AN: Still a bit of honeymoon here. Still T rated but if you don't want to read it, skip to the first break. Thank you for the reviews. They mean so much and keep the story flowing.

Tangled in new white sheets, lit with early morning sun, Draco lay quietly, eyes closed, his breaths moving in deep, regular rhythms, like sleep. Hermione lay curved across his chest, her head on his shoulder, his hand open and warm on her back, beneath her hair. He didn't move as she trailed her fingers from the end of his collar bone, over the rise of his chest, the hollow of his waist, down his side as far as she could reach. There was so much more of him, out of her reach, and from now on, all of it was a part of her.

Their first time was over but she could still feel him with her, as if he'd never left. Her mother hadn't told her to expect that. Maybe it was special. Would it ever end?

This morning, every touch between them had been at once familiar and brand new. She inhaled the smell of him with every breath, as if his scent was imprinted on her own body. Sleepy as she was, her eyes were open, fascinated, awed as she watched her hand moving across his skin.

How could this be real? After years of hiding and waiting and fighting for him, could it be true that they were together like this, nothing between them anymore? Her heart might burst if she didn't kiss him, so she turned her face to brush the line of his jaw with her mouth, delicately, so that if he was truly, profoundly asleep, she wouldn't disturb him.

He stirred and tightened his arms around her, awake. He hadn't asked her if it hurt. It had. He could tell. Nothing he did could have kept it from hurting her. And when he pulled her closer now, tipping his mouth toward her ear, what he said was, "I'm sorry, my girl."

She smiled against his neck. "You are sweet," she said, "but don't you dare be sorry."

The sunlight was bright but the air still had the chill of a winter morning. Draco tucked the blankets over her shoulders. "It will get better," he said. "I promise."

She moved against him, warm and sleek, smiling archly. She had a secret. The feeling that he was still with her had grown from a curiosity to a craving. "Yes, it will get better," she purred, "beginning now…"

Dumbledore had asked them to meet him and Harry in the astronomy tower an hour after they left their wedding ceremony, and they might have slept through the appointment were it not for Crookshanks finding his way into their room, walking over the covers on their bed, meowing his disapproval as if he himself wasn't also known to sleep days away.

Late, they dressed and dashed off, climbing breathless up the stairs to the tower, to find Dumbledore alone, gazing off into the hills outside, looking quite at his leisure.

"Sorry, Professor," Hermione began. "Oh - where is Harry?"

"Resting," he said, turning to them, his expression not set in a battle-mode but pleasantly twinkling. "This morning's events were particularly taxing for him and he's gone to rest. We will require his optimal strength later."

Draco knew this, of course, yet even after what they'd been through together lately, his readiness to be annoyed with Harry was still quick to flare. He strained to control it, a muscle over his cheekbone twitching in his face. Bloody Potter, off napping while Draco's mother was stuck in the manor with the Dark Lord on the same morning he had to refuse to answer the call of his Dark Mark.

Dumbledore seemed to understand. "Several circumstances have changed since you left the chapel this morning," he said. "We believe the Death Eaters now know Dr. Granger came to London through the vanishing cabinet in our Room of Hidden Things. They may move to use it very soon, which may turn out to be to our advantage in that - " he cut himself off. "I'm getting ahead of myself. All I mean to say is that, in light of these changes, our plans require recalculations. Please bear with me and my friends in the Order, as we take a little more care and time - "

"Time?" Draco interrupted. "There isn't any more time. My mother - "

"That is one of the other circumstances that has changed," Dumbledore said, speaking over Draco's outburst. "Your mother is now here, at the school. Come along, I will bring you to her."

They followed the headmaster down, down to the ground floor. His pace set theirs, keeping Draco from running ahead. "We have news of your father as well," he said as they went. "Last night, his comrades broke him out of Azkaban - "

"What? He's here?" Draco blurted.

Ever patient with the interruptions, Dumbledore said, "No. He remains at your home, with Voldemort. Your mother arrived here separately, wounded," he paused, "and in the care of Professor Snape."

The explanation gave rise to more questions than it answered but the doors to the hospital wing were opening in front of them now. Inside, Ann Granger sat in a chair next to a cot, speaking with quiet intensity to the person lying in it. This was not her husband, who had simply eaten a scone, washed the blood from his face and hands, and gone to bed upstairs. This was Narcissa Malfoy.

He knew the headmaster had been taking him to see her, but Draco gasped at the sight of his mother all the same, barely able to call out, "Mother" before he fell to his knees beside her cot, his face on her stomach, her arms cradling his head.

"Draco," she answered, pulling his face toward hers, kissing his cheeks.

He looked her over as she lay neatly tucked under the sheet of the hospital cot. "He hurt you?"

"Yes, but I'm safe now," she said. "Don't worry, my angel. It was a malformed curse, hastily and badly cast, not lethal, but they're keeping me here for treatment anyway. Your Professor Snape insisted - "

Beside her, Ann Granger gave a loud cough.

"And you," Narcissa went on, "You brilliant boy, you didn't answer the Dark Lord's call. You resisted. It's not supposed to be possible, yet here you are, alive and well. You are well, aren't you? I don't know that anyone has ever succeeded in resisting the call before."

"I didn't do it alone, Mother. I couldn't have. But with - "

He left off speaking when she didn't seem to be listening, her attention consumed instead with tipping his head between her hands, feeling along his arms and hands, inspecting him for signs of harm. As she examined him, she sniffed, lightly at first and then more deeply. "Your smell, she said. "There's someone else in it…" Her voice trailed off, her eyes moving at last to the girl who had come to stand beside Ann.

Draco was too overcome to begin, so Ann took over. She cleared her throat. "Allow me, Cissa," she began. "Madam Malfoy, meet Madam Malfoy - my daughter, Hermione, your daughter-in-law."

Hermione extended her hand. Narcissa regarded it for a moment, her lips parted, her eyes glistening. Draco's eyes darted between them as he sat up and out of the way, clearing the space between them.

"Thank you, Ann. We have met before," Narcissa said, raising her hand to take Hermione's. "And for my conduct at that time, I am truly sorry." Her fingers closed over Hermione's hand, as she lifted it toward her face and kissed it.

Hermione bowed her head, remembering the particularly awful shouting match between Draco and Harry at Madam Malkins at the beginning of the school year. "Draco and I weren't forthcoming with our relationship that day, putting me also somewhat at fault for the unpleasantness. You needn't apologize, Madam."

Ann scoffed. "I didn't mean for the pair of you to call each other Madam. Really, Hermione."

"Well, what do you say, Ann? What shall they call each other?" Draco said, deciding in that moment what he would call his mother-in-law. "I won't have my wife calling you 'Mother,'" he said to Narcissa. "It's a bit icky."

Narcissa tapped him on the tip of his nose. "Now Draco, it's time you learned to share your mother. There's a good boy. I'm sorry I never gave you a sister. Things might have been easier for you."

"Hermione is NOT my sister," he said.

It was true, of course, but Hermione was still squaring her shoulders demanding, "Draco Malfoy, since when do you issue edicts about what you will or won't have your wife doing?"

He groaned, his voice rising as he said. "I didn't mean it that way."

She tossed her head. "You'd better not have."

"Of course I didn't. You can do what you like. You always do."

"Enough with the flirting, you two," Ann interjected, snickering at them.

"We're not - " Hermione began, but she had already raised her hand to the base of her throat, hiding her rising colour. She pursed her lips as she looked at Draco across the bed, his eyebrows drawn together, his mouth, like hers, set as if he wanted to look stern but his lips were too full, too bruised from their morning together, too soft and -

"Cissa, will do nicely as a term of address between us," Narcissa said, breaking through the newlyweds' connection. "You may call me that, Hermione, until Draco grows up a little more." She pinched his cheek, a gesture he might have objected to if he wasn't so relieved to see her free from the manor, and if he didn't have a sense that he might need to save his indignation for things that really mattered, like the subject he was about to raise.

He began with a heavy sigh. "And what shall Hermione call Father?" he asked.

Narcissa sighed in return.

Ann stood. "I'll leave you to it. Take care," she said, squeezing Narcissa's hand in parting, as if she already knew what had to be said.

Hermione turned to follow her mother out of the hospital wing but Ann pushed her down into the chair she'd just vacated instead. "Stay with your family, darling. They need you."

Narcissa began. "Regrettably, Draco, the title most fitting your father at this time is that of 'fugitive.' He is unlawfully at large after a Death Eater jailbreak."

"So I've been told. Have you seen him?" Draco asked. "Is he alright?"

She nodded. "He is thin and tired but unharmed. I did see him. But by then, the Dark Lord had already led him to believe my relationship with Severus Snape was of a salacious nature. He would hardly speak to me."

Draco's face had taken on an alarming pallor. Hermione left her chair to stand by his side, her hands on his shoulders. "It's a lie," he said. "Poor father. We have to tell him. His mind is being poisoned against us."

"Not against us, Draco," she said. "Just me. Your father still thinks of you as he ever did."

It was an odd, ambiguous comment that gave Draco no comfort.

"And in fairness," Narcissa continued, "Though the Dark Lord slanders me, I have come to rely on Severus more than I ought to. It began when your father was taken away and I pressed Severus to make an Unbreakable Vow to protect you. Since then, I have relied on him physically, for our safety. From the beginning, you have been well aware of that. You may be sure that any rumours of Severus being my lover in a fully carnal way are the Dark Lord's lies, nothing more. But apart from that, it is true that I have formed an emotional attachment to Severus. He is my sanity, my only true peace."

Draco pushed himself away from the edge of his mother's bed, Hermione steadying him. "Peace? Severus Snape?"

"Draco," his mother said, in a gently scolding tone. "That is how someone else would speak of him. That is not you. He's meant so much to you, since you've been at school. Why, when you hexed that girl's teeth, he wouldn't even punish you for it. Remember? You were so touched - "

"Mother," he sputtered as Hermione leaned over his shoulder to smack a kiss on his cheek. "That was very wrong of him."

"Yes!" she exclaimed. "Wrong, but he did it for you all the same. He defies whatever powers he has to for you. It's the same with me. I trust him. While your father," she closed her eyes, steeling herself. "Your father serves only himself. He defies nothing in our defense. Instead, he offers us as sacrifices to his own vanities and fears."

"No, father is misled and wrong but - "

She raised her hand. "You don't need to answer for him, Draco. His wicked selfishness is not yours. And I won't have it be mine any longer either."

She broke off, biting her lip and swallowing her urge to cry. She seized Draco's left hand. "The day I sat in your father's ancestral home and watched as the monster he'd traded you to in exchange for his life branded your flesh, that was the day I lost the strength to keep looking past what I had been ignoring in order to love Lucius like I used to. I tried, but I can't ignore - that," she said, grabbing his arm where she knew the Dark Mark had been made.

"Well I can ignore it, Mother," he said. "Yesterday, when he called me during my wedding. I clung to what is best in me, and I took strength from people who love me, and I ignored it."

She let go of his arm to touch his face. "And you should," she said. "You should forgive your father for what he's done to you. In time, I will too. But I will never belong to him again."

Draco was shaking his head. "So you haven't just escaped the manor. You've left him."

"He left me first," she said, her voice growing louder, choked with tears now. "He abandoned me for the Dark Lord, betrayed my promises to keep the ones he'd made to him. It's true that I knew where his allegiances lay when I married him, but I believed they would change once we were a family. They never did. I was a fool to think I could ever shift them. But I am not a fool any more."

"Excuse me, Mr. Malfoy." It was Madam Pomfrey, speaking in an uncharacteristically soft and conciliatory tone. "Your mother is injured and ought to be resting now."

He was nodding, rising, grateful for the excuse to leave.

But Narcissa clung to his hand with both of hers. "Draco, say you understand," she wailed. "Don't go until you can say you forgive me and you don't hate me."

"I don't hate you," he snapped. "But I can't stay here either."

He extricated his hand, her flesh burning against his as he dragged himself free. He was taking Hermione by the arm to lead her out. Behind them, Narcissa had begun to sob into her pillow.

Again, the doors of the hospital wing opened for them. Coming from the other direction, as if drawn by magic to Narcissa Malfoy's distress, was Professor Snape, so intent on reaching her he hardly noticed he was passing by them until Draco stepped directly, deliberately into his path. He grabbed the front of Snape's robes with both his hands, pulling him forward before ramming Snape's spine hard against the door jamb.

"You," Draco said through his teeth, meeting him eye to eye, as a grown man, a married man, protector of his family line.

Hermione's hand was on Draco's elbow, calling him back, pleading. "No, this isn't how to handle this, darling. Come with me. Stay with me."

He let go, and with his own wife, went home.

The members of the Order remaining at the school on Sunday afternoon met in Dumbledore's office, some of them still in fancy clothes from the wedding. The meeting hadn't started yet and Remus had been persuaded to tell everyone about following Tim Granger around the countryside, waiting for him to get in enough trouble to need a rescue.

"Extraordinary fellow, really," he was saying, slapping Tim on the shoulder. "Held his own for days. As soon as the Order starts admitting Muggle members, Tim Granger is my nominee."

Even so, it had been Professor McGonagall who had insisted the Grangers be invited to the meeting, reminding the wizards that Tim was the only person to have traveled in this vanishing cabinet since its repair.

Tonks led the meeting with the principles of cabinet travel. "Unless there's anything exceptional about it, the cabinet should allow passage for only one person at a time," she said. "Does that sound right, Dr. Granger?"

Tim shrugged. "I stepped into it upstairs and out of it in some haunted shop in London, like I took a wrong turn into a broken lift. It was dark and small, no room for a crowd, that's for certain, especially if they were all waving wands."

"Excellent," Tonks continued. "So if they come, they'll need to leave the cabinet one at a time, getting stunned by our waiting Aurors as they pop out."

"I don't see why we need to bother with any of this," George said, speaking to Fred but loudly enough for everyone to hear. "Let Peeves drop it down the stairs again and be done with it."

Molly shushed him. "We need to bother with it because it's our best chance to make an attack on You-know-who now that he's weakened by his attachment to Harry and the young Malfoys. We had been planning on raiding the Manor, all the youngsters in tow, but we stand to lose much less if we lure them into our stronghold instead of meeting them in theirs."

"Well said, my dear, well said," Arthur finished.

"What still worries me," Molly went on, "is what our Aurors will do if they find themselves dealing not with rank and file Death Eaters but with You-know-who himself, coming through the cabinet into Hogwarts, bold as you please."

"Yes, yes," Arthur said. "It's one thing to pick off bloody Amycus Carrow or Nott and Crabbe, but what might we be dealing with if they open the invasion with some flash - sending out the big man?"

Dumbledore hummed. "If Tom Riddle were to come himself, and emerge with a blast of magic powerful enough to incapacitate the authorities waiting to apprehend him, he would almost certainly destroy the cabinet with such force, cutting off his own escape. Useful as it is, this cabinet in particular is not well-made and the repair is of dubious quality, Dr. Granger's success notwithstanding. Draco himself tells me it was never properly finished."

"You-know-who won't risk himself that way, will he?" Remus asked. "Where is Snape? What does he think?"

"Professor Snape is indisposed," Ann said. "Family situation in the hospital wing."

The twins gaped at each other. "Family? Who in their right mind would have Snape into their family?" George asked Fred.

"That's just it," Fred said. "Think of someone not in their right mind - "

"Right, away with you two," Molly said. "You're not ready. Out."

"Mum - no, listen here," George was saying. "You don't need Snape to read You-know-who's mind. In an operation like this one, they won't send out the most fearsome fighter first. There are other ways to overpower the Aurors."

"Exactly." Fred took it up. " They'll try'n disarm our defenses with a clown instead, their very worst fighter. And once our guard is down - wham!"

Tonks understood. "Suicide assailant," she said. "You're right, boys. That's what they'll do. If they can't risk sending their most valuable wizard, they'll use the advantages of their least powerful one instead. Send him ahead packing some devastating spell or object that will take our Aurors by surprise - hiding great harm where we'd expect very little. But it will blast the wizard who brings it too. And then the rest will follow once our defenses are eliminated."

The room was humming with agreement, everyone nodding gravely.

"Hate to think who their worst one would be," Fred said to George.

"Would have been little Draco, but now he's here with us," George answered. "Who does that leave them?"

Remus sighed, swearing under his breath. "Peter. It leaves Peter Pettigrew. It's obvious. He doesn't even have a wand right now."

"Tim's rat man?" Ann asked.

"The very one," Remus nodded. "He's already given up first a finger, then an entire hand to this uprising, not to mention his soul. They might have to fool and flatter him with a load of false promises, but he'll do it."

McGonagall cleared her throat. "If it is Peter Pettigrew, with his long, fond history with the school, then surely there is something here that could move him to desist in plans to destroy it?"

"There's Remus," Tonks said quickly. "Last of the Marauders, you and Pettigrew."

He sighed again. "He is lost to me. Our friendship was once his greatest strength. But that was an awfully long time ago. Now, he is Wormtail, and we'd do better to consider his weaknesses than his strengths."

"If I may," Tim began, "He's got a weakness for smells. Couldn't get enough of sniffing at old socks. And I think he rather likes getting tackled. Just kind of lies there."

"See, he's lonely for human contact," Tonks said. "Peter is lonely. Remus - "

"No, he's chosen that," Remus said.

"Then he can un-choose it," she insisted. "Offer him your forgiveness. Amends, nostalgia, and all that. He'll come 'round."

Remus scoffed. "What are you saying, Dora? Peter comes through the cabinet and I greet him like a prodigal, with open arms and fond boyhood memories and he suddenly decides to spare us all?"

"Why not? It wouldn't even be an act. It would be sincere."

He laughed at her a second time. "Yes, it would be. It wasn't always true but now - I would like to forgive Peter now." His head sunk into his hands, his fingers scrubbing his greying hair. "But my feelings mean nothing to him. Dear girl, you grossly overestimate my charms."

Tonks blushed, making no further argument.

Away from the smashed window of the drawing room, the Death Eaters met around the gleaming wood table in the dining room of Malfoy Manor. The room was full but silent. The Dark Lord sat at the head of the long table, still angry at Snape - angry that he had left him for the mad witch, and angry that these conferences were so much harder to manage without him.

"The cabinet is as yet untested, my Lord," Yaxley was telling him. "Old Borgin himself refuses to use it."

"There is no more time for testing," Bellatrix argued. "If Severus went slithering back to his hole in the bottom of Hogwarts, then the headmaster will know by now of the cabinet's existence."

"Meaning," Amycus Carrow took over, "that the cabinet in Hogwarts will be either destroyed, or heavily guarded. Even if they survive the passage, whoever we send to begin the invasion will be hewn down."

"Yes," said the Dark Lord, "they will arrive as a dead person walking, so they may as well walk in with a blast - clear the room for the rest of us. I do appreciate a noble sacrifice, but the more damage it does, the better. Now, whom shall I send?"

The room went quieter than ever. Even Bellatrix, who usually hopped forward to take on the most mad of assignments shrunk into her chair, as if to disappear.

Yaxley sighed. "Whoever it is, we can't explain it to them as a suicide mission. They have to believe they will come back and come back to a great reward."

"Yes," the Dark Lord said. "I could always invoke your vows, call in the loyalty I am owed, manipulate through your marks, even an Imperius curse. Or I could send someone not at this table - a willing fool."

Along the length of the dining table, the Death Eaters regarded each other. Two of their ranks were in the house, but not at the table. Upstairs, Peter Pettigrew was waiting on Lucius Malfoy, now that he had no wife here to help him eat, wash, dress, and recover from his incarceration.

At the thought of them, the Dark Lord grinned, his voice rumbling into laughter. He never wanted for an abundance of well-placed fools. He had two under this very roof, Pettigrew and Malfoy, one hideous, one lovely, and either would do.