Freshly showered, Hermione was surprised to hear a loud knock at her door, she threw on a robe and wrapped her hair up into a towel.

She shook Draco awake, "Go to the spare bedroom, quickly, someone is at the door."

"Are you expecting anyone?" he asked blearily.

"No, I'm not." The pounding at the door caused her to look frantically towards the front of the cottage.

"Go," Draco whispered. "I've got this."

"But Theo…" she trailed off looking over at their sleeping soulmate.

"Go," Draco urged.

She frowned, but started to run to the increasingly loud knocks. "Coming!" she yelled. "Coming!"

She yanked the door open and was surprised to see Harry standing on her doorstep in full Auror uniform.

"Harry, you scared me." Hermione gasped, pulling her robe tight around her throat. She knew that she had love bites on her breasts that she hadn't vanished. She'd definitely have to obliviate him again if he saw those. "I didn't feel you come through the ward net."

Harry blushed to his ears, "Sorry Mione, Malfoy got drawn for the surprise inspection today. I insisted that I come, I didn't realise …I didn't mean to interrupt…I wasn't allowed to call ahead. I have to follow the rules you know."

Hermione sighed. "Can you give me two minutes to put clothes on? And what do you mean by drawn?"

"Well we put all the names in a jar and someone reaches in and pulls one out." Harry was attempting to look at anywhere other than Hermione, his ears still bright red.

"How very Muggle of the Auror department," Hermione's mouth twitched as she considered how easily this process could be manipulated by the department. "Give me two minutes."

She dashed up to her room. Pleased that her bed was made and there was no sign of her soulmates, she made sure that she sent all the dirty laundry down to the cellar. It wouldn't do for Harry to find the boys' dirty trunks in her bathroom.

She threw on a simple house dress and knickers, using a spell to dry her hair that unfortunately made it terribly frizzy. With a flick of her wand her robe and towel went flying onto the hook. Resisting the urge to check on the boys, she healed all the love bites and bruises on her skin.

Grabbing a hair scrunchie, she quickly returned down stairs, hoping to get there before Harry started snooping through her things. She was certain that the darker things were hidden too well for him to find, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

"Alright, shall we get started?" She smiled.

"Mione, your hair!" Harry laughed at her.

"Yes, I know I'm a fright, but I didn't think you had time to wait for me to put potions and creams in this bird's nest," she rolled her eyes trying to remain playful despite her current agitation.

"Probably not. I'm supposed to be done here and be back and have my report filed before lunch." He pulled out his wand and used a dark magic detecting diagnostic that she was intimately acquainted with.

"Harry, are you really using the dark magic detection spell that I designed in my own house?" She tried not to let her relief show on her face and just tilted her head to the side as though she was curious.

Harry laughed, "Yeah. It's protocol to use it for these surprise inspections."

He waved it over where she had Bellatrix's wand hidden away in its secret compartment, and there was not so much as a blip. He went around the house and missed the linen closet where she had all the cursed jewellery in a bag with an undetectable extension charm. He opened the door to the guest room and ran the scan over Theo where he still slept, blankets pulled around him. She could read all the gauges and codes that the diagnostic threw up easily as she had designed each and every output of the charm. The magic suppressants and the implant that blocked Theo's magic both showed up in the scan as dark.

Well, wasn't that interesting? Maybe the spell could help her find where the Unspeakables had placed the implant so that she could remove it.

Harry wasn't particularly interested in Theo, and didn't even go past the threshold of his room, but Draco was a different matter altogether.

Draco was sitting in bed awake. Hermione wondered how Draco was able to transfer him to this bed by himself. He had a book in his lap, but shut it when he saw Harry Potter walk into the room. He kept his face stoic and blank, still not speaking in front of anyone that wasn't Hermione and Theo. She could see the urge to hurl Harry's name like an insult, dripping in derision.

Harry sneered in Draco's direction and she barely restrained herself from kicking his knee out from under him or hexing him silly. The hate she felt for Harry was like magma bubbling underneath the surface of her fake exterior. He'd ruined too much, taken too much from her for her to ever truly forgive him.

Even more amazing was that he didn't really see her as a threat to him.

If he only knew, his wand should be drawn on her rather than casting a dark magic detection spell over Draco. She was more dangerous to him than Draco could ever be.

"What's taking so long? I'm not seeing anything out of the ordinary, do you?" Hermione asked, her patience finally wearing thin.

"No, just can't be too careful with him." Harry's distaste for Draco was evident in every syllable. "Well it looks all clear, Mione."

Gods, she hated that nickname. She pulled the door to Draco's bedroom shut and stood with her back against it, looking at Harry.

"Did you have something else you wanted to say?" She asked him, eyebrow raised, certain that there was something.

"You're sure you want Malfoy in your house? Is he giving you any trouble?" Harry looked so concerned that Hermione almost felt the feelings of friendship and camaraderie again, but Harry had killed those stone dead with his choices long ago.

"Do you think that I would tolerate any nonsense from Malfoy of all people in my own home?" She rolled her eyes performatively and crossed her arms.

"Well I suppose not," Harry laughed. "Want to do drinks this Friday with me and Gin?"

"Can we invite Pucey too?" Hermione asked, leading Harry towards the front of the house.

"Oh sure, that sounds fine. We haven't had drinks with the four of us since you went on sabbatical to do this."

Hermione shrugged. "I need a little bit of old times again."

"What about these two?" Harry motioned towards her guest rooms as he headed down stairs.

"I can have Luna or Neville come. They were both cleared for that."

"I wish Neville had become an Auror with me rather than open up the flower shop. I would love to have someone else that I can trust."

Hermione nodded, giving him a side hug. "Having people you can trust around you is so important."