AN: A fluffy chapter for us. We deserve it! Keep predicting, and asking questions. I love it and it helps me think things through.
"Well, I'm not surprised the new Mr. and Mrs. haven't joined the rest of us for breakfast," Ron said, scanning the other tables in the Great Hall. "Can you imagine, getting married Sunday and then showing up in class as if nothing happened on Monday morning?"
Pansy salted the egg on his plate and mashed it onto his toast. "And isn't it odd to think they're having a honeymoon in here with all of us," she said. "It's not safe for them to leave right now, so they're here somewhere, in our midst, having - a marriage. How are we supposed to keep from running into them? That map of yours would say where exactly they are, wouldn't it Potter?"
Still a little pale from the exertions of yesterday, Harry came shuddering into the conversation. "What? Yeah, I haven't been looking at the Map. I've been making sure not to, actually."
Ron murmured to Pansy. "The Map's little black footprints overlap when - well, it can get quite graphic, if you're into footprints."
"Depends on whose footprints," she grinned into his face, nose to nose.
"Hey-a." It was Ginny, taking a seat next to Harry. "Might want to cool it, Ron. I've been seeing members of the Order all over the school this morning and I can't be sure Mum and Dad aren't here and all."
He sat back, out of Pansy's face, smiling a small apology, settling in to eat the rest of his breakfast without any more of her doting. Ginny, on the other hand, ignored her own advice and spent most of the breakfast hour with her forehead pressed to Harry's, massaging his temples, whispering things that were making him smile and blush.
Pansy stood up from the table first. "I'm off," she said, leaving while Ron was still fussing inside his bookbag.
"Wait a bit, Pansy," he said. But when he looked up, she was still walking toward the exit, waving without turning back.
The iciness of it froze him to the spot.
When he didn't move, Ginny and Harry broke apart, watching him.
Ron sprinted through the crowd in the dining hall, smaller students leaping out of his way. He caught up with Pansy in the corridor. "You didn't wait for me," he said, openly suffering.
She stopped, finally turning to show she was suffering herself. "We're not going to the same class right now anyway. And I didn't want to make you uncomfortable in front of your parents, if they're still here. So I'm off."
"What? No." He reached for her hand and though she let him take it, she left her fingers closed in a loose fist inside his grasp. "I would not feel uncomfortable for anyone to see us together, never."
"Oh, maybe you wouldn't if I was the Chosen One, or some such person. But as it is, I'm the daughter of blood purity sympathizer Prender Parkinson, not that there is anything I can do about it - "
"Pansy, love," he cut her off, stepping closer. "You could be the daughter of You-know-who himself and I'd still be proud to be with you. As it is, I can hardly believe you took me on. And my parents already know who your dad is and that we're together. It's not like you weren't there yesterday when I introduced you. What's this about?"
She tossed her head. "Yes, I was there. And your mother was very polite, but not at all what I'd call warm to me. Though she was so nice to everyone else. And now Ginny's telling you to cool it, and you're doing just that."
He sighed. In a few weeks, he would be seventeen - a fully grown wizard, and one who had never lived in a family where there was anything less than a mature, strong marriage functioning merrily away through all kinds of adversity. Teenaged Ron Weasley might have been a complete disaster at starting a relationship, but his years in his parents' happy household had taught him much of what he needed to know about how to maintain a relationship.
He said, "Forget what Ginny said. I will too. And as for Mum, she might have been trying to help us. You know - playing it down 'cause the twins were playing it up so much. They were following me around trying to teach me contraceptive spells and everything."
Pansy bit back a small laugh.
"There was that," Ron went on, "and the fact that Mum is going through a bit of a grieving process over Hermione. She rather hoped one of us would marry her. Not necessarily me," he hurried to add. "But I've got four other single brothers, so - well, Mum was a bit melancholy. And her distaste for the Malfoys started long before Hermione got mixed up with them. Hard habit to break. It was all very strange for her, yesterday."
They were standing in the corridor, facing one another, streams of students coursing by them. Ron was holding Pansy's hand but she wouldn't look at him. "I don't want to talk about Hermione anymore. Say something, Pansy."
"I'm trying," she said, looking closer to tears than she had yet that morning.
"Right," Ron said, resolved to cool it no more. He scooped her up in his arms, carrying her down the hall toward her History of Magic classroom.
"Weasley, honestly," she said, no longer teary, pulling in her feet to keep from kicking a first year student in the head. "Ron, my knickers. Everyone can see - "
"No one can see." He craned his neck, as if to check.
She slapped at his chest. "Don't look yourself, you dirty - "
"You're covered," he said. "Trust me. I've got you. Make way!" he hollered at the slow-moving group in front of them. They scurried to let him through.
"This is a bridal carry," he said to Pansy. "Let's say a rumour leaks out that a couple of sixth year students were married in the castle yesterday. If it does, everyone had better assume right away it was you and me."
She hooked her arms around his neck and spoke into his ear. "So the contraceptive spell," she asked, "is it difficult?"
"Nah, it's not bad at all," he said.
"A-ha, so you've been practicing it," she said, poking his chest with her forefinger. "You think you've got me right where you want me then, yeah?"
Ron sputtered for only a moment before he managed to say, "What? If you mean as in, not pregnant in school, then, yes."
She covered his mouth with her hand. "Quiet Weasley, or you'll be starting a rumour of a completely different kind. And it wouldn't even be based on anything we've - done."
"Sorry," he said into her palm. She uncovered his mouth and he bobbed forward to kiss her. "My sweet Pansy, pure as anything, aren't you."
They had come to a stop outside Binns's classroom. Ron set Pansy's feet on the floor but she kept her arms around his neck. His hair was really getting long again, and she smoothed it from the crown of his head to the nape of his long, freckled neck. She rose on her toes toward his face, whispering, "My sweet Ronald, keep practicing that spell."
The Malfoys had been awake in their married students' quarters since before the sun rose on Monday morning, but by the time breakfast was being served in the Great Hall, they were still in bed. As their classmates ate, they lay side by side on their stomachs beneath their blankets, Hermione propped on her elbows sketching a simple anatomical diagram on a scrap of parchment.
"It's called a urinary tract infection," she was saying, "and if we don't stop for a little while, I'm going to fall ill with one."
Draco rolled onto his side, groaning. "I get it, but why does that have to mean going to classes?"
She dropped the diagram to the floor, turning to face him. "I like classes. And we have to get you caught up with schoolwork. You've been out so much already this term, and if we're not killed by You-know-who, we'll still have to write our N.E.W.T.s..."
"You are right, of course, darling," he said, pushing her hair behind her ear. "But isn't there any middle ground between staying in bed all day shagging until we make you sick, and getting dressed in our uniforms and making everyone else supremely uncomfortable by turning up to classes during our honeymoon?"
"No one knows we're on our honeymoon," she argued. There was enough light in the room now for her to check on the progress of the mark she'd left on his throat the day before. It had gone from red to purple and would need some of her bruise ointment before they went anywhere. "All the guests have been discreet about the wedding. So this is still a secret marriage."
He looked past her, into the white winter sky visible through their window. "Is it still a secret to him - to the Dark Lord? And if he knows, will he ever imagine it has anything to do with him?"
She clamped her arms around her husband, clinging to him in their bed, kissing his chest. "It has nothing to do with him, not for long."
His fingers tilted her face toward his as he shimmied down the bed to bring himself close enough to kiss her mouth. She was answering with that purr in her throat as he kissed her, her foot snaking around his leg, caressing the back of his knee -
"It's called a urinary tract infection," Draco said, tearing his mouth away from her.
She laughed against his cheek. "More pestilence in the pillow talk, please."
He cleared his throat. "So that's it. For the sake of your continued good health, we'll get up and go to class. And since we have a secret marriage, for now, we'll only be making our teachers and your closest friends uncomfortable by flaunting ourselves in front of them."
Forgetting it was a mannerism of his mother's, she rebuked him with a light tap on the tip of his nose. "There will be no flaunting," she said. "And everyone who knows about us is mature enough to behave themselves - "
He scoffed. "Even Weasley?"
"Of course. And as for everyone else - "
He interrupted again. "They will have known something was up as soon as they saw we weren't in our lonely little beds in our dorms this morning. I can just imagine Patil and Brown screeching at the sight of your untouched bed. And on my end, it'll be so obvious I stayed out all night even Crabbe and Goyle will have noticed. Nott and Zabini are going to let me have it as soon as they walk into potions this morning and find me miraculously reappeared but sitting at the same table as you."
She was smirking at him, teasing. He was the only person she ever really teased. "You know, Draco, we don't have to sit together in class just because we sleep together out of it."
He was smirking back at her, his arms around her waist, pulling her closer, their skin in contact again, his heart rate rising. "We don't have to sit together, but I'd like to see anyone try to stop me."
She held his face between her hands, sighing theatrically. "Fine, I'll sit with you. In every class, all day. Except for ancient runes."
"Unacceptable," he said, falling on her neck and devouring it.
She squealed. "Draco, you're not even taking ancient runes."
"I'm coming with you anyway. Save me the best seat in the class."
"We've got to do better at scheduling some time for eating," Hermione said, famished and laying her head on the table in the potions lab.
Draco offered her the apple he'd just bitten into, balanced elegantly in the tips of his fingers.
She sat back, glancing over both her shoulders, looking furtively about the room as their classmates came in, finding their seats. She glared at him as if he'd been leaning in to snog her in front of everyone. "Keep that to yourself," she said.
"Why? Eat it," he ordered, his stool scraping across the stone floor as he moved it closer to hers. "What are you playing at, Granger? Take a bite?" He brushed the sweet, bitten edge of the apple against her lip.
Behind them, Nott and Zabini, Draco's roommates and usual potions partners, were indeed smirking at him, their eyebrows raised high as he sat ignoring them in favour of continuing to flirt with the girlfriend he had obviously just taken to the next level. They would catch him in the supply cupboard and demand details once class was underway.
But it was Ron Weasley who was making a show of the Malfoys, stopping to call them out from the doorway.
"Oi!" he said, coming into the room with Harry scuffing along behind him. "What are the pair of you doing out of seclusion, sat here feeding each other fruit? It's indecent."
Harry punched him in the arm, the universal sign for pleading with a mate to just act normal, for stars' sake.
Slughorn was coming in through the side door, calling for quiet and ordering the class to their seats. He lifted his head to survey the room - advanced potions, his favourite - and noticed the newlyweds sitting beside each other in his laboratory for the first time. After spending the year making sure to distance himself from Draco Malfoy, Slughorn was seeing him differently this morning. There was something about a man fending off a call through a Dark Mark and then hopping right up to successfully cast a Mitrian matrimonial charm that tended to boost his social capital.
It was in awe of all Draco's stellar accomplishments, in spite of his criminal father, that Slughorn forgot himself and said. "Well! If it isn't Mr. Malfoy and Miss Granger, back in class already. Good for the both of you. Best to be practical rather than sentimental about these things. Yes. Oh, but Miss Granger isn't your name any longer, is it?"
Hermione was stammering. Why did everyone keep making such a big deal of what everyone was supposed to be calling each other now? "Sir, Miss Granger will do. You needn't - "
"No, not at all," Slughorn laughed. "It will not do. Not after that truly exceptional showing of matrimonial magic yesterday. It was superb, Mrs. Malfoy - unprecedented in Hogwarts history, I believe. And to think I was honoured at the event as a guest." He seemed to be addressing the class now. "Shame you all had to miss it. Everyone but Mr. Potter, that is."
Ron groaned into his hands.
The sound of disapproval jarred Slughorn out of his happy, boastful memories. His smile faded with a little cough. "Yes, well congratulations to you both. Now, Skele-Gro is a name brand for a healing draught any potions master can brew in its generic form. If you'll turn with me to page two-twenty-eight…"
The Malfoys sat quietly at the potions table with Ron and Harry, eyes focused on page two-twenty-eight, the half-eaten apple standing between them, browning on its edges. When Slughorn set them to mixing their potions, Hermione stood up first.
"Stay here, I'll bring yours back," she said, darting off before he could object.
It was not an act of domestic service. Draco knew that. It was an attempt to keep him from being accosted and questioned by his roommates in the scuffle at the supply closet. But she left too fast and was gone too long, too choosy in finding the best alabaster stones, leaving Draco alone and unguarded when Blaise Zabini and Theodore Nott came strolling from their table.
Theo was already laughing, quoting from Slughorn's ramblings. "Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy? Matrimonial magic?"
"What is Slughorn playing at?" Blaise asked. "Taking the mick for you staying out all night with Granger? One sexy old Slytherin to another?"
Theo was still laughing. "Doesn't seem like his style but, what the hell else is he talking about?"
Draco sighed and ran his hands through his hair before dropping them on the table in front of himself. He had moved his signet to his left hand but he should really get a proper wedding ring. It might be helpful when he said things like, "I married Granger yesterday."
The lads laughed again.
"You can laugh, but it's true," he said. "Check our room after class. All of my things are gone. Dumbledore gave Hermione and me a dorm of our own upstairs, and I won't be coming back to live in the dungeon. But as you can see, I haven't left school."
Theo laid a hand on his shoulder. "Look, mate, I know it's tempting to agree to whatever you have to in order to get a girl to - well, and everyone knows you've been dating the long-molared Mudblood but - "
"You will never say that again." Draco wasn't yelling, wasn't violent, but his voice was unequivocal all the same, his shoulder twitching free of Nott's grip.
Hermione came back, looking over her shoulder toward the supply closet and its low-level din of giggling and whispering, her face red with a deep blush.
Draco whisked the potion materials out of her hands, pulling her close and feeling her forehead with his cheek. "Are you all right, darling?" he was saying, ignoring Blaise and Theo standing stunned at his side. "Are you feverish? Is it the urinary tract infection already?"
"Draco, hush," she said, her face growing redder, glancing mortified at the other Slytherin boys. "I'm fine. No, there was just a lot of very pointed 'excuse me Mrs. Malfoy' in the supplies closet just now. It was a bit much."
"Excuse me," Blaise pressed, pointedly not addressing Hermione as anything, certainly not as Mrs. Malfoy. "You're saying it was a bit much, but not saying it was complete bollocks?"
Draco moved to put himself between his wife and the childhood, childish friends he couldn't trust to treat her well, but she was pushing past him. "It's the truth," she said. "I'm seventeen years old, a grown witch, and I married Draco yesterday. To avoid confusion in class, you may keep calling me Granger if you like, but I am Mrs. Malfoy."
Ron was returning to his place at the table as she said it. "I will never get used to that."
Draco raised an eyebrow at his gobsmacked friends. His voice was low and serious as he said, "Things are changing, lads. Get your loyalties and your loved ones sorted. There's no time to wait. In fact, Nott, you might want to get in touch with someone at home. I have reason to believe there may be news about your father."
Theo's face blanched.
Draco leaned closer. "Listen. No matter what they tell you, they're not as strong as they claim."
By the end of the session, the potions lab reeked of amateur-brewed generic Skele-Gro, which tastes and smells even worse than the name brand variety. The advanced potions students practically exploded through the doors of the lab, desperate to escape the fumes when Professor Slughorn dismissed them.
"Leave the doors open as you go, for stars' sake!" he called out after them.
In the corridor, Hermione fanned her hair. "The stench has sunk right down to the roots, hasn't it?" she asked Draco.
He sniffed her hair, and for the first time ever, it made him frown.
She swore lightly under her breath. "I don't suppose we have time to go up and shower before Arithmancy."
Draco curved an arm around her waist, whispering something in her ear.
She slapped at his chest. "Draco Malfoy, that will not save us any time in the long run, and you know it. But I do think we might have time to air ourselves outside for a moment in the fresh air."
With the rest of their class, who were all thinking the same thing, they dispersed outside, stepping onto the grounds, and around a corner. And before Draco could think to do it himself, Hermione had pushed his back against the wall of the castle and was snogging him. His hands had missed her terribly during potions, and they grabbed at her almost frantically, intent on touching all of her at once. It was fresh but also cold outdoors, and he had pulled her inside his robes with him.
She leaned away to speak, as if this sudden intensity between them required an explanation. "This is not just my general passion for you," she said. "This is also my admiration for what you told Nott and Zabini just now."
He left off kissing her, trying to remember what he'd said beyond confirming that he was married.
"About the Death Eaters," she prompted him. "About them not being as strong as they claim. Not that long ago, you didn't believe it. You were full of excuses about why everything we did to resist them was hopeless - maybe beautiful, but still hopeless. But you're not like that anymore. I heard you. You're starting to truly believe in what we've been doing all this time."
He nodded against her forehead. "How could I not believe after yesterday?" he asked, kissing her again, less passionately but more reverently, more like it had been at their wedding.
When they broke apart she was shaking her head. "It wasn't just yesterday. You've been coming 'round to this for months, beginning with when you risked death and torture to refuse to tell You-know-who my name so he couldn't destroy our charm. That was before Christmas."
Draco smiled but sighed, slumping slightly against the stonework. "I couldn't have resisted him without help. Well, I could have tried, but he would have killed me."
He meant it to sound flippant but she cringed against him anyway. He held her closer, adoring and warming her, not realizing he had stepped into her trap.
She straightened up to look him in the face. "Who helped you resist him, Draco? It wasn't me or the Order. We weren't there in the manor with you at Christmas. We had no idea what you were suffering."
Like a skilled barrister, she had forced him to a confession. There was no escape. The answer was too simple. He blew out a breath. "Snape. You know it was Snape. He came up with the idea of how to save me, and then to hide me. He was punished for it too."
"You there!" someone was shouting at them from the entrance. "Separate yourselves immediately!"
Professor McGonagall was marching toward them as they straightened their robes and smoothed Hermione's hair. "Ten points from Slytherin and ten - " she stopped when she was near enough to see beyond their house colours, to their faces. "Oh, Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy. You are excused for now, but do show greater propriety in the future. Hogwarts is, first and foremost, a school for under-aged, impressionable youths."
In a rush to apologize, they were speaking over each other. Of course, Professor. Still getting used to it, Professor. We'll be more careful, Professor.
"Yes, well," she said, "I am doubly glad I've found you. You have an invitation to a private lunch today, with the Grangers, in the hospital wing."
Hermione gasped. "Hospital wing? Are they alright?" She was used to thinking the worst and the school can be hazardous for wizards, let alone Muggles.
"They are quite well," McGonagall assured her. "The setting of the hospital wing was chosen to accommodate your parents' other guest, the other Madam Malfoy."