Draco was sweating. As a rule, he didn't approve of sweating, but in this case…well, it was summer in Australia, and he was dressed for winter in London. Although he couldn't quite imagine what appropriate clothing for an Australian summer might be. Nudity, probably.
And then his thoughts were wandering into dangerous territory again, because he jumped when the communication mirror in his hand buzzed him.
"Malfoy?" Potter's voice came over the connection. "Are you there?"
Draco looked at the house. As far as he could tell, it belonged to the owner of Prince's Potions. And the owner of Prince's Potions, he'd managed to ascertain, had arrived on Avalon Isle almost two years ago, and was known as a 'grumpy sod'. He was pretty sure that he was standing in front of Severus Snape's new home. It was just that he couldn't quite believe that Severus would buy a house on the ocean, much less a stunning place like this.
It was all bloody Potter's fault that he was here, of course. They'd been almost done with a truly brilliant plan to rescue Hermione, which would involve Ginny going to see Snape and begging him to come, when Mister Big-Time Auror Harry Bloody Potter had managed to remember that if Snape was on Avalon, then he wouldn't be able to leave the island by any magical means. It was all terribly complicated, and involved the wards around the island, sanctuary, and the fact that Snape was still wanted for murder despite being thought dead. Draco honestly hadn't had the patience for the details, but he'd gotten the general gist – Snape wasn't going to be able to come to England via magical means. They'd just begun trying to figure out how to get Snape there as soon as possible using Muggle methods, when Ginny had come up with a plan that didn't involve bringing to Snape to England at all. It did, however, involve some risk of harm to Draco's precious skin.
And so here he was, in front of a beautiful seaside home on an island just off Australia, with a highly illegal intercontinental Portkey beacon in his pocket and hoping that his godfather wasn't going to murder him when the plan went into action.
"I think so," he finally told Potter. "I'm putting the mirror in my pocket so you can hear. If it's him, start the op."
"Right," Potter said, and Draco put the mirror away without disconnecting, strolled up to the front door, and knocked.
Thirty seconds later, he knocked again. Louder.
He was about to knock a third time – although 'pound' might have been a more appropriate term – when the door wrenched open.
"What the bloody- Draco?"
And there he was, in all his glory. Well, most of his glory. He was wearing pants. Draco had seen Snape in boxers before, but he was pretty sure that there had never been this much of the man to see. Gone was the skinny, almost gaunt Snape he'd known all his life, to be replaced by some tanned stranger with honest-to-goodness muscles under all those acres of scarred, bronzed skin. If this what Hermione had always seen when she looked at Snape, Draco could completely understand why she wanted to worship at his feet. Or higher up. Draco was feeling the temptation to fall to his knees himself, and he'd never fancied Snape.
"Severus," he managed, fighting the urge to swoon. Good God, who gave him the right to suddenly become attractive? It was weird, and Draco didn't approve. Unattractive people were supposed to stay that way, if only out of respect for Draco's nerves. "Can I come in?"
Snape didn't say anything, just turned and prowled into the house on bare (elegant!) feet, leaving the door open to Draco could follow. Draco could no more have stopped himself from following than he could have stopped the tide. When the hell did Severus acquire that arse? Who authorised it? And where could he get one of his own?
"What do you want, Draco?" Severus asked, going over to a kitchen counter and busying himself with coffee.
"We thought you were dead," Draco managed. "And you sent no word. Not to my father, not to me. My mother cried at your funeral, you unmitigated ass!" Which were not the words he'd been planning at all. But thinking of Snape looking like this and then remembering the wasted, wild-haired girl in the white room, Draco's rage came bubbling to the fore.
"I find myself unsurprised," Severus said mildly, presenting Draco with a delicious-smelling cuppa. They stood on opposite sides of the granite kitchen island, cups in their hands.
"That my mother cried?" Draco asked. "You're the only one, then."
"I confess, it was stupid to think she'd keep her word to let you know, when she didn't keep a single one of the promises she made me before I left, but I did think she had enough of a heart to spare your parents the grief," Snape said, and his voice was more bitter than the coffee he was drinking.
There was a sound behind Draco and the instincts honed by a year living in Voldemort's house (yes, technically his father owned Malfoy Manor, and had his name on it and everything, but it certainly hadn't felt like his father's house while the House Guest from Hell had lived there) had him spinning, wand out, to confront quite possibly the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. She was tall, almost as tall as Snape, and her body…well, Draco didn't quite understand the attraction of the female form but if he had been that kind of man, he suspected his tongue would have been hanging out. Her long strawberry-blonde hair tumbled over her shoulders, almost as long as the shirt that was clearly both the only thing she wore, and tailored for a man, and her legs – well, legs were unisex, his father had always said, and you could admire a good set of legs no matter what lay between them. These were seriously admirable legs. And her face, even without make-up, even sleepy-eyed – or possibly especially sleepy-eyed – was just…yes, well.
"Sev?" she said, in a husky kind of bedroom voice, and Snape raised an eyebrow at her.
"Estelle. This is my godson Draco Malfoy. Draco, this is Estelle."
Draco turned back to Severus, who was looking smug.
"This is why you never wrote us, isn't it? You fucked off to Australia and found a girlfriend, and never thought to let us know." The rage, the fiery temper years of trying had never been able to suppress, was welling up in him again, and he just barely managed to punch the table instead of Severus. "You bastard. You let her rot for two damn years when anyone with sense would have been able to figure out something was wrong. If we'd known you were alive we'd have moved heaven and fucking earth to figure out what was going on, but you let us think you were dead while you were fucking some bottle-blond trollop in your beautiful seaside house. I bet you forgot all about Hermione as soon as you got here, didn't you? Did you even try to-"
"HOW DARE YOU!" Snape roared, lurching to his feet. "How dare you," he said more quietly. "I wrote to her. Letters, dozens of them. She replied twice, and then there was silence. And then the Prophet reported that she was married to that oaf Weasley, and I wrote again, and the letters came back unopened. What was I supposed to do, Draco? Go to England and beg her to come to me? When I'd spent her entire life telling her that she should be with someone her own age, and she finally took my advice?"
"You thought she took your advice," Draco said. "You complete and utter-"
"Excuse me," apparently-Estelle asked. "Who are we talking about here?"
"We," Draco said firmly, "are not talking about anyone. My godfather and I have some issues to talk about in private."
She turned her big blue eyes on Snape, who snarled at Draco.
"Perhaps this is a conversation best had in private. I'll see you later, Estelle," he said. Thus dismissed, she stomped out of the kitchen, appearing again pulling on a pair of jeans. She flounced out, swishing her waist-length hair behind her as she cast a reproachful look at Severus. The moment she was gone, Severus turned his formidable glare at Draco, who set his jaw and glared right the fuck back.
"You want to know what you were supposed to do? You were supposed to write to us. One line, Snape, one line to prove that you were alive, and none of us would ever have believed that she'd willingly marry Weasley. And we'd have-" he broke off when his pocket began shouting, and yanked out the mirror. "Potter?"
"Is it him?" Potter shouted over the sound of agonized screaming. "I can't hear shit, it's too damn loud but I swear, Draco, if it's not him I'm taking her to Grimmauld and damn the consequences!"
Draco spared a glance at Severus, who was staring white-faced at the mirror. Possibly Severus didn't recognize the sound. Good for him if that was true, because Draco had been waking up with Hermione Granger screaming in his ears for years.
"It's him," Draco finally snapped. "Do it."
He pushed away from the counter and pulled the beacon out of his pocket, setting the little coaster carefully on a spare bit of floor.
"Tell Snape it seems like a delayed form of Cruciatus," Potter shouted, his face shaking in the mirror. "We have no idea how long she's been under or what kind of shape she'll be in on the other side, but neither of us know how to remove the hex. It's in his hands now." Then the mirror went black.
Draco could hear Snape taking a breath behind him, but he paid no attention as he watched the coaster. And then, moments later, without any kind of fanfare, a screaming, writhing bundle appeared on the kitchen floor of Snape's beautiful house.