Snape stood looming over Draco and Hermione in the centre of his office floor. He was no longer taller than Draco, but standing before Snape still made him feel like a child, a little boy incapable of defying him. But little boy Draco was not here. In his place was a person clutching Hermione Granger's wrist, stepping in front of her, a living barrier between her and Snape.

Draco started with her. "Hermione, I don't know who you think Professor Snape is," he said, "but you don't know him like I do. He's been in my life since before you even knew what magic was, and I can tell you he doesn't fight for the same things as you."

Snape seemed amused. "Vague enough to be fair enough."

Draco's courage was mounting, and he had turned to look Snape directly in the face when he said, "You told me summoning Hermione's mark drew the Dark Lord's attention and his ire. You said it put us all in danger - my mother too. And now you're asking us to show it to you tonight just because you're curious? Because you'd like to see it?"

Snape frowned. "The headmaster believes the information I could glean from examining it would be worth - the risk."

"Our risk," Draco corrected him. "If it's so important, then why isn't Professor Dumbledore here looking at it himself?"

Hermione startled. Draco's complaint about an absent Dumbledore's sounded like Harry's, all through last year.

Snape was no longer frowning. "Come now, Draco, the headmaster has many reasons not to make you his pet this year, does he not?"

Draco's face blanched white.

"The hand of the Dark Lord is upon you, Mr. Malfoy. The less you see of the headmaster, the better for everyone. I am the envoy Professor Dumbledore has chosen to deal with people of your - ilk. As in any coordinated reconnaissance effort, the Order's activities are multi-faceted and the headmaster is engaged elsewhere."

"With Harry," Hermione supplied. "With Harry's private lessons, and with Professor Slughorn, and with something called horcruxes."

Snape's eyes narrowed. "Miss Granger, what the headmaster has deemed private ought to remain - absolutely - private."

"I agree with him there," Draco said. "As long as we don't know who we can trust, it's best if we all keep our secrets."

"Well, I disagree," Hermione said, scuffling with Draco to push him aside so she could better speak with Snape, but winding up more entwined, held back in both of Draco's arms instead. "If we'd all been able to be more open with each other last year, Sirius Black might not have died."

At the mention of that night at the Department of Mysteries, Draco's hold on her cinched tighter. She fought on anyway. "Professor Snape," she said, "there is nothing left on horcruxes in any of the books in the library. It's as if it's been purged. So I am forced to speak to you about them here - "

"Miss Granger - "

"All I know is that horcruxes have something to do with Voldemort's return and Harry and spells that leave strong lingering traces in physical objects and bodies - "

"Hermione, don't say any - "

"And isn't that what our charm is?" she called over their voices. "The mark I left on Draco's arm - it's not a curse, it's a blessing. It's got to be why the Dark Mark hasn't corrupted him. It's why Voldemort is too afraid to summon him to himself anymore - "

"Miss Granger - !"

"Professor Snape, tell me. Isn't our charm the same as a horcrux, another kind of a corporeal charm?"

Snape lunged closer. "You have jumped to some startling conclusions, Miss Granger. Some very dangerous ones indeed. And I can hardly be expected to tell you anything about your charm if I can't see it for myself. The residue left on the Dark Lord from when he vanished it tells me next to nothing."

From between his arms, Hermione looked up at Draco. He shook his head, still refusing.

"Then I'll just draw it for him," she offered, "with a quill on a parchment."

Draco hated it but could think of no objection to it. She stood at the corner of Snape's desk and reproduced the image of the love charm, inking the outline of an upturned hand with a heart and the word "hope" in romanized, not runic text. Snape watched her down the bridge of his nose. As she handed him the parchment to inspect it, she expected to be mocked, braced herself.

For a moment, Snape regarded the image without a word. "Mitrian?" he asked.

"A modification of the Mitrian method, yes," she nodded.

"Your animal familiar?"

"A half-kneazle cat."

This drew a hum from him. "And the purity clause?"

"We abide by it," she rushed to say.

Snape cast a long, narrow, skeptical glare at Malfoy. "See that you do. If you find you cannot, report to me immediately and I will bond you in marriage. I have that authority."

"But my parents - "

" - Will accept my counsel to offer their consent, should it be needed."

Malfoy nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Oh, for the love of stars…" Hermione slammed the quill on the desk, folding her arms over her chest. "We've shown you this much and thus far it's been for nothing. Please, sir, give us something in return."

With a rush of black robes Snape sat in the chair behind his desk. "I will, on the condition that when I am finished, you will summon the charm."

Draco blew his drooping fringe of white hair off his forehead. "Alright."

Snape leaned back until his chair creaked beneath him. "A Mitrian love charm is not a horcrux. A horcrux is a fragmenting of an immortal soul. It magnifies the soul but also degrades it, irreparably. IF your Mitrian charm is properly executed, it will not involve your souls, merely your - love." The word seemed putrid in his mouth.

"Is it," Hermione pushed, "is our charm similar to Harry's scar? His mother's spell that protected him from Voldemort's killing curse, it was also rooted in love, and it left a mark left on Harry's body in that scar something like - "

Her question died as Snape flung himself forward, his eyes black and burning, his voice hissing at her between clenched teeth. "You dare to compare your tawdry flirtation to Lily Evans' sacrifice?"

"No, sir. I didn't mean to. I'm only asking whether - "

Snape was rising from behind his desk like a kraken coming out of the sea, his hair hanging in tendrils over his face, dark, enraged, the furious energy about him filling the entire room, sending shivers through Hermione as she lifted her head to watch him.

It was too much. Draco pulled her back. His left arm bared. "Stand down, sir." He called to Snape through the madness of his rage. "Here, let us show you."

Draco's eyes met Hermione's. She was on the verge of tears, her chin quivering. In this state, she wouldn't be able to muster the magical intent needed to reveal the charm. Draco knew it and bent to kiss her lips, the hand of his unmarked arm cupping the back of her neck. "Show him, love," he whispered into her mouth, "like you wanted to."

She leaned to press a kiss on Draco's Dark Mark, lightly, nervously, and then, as she thought about kissing not the Mark but the token of hope beneath it, she moved her lips against his arm with something closer to the ardor with which she first cast the spell. Blue light flashed and she withdrew. From the light, shining marks resolved, broken but visible.

The spectacle shook Snape out of his rage. His brow furrowed with wonder instead of anger, he stooped to inspect Draco's arm, now laid against the top of the desk. Snape had been expecting to see dull lines, colourless scars, not living lights in Draco's skin. His fingers reached out, as if to touch the blue glow, but recoiled just before they did. Instead, he held Hermione's drawing, looking between it and Draco for signs of the girl's curves and edges in the boy's flesh.

"Exceptional," he breathed, almost too softly for them to hear. "This is what burns and maddens the Dark Lord. I minister to him with balms and salves, he works it with his own wand, yet it persists."

"But how can it help?" Hermione asked, looking away from the charm, somehow, its light reflecting on her face as she spoke to Snape. "What do we do with it now?"

Snape grapsed Draco's arm above the elbow, tilting it to memorize the charm from every angle as Draco forced himself not to tear away from this far too intimate contact with his teacher.

When the light faded away, Snape's cold fingers released him. Snape forced a cough. "I will confer with the headmaster. The three of us shall talk again soon. Say nothing to no one."

"Not even Harry?"

He rounded on Hermione, angry again. "Especially not Potter. There is nothing he knows that the Dark Lord can't bring himself to see if he pushes hard enough. Now guard yourselves, and go."

In the corridor outside Snape's office, Draco leaned heavily against the wall, his spine against the stonework, breathing deeply, as if Snape really was a kraken and they'd just made their escape. Hermione coiled her arms around his waist and let herself fall into his chest. He palmed the back of her head, indulging in a minute's rest before pushing off the wall and moving farther away from Snape's office.

"Did you hear him?" he asked, leading her by the hand up the stairs. "'Tell no one,' he says. The nerve. After he could hardly force us to tell him anything." He sighed. "Snape - what is Snape?"

She smirked. "The line among the Order is that as long as Dumbledore trusts him, everyone does. Everyone except for Harry, of course."

Draco stopped, pausing a stair below her, their faces near the same height. "Well at last, Potter and I have something in common. How can Dumbledore trust Snape when the Dark Lord trusts him too?"

She folded her arms around his shoulders. "It makes about as much sense as Draco Malfoy slinking around the castle all night with Hermione Granger."

He took her face in his hands. "Yet here he is all the same. And she's been heard to say, 'He's mine.'"

"'You're not touching her,'" she said, quoting the words he'd spoken the moment he drew his wand and stood up to Snape to defend her.

"That was rather handsome of me, wasn't it?"

"I'll remember it all my life," Hermione said as his lips pressed into hers. He let go of her face and plunged his hands inside her robes, pulling her chest to his, his hands growing warmer against her jumper, and then against her skin, tracing the curve of her waist with his palms. From where she stood above him on the stairs, she lifted her leg to settle her ankle into the back of his knee, drawing him closer, her hips against his stomach.

His voice was hoarse. "He's still in his office. Let's go back and get married."

"Malfoy, can't I snog you without having to fend off proposals anymore?"

"It's not my idea this time. It's our professor."

She dropped her foot, groaning as she pushed off his chest. "This was your worst one yet."

He laughed into the crook of her neck. "Sorry. Don't stop snogging me over it, yeah?"

She tipped her head back to smile at him in the yellow firelight of the stairwell torches. "Don't stop asking me either."

Ron was no longer grieving at breakfast, but he was certainly sulking. A massive bowl of warm oatmeal and stewed peaches and cream sat encircled in his arms on the table in front of him as he ate away at it, gazing miserably at the Slytherin table.

"She's right, you know," Hermione told him from behind her Daily Prophet. "It's better for the self-respect of everyone involved if you aren't seen stepping out with Pansy before half the school even realizes you've finished with Lavender."

He sighed into his oatmeal. "Right."

"It's not like you don't get to snog her in private, yeah?" Harry said, ever helpful. "Secret relationship - best of both worlds, right Hermione?"

She slapped him on the head with her newspaper.

"Only I'm not snogging her in private," Ron moaned. "Since right after she accepted me, outside on the green, she's had me doing penance. I can worship her all I like as long as I don't touch her until she's satisfied I've learned my lesson. It's torture - well-deserved torture, I guess."

Harry and Hermione exchanged smirks. "How badly does she want to throw people off your relationship, Ron?" Hermione asked. "Would it help if I asked you to go with me to the Slug Club Christmas party?"

He shrugged. "Might. Or it might get me walloped. Hard to say. Better not risk it."

Across the Great Hall, Pansy had finished her breakfast and was standing up from the Slytherin table, straightening her skirt, failing to notice Theo Nott paying very close attention as she did so. Ron growled miserably into his bowl. She hadn't even reached the exit before he'd pushed his breakfast away and leapt up to chase after her.

Harry called out as he sprinted away. "Subtle, Ron!"

Speaking of subtle, Cormac McLaggen was already taking Ron's spot beside Hermione. Beset with flashbacks of this year's quidditch tryouts, where Harry had passed over McLaggen as keeper in favour of Ron, Harry could not abandon Hermione to him any faster.

Leaving was worth it even if it meant Hermione didn't speak to him for the rest of the morning. When she did it was to inform him that McLaggen was now her date to the Slug Club party.

"I agreed but he must know I'm not exactly - available. Right, Harry? Everyone plays along like I'm not actually with Malfoy but no one truly believes it, do they? I mean, even McLaggen must have noticed Malfoy breaking a plate the moment he asked me."

Harry shrugged. If there was anyone at Hogwarts who thought enough of himself to consider challenging one of the longest, and definitely the most complicated relationship at the school, it could only be Cormac McLaggen.

The broken plate notwithstanding, Malfoy seemed to forget about the Christmas party he hadn't been invited to rather easily. It was weeks away, and he failed to connect it to the dress catalogue Hermione pulled out as rest-reading during a study session in the library.

"Which of these do you prefer," she asked him, crowding next to him in his chair as they sat hidden by one of Malfoy's passageway spells. She flipped between two pages. "Do you like the pink or the blue?"

He was usually inclined to recommend blue for her, but the pink dress had a much deeper neckline. He tapped its page with his finger. "This one. The blue one has an A-line skirt. Not as formal."

She smiled. "You do like things as dressy as possible, don't you? Shame you won't be coming with me."

He dropped his book. "This is for the Slug Club Christmas party?"

"Of course."

"This is for McLaggen?"

She tossed her head. "No, it's for me. And I'll let you see me in it and dance me around first, as always."

He was grabbing for her catalogue. "Well, that dress - the pink one, it - it won't be warm enough for a December night. Let's keep looking."

She was laughing at him. "It's fine, Draco. I'll bring a shawl, but I won't need it."

He was still reaching for the catalogue when she tossed it aside and took his face in her hands, boosting herself into his lap, speaking softly into his face. "Just say you'll come with me to the party instead of Cormac. I'd prefer to dump him while there's still plenty of time for him to find someone else. I'll go do it now, as soon as you say the word."

"We can't - "

She kept his forehead pressed to hers. "Why not, Draco? We've been carrying on in secret for two years now. I didn't realize how obvious things like this are to other people until I had to watch Ron and Pansy trying to sneak around."

Draco pulled his head back, gaping. "Ron and Pansy?"

"Yes, of course. Don't tell me you didn't know."

He blinked. "I didn't know."

With a small kiss, she refocused his attention on herself. "Well you would have noticed them after two years of it. I think even clueless Cormac is beginning to wonder about you and me. So enough, Draco. Come to the party with me. Spend an evening sauntering around Slughorn's office holding my hand and looking adoringly down the neckline of my new pink dress."

He let out a long sigh. "Hermione, You-know-who still doesn't know you're the witch who cast my charm. If you start appearing with me in page four society photos in the Daily Prophet, he'll definitely figure it out."

"Which would be a whole lot fairer to Pansy Parkinson, frankly - "

"Yes, but a whole lot more threatening for the charm," Draco reasoned. "We still don't know if there might be a way to attack him through it. And until we do, we have to hide the charm's true caster. Let the headmaster and the rest of them worry about protecting Pansy."

She sat back, sulking. "They protect her no differently than they protect all of us: by keeping her inside the castle. As long as we're in here, we're safe."

Draco looked suddenly, profoundly sad. He pulled her closer, whispering, "What if they found a way inside the castle?"

She twitched. "They won't. They can't."

He clenched his eyes closed. "But what if they did, Hermione? If they got inside and they found you, knowing who you really are - " He crushed her in his arms, shuddering. "No, I'm sorry, love. You won't be seeing me at Slughorn's party."