Over the years, Blaise Zabini had moved beyond trying to get to know his mother's husbands. He'd moved beyond caring about them. He'd even gone so far as to do his very best not to meet them at all. He had no real memories of his birth father, having grown up viewing his mother's second husband—a kind, generous man—as a father figure. He had died in St. Mungo's after a few months of being very sick, and had left Blaise and Aurora Zabini very, very poor. Aurora's third husband had been old and rich, and also, in the words of ten-year-old Blaise, an asshole. The third husband died in a skiing accident that Aurora survived by sheer luck.

At least, that was what everyone had said. Blaise had his suspicions, but if Aurora Zabini had taught her son one thing, it was when to keep his mouth shut. And so he did.

By the summer before Blaise's seventh year at Hogwarts, Aurora was on husband number eight, and people other than him were definitely suspicious of her supposed luck. Still, they couldn't prove anything, and in Blaise's opinion, if the men still chose to marry her, anything that happened to them was their own fault.

Until Blaise was seventeen, he hadn't thought much about what these deaths meant for him: his mother was wealthy, which meant that he, too, was wealthy. He knew that Aurora Zabini never changed her will, and that if she were to die before a husband, it would be Blaise, not that husband, that inherited her fortune. But, until he was seventeen, he had always assumed that the husbands made their wills out to Aurora alone—and, to be fair, all but two of them had: the second husband, who had left them each half of what he had left—all of ten galleons and seventeen sickles—and the first, Blaise's birth father, who had left two French Villas, fully furnished, protected, and ready to live in, and had left them only to Blaise, the knowledge of their existence sealed away in an envelope that was delivered to Blaise on Tuesday, July 14, 1997: his seventeenth birthday.

"You're sure she doesn't know about them? Like, you're positive your mother isn't aware of these."

"If she was, she would have tried to get access to them instead of marrying a bunch of terrible men," Blaise told Daphne, his tone matter-of-fact. Daphne didn't look convinced.

"You're rich, Blaise—she doesn't need to marry them to survive, she just wants more."

"She needed the third husband," Blaise responded. "We had to live with her friend Leanne for weeks before that marriage. Trust me, if she'd known, she would have done something."

"Hmm." Daphne reached for her sandwich and took a few small, dainty bites. Blaise watched her, amused at the image.

"Your mother left to go shopping ten minutes ago," he informed her, and she set the sandwich down, glaring at him.

"My mother is friends with the owner of this establishment, and will certainly ask for a report of our brunch—I told you I didn't want to come here. You're going to get a terrible review."

"I won't—I'm a regular, and I work hard to keep a good reputation at the places I frequent."

"You sound ridiculous," Daphne informed him, "but we're off topic. What are you going to do about the houses?"

Blaise shrugged. "Keep them, I suppose. I do own them, and they're uncharted, so it's not as if I'm paying Muggle taxes on them. And I figured they're good backup options."

"Backup options?" Daphne asked, her brows lifting. Blaise leaned forward, lowering his voice.

"For when everything goes to shit here. I know that we decided that the whole 'attacking people for something they can't help' thing wasn't for us two years ago, but I'd rather not be murdered because of that, and I'll bet you would too. I'm not going to side with the people that are killing people, but I'm not going to sit around waiting to be killed either—or run out and make it happen faster. I'm not a Gryffindor, for Merlin's sake."

Daphne lifted her sandwich again, her face betraying no reaction to this plan. After a few more bites, she set it down, looking at Blaise in a considering manner.

"That's all theoretical, though. He-who-must-not-be-named is out there, but he's not in power and ruling over everything or something. Seems a little early to have a bolt hole."

"He's not in power yet. And you don't wait until it's time to bolt to find a place to go. That's what peacetime is for."

"That and living normal life, Blaise."

"So you think it's a bad idea—that I should just tell my mother about them."

"I think," Daphne said, each word emphasized as though she was carefully selecting the individual words from her mind, "that you would be happier if you were less paranoid. But I also think that having a place to hide is a good thing, no matter what the world looks like."

"The world looks pretty bleak right now," Blaise said.

"Then I'd say it's even more important to have somewhere to go—somewhere secret."

/

George or Fred, whichever of you gets this—

Like I said at the last meeting, I'm not going to be able to make it to this one—my Mum's got a function that she's having Liam and I attend, and even though it's not until evening, preparations are sure to go all morning.

But something's about to happen. I don't know what, exactly, only that Dad's had meetings with people behind closed doors all week, and Liam and Holden have been invited in for some, while Mum's been keeping me far away from it all whenever I'm here, which I've been trying to make as little time as possible.

Don't tell Andrew, but I could've sworn I heard them talking about his dad one time on the way out—but it didn't sound like a mass breakout was the plan, just a little something they were hoping to do on the side.

I don't know much else, but I thought it might help for you to be ready—let everyone else know tomorrow, and keep doing the usual attention in the streets, check-ins about Potter. I think this time is going to be something big.

One of these days, I'll be showing up on one of you lots' doorsteps and taking up permanent residence. I can't take it here for much longer, and I don't think they mean for me to.

Cheers and all that,

Jake Urq.

/

"Miles? Is that you?"

"Adrian?" Miles stood from where he'd been leaning over a pile of books on the floor and grinned at him. "Back from Wales, then?"

"Yeah—I heard that loads of my friends had started working in bookshops, and I felt like I had to come—you know, morally, to save them from themselves."

"You've seen Jack, then," Miles said. "He's doing his best to make Scrawl's a treasure trove instead of a pit, but I think he's fighting a losing battle there—I'll stick with Obscurus."

"Family business, yeah?"

"Yeah—Mum took it on out of duty when her parents retired, and now she's passed it off to me. I think she's been waiting for years to be able to get rid of it. But that's not why you're here."

"No," Adrian agreed, "I'm looking for books on wards, strong ones. I just moved back, and…" Adrian tried to think of how to phrase what he was doing without revealing the location "…the place I'm in is a bit sparsely protected. I heard London's been a bit…rougher than how I left it."

"Well," Miles said, his eyes scanning the shelves, "We've got a couple, but most are pretty basic. I'm sure Jack already said you should really ask Zoe—" Adrian nodded to confirm "—but I would also say looking around Scrawl's would be a better bet if you're looking for something unique—and unique is usually what makes a ward harder to crack. I assume you have the ones that are up keyed to yourself already?" Adrian nodded.

"Yeah—first thing I did was take the old ones down and rebuild with the basics." It had been a grueling week of work at the old Pucey house, as Adrian had sorted through the spells around the house, deciding which were wards that needed to come down and be replaced by his own, and which were simply the result of years of wizard inhabitancy: strong, though barely noticeable, Muggle repellant charms, notice-me-nots that were worked into the house's foundation, charms to keep the paint on the outside of the house from peeling or chipping.

"Good—I'll keep an eye out for anything we've got coming in, but in the meantime I'd suggest looking in here—" Miles handed Adrian a thick book titled Defensive Magical Theory: Protection and Provision "—and working out how to combine some of them to cover a house, if you can. The theory's good for that. That's how this place is protected, not anything from a book. Takes longer, but it's well worth it."

"That's great," Adrian said, taking the book and handing Miles a few galleons. "It was great to run into you—I'm at Mungo's now, so I'll be around for a while, if you ever want to meet up."

/

"Daphne, darling, what ever happened to those…other friends of yours? Not Pansy Parkinson and Emma Vane, those—Patil girls, was it? And what's her name—the Ravenclaw one with the red hair. Have you been doing much with them?"

"I wouldn't call them friends, really," Daphne responded, keeping her tone neutral, and continuing to flip through the pages of Witch Weekly. "I talk to the Patils in classes the others aren't taking, but I never see them outside of that, and Edgecombe graduated, so I've no idea what she's doing now."

Daphne felt her mother studying her, trying to tell if she was lying. Apparently, either she was convincing enough or her mother decided that it didn't really matter, because she simply nodded and went on.

"You should really make an effort to talk to people who are more like us—you'll be happier."

"I am happy," Daphne said, her voice cool, "and I do talk to people like us, unless you think Blaise Zabini or Pansy Parkinson suddenly don't fit that description."

"Oh, no, darling. I just meant to be careful who you associate with. It can make a difference. But of course, it's not you I'm concerned about, really; it's your sister. Now, no one doubts that the Bletchley family is rich enough, or that they're pureblooded, but the sons are a bit…off. Not what you want an heir to be."

"Miles was strange, sure, but Kevin's fine—he's nearly top of his class and wants to be a Healer. I don't see anything wrong with him." Daphne mentally apologized to Miles for the undeserved critique, but she didn't think he cared much about Leona Greengrass's good opinion.

"We'll see," Leona responded, which Daphne took to mean that she didn't agree, but was no longer concerned about her daughter's wellbeing—she was sure Astoria would be spoken to about Kevin Bletchley later, but Daphne was in the clear now.

She continued to flip through the pages of Witch Weekly, but she was no longer reading, instead thinking about Blaise's comments at lunch the previous week, his expectations that everything was going to blow up soon. Daphne, in spite of the appearance she let people believe was real, was not stupid. She knew as well as anyone else that the world was tense—maybe more than anyone else, surrounded as she was by people whose families were players in the game that had caught the entire Wizarding World up in its movements. But, in spite of all that, she'd thought that Blaise was a little paranoid in his expectations that the world was on the brink of falling apart.

This, though, her mother checking on her daughters' "undesirable" acquaintances, making sure that they weren't too close to anyone who could hurt them…this worried Daphne.

She thought that maybe the world was falling apart after all, and she thought fleetingly that she hoped Blaise's houses were a bit nicer than the average bolt hole.