"Darling, I beg you to reconsider," Narcissa pleaded.

"Is this honestly why you summoned me?" Draco sighed in exasperation. His mother had sent Jondey to fetch him directly with a dire message to come right away. For the few moments it had taken for him to hasten from the library to the east drawing room, Draco had actually been concerned of a real emergency.

"You cannot sell la maison," she insisted. She was perched imperiously on the center chaise, and not really looking at him. "You cannot."

"I thought there was some kind of crisis."

"This is urgent."

"Really?" he responded with sarcasm.

"Draco," she said in a low voice, her eyebrow twitching in acknowledgment of his less-than-respectful tone. "Is this all some kind of vindication?"

"What do you mean?"

"Are you selling la maison because of me? Because of your father?"

"Of course not. I'm also selling our Irish property. We need the money and we can't afford to keep them up."

"Sell Woodhaven if you must, but please, I urge you strongly not to sell la Maison d'Elise."

"We really can't afford to keep it up, mother." Draco began to glance around for his escape. This east drawing room was Narcissa's domain. He did not like to be there if he could help it. There were too many memories in this room, no matter how much she had redecorated. He did not know how she could stand it.

"The thing is," she started, looking somewhat nervous, "I've been coming to think of it as the place I can go to retire."

He arched an eyebrow at her. "What exactly do you have to retire from?"

With a glare in his direction, she gravely answered, "You aren't the only one with memories of this place you'd rather not recall. You're not the only one with nightmares."

This took Draco aback. Not just because he was unused to his mother being candid, but also because she had always been so good at seeming unaffected by any of it. He glanced around the drawing room. Though the walls had been repapered, the room refurnished, and electric lights installed instead of the gas lamps that had used to be there, Draco could still recall the place where Marshall and Lucretia Fawley, a husband and wife whom he recalled from various dinner parties whilst he grew up, had been dragged in. They were accused of treason against the Dark Lord. Soon thereafter, the sound of Marshall insisting that the allegations were untrue were abruptly cut off by two Avada Kedavra curses in near-unison. Those had not been the first deaths Draco had witnessed, but they were the first people that had not been strangers.

It had all happened about three feet away from where he was now. His mother, across from him with her delicate teacup perched between her fingers, was looking at him with intensity.

"Then why did you stay?" he asked. "Father is never coming back to this place." The words came out harsher than Draco intended, but there was no taking them back.

But instead of looking offended, Narcissa hardly reacted. "I am Lady Malfoy. I must stay."

"Who says so?"

"It's a duty, Draco. No one has to tell me to do it."

He threw his hands in the air and huffed. Standing from his seat, he made a little sarcastic show of bowing to her. "Well, Lady Malfoy, kindly excuse me now. I have a meeting to attend."

Without a backward glance, he left the room. Once he was outside the door, he realized his hands were shaking. The entire interaction had left him feeling oddly unmoored, brought back to the night when the Fawleys had been murdered, and then thinking about how his mother still apparently had nightmares at night, while by day, she spent much of her time only a small distance away from where the bodies of her lifelong friends had crumpled to the floor.

He really did have a meeting at St. Mungo's, which he showed up over an hour early to. Despite this, only minutes had passed before Chen collected him and ushered him into her office.

Her greeting was triumphant, despite her calm exterior. "We've done it."

Draco could not help it—his eyes widened with genuine astonishment. "You've made a cure for lycanthropy?"

"Well, it would be more accurate to say we have mostly made a cure for lycanthropy." Chen did look a little chagrined now. She circled around to take her place behind her desk, motioning for him to sit in one of the many little chintz chairs scattered around her cluttered office. "We can cure all but the AB blood type. For some reason, this blood type resists the treatments completely. But for the other three blood types, the cure appears to be 100% effective so far."

Draco remembered her talking about blood types on a previous visit of his. She had explained how there were four main types called A, B, AB, and O, for some reason unknown to him. It had all been discovered by Muggles over a century ago, and was really only just coming to be understood by wizards now. By now, Draco was no stranger to the vast knowledge of Muggles, though learning new concepts like this always made him reflect upon the relative ignorance of wizardkind. Chen's team had based quite a bit of their magical research on Muggle information.

He thought back to Chen's previous explanation of the concept, reaching for the facts he had learned then and since. "If I recall, you mentioned that it was a rare type?"

"Yes, which I suppose is somewhat fortunate in the sense that it's statistically unlikely for most who may be bitten by a werewolf."

He shifted a bit in the chair he had chosen, which was not very comfortable. "It seems like an unlucky drawback."

"I wish we had more time to research," she said, suddenly a bit mournful.

"Why won't you?"

Now, a truly aggrieved expression came upon Chen's face. "Research space at St Mungo's is extremely limited. There is another team already waiting for us to vacate these premises, and probably another after them. I'm afraid our days are numbered."

Draco frowned. "That doesn't seem right."

"No," she agreed. "But it's how it has to work. There is a lot still left to explore that the whole team would love to work on. The cure will be difficult to endure for those who opt to try it. They'll need to take the three potions at least three times each before their second full moon transformation. For werewolves who have already fully manifested at least twice, it will need to be more of an ongoing treatment."

Draco frowned. "Given all the side effects, what makes you think people will do it?"

"We anticipate that the side effects will lessen with time, as resistance builds. It's what the pre-trials have established."

Draco mulled this over. It was not new information, but Julianne Chen had a pleasing way of retelling information in different words each time, so it often felt new. "Tell me again about how the new cure works."

"The werewolf mutation, as you know, is caused by an undisclosed magical pathogen secreted in the saliva of the werewolf. The first potion will locate, label, and inhibit infected blood cells. This will stop the mutated cells from replicating and spreading throughout the body, where they are more difficult to target." Now, Chen seemed to be coming out of her earlier moroseness. Her eyes had brightened as she spoke about her team's work. "A perfectly brewed starter potion is the most critical piece of the cure, as without it, the whole procedure will not work. This was the most time-consuming part to figure out."

"I can imagine."

"The second potion is then taken seven days later, to boost the immune system into attacking the tracked cells altered by the first potion. The final potion is a normal blood replenisher, to enhance general health, which may need to be taken more than once, depending on the patient."

"It's an incredible step for wizardkind."

She beamed at him. "All possible because of you."

Draco shifted again in the chair, but this time, not because it was uncomfortable. Instead, he could not help thinking how little he deserved her gratitude. He did not reply.

Chen did not need him to, and was happy to carry on the conversation all on her own will. "I'm going to be doing some liaison with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement in the near future. You may not have heard, but there is currently an attempt being made to provide free Wolfsbane Potion to those who ask for it. It seems like it will be enacted. Hermione Granger is personally advocating for it."

"I've heard of it," he said, allowing himself a private smile.

"We want to go to her team with a proposal to amend her law to include our potion as well."

"Doubtless, that will be incredibly helpful to all those bitten. But for now, I am more concerned that this is where the research comes to a stop."

Chen sighed again, seeming resigned. "Our experiments have made a huge leap forward for so many. It will leave some behind, but better to help the majority now and move on. Who is to say the next project to use this space is not just as important?"

The conversation really got Draco's mind working. It left him feeling oddly unanchored for the second time that day, and it was not yet lunchtime.

He spent most of the rest of the day in the library back home, taking stock of what books were there, and paying particular attention to those about Malfoy Manor itself. There was one old journal in particular, written by his fifteenth-great-grandfather, Servius Malfoy, detailing nearly all of the old enchantments he had put on the place; there were many.

Come that evening, Draco was exhausted. He had worked hard all afternoon, with marginal successes, often consulting the old journal, which was faint and hard to read, even despite the preservation charms on it. When he finally had a chance to sit down with the two-way parchment and a flagon of fresh pumpkin juice, he found a sentence from Hermione already waiting for him.

Have you heard about sex week? she had written.

It had been so unexpected, especially after the day he'd had, that he choked on his drink and wrote back, I beg your pardon?

I was told, Hermione wrote, that when we do finally decide to meet, we might want to clear our schedules for the entire week following. After a pause, she added, Did you know about it? I didn't at first, but a friend of mine mentioned it today. Apparently, it's a thing.

What was he supposed to say to that? He stared at the parchment in front of him for several seconds. Finally, he wrote, Are you asking me about sex?

No, she wrote, then crossed it out. Kind of?

Draco could not think of a response at all. His mind went blank.

I have heard from others and from a legitimate source book that it's a normal thing to happen after sealing the bond. I suppose I'm asking about your feelings about that. Have you heard that before?

Of course he did. To his mortification, it had been included in the twice-weekly radio show, The Lovers of Scarborough, which his mother had made him listen to in his youth. Even worse, she had actually hung around to listen to some parts of those episodes with him, for reasons he did not like to examine too closely. He wrote, Yes.

And?

What was he meant to say to that? His mind went to the little photograph that appeared beside her column. There had been too much nonsense during their youth for Draco to ever have noticed if Hermione Granger was pretty or not, back then. The one exception had been the Yule Ball, when she had looked like a winter nymph in a floaty blue dress. That teenaged bookworm had blossomed into a real beauty, as he had seen in plenty of moving photographs of her since embarking on this current journey. The Hermione Granger of the present was gorgeous. It was difficult not to think of sex week, now that she had brought it up.

I wanted to check with you first.

Draco was not going to survive this conversation. I'm going to bed.

Wait, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you. I suppose all I'm trying to say is that I like sex quite a lot. But I also have heard that sometimes a soulmate bond is not romantic in nature.

The concept of a non-romantic soulmate had never even occurred to him. He certainly did not want her to think he was rejecting her. I like sex just fine, and I'm not offended.

"Just fine"? Those two words seemed to loom at him from the bottom half of the page. He was imagining Hermione-from-the-photograph asking the question.

Oh, right. She was expecting him to answer. He conceded to her, I like sex a lot.

Good, she wrote back immediately. Me too.

She did not even know his identity and had already essentially agreed to sleep with him. Draco did not know how to feel about that. He sat at the library desk, slowly draining his pumpkin juice as he debated telling her who he was right then. He almost grew adventurous enough to actually do it, but could never seem to go through with it. It resulted in a long pause between messages for them.

Some time later, she wrote, I like to be pretty adventurous sometimes.

He laughed aloud. He had been considering and reconsidering revealing his identity and she was still fixating on sex. Are we still having this conversation?

I really, really miss sex. It's been a year and a half since I had any.

Merlin. His mind was working in overdrive, conjuring up all sorts of imaginings that involved tongues, fingers, spread legs, and all manner of delicious sounds. It was times like these he really missed cigarettes; he had his last one back in Romania, and had not wanted one so badly since, as he did now. When he went to bed sometime later, he settled for a wank, which was unsatisfying and did not lessen his tension hardly at all. The end result was, he fell asleep feeling as if he had been touched by a livewire, and woke up the next morning feeling exactly the same.

It was the kind of jitteriness that, throughout the years, had taken him windsurfing, white water rafting, flyboarding, broom-diving, riding in a helicopter, ziplining, relay-Portkeying, and on many other adventures. He sought an adrenaline rush—there was only one available to him currently, and that was his broomstick.

Unfortunately, he ran into Blaise on the way out to the field. "You have that expression like you're about to do something reckless."

"Reckless?" Draco scoffed, not breaking his stride. He yelled back over his shoulder, "Hardly!"

He made it to the broomshed with the distinct feeling he had barely avoided another telling-off about safety from Blaise. Smirking to himself, he thought, What a mother hen.

After spending nearly two hours in the late October sky, his Warming Charm had finally worn off, though he descended only once his fingers were stiff and his nose was numb from the cold. Right around that time, his Fatemark began to itch—a common sensation these days—and a Sense began.

I suppose it is lunchtime, he thought. As he stored away his broom back into the shed, Draco slid his tongue around the inside of his mouth, trying to decide what Hermione was eating. It seemed like some kind of soup—something familiar. It was a light, savory broth with a beautiful, complex flavor to start. He was glad it was lunchtime, though he doubted sadly that even Tipple's great cooking would satisfy the sudden and ravenous craving deep in his gut. About halfway through his own lunch, he decided it reminded him of pho.

He pulled the two-way parchment out of the pocket of his inner robes, and wrote Hermione a quick message. The many erasings of the pages were starting to take their toll on the quality of the parchment. Did you have pho for lunch? It reminded me of my stay in Hanoi for three months, a couple years back.

Yes, she replied back about ten minutes later, in a hasty script. Business meeting. It was a brand new restaurant that opened in Muggle London.

I didn't know you could get Vietnamese food in London?

Nor did I.

It was not bad, he replied, with a grin stretching across his mouth as he wrote. But nothing compared to the real thing.

Oh?

We stayed with a woman who cooked for nearly every meal, and was determined to put me to work. It started with being sent to the market for ingredients, except she wanted me to go on a bike, since there was no good way to safely Apparate there. The only problem was, I'd never driven a bicycle before.

Draco threw down his quill for a moment here to flex his hand. In the pause, she had written, Did you learn?

It was that or starve, so yes. I learned. The markets were some of the loudest places in the city, but also had some of the most incredible variety in smells. We went there nearly every day and I had to learn a few phrases in Vietnamese to survive.

You seem to be a person who can adapt to new situations, she had written further down the page.

He opted to continue his story rather than respond, though he could not help chuckle at it. Once we had gone to the market a few times, I was entrusted with food prep. I have chopped more spring onion than I care to admit. Eventually, I moved up to monitoring the pork in the grilling baskets for bun cha.

Draco did not know how to put into words what he really felt about standing in a small yard area near a hot grill, the smoky smell of the pork in the air. Some days it had been so hot that even a Cooling Charm was barely adequate.

So you can cook Vietnamese food? What about pho?

Pho can be an art form when it's done right. I am pretty good at Banh Xeo.

What is that?

It's a crispy pancake with filling. You can add nearly anything to it, but shrimp, pork belly, and bean sprouts were what we usually ate in them, and they were always served with mixed greens. At first, it was difficult for me to get used to picking them up with my hands. It was easier to control where the sauce went by eating it like that, but I was not raised to eat food that way.

It was a pleasure to think of his time in Hanoi. He always tended to grow attached to places he had spent longer in, and Vietnam was no exception. Finally, Hermione had to continue her busy day—she was nearly going to meetings with people, or so it seemed from their conversations—so Draco left off his writings for the moment. He had his own afternoon to attend to, after all.

An hour later, he had a visit to Gringotts to review the large sums of money he had been moving around lately. One goblin had, on a previous visit like this, suggested using some of the more valuable treasure in the Malfoy vaults as a lien. When Draco had run the idea by Pucey, he had instead suggested liquidating some items, if he was willing to part with them, instead of bothering to pay interest with a lien. Today, Draco was beginning the process of doing just that. But despite the greedy expressions of the goblins all around him as they eyed some of the treasures he brought forward, he could not disdain them for it, or even regret giving up the pieces.

Much later that day, Draco finally received the telling off from Blaise he had narrowly avoided that morning. Only a few moments after entering the room and installing himself in the chair opposite Draco, Blaise threw down a copy of Witch Weekly magazine onto the table in front of them. From the front page, Hermione blinked up at him with her wide, dark, intelligent eyes. The cover posited the question, Hermione Granger: Future Minister for Magic? and promised to explore the possibility in the article within.

"I want to talk about her," said Blaise.

"Why?"

"Because, she's your soulmate."

"So what?"

"How is it that you ended up with a soulmate who is beautiful, famous, successful, smart, and powerful—and you still manage to be sour about it?"

"I'm not sour!" Draco protested.

"Then, what?"

"I don't know. She'll need time to accept it."

Blaise shook his head.

"You're hardly one to give relationship advice," Draco pointed out. Picking up the magazine, he opened it up to the article mentioned on the cover, and prepared to skim it. Blaise had other ideas.

"I went and saw her today."

That stopped Draco in his tracks. "You saw her?"

Blaise nodded. "She was writing all those articles about food, so I brought her a Sfogliatelle. You should have seen the look on her face."

"What did you say to her?"

"I just gave her the pastry and complimented her column in the Prophet."

"Did you imply anything?"

Now, Blaise frowned at him. "Of course not. I want you to get off your ass and meet her, not have me do it for you."

"She's smart. I bet she picked up on something." He had been checking the two-way parchment every quarter of an hour. Even despite having just looked moments ago, Draco summoned the parchment to him from his desk and scanned it. On the second page, there was that night's query in her handwriting—in fact, the ink was still wet. She wanted to know what Hogwarts house he had been in. His suspicions confirmed, he shot Blaise a dark look.

"Is that her writing to you?" he questioned, eyeing the pages in Draco's hand with interest.

Pulling the parchment back as if to protect it even from Zabini's view, Draco frowned. He scratched at his itching Fatemark. "It's none of your business."

To that, Blaise only laughed. After some brutal teasing, he eventually left. It was only after the other wizard had finally departed and Draco felt sure he was not going to pop back in suddenly, that he replied to Hermione.

His eyes scanned her query to him. He wrote, Guess.

When she replied, he was not wholly surprised that she suggested Ravenclaw first. He had a notion that it was probably what she had been hoping for. When he denied it, her next guess was Slytherin, which he confirmed.

It makes sense with what I know of you so far, she wrote.

He wished he knew what she was thinking just then. Explain.

You have a lot of classically Slytherin personality traits. It probably should have been my first guess.

Does that bother you?

No. Does it bother you that I was Gryffindor?

He decided on honesty, and wrote, Only at first.

It's been a long day. I think I'll head to bed early. I hope you don't mind, she wrote.

Of course. Sweet dreams.

He laid awake a long time that night too. He hoped Hermione was not secretly disappointed in him already. The thought raised his hackles so that he was still tense in the morning. Now thoroughly exhausted from a few nights' bad rest in a row, he went into his morning meeting with his lawyer feeling listless.

"Pucey," he greeted. Tipple had brought in a tray of bracing tea and sugary biscuits earlier; it was early in the day for it, but lately, Tipple had begun to fuss over him. Draco offered some to his guest. Adrian accepted a cup of tea as they settled in for what both seemed to anticipate being a heavy meeting. He began assembling a great many sheafs of parchments over the table. They appeared to be lists of some kind.

"What are these?" asked Draco.

"I've assembled a series of plans for you to consider for how best to bail yourself out of the current financial situation. There are varying degrees of aggressiveness, depending on how you want to treat your assets. This is by no means an exhaustible list of options."

Draco took a second to appreciate the amount of work Pucey had already put in, and the last of his reservations over firing old Waverell were firmly set aside. The two of them spent two hours reviewing the lists. Draco noticed lots of patterns emerging as Adrian talked and answered his questions, with the primary one being that he must downsize somehow. It was one of the things Waverell had been right about.

"Thoughts?" Pucey asked once they'd finally finished reviewing all six of his prepared outlines.

"The thing is, I know you think you've shocked me with some of the more drastic proposals. But I have to be honest, I want to go further."

"How?"

"I want to sell Malfoy Manor."

The lawyer's face was blank at this. It was not an option he had considered in any of his outlines. Draco knew that by traditional pureblood standards, any respectable Lord of an ancestral estate was expected to treat the burden of it as the highest honor. Malfoy Manor had been a gift from William the Conqueror in 1066, and Malfoys had inhabited it without ceasing for ten centuries since. The estate was tied to the very identity of the family and their history.

Slowly, the lawyer said, "That would certainly be significant."

"I've been thinking about this for some time," Draco assured him. "In nearly every instance, you have us selling la Maison d'Elise. It's true that it could potentially bring in a sizable sum, but my mother is keen to keep it. I would like to propose I transfer the ownership of that property to her, but sell the Manor."

Now Pucey was staring. Slowly, he said, "There are going to be a lot of enchantments that would need to be removed from Malfoy Manor before it could be sold."

"Yes, I have already begun looking into that. Luckily, I had an ancestor who took notes when he put them up. The point is that they can be removed, or at least contained. Surely something like this has been done before."

"It's possible." Pucey seemed almost to be musing aloud now. "Yes, most likely possible. Cursebreakers would need to be brought in at some point from Gringotts to verify the safety of transferring the place to outside ownership." His somewhat glazed look slid away, and he looked earnestly at Draco now. "But, Malfoy, consider the future generations of your line. They may want the estate later, even if you don't right now."

"I don't want them to have it."

Pucey's staring had reached a new intensity. It was plain that he thought at least some part of Draco was cracked.

The point was, whether or not it was cracked, Draco knew deep within that it was the correct thing to do. He had given the matter of being soulmates with Hermione Granger much thought, and he knew it was right. "No one should have to have it. I expect to be married soon. I hope to have children someday. I don't want them to have to take on the burden."

"I see," said Pucey finally. He looked merely stunned now, having digested all of what Draco said. A part of him looked intrigued, possibly at Draco's open declaration of his intention to marry soon. He was, however, too polite to ask. "Very well, so we would sell Malfoy Manor as… what?"

"Actually, I did have something specific in mind." Draco reminded the other wizard of his sponsorship of the research team at St. Mungo's, and filled him in on the constant issue of there not being enough space to conduct long-term research for essential cures. "They only have their London hospital, which is being taken up mostly by the treatment of patients, and has no long-term spaces for research into cures and ailments. Many potions are never improved from their original forms, because there simply has never been enough space to do so. To that end… I'd like to see if St. Mungo's would buy it to use as a hospital annex for the purpose of being a research facility."

Pucey looked intrigued. "Do you have a lead on something like that?"

Draco shook his head. "Only that there is not currently space, nor does it seem likely to expand any time soon, given that the projects' very existence are already so reliant on private donors."

"I can certainly make some inquiries, put a feel out if they'd be interested in such an idea." Pucey did look interested in the concept, now that he had fully digested Draco's big decision. Even so, he warned, "But, you should know that if you sell it privately, you'd be likely to get a lot more money for it than from a government institution."

To that, Draco only shrugged. "As long as it gets put to good use, and my mother gets to keep the house in France, I'm willing to negotiate. I don't necessarily need to get the best deal if it were a worthy venture."

Another hint of incredulity had crept back into Pucey's expression. "Worthy, how?"

"You know," he waffled, finding it difficult to say the words aloud. He finally just about managed to eke it out: "...For a good cause."

"Well," said Pucey, his face blank again. "Let me do some more research, draft up some more action plans. You'll hear from me by the end of the week."

Draco emerged from the meeting with adrenaline coursing through him, but feeling lighter than he had in ages. He looked around at the walls of Malfoy Manor and actually chuckled aloud at the thought of soon never having to set foot within them again.

Spirits high, he took to the grounds, and despite the fact that the sky was gray and looked like it might threaten rain, he went straight for the broom shed. After kicking off from the ground with initial intensity, he slowed once he was a good way up into the air and then spun around so he could properly survey Malfoy Manor. It was certainly large, ostentatious… expensive… Pucey was right that he would need to hire cursebreakers. Most likely it was going to be a nightmare dismantling all the enchantments put upon the place by so many generations of Malfoy family members. Even with the great resource that was Servius Malfoy's spell journal, he was willing to wager that much of that sorcery had never even been written down. There were likely also spells baked into specific objects that took up residence there. He was going to need a lot more information, and expert help. It occupied all his thoughts as he flew, spun, dived, and twisted through the air for above an hour.

Soon, he was driven inside by the appearance of rain, which quickly thundered into dangerous territory. Once he had bathed and eaten, he returned to the library to continue his research.

There were a lot of scrolls stuffed into cubbies that lined one of the walls, and some were quite old. Just like that, the realization hit him, These will have to be gone through individually before I can get rid of the place.

The library would have to go—and each book would need to be checked for curses before they could leave. Much as he would love to hire someone to do that work for him, he did not have any desire for an outsider to find horrible information about the Malfoy family. It was a mercy he had avoided mention in the Daily Prophet since his return to England—and unfortunately, it would not last forever. Not once it was revealed that he was the soulmate of Hermione Granger. Wouldn't it be just his luck if he captured the attention of the press prematurely, and for some kind of Malfoy-related scandal? No, this was a task best left to him alone. Unfortunately.

Clarity dawned. Unless I could persuade mother to help.

It would mean bringing her on board with the idea of selling the Manor in the first place, which he somehow doubted would go over well. He sighed, knowing she would need to be told at some point anyway, and resigned himself to the inevitability of a potentially unpleasant conversation in the near future.

A/N: I have the most amazing alpha reader in the world, sarenia, who is also my own personal immunologist and the owner of some snazzy new kitchen countertops. I also happen to have the most incredible beta in the world as well, iwasbotwp, who is a plot-bender with the ability to reveal hidden messages from the opaque. Mysterious af. That's right. The problem is ME, the writer. I am sorry, lovely readers, that it took me so long to update. I really have no excuse.

I had a couple of people request Vietnamese food after the last chapter, which is another favorite cuisine of mine, so I was more than happy to oblige. All the love to my Vietnamese readers… Trân trọng cảm ơn!

Did you see Draco's decisions coming, or not? You can let me know what you thought of this chapter in that spiffy little box just below this message. Many floaty hearts to you.