the Malfoys.

For now, he only shrugged.

Percy scratched his head. "You didn't bring it on with a spell?"

Charlie shook his head. "No spells, no potions, no charms or magical creatures."

Audrey was squinting into the fire. "Other witches and wizards could count as magical creatures here," she said. "Did it happen when the pair of you were alone?"

Percy nodded as he saw Hermione's face flush red. "Interesting. Someone else was there. And they weren't our family members."

It wasn't a question, but Hermione answered anyway. "That's right."

"I'll assume they were another nubile couple, in the midst of their childbearing years," he continued. "A pair to whom you have a strong emotional connection."

Charlie bowed his head and ran his hands through his hair again.

It was answer enough for Percy. "And Charlie's connection to the woman is particularly strong, while Hermione's connection to the man is also..."

Baby Molly hiccoughed in her sleep, and as Audrey shifted from holding her on her shoulder to cradling her in her arms, she said, "Plain as day. That's the preliminaries of Gravida Sympatico, isn't it Percy. They're being drawn into a tier four fertility spell."

Hermione chirped. "Ancient, rare, and secret spells, my eye," she said. "How do you know anything about it?"

Percy sighed again. "We managed to get and stay pregnant with Molly through a tier two fertility spell - charms between just Audrey and I. Those are the ones we wrote about in the book. They're tricky but safe and becoming more well-known. But in case tier two didn't work, we educated ourselves on tier three and tier four fertility spells as well."

"We had no interest in a triadum," Audrey rushed to say. "The inescapably sexual nature of the contact with the third party is - it's not for us."

"But at tier four, the spells were better suited for us. They don't necessarily demand actual sex with anyone outside the marriage," Percy said. He clapped Charlie on the knee. "You're both aware of that, aren't you?"

Charlie nodded. "Yes."

"Right. Shared sex makes it a safer bet, but even without it, as long as the emotional connections are sufficiently strong, everything should work," Percy said. "The most difficult bit about tier four is finding a matched couple that is already expecting. For us, we got into contact with Audrey's long lost childhood crush. He's an old chum of mine from school and all. Our plan was that, as soon as his wife fell pregnant, we'd get together and bring Molly to life."

"They were very nice about it," Audrey said. "Dear Murrfit and Maxine. It's almost a pity we didn't need them. We'd be just like family now if we had."

Hermione shook her head. "So you trusted this spell? You would have tried it yourselves - risked your bodies and your children?"

"And your marriage?" Charlie added.

Audrey stood up, easing Molly out of her arms and into Percy's, stretching herself in front of the fire, rubbing at her neck. Percy gazed down at his daughter's sleeping face. "To bring Molly into our lives, what wouldn't I have risked?"

"But," Charlie said, leaning closer to his brother, "but what about the other family - your Murrfit and Maxine? What's the matter with them? What made them willing to risk it? I mean, the risk of harm to the existing pregnancy is low, but it isn't nil."

Percy breathed deeply, inhaling Audrey as she draped herself over his shoulders from behind, resting against his back as he cradled Molly on his perch on the ottoman. She smelled wonderfully like herself to him, and like Molly too as she leaned forward to kiss his cheek.

"They're good people," Percy said. "Murrfit and Maxine are generous and kind, and invested in our nation moving on from the awfulness of the war. They knew my story, my history with the Ministry during its darkest time. And they wanted to give Audrey and I a chance at a fresh start, at a family and healing. They offered us the spell not because we convinced them that I deserved it, but because it was so clear that I didn't deserve it."

Audrey hummed a note of comfort against his ear. Otherwise the room was silent, Charlie and Hermione sitting side by side, their fingers intertwined, transfixed, watching Percy and his family in the firelight.

Percy returned their looks. "Charlie, we searched all over Britain for a book on Gravida Sympatico before we gave up and traveled to the Continent to see the copy kept in a special archive in a Danish university. But we know the book does indeed exist in Britain. It's in a private collection, belonging to someone I couldn't bring myself to approach."

Charlie sighed, sitting back, away from Percy.

He spoke slightly louder and very seriously. "Charlie, I know exactly where the British copy is, and whose it is."

Charlie let the back of his head land with a thud against the top of the sofa. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Be careful," Percy said. "If properly cast, a tier four fertility spell is safe. I can tell you that. But as for finding safety with the Malfoy family - the only advice I can offer you there is extreme caution."

No matter what he might have been fretting over before bedtime, Charlie fall right to sleep that night. Hermione envied him, her eyes wide open in the dark of their bedroom, watching him. He rolled onto his stomach, his arms sliding beneath his pillow, as if even in his sleep he knew how to show her how lovely he was. She slid her hand over his triceps, closed her eyes as the touch of his skin defused some of her anxiety. His body was like a potion to her now, magic for making her happy by mere contact with it. Not wanting to disturb him. she dropped the lightest kiss she could against the freckled point of his elbow.

Maybe it was because she'd seen Percy that night, reminding her of the hosts of Charlie's brothers. Or maybe it was because she had been in Draco's arms again, his eyes full of pain, needing her help again, like he had when she'd wandered Hogwarts heartbroken and stumbled into his arms before. Whatever had prompted it, somehow events had combined to set Hermione thinking about Ron.

He'd been married to Gabrielle for a few months now. The wedding had been the poshest Weasley wedding ever, Madam Delacour unwilling to settle for a tent a second time. Everything was decorated in Veela silver, which seemed a bit too on the nose for Hermione. Fleur and Bill's oldest daughter had been dressed in a gown and made to roam around dropping enchanted petals that flew into the air and unfurled as fairies. What would the next bit of high romance from Ron and Gabrielle be? As far as Hermione knew, they might very well be expecting by now too. This blasted Weasley fertility - stars bless it.

She was not in love with Ronald anymore - not in the least. She had never stopped loving him like a family member. And even Gabrielle was growing on her. Someday, they might be good friends. Yes, things were good between Hermione and Ron. So why was it then, that on long sleepless nights like this, after she'd exhausted herself thinking about real problems, she often came back to this nagging feeling like something still wasn't finished, something to do with the years she spent with Ron? She frowned against her pillow, turning onto her other side, away from Charlie. She had to think of something else.

When she couldn't get her mind to stop, she typically took advantage of its activity and got up to read. She had the Malfoys' Occlumency book now. But it wasn't what she wanted to read. The matter of her parents seemed out of sequence - an enormous problem for another night. What she wanted to read was the book Astoria had left open on the table at Malfoy Manor, the fertility spell book. Charlie had read the entire section on Gravida Sympatico, but she had yet to read it herself.

She sat up in bed, slid her legs over its edge. She crossed the floor to the little writing desk they kept there and was about to reach for parchment and a quill to write a note to Charlie telling him she'd gone to Malfoy Manor to do some reading. She had dipped the nib of the quill before Percy's words came back to her, almost ghostlike.

"Extreme caution."

She shrugged. Going to the manor without telling anyone, all alone in the middle of the night, was not even moderate caution. Then again, ignoring Percy's advice was a Weasley tradition. But still…

"Someone we can trust completely…" That was how Charlie had described Percy when it came to this business. Maybe this time, Percy's advice was different.

"But still…" she said aloud, her eyes fixed on the bedroom window, on the high pale face of the moon drifting over the rooftops.

She blotted her quill, and finished the note.