After not nearly enough sleep, Draco woke up with three tasks to accomplish. Each of them was urgent, each of them was massive, each of them had to do with a different woman.

The first one was ringing around his ears as soon as he stepped out of his room.

"Malfoy, whatever did you do to Pansy last night?" Daphne Greengrass was in the common room, demanding to know. "All the shouting outside our bedroom doors?" she clarified when he feigned having no idea what she meant.

He growled something about it being none of anyone's business. This inflamed the situation and an instant later he was weathering the complaints of everyone in the common room at once, all of them protesting that if it was truly no one else's business, then there was no good reason why the commotion of it forced everyone awake in the middle of the night.

Draco declined to defend himself any further, storming up to breakfast alone instead.

At the Slytherin table in the Great Hall, all of the students within ten seats of Draco stood up and moved elsewhere as soon as he sat down. Further down the table, on the other side, he saw a similar buffer of empty seats between Pansy and the rest of their housemates.

"Oh, I see," Draco muttered.

It seemed his house was not satisfied with punishing him and Pansy for the noise in the night by merely shouting at them en mass in the common room. No, their offense had been deemed serious enough to be punishable by a traditional Slytherin shunning. For the rest of the day, Draco and Pansy would be ignored by every Slytherin in school. Most of the time, Draco would have agreed with the rest of his house that this was the best way to handle conflict. No one got hurt and no one had to lose face apologizing either.

But it was a rather unfortunate development in light of his need to keep Pansy from spending the day alone and unprotected. Someone had to stay near her, and with two other tasks for him to take care of today, it couldn't be Draco.

He went to sit in one of the empty chairs beside her. As he sat, he could almost feel the wave of regret flooding off the rest of the Slytherins who were cross with them mostly because they hadn't yet found out what they had to talk about in the dead of night, and now they were sitting too far away to overhear it.

"I know, Draco," Pansy said, her hand in his face before he could say a word. "Don't leave the castle and don't go anywhere alone."

"So you're going to listen to me?"

She lowered her hand, scowling into his face. "Wouldn't you like to know."

He leaned in close to whisper to her, looking from a distance like he was nibbling sensuously at her ear. "The problem is, I brought a charm home with me, and when the - when you-know-who found it, he demanded to know who made it. And when I wouldn't answer, my mother assumed it was you. So that's what he believes. He's raging mad about it, for some reason, and I'm afraid you might get picked up and dragged off for questioning."

She shifted sideways in her seat, away from him. "So let him question me then. I've done nothing wrong. Not everyone around here is a habitual sneak. You-know-who can pick through my brain 'til his wand rots to pieces. I've got nothing to hide."

Draco shuddered. "Pansy, you don't understand what that would be like - "

"Who made the charm they found?" she interrupted. "Obviously it wasn't me. Who was it? Not that I can't tell. It was her, wasn't it?" Pansy glared over her shoulder at the Gryffindor table. "If they pick me up, I'll tell them it was Hermione Granger's charm, and they'll send me back here safe and sound, with their gratitude, in a heartbeat."

Draco grabbed her arm in both of his hands. "Pansy, it won't go that way. Remember what they did to Cedric Diggory? He was pure-blood too and it didn't matter to them at all. It never really does. They'll see you as a spare who knows too much and - and you might not make it back at all."

She brought the fist of her free hand down hard on the tabletop. "Of course you'd say that. Every girl but yours is a spare, yeah?"

"Pansy, that's not - "

"Everything alright, Parkinson?" It was Ron Weasley, standing with his fists clenched, breaching the empty space around them.

Pansy groaned, pulling her arm out of Draco's grip. "Stand down, Weasley. This is a private matter."

Ron was shaking his head. "Nope. Much too loud to be private."

He was twitching for a confrontation with Malfoy, something in public, something about how to treat a girl - a message to everyone about which of them was the better man. So he couldn't have been more shocked when instead of rising to meet him, Malfoy grabbed his robes and hauled him down to sit on the other side of Pansy on the Slytherin bench.

"Weasley, thank the stars you came. Right. Now you need to keep this secret," Draco began. "I wouldn't normally burden you with it, but I'm getting no help from any Slytherins today and I'm desperate."

Ron leaned forward, both of the boys hissing at each other over Pansy's plate. "I'll agree to nothing unless you tell me everything."

Draco leaned in closer. "Fine. The fact is, my mother has mistaken a charm Hermione made for me as being made by Pansy. It's a rather impressive and advanced charm, and it's attracted the interest of some of my parents' - more dangerous friends."

Ron's blanched white under his freckles. "Dangerous friends," he repeated, understanding perfectly.

Draco nodded, his eyes wide and dark. "Yes. I'm afraid Pansy might get taken away and questioned about it. If she does, I can tell you, it will definitely turn out badly."

"For the love of Boggarts, Draco," Pansy interrupted. "I can handle myself."

"This one," he went on, pointing at Pansy but looking at Ron, "says she'll handle it by simply grassing up Hermione, easy as you please."

Ron groaned. "Why'd'you have to be like that, Parkinson?"

"I'll be however I like."

"Anyway," Draco shouted over them before dropping his voice again. "To keep everyone safe, I'm asking you, Weasley, to make sure Pansy stays in the castle where she can't be snatched, and that she's never alone even on the school grounds until these petty housemates of ours are finished with today's ceremonial shunning."

Ron rolled his eyes. "Bloody Slytherins."

"You've got all the same classes as her anyways, haven't you? Mine are a bit different. But for you, most of the time, you won't even notice you're watching her."

Pansy let out a frustrated exclamation. "I do not need a big, loud ginger nanny."

"That is precisely what you need," Draco said. "You're too stubborn to listen to good advice and this is what you get instead."

"Drop the savior act, Malfoy," Weasley said. "I'll happily tail Parkinson for the rest of the day, but not for you. I'm doing it because you've spooked me, good and proper, with your family's creepy connections to the worst of people. If I'm protecting Parkinson from anyone, it's from the likes of you."

Draco stood up. "Fine, however you like it. Just stay together."

"Can you believe him?" was the last thing Draco heard Weasley saying as he grabbed a slice of dry toast and sprinted up to the owlery.

The second task of the day had to do with Draco's mother, and the ongoing and harrowing problem of her safety. While Snape had been meeting in private with the Dark Lord in the drawing room of Malfoy Manor, Draco had been in the hall with his mother, listening to her plead with him to offer some kind of sign that he was making any progress at all with the mission the Dark Lord had given him that summer.

Though packages were being inspected on arrival at Hogwarts, students' letters were still private and Draco had managed to receive Borgin's first set of instructions on how to begin repairing the vanishing cabinet. The very sight of the letter, written in Borgin's slanting ornate handwriting, the ink jagged as if he wrote with one of the cursed antiques from his own shop, made Draco queasy. He'd experimented enough to prove that the cabinet was indeed broken, but otherwise, he hadn't been able to bring himself to work on it in earnest.

Now with his newfound hope, he had reasons to feel less queasy, and reasons to act quickly to buy himself and his mother more time while he and Hermione looked for another solution. He would create a distraction - provide the kind of sign his mother wanted even if at its heart it was little more than an empty gesture.

Creating such a sign meant going back to Borgin, and taking off his hands an infamous cursed opal necklace that had been in the shop so long and displayed so prominently that Draco couldn't remember a time when he hadn't known it. Anyone who'd ever been shopping in the Diagon Alley neighbourhood should recognize it and know to avoid it. At least, Draco assumed everyone made it off the beaten path and into Knockturn Alley, to Borgin's shop. He'd seen Potter in there more than once, at any rate.

If he sent the necklace to Dumbledore, it would count as an assassination attempt, but one to which the headmaster would definitely not succumb.

In the owlery, Draco wrote a note to Gringotts advising them to release the galleons Borgin was asking to buy the necklace. The second note was to Borgin himself, agreeing to buy the necklace and instructing him to send it to a nest box at the post office in Hogsmeade, where people without their own owls sent and received their letters and packages. It was a system that worked well enough for the poor and for the sneaky. Safely wrapped, the necklace could remain in the box in Hogsmeade until Draco's contact in town was able to pass it to a Hogwarts student to turn it over to Filch, to deliver it to Dumbledore, who would, no doubt, dispose of it. It was a complicated, risky path, but the only one Draco could see.

He scratched his own owl on its downy head as he passed it by and sent his messages by one of the school owls instead. Standing in the unglazed window of the owlery, he watched the plain little bird winging away. It was a weak and fake murder plot, but it had shaken him all the same. He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and went downstairs for class.

By lunchtime, Pansy had stopped glaring over her shoulder at Ron. She had even slowed down her pace to walk through the corridors at his side. As they came into the dining hall, she was listening to him complain about their astronomy homework.

"Please Weasley, it may surprise you to hear this, but not all girls like to talk about schoolwork during lunch breaks." She sat down at the Slytherin table, which was promptly vacated by the shunning masses.

Ron glanced over at the Gryffindor table, where Hermione was ranting to Harry about their astronomy assignment. He sat down in Pansy's empty section, expecting to be swiftly evicted by some of the Slytherin heavies. It had been a while since Ron had tangled with Crabbe or Goyle and he was sure they'd be keen to go again. But no one came near him.

"Blimey, they are serious about this shafting business."

"Shunning," Pansy corrected him.

"All this for having a loud argument in the middle of the night? We row at all hours in Gryffindor all the time."

"That's because you're all unhinged. We're civilized in Slytherin." She was helping herself to a bowl of stew. "What are you waiting for?" she asked when he didn't move to take anything for himself.

He shook himself and began dishing up. "Everyone civilized except for you and Malfoy then?"

"Oh, I'm civil enough," she said, Ron still wholly unconvinced. "But do you know what Draco said to me last night? We'll see how civil you feel once you hear it, Weasley. He told me, straight up, that he is in love with Granger."

Ron slowed in ladelling stew into his bowl. "I can accept," he began, "that there's a certain chemistry between them, enough to keep them snogging in shady corners for going on two years. But they're not in love. Love is different."

Pansy turned to watch him buttering a thick slice of brown bread. He talked about love as if he knew it, as if what he'd felt for Granger all this time wasn't just a crush. He talked about love as if it made him infinitely sad. She continued more carefully. "I'm sorry, Weasley. But that's exactly what he said. And it was believable - so believable it completely gutted me." She looked away, into her bowl, stirring at the stew. "What do you think Granger would say about it if you asked her?"

"Hermione?" He turned around to look directly at her. She was eating over a book while Harry talked to Dean and Seamus about quidditch. Malfoy sat by himself reading a book too. "I dunno. But let's not let it ruin our appetites. Eat up. We can be miserable later." He balanced a buttered slice of bread on the rim of Pansy's bowl.

She cleared her throat. "What have you got to do during the free period after lunch? I need to know so I can decide whether I'll keep playing along as if you're protecting me today."

"I usually head down to the quidditch pitch for a bit of practice on my own around now. Flying maneuvres and whatnot." This was usually where his conversations with Hermione ended. But maybe it didn't have to be like that with every girl not on already on the team. "You much of a flyer, Parkinson?"

She smirked. "My parents put me in figure flying when I was younger."

Ron's eyes widened. "With the music and the costumes?" He laughed.

"Shut it, Weasley. It's actually very athletic."

"Right, it's spectacular." He stood up. "Come on then, let's go for a fly, Parkinson. Not schoolwork, but not out of school bounds. Perfect really. How about it?"

She took one more look in Draco's direction. His seat was now empty, and so was Hermione's. She tugged on Ron's arm as she stood up. "Go on then."

In the library, Draco moved directly to the back wall, over the rope of the restricted section, now unrestricted to him as a NEWT student. Hermione was there already, wearing a pair of white gloves though she was turning the pages of a large, decrepit codex with her wand rather than her fingers.

Draco grabbed her around the waist, leaned over her shoulder from behind, and kissed her cheek as ardently as a cheek can be kissed. All the while he was glancing at the entrance, keeping watch.

"Get off me," she laughed, her wand jostling with alarming force between the delicate pages as she swayed forward with him. "The Mitrian Monks do not approve."

"If they wrote spells for love charms they won't mind much," he said as he kissed along her face, toward her ear.

"Well, Madam Pince doesn't write love charms - " The rest of her protest disappeared in a gasp as his lips nipped her earlobe.

"We don't know that." He released her ear and started down her throat.

She shivered and sunk back against him. "And your tricky Malfoy passageway spells can't hide the entrance to the," she drew in a breath and let it shake through her, "restricted section," she finished much more slowly than she usually spoke. "Draco, I really can't concentrate…"

Which meant he had succeeded in his aim, and now he pulled his mouth away from her neck and commanded himself to focus on the book on the table in front of them. "Right. Concentrate."

"Let go of my waist too."

He sighed, stepped away, and watched her profile as she explained what she was reading. "So looking at it now, the night I inscribed the spell on you, in the hospital wing under the influence of about a dozen potions, I didn't remember just one spell but this entire section." She pinched a centimetre of thick, bound parchment pages between her gloved fingers. "I mixed them up, making a custom spell out of all these ancient ones, and adding a little of myself too."

Draco raised his eyebrows. "You remixed the Mitrian Monks?"

"That's one way to put it. I think of it more like, the Monks created an archive of everything we need for advanced love charms, and as long as we're artful and earnest and respectful of their original spirit, we can take and use what we want. And it looks like we can add to it too. For instance, most of the Monks' animal familiars were doves, but instead of hunting down a dove and squeezing the poor thing to make it irate enough to peck your arm, I had Crookshanks fill in with his claw. But it seems to have worked anyway."

"Probably worked a damn sight better."

She turned from the book to smile at him. "I think so."

He had just begun to bend to kiss her when she jerked her head back to her reading. "So it's hard to say which of these spells I used, since I used all of them. And that means it's also difficult to work out what the lasting effects of my version of Mitrian love charm inscriptions may be."

Draco remembered something. "Yours is different, I know it," he said. "When - when he thought he was removing mine, he made some comment about how badly it must have hurt when it was inscribed. Only it didn't hurt. Maybe he wasn't just gloating when he said it. Maybe he was testing to see what kind of charm it was before going any further so he'd know how to handle it. And maybe because I said it didn't hurt, he handled it wrong."

She hummed. "The book does say something about pain. I'll read it again."

His mind was working, and he was all questions now. "What does the book say about consequences for wizards who try to vanquish charms like these? Is there anything about what kind of damage someone could sustain if they attacked a charm?"

Hermione was frowning. "That's harder to make out than I'd hoped. Look at the manuscript, Draco, it's not just fancy calligraphy, it's written in runes. I've been learning runes, but reading them is slow going, and nerve-wracking without a professor to check my work."

"You can do it. You should probably be the one checking your professor's work." By now, Draco had mastered paying her compliments.

She nodded. "Thank you. I do think I can get it well enough. But it won't be easy. Even when I can read the runes, I still don't always know what they're about just because they're so old and strange. Look here: this one says the charm will have certain properties only if cast while the constellation Heibeles is in retrograde."

Draco frowned deeper than ever. "Heibeles? There's no such constellation."

"No, it's a cypher. We find them all the time in medieval writing. The name Heibeles is hiding the name of a real constellation, on purpose, so that only a worthy Monk will know which it is."

Draco swore. "Well, you just worry about decoding the original manuscript. Leave the cyphers to me. I can research that without reading runes. And I'll start studying runes on the side, anyways. I'll catch up." He opened his book bag, looking for parchment and a quill to start making notes on the cyphers.

Hermione hopped and threw both her arms around his neck, kissing him on the mouth. He hadn't expected it and scrambled to hold her with his hands still full of stationery. Clumsy and flailing, he opened to her kiss anyway, closing his eyes completely to the restricted section and its entrance.

"Thank you," she said again, breaking away, his arms still around her. "I've never worked with anyone who didn't just stand by with his hands in his pockets waiting for me to do all the book work myself. Harry came back here once, had one book scream in his face, and bolted. Didn't come back until the Triwizard Tournament and hasn't been seen in here since."

Draco gathered her closer. "Prats."

"Yes, they are. Thank goodness you're all prats in your own different ways."