Draco put his arm around her waist.

The primitive show of possession was more irritating than charming, and she had to stop herself from shaking him off. She and Harry had never been a couple. Draco didn't need to mark her as his.

"Could you manage to avoid insulting the artwork?" Draco asked smoothly. "We just bought it."

Harry glanced at the portrait of Snape, still sneering at them from the wall, and rolled his eyes. "Figures," he said. "You always were the sort to have more money than taste."

They had more important things to talk about. "When did you get here?" she asked, brushing aside Harry's opinion. "What's going on? Who else is here? Where's Ron?"

"Portkeyed over this morning," Harry said. "Been looking for you since. Didn't you get the note?"

Hermione felt a quick flash of guilt. She had stopped checking for protean charm messages long ago. The Order had left her on her own, and she'd moved forward without them. She hasn't had time to wait for instructions - or the heart to check every day for messages that never came. Harry, who had always been more perceptive than people give him credit for, read all of that as it flickered across her face.

"Don't worry about it," he said. "I found you, and you're right near the marching anyway. Let's go."

"Do you mind if I ask how you found her?" Draco asked.

Harry looked delighted. This was a revelation he wanted to share and Hermione crossed her arms. These two needed to stop their adolescent posturing.

"The bracelet," Harry said. Their confusion was clear. Harry's smile grew. "We all looked at it pretty carefully when you first sent it to her. Molly added a tracking charm. It's not the best, and it's been so long it's getting a bit wonky, but, well, you know her."

"Molly Weasley did that?" Hermione asked. Her heart ached with that realisation: Ron's mother had given them a way to find her and never mentioned it. Something burned in the corner of her eyes, and her breath shuddered. She pushed her lips together to try and force herself into some semblance of calm. They had never abandoned her. There had always been a thread to bring her home again.

"She made that clock, after all," Harry said. "It's the same basic principle."

Hermione didn't think it was the same principle at all. She hadn't noticed Molly doing a single thing to the bracelet. All those months and months and months ago she had picked the thing up, weighed it in her hands, and sniffed derisively. Hermione had assumed Molly hadn't cared for the ostentatious display of wealth. Yet, in that brief moment of contact, Molly had added an enchantment so powerful they would be able to find her, and one not a single Malfoy had noticed. It was impressive magic. Beyond impressive. It was so easy to forget what a powerful witch Molly was. People dismissed housewives in the same way they dismissed socialites.

"Right," she said, keeping the tremor out of her voice. "So, we're marching?"

"On the Ministry," Harry said. He flicked a glance at Draco. "You coming?"

"Wouldn't miss it," Draco said.

'John Smythe' managed to insert himself between them. "You can't," he said to Harry. "They're… he's a Malfoy and so is she. They're -."

"Oh, shove off," Harry snapped. "I'd trust Hermione with my life. I have trusted her with my life. Who the fuck are you?"

"But he's," Smythe said, gesturing weakly at Draco.

"A man with bad taste in art," Harry said. He looked at Draco, Hermione could feel the blood rushing in her ears as she waited to see what would happen. The pair of them had hated one another for so long. They hadn't just been rivals; they had loathed one another, and with good reasons. All that history hovered between them and then, with a sigh, it dissolved. They looked at one another, they acknowledged their history in a long glance, and they let it go. "You with us?"

"Marching," Draco said with a dramatic sigh. He knew what had just happened and felt the weight of it as surely a Hermione did. "And me in good shoes."

Harry glanced down at Draco's surely bespoke dress shoes. "You'll live," he said.

"But the blisters, Potter," Draco said as he held the door for both of them. "The blisters."

Hermione looped one arm around each of them as they joined the parade. For a brief moment they were a group, protesting together. They matched their steps to one another's and moved as if they were a single entity. Hogwarts students. War survivors. Friends. Someone shoved a sign into Hermione's hands, and she had to let the two men go, jabbing the placard toward the sky. She looked around, searching the crowd for a flash of familiar red hair. She saw Percy, off to one side of the group, and he nodded at her. One of his hands held a sign of his own, the other was gripping his photographer girlfriend. She smiled at Hermione with a look of fierce rage in her eyes. Yaxley had assumed he had this under control. He did not.

Hermione didn't know whether it had been the steady stream of propaganda Percy had slid into the papers, or the allegations against the Carrows and the Lestranges, or even the slow, steady revelations about corruption and bribery. Something had turned the masses against the Ministry. Hermione didn't mind being one weight added to the lever if, in the end, things got moved.

Another scan of the people marching and she caught sight of more ginger hair, but this time it was on Ginny's head. She should have gone over, and said hello, maybe given her a hug, but the truth was this: Ginny was Harry's girl and Ron's sister. Hermione and Ginny had only ever been the most casual sort of friends. They never would be more.

Finally, he appeared.

He pushed his way past a woman and past Draco and then Ron – her Ron – was standing in front of her, blocking her way. His arms half out as though he wasn't sure whether he should hug her. As though he wasn't sure whether she would slap him.

Given their history, it was a reasonable fear.

She pushed herself forward, into his embrace.

He smelled the way he always had. Sweets, she thought, and a bit of wet wool from the jumpers his mother knit. It was the smell of home, but the home of childhood. It was the home you went back to at the holidays, standing in the doorway, happy to be back but shocked that the place seemed so small. She held him away from her and studied him, her hands on his shoulders. He looked so much the same. Same crooked smile. Same freckles.

Draco brushed against her, and Harry stepped away, giving them a little space for this reunion.

She asked, "How's the baby?"

She didn't realize until she heard the words how they might sound. She hadn't meant them to be cruel, or dismissive. The lines of his face dipped toward a frown until she added, "I saw a photograph of Gabrielle, and she looked beautiful."

In the language of old friends that meant, I forgive you, and he heard it. His shoulders eased and he pulled her in for another hug, this one tighter and so long Draco let out a cough. "People are going to trample us if we don't get moving, Weasley," he said.

Let go of my wife, he meant.

Ron let go.

They all started walking again. "She is beautiful," Ron said.

"Veela are," Draco said with a sly smile. "She must be besieged whenever you go out."

"People stare," Ron admitted. Hermione remembered Draco telling her that marrying Gabrielle was an act of self-sabotage, that Ron, always the least secure of the Weasley siblings, would spend his life watching men admire the woman he loved, never quite sure whether she'd only ended up with him because of the pregnancy. Hermione couldn't tell if she hoped that weren't true, or rather enjoyed the slightly grim set to Ron's mouth. "I hate it."

There was forgiveness, but there was also payback.

"I'm sure she adores you," Hermione said. "How could she not?"

Ron's smile perked up a bit at that. "I'm sure you could give her a list of reasons I'm an arse."

"I make that list for Draco alone," Hermione said.

Draco eyed her. She could see his mind working as he frowned. Had she meant she only made a list of Ron's flaws to share with him, or that the only man whose flaws she bothered to enumerate were his. She smiled at him with every ounce of bland Narcissa power, and those grey eyes twitched just a little. "You're a demon," he said quietly.

"We're well matched," she said. She hooked her free hand through his and held on, looking to Ron. "Where is Gabrielle?"

"At home," Ron said. As Ron was speaking, she could feel tremors spasm again through Draco hand. She spared a quick flash of hatred for Yaxley and the way he utilized torture. Some things never quite healed. In some ways, none of them would ever be right again. Then she forced herself to focus on Ron, who was still talking. "The baby is so young, we didn't want her to portkey, and this isn't the safest place for a new mother."

"I understand," Hermione said. She did, too. This wasn't Gabrielle Delacour's fight. Let them finish it now. Let them finish what Voldemort had started and put him in the ground-her and Ron and Harry and, yes, Draco too, and wankers like that John Smythe and quiet souls no one had listened to last time around like Arabella Figg It was time to burn his fascist legacy to the ground and salt the soil so nothing like it could ever take root in wizarding Britain again.

She and Harry and Ron and… Rodolphus Lestrange?

She stopped walking at the sight of the Lestrange brother. He had his son by the hand, and was eyeing Harry with a glitter in his eyes. "God-slayer," he said, and the words sounded fervent, even ecstatic. "You've returned."

Harry glanced at her and she mentally kicked herself for not having prepared him for this. Lestrange had been a weak man filled with hatred who'd found someone to worship and now, broken by his god's death, he'd latched on to the next thing in line.

"He thinks because you killed Voldemort, you're his natural heir," Hermione said in an undertone. "A bit loony but I think he's on our side. Play along."

"And then we get him into St. Mungo's, right?" Ron asked. He was watching Rodolphus with a look of sad recognition. Not pity, really. None of them would ever be able to work up pity for the dedicated servants who'd worked for Voldemort's return. But they all recognized the broken, even if they were on the other side. "He's starkers, Hermione."

"A locked ward," she said. "Maybe it will help." She doubted it would.

Lestrange pushed his son forward. "You remember Archibald, don't you, Hermione? God-slayer's prophet?"

"Archibald is the god-slayer's prophet?" Ron asked quietly.

"No," Hermione said. "I am."

Ron muffled his laugh. Hermione tried to subtly smack him on the arm, and turned what she hoped was a reassuring smile onto Archibald.

"Hullo," Hermione said. "How are you doing?"

His smile was mostly welcoming. Far more welcoming than she deserved.

"How did you meet the god-slayer's prophet?" Ron asked Archibald brightly, all the manners Molly Weasley forced into her offspring rising at the worst possible time.

"She cursed me," Archibald said. Hermione tried not to flinch as Ron turned his eyes onto her. Harry's followed.

"Really?" Harry asked her. She could hear the condemnation. "A child?"

"I've had much worse," Archibald said. He didn't care about the spell she'd used to slice him into ribbons. He cared about who was in front of him. "Are you really Potter?" he asked. "Did you really do all those things?"

"Archibald admires you very much," Hermione said as a pair of witches stepped neatly around her, a banner condemning Yaxley held between them. "He told me all about you when I went to visit him at St. Mungo's." Harry wasn't always the best about picking up hints, but she tried to will him to pick up this one. His frown deepened as he looked at the boy, and Hermione gritted her teeth. She'd done a lot of things since she'd arrived at Malfoy Manor, but torturing that boy might have been the only one she was really ashamed of.

She'd had to do it. Spies had to do a lot of things they didn't like. She would have preferred that this particular bit of her corruption wasn't shoved in Harry's face like this. It wasn't fair they saw this first.

Harry took a deep breath. "I've done a lot of things," he said. "Some of what you've heard is probably exaggerated. Rumor never gets things exactly right, you know."

How Hermione knew.

"But you killed Voldemort," Archibald said. That was what he really cared about, after all. It was what everyone cared about.

Harry nodded. "I did."

"And you're going to kill Yaxley," Archibald said, with absolute confidence. "And then be the leader."

Harry hesitated at that.

Archibald fished down in his pocket and pulled out a frog card. He thrust it toward Harry. "You'll sign this, right?" he asked.

Hermione could see the way Harry glanced briefly up at Rodolphus Lestrange. She knew the entire encounter had to be surreal from his perspective: a Death Eater's son turned fanboy.

People were stepping around them and bumping into them as they marched. Their little drama was getting in the way of the protest. They needed to move this along and she tried to at least push them to side of the march, but none of them let themselves be moved. And she sighed. "Archibald's father helped get Percy out of prison." If she could get Harry to sign the damn card, they could return to what mattered: this march.

"Did you?" Harry asked. Ron pulled a broken quill out of his pocket and handed it to Harry, then twisted and bent over so Harry could use his back to support the card. "Well, Percy's a good man." He signed his name and passed the card back over to Archibald.

"Anything for the god-slayer," Rodolphus said, eyes gleaming with a light that heralded a monologue. "We're all on his side."

"Indeed."

Hermione closed her eyes. She recognized the voice of Antonin Dolohov all too well. Draco shook next to her, another round of tremors coursing through his body.

"Aren't we all on the same side, Mrs. Malfoy?"

. . . . . . . . . .

A/N - Thank you so much to Bethan ( agapic) for beta reading. She is a most amazing editor and coaxed a stream of consciousness mess into coherence.