AN: Posting even earlier than usual in case things get crazy this week. A longer chapter than usual, but I hope you find it a good investment of your time. Thanks for the continuing feedback. Reviews make stories better!
As Draco Malfoy knelt at his wedding altar to inscribe a matrimonial charm on Hermione Granger's arm, hundreds of miles away, the Dark Lord closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. He held it as Lucius Malfoy pressed his forefinger against the black scar tissue of the mark on his cold, gray arm. He let it out slowly, rapturously at the touch of Lucius's warm hand.
"Ah, Lucius," he said, eyes still closed, head tipped back. "You have been away from us for too long."
Lucius withdrew his hand, bowing as the Dark Lord opened his eyes with a low growl of satisfaction. "Your son as well. I anticipate his arrival with great eagerness."
"As do I," Lucius said. "Thank you, my Lord, for bringing him back to us."
The Dark Lord attempted a smile. "Yes, it will be a joyful reunion for the Malfoy family, won't it? All three of you, living here in love, together again." He waved at Snape, the favoured deputy at his side. "While I'm thinking of it, Severus..."
Snape sank to one knee on the floor. "Yes, my Lord?"
"I may get caught up in my many plans for the coming day - the Mudblood, the cabinet, so much to do. You must not let me forget to share that memory of yours with Lucius. You know the one. It was you who brought it to me, from his wife's bedchamber."
A snicker ran through the room, sincere but vicious laughter at the expense of Lucius Malfoy, a high man brought low. He hung his head but Narcissa only held hers higher.
The laughter died abruptly as the Dark Lord stood from his chair to pace. "Young Draco delays his coming," he said.
Snape stood upright. "If he is in the castle, my Lord, he will not be able to reach you until he escapes the grounds. It may take some minutes."
The Dark Lord didn't seem to hear, growing more agitated with every pass of his pacing. "It is too long. Too long." He stopped, raising a finger. "Did you do this, Lucius? Did you sabotage the call as you made it? Is this some ploy to keep your son from his destiny?"
There was only one laugh this time, Narcissa Malfoy's, a loud single note of ridicule at the mention of her husband doing anything so brave and noble as plotting against the Dark Lord to save their son.
The Dark Lord rounded on her, his finger still pointing. "You have something to add, Madam Malfoy?" He was moving toward her, his finger scratching at the air in front of him as he came.
He stopped.
In the centre of the room, he stopped suddenly, struck. Cringing where he stood, he reeled, as if from the impact of a silent curse. He stumbled sideways, pulling his already wounded hand into his chest, gnashing his teeth.
Wormtail took half of a step forward, as if to rush to steady him, but then retreated behind his chair.
A shriek of anger and pain went out from the wounded Dark Lord, ending in a panting, murderous demand. "Who has done this?" he rasped.
His eyes swept over his horde of followers, arriving back where they started, at Narcissa Malfoy. Black stains were seeping through the white gauze dressing twisted around his hand as he advanced toward her again, hissing, "You."
Bellatrix was bleating at his side. "My Lord, my Lord!" she was saying. "Cissie wouldn't dare. No one who knows your power would dare. But the Muggle man - he's not a Muggle. I've seen him steal a wizard's wand and use it against him. And now he's done this to you. I should have known. I should have spilled his entrails in the streets - "
"Silence!" the Dark Lord shouted over her. He swiveled away from Narcissa, looking to Tim Granger instead. The man still stood where Snape had set him, in front of a huge window made of small, diamond panes of glass.
The Dark Lord smirked. "Not a Muggle?"
Tim raised his hands. "Oh, yes. Certainly a Muggle. No one to worry about. Full Muggle, through and through. Pure Muggle here."
The Dark Lord spat at Tim's feet. "He calls himself - pure."
A cry of disgusted protest rang out from among the Death Eaters, all of them only too happy to join in calling for the Muggle to answer for the attack on the Dark Lord rather than one of their own.
"I would have let you wait," he called over the roar of voices, creeping wounded toward the window where Tim stood. "I would have let you see your daughter one more time before I killed her. I would have taken you with me to ride your magic cabinet back into Hogwarts. You might have stood a chance. But you dared to attack me, deceive me, insult me..."
What the Dark Lord didn't hear over his own voice and the taunting and jeering of his Death Eaters as they clamoured for Tim's murder, was the creaking of metal and the cracking of glass.
And further, in the darkness beyond the glass, the cries of wolves were rising. Fenrir Greyback heard it, the faraway voices wolfish and more than wolfish. His ears pricked, straining to hear. Lithe and canine, he leapt into the centre of the room, to the Dark Lord's side. He was shouting warnings, calling for quiet, all of it unheeded as the crowd called for blood.
Greyback's spectacle only further distracted the room from Narcissa Malfoy as she glared hard at the window, her eyes tracing the edges of the panes of glass behind Tim Granger.
Only Severus Snape watched her, whispering under his breath. "Cissa, wait."
The Dark Lord took up his wand in his left hand, pinched awkwardly between his fingers, pointed at Hermione's father. He thrust the werewolf aside in disgust. And as he turned back to the window, his wand drawn back behind his head to execute Tim Granger, the glass shattered, filling the room, dashing against the back of Tim's coat. The room was chaotic with cries of pain and alarm as Tim fell forward, toward the furious, howling form of the Dark Lord.
Tim had clenched his eyes shut and steeled himself to be torn apart when a pair of long arms in a shabby coat caught him from behind. Tim struggled in their hold, dragged out into cold dark gardens noisy with the calls of wolves. He fought, but the arms had a supernatural strength, and Tim was so very tired. Surely it had been enough already, and he could now let the darkness overtake him.
All at once, there was no darkness, only fiery red light. It enfolded both himself and the shabby, strong arms that held him, warm and soft like feathery wings, rising with a flash, soaring into silence.
At the altar of the Hogwarts chapel, Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger were nearly married. All that was left to finish casting the matrimonial charm was for her to let him kiss the inscription he had made on her arm.
As he made himself ready, Ginny and Ron took Harry to sit down on the front pew, holding him, ready to shelter and comfort him against the pain and fear that would descend when his connection to Voldemort flared to life, reacting against the casting of the charm.
Harry knew the violent resistance was coming, and yet he sat in the chapel with his friends anyway, not only supporting, but helping them to cast the charm. Unlike Voldemort, he would bear it, suffer it as an act of love for his friends and their families, their futures. And through this, he would survive it.
Harry's sacrifice was selfless and vital, but Draco's back was turned to it as he looked down at Hermione's arm, cradling it in his hand on the altar. With her free hand, she touched his face, drawing his gaze from her arm to her eyes. No one had given them instructions or permission to do it, but no one had forbidden it either, and even if anyone had, it may not have stopped them. Leaning over the altar, they kissed each other the way Hermione had always dreamed of kissing her husband at her wedding. Her husband, tall and elegant, standing with her before people who loved her, pledging his love, fighting off devils, and now, kissing her with soft, warm lips. A tear slipped from beneath her lashes, running against his face, her hand on the back of his head, holding him close.
"I love you," he whispered, his mouth on hers. She said it back, sliding her hand away from the nape of his neck, letting him bend toward her arm again. His lips, still wet from her kiss, pressed against her flesh.
Foi.
The inscription flashed into view both on her arm and above it, as if projected onto the high, vaulted ceiling of the chapel. The blue light crackled like lightning, playing over the stone arches, down the columns, and into the floor. Draco stepped around the altar to take Hermione in his arms, holding her as they watched the light flashing over the dark windows, the candlelit room now bright with magical light.
They couldn't see it themselves, but as they stood entwined in each other's arms before their friends and loved ones, they seemed to glow, not drifting wispy white like ghosts, but dazzling like platinum, like angels - exhilarating and marvelous to see.
Their light reached into Harry's darkness, penetrating his eyelids where he sat with his forehead pressed into Ginny's shoulder, his fist in his mouth, his hand gripped hard on Ron's arm, willing himself to weather the struggle inside him. Somewhere, Voldemort was wracked with pain, consumed with rage, lashing out to kill. Harry felt the rage, his body shaking with the force of it, but in the arms of his friends and the glow of newly sworn love, he reached out and past it. The storm was abating.
The matrimonial charm was cast.
The lights were fading, retreating to where they'd originated in Hermione's arm. Harry was loosening his grip on Ginny and Ron. The guests were letting go of their own heavy tension, their postures relaxing...
When all at once, at the back of the chapel, and with a deafening crack and a plume of red flames, Fawkes apparated into the room. In his talons, he gripped two men, their faces marked with bleeding cuts, their hair full of broken glass.
Hermione called out from the altar. "Dad!" she cried as the bird winged away.
Ann Granger was on her feet. "Tim?"
Tonks reached them first, stumbling to a stop in front of Remus, as if she wanted to embrace him, but didn't dare risk driving any more glass into him.
He grinned, wiping at the blood on his already scarred cheeks.
"Remus, bless you. You've found him," Hermione said, coming down the aisle, her dress hiked up to her knees as she ran. Draco couldn't follow, slumping exhausted onto the pew beside Ron and Harry instead. Ron dropped a hand on each of their shoulders. "Well done, mates."
At the back of the chapel, Hermione and Ann examined Tim. Ann furrowed her brow. "Tim darling, are you sure you're alright?"
"What? Don't I look alright?" he laughed. He pulled at Ann's hand as he sat up, looking to the head of the chapel, scanning the room through his still blood encrusted eyes. "Did I miss it? The wedding?"
Remus nudged him. "Of course you did, that was the point, old boy. You kept them busy while this fine bunch here got the spell safely off. I've been watching you from closeby since they picked you up in Kent, holding back as long as I could, waiting for them to realize they were being played which, thanks to your impressive wits, they didn't."
Tim was squinting at Remus, trying to remember if they'd met before. Remus extended his hand, introducing himself at last.
"Lupin?" Tim said. "Explains why you've taken the trouble to cultivate such a convincing wolf call, I suppose."
Remus laughed and shook out his hair. "Well, Dr. Granger, congratulations on your extraordinary daughter. And best of luck with - er, your son-in-law."
At the word "son-in-law," Hermione stood up, looking desperately around the chapel. Draco's slump had developed into a full-blown lie-down on the front pew. He was stretched there, weary and waiting for her, but out of her view. She dropped the shard of glass she had just pulled out of her father's hair.
"Draco?" The sound of her voice was high and tremulous, heart-rending. "Mum, where is he? I promised I'd stay with him but I didn't and now he's - "
Draco sat up quickly, jumping to his feet and rushing toward her. "I'm here, darling. I'm here, I didn't leave."
Professor Dumbledore met them where they crashed into one another in the centre aisle, Hermione's face buried in Draco's robes as she tried not to cry.
"Friends, it appears we must not keep the newlyweds any longer," Dumbledore said, addressing the entire room. "May I say, it has been a most moving but far too eventful wedding service. No dancing this morning, I'm afraid, Professor McGonagall."
She nodded.
He stepped closer to the couple, speaking more discreetly, even winking. "Take some time alone. About one hour, until the sun has properly risen. By then, Mr. Potter and I will be ready in the astronomy tower. For now, since it is such a special day, I will grant you the use of my privilege to apparate without the castle, and send you off to your quarters."
He stepped back, his arms extended. "Friends, loved ones, guests," he announced. "Join me in coming forward to bid our brave but exhausted Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy farewell for now!"
The crowd came forward in something like a line to congratulate them. There were hearty pats on the shoulder from an unending stream of teachers and Weasleys. Hermione kissed both Pansy and Ron, throwing herself into Harry's arms with teary thanks. For the first time, Ann kissed Draco's cheek. Then Tim faced him, bloody and beaten and beaming with happiness all the same.
Overwhelmed, Draco's knees buckled, and as if he'd been watching, waiting for such a moment, that was when Dumbledore apparated them away.
In the drawing room of Malfoy manor, the Dark Lord stood enraged in the wind blowing through the shattered window. Fenrir Greyback had sprung through the jagged opening, chasing after the Muggle and whatever had snatched him. But the Dark Lord knew already that the Granger man was gone. This assembly he had called to prove his power and control was now a showcase of his failure to contain a lone, defenseless Muggle.
Someone must answer for it.
He called for silence and the room lapsed into a terrified quiet. "Malfoy Manor tears itself to pieces for one reason only," he began. "At the behest of a family so pathetic and cowardly they dare not act for themselves."
He turned from the window. "Lucius."
Malfoy fell to his knees, sputtering. "My Lord - Lord, the Muggle - he is not of our family - "
"Lies!" he roared. "He is. Your son makes him so, does he not? Let us ask your wife. She knows." Again, the Dark Lord was advancing on Narcissa Malfoy, broken glass snapping and crunching beneath his feet. "Madam, you destroyed this window and set him free, as you did his wife."
Her lips quivered, her mouth opening to speak.
"My Lord," Snape said, snapping to life, clipping across the floor, stepping cat-like between shards of glass, approaching the Dark Lord. "From the vantage of many of us here, it was clear that the werewolf Remus Lupin, a known operative for Dumbledore's terrorist organization, stole the Granger man from the window. Ask them. They saw it. Greyback has given chase. In light of that, the Malfoys - "
"Are complicit," the Dark Lord finished with a snarl, lunging toward Narcissa.
"Wait!" A screech rang out, Bellatrix Lestrange's desperate voice. "It wasn't my sister, my Lord. It was him!" With both hands, she pointed at Severus Snape. "As the glass was breaking, he was standing here muttering something to himself, speaking a spell."
The Dark Lord almost laughed. "Severus? Bella, no more of your jealous slander."
"I swear I saw it!" she railed. "Use Veritaserum on me, or legilimency, or draw the memory from my mind. I give it willingly. It was not our Cissie that broke him out, it was Snape."
"Ridiculous," Snape hissed. "Everyone in this room was speaking something when the glass cracked. The stars only know who said what."
"Look at him wriggling," Bellatrix said, sidling closer to the Dark Lord. "This is his true form. Ask him, my Lord. Ask him what it was he said when the glass smashed, and why."
With the tip of his wand, the Dark Lord pushed her aside, clearing a space between Snape and himself. "Interesting," he began. "Which of you was it, Severus? Who broke the window? Madam Malfoy, or yourself?"
Snape's posture stiffened. "My Lord, there must be two dozen people in this room. It need not be a question limited to Madam Malfoy or myself."
"Why not, Severus?" the Dark Lord smirked. "If it's not you, speak up and accept my proposition that it must be her. You have nothing to lose in doing so."
"Neither do I have anything to hide, My Lord," Snape said. "I will gladly participate in a full interrogation of all of us here, Madam Malfoy included, of course."
The Dark Lord was laughing mirthlessly. "No, no, my faithful servant. There is no need for all of that. I ask again. Is the culprit you, or Madam Malfoy?"
Snape said nothing as the Dark Lord placed himself in the centre of the space between Snape and Narcissa. "What do you say, Lucius? Shall we determine the matter in a trial by duel, with you fighting Severus in your wife's place, of course?"
Lucius Malfoy's eyes widened, his complexion turning green. "My Lord - but - I - "
"No, no, Lucius. Stand down," he said. "Amusing as that would be, it would not serve my purposes. Yes, my purposes - they are shifting, changing. With the vanishing cabinet operational, my need for operatives inside Hogwarts - both students and teachers - diminishes considerably. And what's more, I cannot abide a deputy who cannot renounce love."
The Dark Lord stretched out his arms, addressing all of his assembled followers. "I have warned each of you, yet in this, you have all defied me - with the exception of Severus, the most excellent servant I ever had. Cowardly as he is, Lucius was better before his marriage and son. Amycus lies to me to protect Alecto. Yes, don't deny it. Even you Bella," he said, caressing her face with the back of his hand, "you betrayed your husband, and disowned one sister for me, but it made you all the more driven to protect the sister who remained."
She bowed her head, whimpering in shame, but not arguing.
"You were my one hope, Severus. But now I discover you in love with another man's wife. Yes, there's no other explanation for your bizarre reluctance to sacrifice her for your own innocence. Coveting her and her son and this house - all of that would have sufficed. I would have given it to you, but you could not hold yourself there. And now, I cannot keep you at my side. I have a perfect servant, no more. "
"What about him?" It was Narcissa herself. She had marched to where Wormtail cowered behind his master's empty chair, seizing him by the collar and dragging him into the open. "Our Lord has one servant who loves no one. And this is what he's like." She pushed Wormtail to his knees on the broken glass in front of the Dark Lord. "This is what he wants for us," she told the Death Eaters. "He will never glorify us. He wants us like this - "
"You will hold your tongue!" the Dark Lord wailed. "And you will watch your lover die!"
He raised his wand at Severus Snape. "Avada Ke - "
The spell died unfinished in his mouth as another unspoken curse broke over him. It was like the first attack of the day but stronger, more sustained, knocking him to the floor. It burned the gauze dressing from his wounded hand with bright blue fire, baring his shriveled arm. No one stirred to aid him. He twisted with pain and rage on the glass-strewn floor. In Hogwarts castle, the matrimonial charm had just been cast.
He was not dying but he was suffering exquisitely. His arms twitched and jerked, one hand still clenched around his wand, wringing out the dregs of the unfinished killing curse. It flashed green and malformed across Narcissa Malfoy's drawing room, striking her squarely in the spine as she threw herself in front of Severus Snape.
He caught her in his arms, staring into her upturned face, shocked. Her eyes returned his gaze before drifting closed.
The partial curse hadn't killed her but she was terribly hurt. "Enough," she whispered. "I am now ready to leave this house." With the last of her strength, she clutched her wand, and disapparated them both.
Snape was still holding her against himself when they materialized outside the gates of Hogwarts. It was barely daylight now. The ice on the lake glittered through leafless trees. Inside the castle, the wedding would be over. Narcissa's head lolled in his arms as he gathered her up to carry her to the school.
"Foolish, Cissa. Incomprehensibly stupid of you," he said as they went.
"Severus," she said, almost too weakly to hear. "I've left Lucius."
"So I saw."
"I came to you."
He huffed. "You did, at the worst possible time and for no good reason. Had I survived, I would have continued to protect Draco, not that he may need much of that now the matrimonial spell - "
She lifted a finger to his lips. "Quiet, Severus, you know Draco is not the reason."
He obeyed, keeping quiet, continuing to labour up the path to the castle with her body limp in his arms.
She batted one hand against his shoulder. "Conjure something to carry me," she said.
"I will not."
"Stubborn man - "
"Because I want you here," he said, tossing her slightly higher in his hold.
Her face was closer to his now, and she turned it up to him again, her eyes still closed, traces of the pain of the curse visible in her mouth and brow. His pace slowed as fleetingly, lightly, he kissed both - her forehead and then her lips.
Her head drooped sideways as she sighed against his shoulder. "Accept me, Severus. I have given everything you could have asked of me."
"I asked for one thing only."
"And you have it," she said, opening her eyes to see him, dark and grim, looking not at all like herself. "You have my love."
Snape's heart felt as large as his entire chest again as he shouldered through the school doors, stepping into the Floo in the entrance hall, and out of the Floo in the chapel. The bride and groom were gone but the wedding guests remained, drinking coffee and eating breakfast scones.
Ann gasped at the sight of the blond hair and the lavish gown the nasty chemistry teacher clasped in his arms. "Cissa?"
Snape ignored her. "Professor Dumbledore, Poppy. Help."
AN: OK, this is the beginning of a Dramione honeymoon. I stand by my T rating and think this stays wholesome. But it is about their relationship becoming a married one, so if you ABSOLUTELY do not want to read anything like that, skip to the next chapter now.
Minutes before his mother arrived with Professor Snape in the Hogwarts chapel, Draco and Hermione materialized in seventh floor married quarters neither of them had ever seen before. Professor Dumbledore had disapparated them from the chapel just as Draco's knees were giving out during all the congratulations, meaning they appeared in their new suite tumbling, falling onto a large, downy bed, their arms still closed around each other.
They lay motionless beside one another for a moment, disoriented until Hermione laughed.
Draco groaned. "Right into bed? That corny old Dumbledore - "
"Come on," she was still laughing. "It's sweet."
"No, it's all wrong," Draco was saying. He was trying to sit up but she wouldn't release her arms from around his neck. "This is not how it's supposed to go," he insisted. "We're supposed to start OUTSIDE the door and then I carry you inside, over the threshold. It's called a bridal carry for a reason."
She ran a hand through his hair, fluffing it out of its slick wedding style. "Draco, you're knackered. No one expects you to carry anyone anywhere when you can hardly stand," she said, leaning in to nuzzle his neck. She took his chin between her thumb and forefinger, tilting his face. "Honestly, stop looking longingly at the door. You can carry me inside next time. That carrying bit is just more patriarchal nonsense anyway."
He smirked, scoffing. "Yes, darling, more feminism in the pillow talk please."
"You knew what I was when you married me," she said, nipping at his earlobe.
"I did, and it is all incredibly hot," he said. He was getting over his disappointment about their entrance, relaxing into the mattress beside her, moaning into her hair as her mouth worked against his throat.
She pulled away, rubbing her thumb along the mark she hadn't meant to leave on his skin. "If you really are you're too tired, we don't have to do this right away - "
He cut her off by pulling her underneath himself, pressing all of him against her, her body sinking into the mattress. "Oh, we are doing this right away."
She uttered her seldom heard giggle as he settled in to snog her as a married man, mouth open, devouring, hands on her front, moving from her waist upward.
"Wait," he said, pulling himself back.
She whimpered and fought to hold him close. "No, no more waiting. No more monks. No more ceremonies, just - no."
"Let me get my wand for a second," he said. "It's important."
She frowned. "Your wand?" she moved her hips against him. "Isn't that it there?"
His already flushed face blushed redder as she moved. "Uh, close, but no."
Her eyes widened.
"I told you, I'm not too tired," he said, finding his wand in his sleeve. "Now hold still while I magic our heirs away for a little longer."
She batted his chest. "You don't need to do that. Mum gave me those pills. You remember."
"Look, they took the bridal carry away from me. Don't take away a boy's dream of casting his first contraception spell too." He pushed himself upright, onto his knees, sliding his arms out of his robes, his waistcoat, and untying his fancy white tie to toss all of it onto the floor before clearing his throat and flourishing his wand.
She laughed but kept still, exaggerating her awe at his skill with the contraception spell. "That was lovely," she said when the pink sparks puffed between them.
"Wasn't it?" he said, throwing his wand onto the floor with the clothes he'd shed. "Those bloody Weasley twins thought they'd save the day and teach me how, minutes before the wedding. Weasley himself looked like he needed to see it, but my father taught me that back in fifth year. Must be the age the old creeper was when he first got at it himself."
"Do shut up," she said, pulling him by his shirtfront, down on top of herself. "Can we agree not to talk about Weasleys or parents for the next little while? Hmm?"
He grunted his consent as he settled onto her differently this time, fitting himself between her knees. Her heart crashed at the contact, even through her skirts, and she was finally speechless, dumbfounded by her own natural, uncalculated responses, her hips tipping, her back arching beneath him.
"All mine," he murmured against her neck. "So soft and beautiful."
"You know, there is something different about this than the way I always imagined it would be," she managed to say.
The best he could do to ask her what she meant as he tugged her dress away from her shoulder, kissing its smooth round dome, was to utter another low grunt.
"I always pictured our first night as - well - as a night," she said. "You know, shadowy and mysterious. But the sun is up now. I can see all of you, and you can see all of me."
"Not yet I can't," he said against her shoulder, his hand beneath her, groping for a zipper at the back of her dress.
"Draco…"
He brought his face back to hers, looking into her eyes, the sunlight setting off the amber flecks in the shimmering brown. He laced their fingers together, holding both of her hands, her knuckles against the mattress next to her ears as he hovered over her. Low rays of sunlight, barely clearing the horizon beamed through the window, shining through his hair, lighting his skin.
She swallowed, working to control her disordered breath. "Draco, I'm not afraid of you," she said. "Not at all. I trust you. I adore you. But this..."
He nodded and with a shift in his shoulders and hips - graceful and fluid, like a pirouette, or a quick turn on a broom - he was on his back and she was on top of him, her knees on either side of his hips.
"About this," he said, his hands on her hips now. "This only happens if you want it."
"I want it."
He grinned and sat up far enough to kiss her, the muscles in his lower abdomen flexing against her body where she sat on him, sending her heart crashing again, her stomach flipping, and something else churning inside her, lower and stranger.
"Good," he said. "And now that this is happening, it only happens as quickly or as slowly as you want it to."
He lifted his hand from her hip and eased Pansy's shiny clip out of her hair, tossing it into the pile he'd been making on the floor. Her hair fell forward, engulfing both of their faces.
From behind a mass of curls, she was laughing again, and with none of his grace, she was fighting to roll onto her back, bringing him with her. By the time she succeeded, he was lost in kissing her, long and sweet, his body pressed urgently against hers until she couldn't resist the urgency herself. He was breathing her breath, sighing her name. She was ready.
When there was nothing left to add to the pile of clothing on the floor, he pulled the blankets over them, closing off everything outside their bed. Their solitude would not last for long, but for a little while, there was no one else - not in the castle, not far off in the manor, not in the entire country. At last there were only two, less than two, one.