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Chapter Text

Harry Potter was having a record-breaking bad week, and if you knew even the barest facts of his life, you’d understand the seriousness of that statement.

It began, as many bad weeks often did, with an existential crisis at work.

He’d been sitting at his desk, surrounded by stacks of expense reports and personnel files, when it struck him that maybe being the youngest ever Head Auror wasn’t such a good thing after all. The title and position, while earned, had been offered with a compensatory undertone that made it clear that any outstanding debts had just been settled: Harry had nearly died in a host of creative ways in service of the wizarding world, and the Ministry had provided an office with a door.

And now that office was where he spent nearly all his waking hours, assigning away all the interesting work to Aurors still on active duty and approving timesheets until his fingers cramped and ink permanently stained the lines of his palms. Sometimes, when the door was closed, he would look around the cluttered room and think to himself, I can’t believe I peaked at seventeen.

Home was different, though, or at least it had been until recently. When he stepped through the Floo at the end of each day, his mind felt light and unplagued by the occasional intrusive thought that his desk would be his tomb someday.

Home was his temple. Narcissa had entered it like a conquistador bearing swords and smallpox.

Even when she wasn’t sitting stiffly on his favourite floral loveseat, coercing Ginny into doing Merlin only knew what in her fanatical effort to marry off her only son to a dubiously willing partner, the symptoms of her presence were everywhere.

Ginny became wholly preoccupied with thoughts of Hermione and Draco, and had little time for Harry. And James, who was still in that sponge-like state of early childhood, had replaced his once-favourite word (no!) with Narcissa’s lip curl of displeasure, forcing Harry to acknowledge there was probably a bit of Black and also Malfoy somewhere in his family tree, thanks to all the inbreeding.

He’d taken to wandering the Ministry corridors like a malcontent ghost in search of something useful to do.

That was how he found out about Stoke and the snow.

His nose drew him in. The smell of smoke wasn’t all that concerning since everyone walked around carrying wands that doubled as firehoses, but Harry knew well how quickly fire could spread, and their whole system of government was practically built on parchment.

As he neared the source of the smell, he heard what sounded like a frantic argument.

It’s three metres deep, they said…we’ve had to empty the bin five times today already…we can’t…you heard what she told us…still, somebody ought to do something…

“Does somebody need an Auror?” he asked hopefully, popping his head around the doorframe.

All three of the Improper Use of Magic Office’s assistants froze over a burning rubbish bin, caught in the act of evidence disposal.

Harry recognised it and groaned. “What’s she doing now?” he demanded.

“Nothing!” one of the assistants squeaked, and frantically shoved a final bit of parchment into the open flame.

But Harry wasn’t totally useless, you know. He had a wand and knew accio. The singed remains of the paper flew over to him and he snatched it out of the air. (You could still play Seeker if you wanted, it’s only that you’re busy, you haven’t really peaked, he told himself sternly.)

“Snow in Stoke-on-Trent?” he said, reading the burnt parchment. “What’s that got to do with magic? And Hermione, for that matter?”

The assistants pressed their trembling lips together and refused to answer.

But never mind them. He was an Auror, wasn’t he? The Head one, in fact.

When he told Ginny he’d be leaving for a few days on a secret mission, she kissed him sweetly, but then asked whether he thought another dinner party might be a good idea.

I just need fresh air to clear my head, he thought as he departed.

And there it was, the final nail in the coffin.

His desk was a tomb, Ginny had let an invader into their peaceful kingdom, one of his best friends was away at Hogwarts and the other was chasing a ferret around in endless circles, James had begun lifting a pinky whenever he picked anything up, but worst of all:

The air in Stoke was not fresh.

So, yes. It was a record-breaking bad week.

At least there weren’t any reports to be filed in the unseasonal snowbanks.

(Although, this wasn’t really even Auror business, and he’d probably have to complete a stack of paperwork to explain why he’d come at all instead of just leaving it up to those blokes in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes.)

He shuffled that thought beneath a stack of parchment in his mind and got to work on the boring-but-useful job ahead of him.

Strange snow, though.

It was…resistant. Almost like it didn’t want to be vanished.

What he thought would be a short trip, easily resolved, was evolving into a bit of a mystery. There was definitely magic afoot; he didn’t need the fact of Hermione’s involvement to tell him that. Over the course of Harry’s life, he’d developed something of a sixth sense for dark magic, so while he could tell that this wasn’t some evil plan to do the world a favour by burying Stoke under a mountain of snow, the magic wasn’t entirely benign, either. It had a kind of guilty grey tint to it, like a child who knew better. Not that a child could ever have cast this particular spell.

He performed the standard Auror procedures of casing the area while asking carefully-worded questions to the local population, who seemed to know less than nothing about practically everything.

The snow started getting into his boots, despite permanent repelling charms. When finally he managed to banish it and free the ungrateful residents from the threat of global warming's early arrival, he vowed never to let Hermione find out how long it had taken him. And there was still the mystery of how it had got there in the first place, a puzzle that eroded at his mood as the days stretched on with no progress to speak of.

Finally, when the thought of remaining in Stoke another minute outweighed the dread of returning home to discover a rude, uptight, extremely distant relative in his sitting room, he gave up and went home.

Ginny opened the door a second before he could, as if she’d been waiting for the crack of Apparition, and positioned herself in the open doorway like a bouncer.

“Hi! You’re back. James is with my mum, you’ve just missed him.”

She looked nervous. The emotion instantly rubbed off onto Harry.

“Oh. Were you going somewhere?” She had a sleek wool coat belted around her waist.

Fingering the trailing sash, Ginny shook her head.

“Then…can I come in?”

Harry hated the reediness of his voice, the shuffle of his feet on the doorstep. You would’ve thought he didn’t live there. You would’ve thought, wow, now there’s a pathetic specimen. I wonder what he’s done? Probably so many terrible things, he doesn’t even remember which one his wife is currently angry with him over.

He wondered if maybe he had.

“Ginny,” he began worriedly, but she stopped him with a hand.

“I have something to tell you,” she told him, and his heart sank further, if possible.

“This is incredibly difficult for me to say,” she went on.

His heart took up a shovel and began excavating.

Her fingers traced the stitching on the sash. “It’s just that I thought I could make it work, and you know I tried, I really did…”

“Ginny,” Harry said, dread curdling in the place where his heart had once been. “Please just tell me what’s going on. I’ve had a terrible week and you’re really starting to scare me.”

She seemed to take note of his expression for the first time, and her eyes widened. “Oh! I just realised how that sounded. Of course I’m not leaving you, you idiot. I’m only trying to tell you that you were…you were…right.” She nearly gagged on the word. “Fuck, that was awful.”

Harry sagged a little against the doorframe. “I was right?”

“Well, don’t sound so surprised,” she said peevishly. “I can admit when I’m wrong.”

The sudden return of his vital organs to their proper places left him lightheaded. “Yeah, it sounded very natural. But what was I right about?”

She waved her hand to encompass the general scope of her errors in judgement.

“Oh, you know. Meddling. I shouldn’t have; I think I made it worse.”

Harry’s chest swelled. She was the salve to all of his wounds: exhaustion, worry, excessive time spent in a droll town with a noticeable lack of economic prosperity, and age-related existential dread. And anything she couldn’t heal, the words you were right had just patched right up.

He hooked a finger into the belt of her coat to pull her forward. “Oh? I wonder who could have predicted that?”

She bit down on her lip, smiling up through her lashes at him. “I’ve learned my lesson, and I’m really sorry. I’m going to mind my own business from now on.”

He grinned down at her, green eyes darkened by the evening shadows. “No, you’re not.”

“I am! I even closed the Floo,” she told him. “No more visits from you-know-who.”

“Merlin, Ginny, can you please not call people—”

With a flick of her wrist, the sash fell free, taking her coat with it.

Like Venus on a shell she stood, a curtain of fiery, silken hair the only thing left between her skin and the crisp night air. Lit from behind in the open doorway, she was nearly blinding. Harry sucked in a breath and held it, eyes sweeping over her rounded shoulders, the pale curve of her hip, her pink nipples taut with cold.

Then it came to him that she was utterly naked, practically in public, and they had neighbours.

“Ginny!” he cried, and, spreading his cloak out like bat wings, jealously guarded her from view.

She laughed as she ran a remorseless hand down his chest, and then a little further. “I missed you like mad. And I heard you had a bad week. Let’s see if we can’t do something about that.”

They barely made it through the door.

- - -

While Ginny and Harry peaked in one of those rare simultaneous events that are mostly the provenance of literature aimed at women, Hermione was having her own nerve-trembling, palm-sweating experience half the world over.

A panic attack, you might call it.

Ragged huffs of breath fogged the glass as she pressed her nose to the window. She stopped hyperventilating just long enough to wipe it clear.

Outside, a family of five occupied several lounge chairs by the water. The oldest child seemed keen on fratricide, attempting to bury his brother's head in the sand while the mother drank something out of a coconut and idly flipped the pages of her romance novel. The father snoozed beside her, the top of his round, shirtless belly slowly reddening in the sun.

It was not the English sun, that much was evident.

“These people are all going to die if we don’t get back! How could Kingsley have made such a terrible mistake?”

When Draco didn’t answer, she turned to find him standing like a statue before the bed, staring down at it speechlessly.

It was conspicuously singular, a great big four-poster thing. Someone had spread scarlet rose petals in the shape of a heart in the centre.

“I don’t think it was a mistake,” he said in a strangled voice.

She forcibly dragged her thoughts out of their downward spiral and came to stand beside him at the tip of the fragrant abomination. Resting neatly in the centre, a card printed on hotel stationary read:

Below it, an amendment in Kingsley’s scribbled hand:

Hermione’s breathing picked back up.

“This is wildly inappropriate! If Human Resources finds out he used government funds to trap us in a hotel room at a Muggle resort with a – a bed…” She choked on the word.

Draco finally snapped out of his horrified trance. He brandished his wand and, looking pointedly away from her, summoned his patronus.

Nothing happened.

“How is that meant to work? It will take days for a patronus to cross the ocean, surely!”

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried again. “Expecto patronum!”

The silvery fox didn’t emerge.

“I think you might need a happier memory,” she said unhelpfully.

Grey eyes slid over her and darted away again. “I don’t have a happier memory than that one.” The admission looked as though it caused physical pain as the veritaserum dragged it from his throat.

“What—”

“You know perfectly well that I’ll have to tell you if you ask. Don’t.”

Hermione pursed her lips and cast her own unsuccessful patronus. They didn’t look at one another.

The pile of rose petals mocked her from the bed. We know all about your fake happy memories, they said. Wouldn’t you like to create some fake new ones?

“Evanesco,” she snapped at them. They didn’t budge.

“Oh.”

“Oh.”

- - -

Unable to wait until even the next day to learn whether her son was engaged to be married or still somewhat of a disappointment, Narcissa sent her fastest owl to Hogwarts. It returned shortly.

Well, that was just wonderful. Another problem for her to solve.

Narcissa tried to take the Floo to 12 Grimmauld Place, found she was unable to, then drew out a fresh sheet of parchment to draft another letter.

And that would have to do it.

She wasn’t about to go traipsing off to save the world herself.

Who did they think she was, Harry bloody Potter?

- - -

Theo knocked, then shivered for a full three minutes in the late October air before the door conceded to open.

“No need to ask what you’ve been up to while I stood out here in the cold,” he said, surveying Ginny’s flushed cheeks and general dishevelment. “You had to close your Floo for a little midweek romp with the Boy Wonder?”

She grinned, drawing her housecoat closer at the neck. “I tend to keep a G.I.T.-free household these days.”

“Well, thanks for that, because Narcissa’s gone and made me the messenger boy. She probably would’ve come herself, but I don’t believe she’s ever knocked on a front door before.” His lips pulled to one side in thought. “Actually, there’s a chance she doesn’t know how.”

“Did the veritaserum work, then? Is our collective nightmare over?”

“Veritaserum? Oh, I can’t wait to learn what that’s about. But no, she said to tell your husband he’s on world-saving duty again.” He shrugged. “The end of the world is apparently nigh, and, for some unfathomable reason, Stoke-on-Trent is the epicentre and Narcissa Malfoy its herald.”

Ginny rolled her eyes.

“Figures she’d think a bit of snow was the end of the world.”

He snorted. “I take it I can stop worrying?” he asked, looking the very picture of unbothered.

“Yes, he’s just been earlier today, and all is well. I’m curious though…” She put her head to one side and observed him speculatively. “If the world was really ending…”

“Oh, no. Why do I feel a W.A.N.K. approaching?”

“If you can honestly say you wouldn’t have any regrets, I’ll drop it. But if the world was ending, I know I’d regret not telling you to get over yourself and apologise. He really misses you, you know.” Taking a step back over the threshold, she grasped the doorknob. “And now I’ll say goodnight because I’ve just broken a promise I made not twenty minutes ago to stop meddling. I suppose I’ve got to go and redo my own apology.”

“Oh?” There was a twinkle in her eyes he wasn’t sure he liked.

“Indeed.” She waggled her eyebrows suggestively. “I recommend turning up at his door starkers. It worked for me.”

Theo stood outside Grimmauld Place until his toes went numb in his boots.

If the world was really ending…

It wasn’t, of course. That was just Narcissa getting worked up over things that didn’t concern her.

But if it was.

If it was, and he only had tonight, he’d…

He’d…

In the end, he only took part of Ginny’s advice. It wouldn’t do to be presumptuous.

- - -

They argued over their options while looking anywhere but at the garish display of petals.

The best one turned out to be completely mad, and Hermione had to clap her hand over her mouth to keep from bursting out into panicked laughter that would, she was sure, shortly be followed by great wracking sobs. She felt on the very precipice of a mental breakdown. Draco’s hand snaked out on no fewer than six occasions but he caught it every time, jerking it back from her shoulder before it made contact.

“If this doesn’t work, I can think of worse places to spend the apocalypse,” he said with forced lightness as they exited their room.

There was a pronounced wobble in Hermione’s stride as they crossed a sunlit lobby filled with smiling holidayers. She couldn’t stop herself from cataloguing their faces as she passed: the American honeymooners (dead soon; her fault), a group of sweaty Europeans stumbling out of a taxi out front (dead soon; her fault), a pinched-looking woman wondering loudly why she’d only been given four beach towels instead of the five she specifically requested (dead soon; feeling peevish, she assigned this one to Draco).

“I’ve never broken the Statute of Secrecy before. If this works, do you think we’ll lose our jobs?” she asked, hurrying to match his long strides toward the pool bar. It was packed with people, which was the idea.

“We have, actually,” he corrected her reluctantly. “We sent a Muggle to Hogwarts.”

She sniffled against her sleeve.

Draco’s hand spasmed toward her again. He shoved it into his pocket.

The couples around the bar were plastered to their seats, having started their day with a daiquiri (which contains fruit; part of a healthy breakfast) and were now well into their tenth rum punch.

Sitting on a barstool all day in paradise has a kind of bonding effect, the same way surviving a traumatic experience together does, like going to war, or being stuck on a tarmac for an hour after your plane’s landed. The pool bar’s dozen occupants had been strangers that morning. Now they were following each other on social media and had an inside joke about a parrot.

Draco cleared his throat as they approached.

The bar patrons turned at once to greet their new best friends, and he faltered. It occurred to Hermione that purposefully embarrassing himself in front of perfect strangers directly contravened Draco’s upbringing and every aspect of his personality.

She pulled herself together and stepped forward.

“Hello. Are any of you witches or wizards? The world is about to end and I need to get a message to Harry Potter immediately.”

The day drinkers were delighted. They raised their coconuts in a raucous salute.

“It’s true,” she insisted. “I literally cannot lie.”

“Who’s your supplier?” one of them shouted amiably.

Hermione did her level best not to engage in any petulant foot-stomping.

“Pardon me,” she said, turning to a bartender in a blue-striped uniform. “Do you have a phone we can use? I need to call whoever runs this country.”

The woman sighed wearily and pulled a bottle of water from a cooler.

“Drink water, eat a snack, and sleep it off,” she advised pragmatically.

“We’re telling the truth,” Hermione said urgently. “There was a prophecy about demons walking the earth and everyone dying. We were supposed to stop it but we adopted the wrong girl.” She looked pleadingly around at the drinkers. “It could be happening any minute! We have to get in touch with the British Prime Minister.”

The drinkers were forced to confront their own inadequacy in the face of Hermione’s impressive inebriation. Alcohol began to disappear rapidly through pink and purple straws.

Draco leaned in but didn’t bother lowering his voice. “They’re Muggles, Granger. How’s your wandless magic?”

“Good idea. How about…that?” Her eye landed on a machine that sat on the bar, whirling and humming as it mixed rum and artificial flavouring together into a frozen, sugary sludge.

“What is that thing?”

“You can’t have any. You would love it too much, and it would become a problem I’d have to save you from.”

She raised her voice to recapture the attention of the drinkers while Draco eyed the frozen drink longingly.

“We have real magic, and we will now demonstrate! Behold.”

He rolled his eyes at the dramatics but watched in admiration as she sharpened her focus in the direction of the unwitting frozen drink machine with a muttered confrigo.

Something popped within. It shuddered once and fell still.

“NO!” The drinkers gasped at the shocking loss.

“Party foul,” one of them told Hermione reproachfully.

The woman seated closest to the machine stroked it mournfully. “You’ll be missed.”

Someone suggested a toast in its honour. Coconuts went up.

“Farewell, Frozy, our eternal frosty companion. You freezer of brains, you…”

“Icer of esphoguses?” someone suggested.

“May your memory be a blessing, and may we not remember this tomorrow.”

There was a brief moment of silence punctuated only by the sounds of straws scraping the bottom of cups.

“Come on, then. There’s another bar around the corner.”

As one, they peeled themselves from their stools and stumbled in a herd formation around the perimeter of the pool.

When they were gone, the bartender smacked the machine with the side of her hand. “Just look at what you’ve done,” she admonished.

“Everyone just thinks we’re drunk,” Hermione moaned, slumping onto a recently-unoccupied stool.

Draco settled in beside her, inspecting the faintly sticky bartop closely before resting a tentative forearm against it.

“No, I don’t think they suspect alcohol. Though, I can’t say I blame them.” He looked over at the bartender, who was committing the interaction to memory so it could be brought up later as supporting evidence for why she deserved a raise. “Where’s your Ministry? Kingston? Can we walk there from here?”

The bartender blinked at him in displeasure.

“Well, that’s alright. If Jamaica's wizarding government is half as organised as ours, someone’ll be here soon.”

[It was easily less than half as organised. All eleven employees of the Ministry of Magic in Kingston were on an extended lunch break that had begun the day before.]

Hermione shifted anxiously on the seat beside him. “So what? Are we just supposed to wait here while demons take over Britain and kill everyone?”

Draco’s mouth flattened out. One of his eyes began twitching.

“Are you trying not to say ‘yes’ right now?”

All of his breath left him in a woosh. “Yes. Merlin, that’s a lot of veritaserum. It must be fully metabolised by now; I can hardly keep my mouth shut.”

Hermione felt overheated and ice cold all at once. Though they’d shed their coats in the hotel suite and Draco was down to his shirtsleeves, they’d dressed that day with the expectation of a Hogwarts autumn. Sweat made itself at home between her skin and the cashmere of her jumper. She pulled at her collar in agitation.

“I think we’re going to die.”

“Hermione…”

“I don’t want to die!”

“We’re not going to die.” He paused, frowning. “Well, apparently I actually believe that. I’m not sure why, even. It just seems impossible that Potter won’t swoop in at the last moment and save everyone. It’s his favourite activity.”

“I don’t think anyone’s coming for us.”

“No, I don’t believe they are.”

“Oh god. Lilith—”

“Gemma, you mean.”

“We just left her there!”

“We left her at Hogwarts. There isn’t a safer place.”

“We adopted the wrong child.”

“Well…that’s indisputably true.”

“We made every imaginable mistake.”

Draco’s expression grew solemn as he watched her features twisting up in misery. “I know I have.”

Panic tightened its laces around her chest. The tears, which she’d been holding at bay through sheer force of will, surfaced and spilled over, unrestrained.

“The world is going to end because of us,” she said hollowly. “And I am going to die here of all places, with you, of all people.”

He was silent for a full minute. Cheerful music drifted, unwanted, from the ceiling-mounted bar speakers, and she resentfully awarded it the title of her all-time least favourite song.

…don’t worry…about a thing…

“Is that it, then?” he finally said, voice tight. “You can’t stand the thought of being stuck here with me?”

She hiccoughed and wiped angrily at her cheeks with the sleeve of her jumper.

…cause every little thing…is gonna be alright…

“I can’t think of anything worse,” she said.

…singing don't worry…about a thing…

“Then I don’t understand why you left,” he said bitterly, staring down at his clenched fists. “When you thought I was marrying Pansy, you left. I can't see why you would do that.”

“What is there to understand?” She was sobbing now, furious. “You don’t want to be here with me, and I don’t want to spend my last moments with someone who hates me!”

Draco looked stricken. His hand went to his hair, gripped a tight handful, then released.

“Come on,” he said, standing sharply. “We’re going back to the room.”

“Why?” she asked, but didn’t object when he put a hand under her elbow to draw her away.

“We’re going to have a very overdue conversation. And I refuse to do it while listening to this fucking music.”

- - -

If, for some reason, you ever want to make a man feel capable and important, you should do the thing that Ginny had just done.

“I think I’m going to take another crack at it,” Harry said, as his breathing returned to normal. “There’s something going on in Stoke, I can feel it.”

“What, right now?”

- - -

Draco walked at her pace, leaning in but never touching. A pulsing pressure behind his eyes warned him if he didn’t hurry, he’d end up screaming the truth at her in the hotel lobby, which would probably not make her any more amenable to accepting it.

He’d held it safe within the creases of his heart for years. What was another thirty seconds?

In the room, Hermione sat sullenly on the end of the bed, exhausted, tear-streaked, and worn out by the knowledge of their failure.

He could – truthfully – state that he did not care one ounce for the rest of the world at that moment. His entire universe was sitting in front of him.

Draco took in the entirety of her.

His brilliant counterpart, his best friend, the object of all his desires and the eternal rock in his shoe. His favourite adversary; his most treasured enemy. He would not lie to her again, not even if they had a million lifetimes left on this earth instead of a few veritaserum-filled hours.

He knelt at her feet.

“Hermione, I don’t hate you. Quite the opposite, actually.”

- - -

There’s a trite saying that, on its surface, seemed as though it ought to have applied:

The truth will set you free.

Instead, Hermione just felt stymied by it.

Her mind worked overtime to intellectualise her way through two contradictory truths: that the veritaserum wouldn’t begin to wear off for hours yet, and that somehow, he had just lied to her again.

Unable to reconcile them through brute force, she fell back into familiar patterns.

“You hate me,” she insisted, shaking her head.

He reached forward to wrap his hands around her own.

“Think about it. You know I must be telling the truth.”

“But you said – you don't even want to be friends,” she objected.

He looked at her meaningfully, and her face flooded with heat.

“But…no, you’ve always told me you hated me…and the pranks…”

“The pranks, Hermione, what do you think those were? Running after you, begging for your attention like a child. Surely you can see that if I hated you, I would’ve avoided you, refused to work with you. I wouldn’t have pursued a job for the sole purpose of being near you—”

“You didn’t!” She pulled her hands free and pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes to stem a fresh flow of tears. “That's not possible! You didn’t! You – you…”

“Always asking the wrong question. Ask me why I took that job.” His fingers slid around her knees and tightened. “Go on.”

“Why?”

“It’s true that I didn’t like you, not then. But when I heard you took the job, my first thought was that somebody ought to keep an eye on her before she consolidates too much power. My second thought was that I’d be mad to let anyone else be the one to do it. I wanted it to be me. I wanted to be the one fighting with you over Muggle nonsense—”

She sniffled loudly. “It isn’t nonsense!”

“I wanted to be the one giving you grief in your office. I wanted to be the one taking up too much space on your sofa. I wanted to be the one to watch you write endless lists and challenge you over silly topics and flirt with you just to annoy you.”

“But that’s just it!” she cried, running her fingers beneath her eyes, again and again. “How am I to believe you? The flirting, the way you’d always touch me…You’ve made it impossible to trust that any of this is real!”

“Then please, allow me to set the record straight,” he said, without hesitation. “I love you.”

It was as though every one of his muscles had been conscripted into the effort of holding it in, and now that the words had left his body, they could finally relax. He looked nearly delirious with the relief of it.

“If that means I've lost,” he went on, “and you want to make me suffer for it while the whole world goes to shit, just know that you cannot do worse to me than I've done to myself. When I think of the years wasted when I could have simply opened my eyes…”

Unburdened and empty, he leaned forward to rest his cheek against her thighs in supplication.

“It's over. You win. You can have anything you want of me, or nothing at all, if that's what you prefer. I'm yours, anyway. This whole time, I've been yours.”

Her fingers twitched. She didn’t suppress the urge, because it wouldn’t have been truthful to hold anything back now. They slid through his hair and stroked the back of his neck.

“You haven't lost,” she told him.

“I haven't?”

“No. I have.”

“I don't understand.”

"You said it first.”

“Please be clear with me,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut. “I need the truth, all of it. No matter what it is.”

“You said it first,” she said again. “So you won. I love you, too.”

He turned his face into her lap and, for a long moment, just breathed into the fabric of her skirt.

When he found the strength to lift his head up to look at her, she was already moving.

Their mouths collided, pulled back by millimetres, and came together again with all the gentleness two starving creatures could manage.

“Draco,” she said against his mouth, and then again, low and guttural. “Draco.”

It was not ambiguous.

He wrenched her from her seated position and tumbled her backwards onto the bed. Crushed petals drifted beneath his hands as he climbed with steady determination back into that coveted position above her, the full length of her body pressing alongside his.

“Tell me again,” he demanded.

“I love you.”

She pulled him down with fistfuls of his shirt. He gladly obliged, and for a while they occupied themselves in their mission to take shelter beneath each other’s skin while rose-scented desire thickened the air around them.

But they couldn’t stay that way for long. It was too hot, and they were both dressed for late October in Scotland.

Draco’s hands slid beneath her cream jumper, finding flesh, then lace, then flesh again as he liberated her warm brown skin from the constraints of out-of-season knitwear.

“Merlin, Hermione.”

She flushed prettily as he stroked one hand across her ribcage, relishing the utter freedom of the action. He could look without pretending he didn’t want to. He could touch without cloaking his desire within stratagem. He did both as if fearing the liberty might be snatched from him at any moment.

“We’re both still wearing too much,” she told him, gasping as his hand found its way beneath the hem of her skirt.

“I couldn’t agree more.”

He pulled her down the pillows and laid her out before him, settling between her bent knees as she got to work on the buttons of his shirt. But her hands, shaky with adrenaline and the desperate need to be everywhere all at once, were too slow, and he soon pulled away to shuck shirt, then trousers, then briefs.

“You’re the best part of my life,” he told her, locating her zipper and easing the skirt down over her hips. “The very best part.”

Oh, she thought abstractedly. The truth really does set you free.

For years, Hermione had encased herself within rock-hard layers of pride and obstinance, a protective measure against the inevitable sharp stop that follows a fall. But it was fear that she wore closest to her skin. Fear that clung like mud, blinding her to what was directly in front of her. It was not the general fear of unrequited heartache, but a specific dread of him, and the truth that lurked unacknowledged in the liminal edges of her consciousness: that for years, her heart had thrummed, not within her chest, but between his hands like a soft, trapped thing.

There had never been any defence against him, only the hope that he never noticed what it was that he held.

She offered it to him now willingly, and let his words wash her clean.

“Say more things,” she asked him, head tipping back to receive the truth he poured into her like communion.

From the foot of the bed, he looked up at her, eyes soft and adoring.

“I must be the biggest idiot who ever lived. How did I fail to see what was right there? Merlin, I’m such a fool.”

Hermione panted as his lips traced a path up the inside of her knee. “Say more.”

“I’ve wanted you for so long. I think you knew that.”

“I knew. I was afraid. I thought it didn’t mean anything to you, not like what it meant to me. I thought—” She arched in a spasm of movement as he pressed a kiss over the fabric between her legs. “I thought you would ruin me.”

He paused, fingers hooked around the waistband of her knickers, and met her heavy gaze. If the truth pooled in her limbs like water, it crackled on a pier inside him. His touch burned bright and hot with the flame of it.

“I want to ruin you.” He tugged. “I want you to ruin me.”

“But you won’t hurt me after. You won’t use it against me.”

His mouth grazed just above her hipbone and her toes curled in response.

“Never, Hermione. Never.”

“I love veritaserum. Say more.”

“I love you.”

Moving without thought, her legs wound around his waist, nesting him directly between her parted thighs. With immense effort, he resisted.

“Your turn. Is this for me?” One thumb rubbed a teasing circle over the white lace still covering her right breast, her nipple pebbling under his touch.

“It always has been.”

“You’re perfect,” he informed her, then reached behind her to liberate more skin for his consumption. Once freed, she flung the bra at the wall as if it had personally offended her.

“Just look at you.” His jaw dragged a path up the side of one soft breast and then across the other. “Say more.”

“I feel as though I've been reunited with a part of myself I didn't know was missing. Do you feel it?”

She took his hand and rested it together with hers over her heart. Beneath the thudding pulse in his own fingertips, he registered her galloping heart. Hers was faster; his more unsteady.

“I feel it,” he murmured. “Say more things.”

"I love you, Draco."

As one, their pulses lurched into a measure of double time. He took his hand away and presented a solemn pinky.

“Pinky promise this is real?”

Her face fell at once, and the heartbeat in his chest careened to a halt. “Oh, dear.”

"What?"

“I'm afraid the pinky promise is meaningless. That was a prank.”

He looked at his outstretched finger in outrage.

"It’s redundant, anyway."

“I should’ve been drugging you with veritaserum from the start. But please, say it. I need to be sure.”

“It’s real! It’s real. I swear—”

Nothing at all remained between them: no secrets, no lies, and not a scrap of fabric. He perused her body lazily, enjoying the total freedom as his hands moved down her side; wound through her hair; crested the peak of her breast; cupped her calf to pull her legs open for him.

When, for the third time, he ghosted the pad of his thumb in an exploratory circle between her legs, she grew impatient.

“I’m on the potion,” she gasped nonsensically, forgetting that such concerns were usually reserved for people who had a future to worry about, and slid her hand below his navel to grip him authoritatively.

He thought he might go blind. It was addictive, her touch. He could spend a happy eternity giving himself over to her in whatever way she wanted.

They didn’t have an eternity.

“Tell me more,” he croaked, desperate to eke every drop of truth from her lips while he was still alive to do so.

Hermione pulled back to look at him with shining eyes. “If the world doesn’t end tonight, I want to move back in with you. Your room this time.”

“That’s easily arranged. What else do you want?”

“I want to sit on your face. Oh my god.” She clamped a hand over her mouth. “I didn’t mean – Ginny said – we don’t have to—”

But there’s no undoing the truth with half a vial of veritaserum rocketing through one’s bloodstream, so the rest of her words wouldn’t come.

“Fucking hell,” he said hoarsely. “Don’t you dare try to take that back. We do have to. In fact, I insist on it.”

In a flash, he was on his back with her astride. He looked up at her and just…looked.

“You’re so beautiful. You have no idea how long I've spent wishing – FUCK!”

She made a halfhearted attempt to draw back in alarm. His hands tightened on her hips and didn't let her.

“What’s wrong?”

“I just realised we could’ve been doing this for years. Years, Hermione. I am so stupid, I—”

She laughed. “Alright, you can stop talking now!”

Grinning wolfishly up at her, he clamped his hands around her bare thighs and nudged her forward. “Climb up here and make me, you minx.”

Sighing fondly, she did.

It was, by a landslide, a preferable death to anything a demon might’ve orchestrated: smothered between her soft thighs, drowning in a flood of heat and lust while she stretched and writhed above him. But much as he might’ve wanted to spend his last moments there, she shuddered and broke with a surprising speed, riding out the final aftershocks against the flat of his tongue before draping herself back against his chest.

“I thought about that a lot,” she admitted between heaving breaths.

It had been a very, very long time coming. Draco was glad the windows were closed. A stiff breeze could’ve knocked him over, so to speak.

As if wishing to test his resolve, her hand wound back around him while he traced the curve of her hip with steady, teasing strokes.

“Don’t,” he said, eyes squeezing shut, but his traitorous hips bucked up into her palm. “It’ll be a massive blow to my ego if I can’t make it past the opening act.”

She laughed softly and took pity on him. Lying back against the pillows, she allowed him, for once, complete control. He seized it, looping one arm beneath her knee to spread her further for him.

“You’re beautiful. My brilliant, perfect, infuriating witch. Say you won’t leave me again.”

Taking his face in her hands, she nodded once.

“I won’t. Not ever,” she said, and brought his lips to hers as he pressed into her.

Finally.

The word hung unsaid in the air between them. They were insensible with it, drunk on the relief of laying down arms, of winning, and losing, and not caring in the slightest which was which.

Finally.

He buried his face in her hair and moved inside her at a torturously slow pace, driven by the need to savour every solitary second.

Finally.

She said it back to him, wordlessly, as she wrapped her legs around his hips to pull him further into herself.

Finally. Finally. Finally.

Only when she begged him did he concede to increase his pace, and, truth falling from his lips like diamonds across her skin, he brought them both hurtling together over a precipice.

They loved. It was enough, and yet how could they ever have enough of it?

In his arms again some minutes later, she trembled, and nearly cried, suddenly overwhelmed and overcome by the sheer shock of finding him now, when it was very nearly too late.

“You were right there,” she said, again and again, her cheek rubbing into the firm valley of his chest. “You were right there, and we wasted so much time being stupid.”

“I’m here now,” he promised her. “I’m right here with you.”

Perhaps they had minutes to live before a girl in Stoke-on-Trent fulfilled a prophecy. Perhaps some deus ex machina would appear to do battle with demons on their behalf. Perhaps the world was never in any danger other than the steady, creeping lap of waves against increasingly higher ground. Perhaps a butterfly had just flapped its wings in Indonesia and soon an earthquake in Nebraska would disable the cache of nuclear weapons stored below ground there, finally giving the Russians their opportunity to do something about the problem of too many humans.

It was out of their hands now. She clung to his shoulders as he rolled them together over a sea of perfumed petals and told her he loved her and she believed him.

- - -

The demons that appeared through the floor of the Prices’ front room were probably hoping for a reception involving a lot of satisfactory wailing and crying and gnashing of teeth.

If so, they misjudged the human brain’s capacity to adapt to new stimuli when it was being violently shoved at them. Therefore, they were forced to wait in somewhat awkward silence until Pansy gathered her wits enough to scream.

It was an excellent scream, though. They were very pleased.

Neville sprinted back to the room, followed by Mrs Price and, somewhat later due to his creaky knees, Mr Price.

At once, Mrs Price fainted dead away while her husband discovered that his joints weren’t that bad after all, and fairly sprinted for the exit.

“WHAT THE FUCK?” Pansy was screaming. She actually hadn’t stopped yet.

“It’s alright, they’re in the pentagram,” Gemma reminded her. “Haven’t you done this before?”

The demons opened their mouths. Or, at least, they opened the spaces where a mouth should have been. The voices that poured from them sounded as though a boys' choir had been instructed to just pick a random high note.

THY MORTAL BONDS CANNOT CONTAIN US.

They moved, and it was a sight more terrible than any a human eye had ever witnessed. The white chalk lines of the pentagram smudged beneath them as they headed for Gemma.

Neville shot his arm out, hoping to – he didn’t know what. Grab her and run for it? Shove her behind himself and squeeze his eyes shut?

But Gemma stepped forward and his fingers closed on air.

“STOP,” she commanded, a hand held out in front of her.

The writhing mass of blackened limbs and wings oozed to a stop mere feet away.

Understanding crackled through the air.

Whatever monsters had been unleashed, they obeyed her.

“Back up,” Gemma told them sternly, and they skulked back into the pentagram without protest.

Her lips twitched with pride.

She’d summoned the demons in the same way an artist summons a painting onto canvas. Shaped from her morbid imagination and the religious overtones of her upbringing, they hadn’t so much come forth from the bowels of Hell as they had popped into existence on a whim.

Kind of like a really, really powerful illusion charm. Well-behaved illusions, at that.

You can think of them like horrific-looking pets, the kind that might appear in an Ugly Dog of the Month calendar alongside a pug that had survived a house fire. Each was more creatively gruesome than the last. There was the classic half-man, half-goat variety (which is a lot more disturbing in person), one with flesh dripping from its bones like lava, and another with molten eyes and acrid, steaming breath and claws the length of your arm.

Neville kept trying to shield Pansy’s body with his own, forcing her to wedge her head into his armpit to see better.

“What are they?” she shrieked. Her overwrought brain couldn’t seem to pick a spell to try first.

Gemma turned to her in confusion. “Well…they’re demons, aren’t they? You told me to summon them!”

“But…” She stared up at them, outraged. “Demons don’t exist!”

“Erm,” said Neville, looking at the hard evidence. “Wait a minute, you summoned demons with my gran’s wand?”

Pansy grabbed a fistful of his shirt and shook him roughly.

“SHE IS A WITCH, NEVILLE!”

“Oh. Oh…”

Gemma eyed them worriedly. “Yeah, but you knew that already. Did I make you forget by accident?”

Neville began to remove his glasses to clean them – now seemed like the appropriate time for a nervous habit – but decided he didn’t want to be sight impaired for any length of time in the demons’ presence.

“Merlin, we didn’t know you were a real witch!” he told her. “We’ve been teaching you fake spells this whole time!”

Gemma’s mouth fell open.

Pansy, who did not wish to spend any more time gazing upon the putrid composition of drippy flesh and matted fur in the room with them, began banging her head against the wall of Neville’s chest in frustration.

“I don’t know how this could’ve happened. If you were a witch, you should’ve received your Hogwarts letter. You should be at school right now!”

Gemma’s mouth snapped shut again.

In the centre of the pentagram, the demons shuffled their feet (if they had them), impatient to get started on world destruction.

THOU HAST SUMMONED US FROM THE BOWELS OF HELL. WHAT IS THY WILL?

“Hell?” screeched Pansy. “What hell?”

“Oh…erm, the Catholic one, I guess?” Gemma ventured. Then, to the demons, she added, “I didn’t really have a plan. What can you do?”

FOR THEE, MISTRESS, THE RIVERS SHALL RUNNETH BLACK WITH BLOOD. THY THRONE SHALL BE FORGED BY THE BONES OF THE DOOMED. WE SHALL LAY THE ASHES OF THIS ONCE MOST WONDROUS NATION AT THINE FEET—

“Incarcerous,” tried Neville, with an unoptimistic wave of his wand. The demons turned to him, and within the endless abscess of their eyes, he watched the fall of a thousand empires and the enslavement of humankind for all eternity.

He lowered his wand hesitantly.

“No thanks, I don’t want any of that,” Gemma told them. “I think I should like for you to go away now.”

MISTRESS, WE BESEECH THEE. GRANT US LEAVE TO CONQUER THIS WORLD IN THY NAME.

“Please don’t, actually,” Neville croaked.

The demons shuddered in fury. HOLD THY TONGUE, WEAKLING.

“I’ve quite had it with you,” Pansy snapped. “He is not weak.”

Neville shot her an appreciative look.

WE SHALL BRINGEST HELL UPON THIS EARTH AND YE SHALL TREMBLE BEFORE US. THE FIRES OF OUR DESTRUCTION SHALL BURN FOR ONE THOUSAND YEARS—

Gemma wrinkled her nose. “No thanks. The earth’s alright as it is.”

MISTRESS, THOU DIDST CALL FOR US.

“Yes,” she said reasonably. “But that was before I knew you could talk.”

The winged demon ruffled his leathery appendages irritably, causing a waft of something that smelled like roadkill pickled in sulphur to permeate the room.

Pansy pinched her nose and glowered at them, and Gemma shrugged in a way that meant they’re biblically accurate, what did you expect?

“This is ridiculous! I refuse to die at the hands of demons that shouldn’t even exist—”

“No one said anything about dying,” Gemma muttered.

WE DID, insisted one of the demons, looking a bit put out.

In the far corner of the room, Mrs Price stirred, opened her eyes, and fainted again. Neville helpfully levitated her to an armchair.

“Get rid of them!” Pansy demanded.

“It’s not like I know how! You’ve been teaching me fake magic, apparently, so it’s not my fault—”

Pansy moaned. “Merlin, of course you’re a witch, just look at you!”

“Look,” interrupted Neville. “It’s just a little flick, like this…yes, that’s it. The spell is evanesco.”

There was a sound like the buzzing of a thousand locusts as the demons opened their mouths in protest.

BETRAYTH NOT THY LOYAL SERVANTS! BID US DESTROY THIS EARTH—

Gemma decided that if she were to have any pets, she wanted them to be small and cute like the Prices’ yappy dogs (current occupation: barking madly at the demons’ feet, trying to bite their scaly, pointed tails). She had little use for pets that stank of rotting flesh and talked about world domination all the time.

“Evanesco!” she yelled, and flicked her wand just as Neville had taught her.

- - -

Harry burst wand-first into the room. All of his senses, which had been complemented by a complex weave of detection spells, told him that something was happening, and not only that, but it was happening here, in the front room of a little house on the outskirts of Stoke-on-Trent.

Or, rather, had happened. He lowered his wand.

“Harry!” Neville blinked at him in surprise. “You got here right on time.”

“Did I?”

He looked around the room again, cataloguing the clues. A tipped candle dripped wax onto the smudged remains of a chalk drawing on the floorboards. Someone had tried and mostly failed to hang a dark curtain over the windows, and a singular locust hummed noisily against the exposed pane in a doomed effort to escape. Neville and Pansy (what were Neville and Pansy doing here?) had twin expressions of dawning comprehension, as though they’d just had knowledge dumped into their skulls at a rate much faster than their spongy grey matter could absorb, and the excess was slowly getting soaked up and fitted into place. And, there was an old woman snoozing softly in a chair by the door.

It didn’t look as though he’d arrived on time. It looked as though he’d just missed the tail end of a house party hosted by ogres.

“Yes, if you’d been here a minute earlier you would have run right into the demons. I don’t think they would’ve liked that much.”

Demons? That hadn’t been on his list of working theories. Although, there did seem to be a stench in the room that went beyond the town's normal air quality concerns.

“Does anyone care to explain what’s going on?” he pressed.

“Why yes, Potter,” Pansy began, pointing. “This is a witch. She is definitely not a Muggle.”

The girl in question threw her hands in the air in exasperation. “I told you I was!”

“Oh, Gemma. I’m so sorry we didn’t believe you. I cannot think why, now.”

Gemma shrugged. “Adults never pay attention.”

“That changes, starting now. Merlin, what a mess.”

Neville nodded at the sleeping elderly woman. “Harry, she needs to go to St Mungo’s along with her husband, who's on the loose somewhere outside.”

“And there had better not be a single report about this incident,” Pansy added.

Some of those words made even less sense than others, to Harry’s ear. “No…reports?”

Pansy nodded firmly. “I know that’s what you get up to all day in that fancy job of yours, so you’re probably trembling in horror at the thought. But it’s really important that we don’t document any of this little situation. We’d be happy to explain all about the demon summoning later, but I imagine a lot of it was illegal in some way, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to get us into any trouble.” She paused, then reconsidered. “Not Neville, at least.”

“It would be a lot of paperwork, I bet,” added Neville. “Mountains of it.”

Harry rubbed his jaw. What were the proper forms for demon summoning? The Ministry probably didn’t have one; he’d have to create it from scratch. And what department would that even go to, anyway? Would he have to get the Unspeakables involved? They’d probably insist on trying to recreate the whole thing in the name of research…

When he finally agreed, he managed to make it sound like he was doing them a favour.

“And who are you?” he asked the girl.

“I’m—” she paused, looking uncertainly around at Pansy. “Actually, I have to tell you something about that.”

Pansy felt behind her for Neville’s arm, intuiting that she was soon going to need something to hold onto. Gemma hadn’t even looked this nervous in the face of biblically-accurate demons.

“I’m not…actually Gemma. She’s my friend; we switched places at the children’s home because she wanted to go to London and I didn’t. My name’s actually—”

“LILITH!” Harry shouted.

Everyone stared, and he flushed. “I worked it out,” he muttered. “Before you said it, I worked it out.”

“Oh, very well done.” Pansy rolled her eyes. “She’s been doing magic on those Muggles this whole time and the Ministry has only just noticed.”

Harry looked affronted. “That’s not my fault. There’s this rubbish bin.”

“Anyway, now you get to go to Hogwarts, which you’ll love, and Potter here will take you,” Pansy told the girl. “All the magical children go there.”

“And your friend, too, actually.” Harry rubbed his eyes. “Merlin, they sent a Muggle to Hogwarts. I’m never letting Hermione live this down.”

“Gemma’s there?”

Harry looked down into her serious, impertinent face and nodded. His Auror senses (still finely honed, obviously) whispered to him that if this child got the notion into her head, she could take reality into her hands like modelling clay and reshape the universe so that it had never contained a Harry Potter, and he would have nearly died all those times for nothing.

“Can Pansy and Neville visit me there?” she asked.

No part of Harry was willing to risk nonexistence by denying this child something she wanted.

But Neville answered instead. “Course we will.”

They readied to leave. Lilith said goodbye somewhat awkwardly, Harry thought, as if she was toying with the idea of a hug but couldn’t quite work up the courage for it. Pansy settled the matter by yanking her in and squeezing her firmly around the shoulders.

“You are going to do amazing things,” she told her. “I cannot wait to see it.” Then, pulling back to take hold of the girl’s face, she added: “No more demons, though. I forbid it.”

Lilith actually grinned. Then she turned to Neville, staring hard.

“You’re taking too long,” she told him sternly.

He gulped. “Pardon?”

“She’s trying to be patient but I don’t think she’s very good at it. You might end up taking too long. So hurry up.”

Neville flushed crimson in understanding.

New clues presented themselves, now that Harry knew what to look for. He took in the way Pansy had settled back against Neville’s chest as if pulled by a magnet, the protective curl of his fingers around her waist, the absent-minded stroke of her hand across the sleeve of the arm that held her.

“Wow, you’re right. I actually think we’d better go, before they…” Harry cleared his throat. “Bye, Nev. Bye, Pansy.”

Floating the sleeping Mrs Price before him, he ushered Lilith outside. Some things weren’t meant to be seen by twelve-year-old eyes, and one of them was about to happen in that demolished front room.

Pansy waited until the front door closed, then turned, stretching up to cross her wrists behind the back of Neville’s neck.

“Well, you heard her.”

He blushed again, and was still blushing when he took her face in his hands and kissed her.

- - -

ON ALL HALLOW’S EVE, ELEVEN YEARS AGO, A PARENTLESS CHILD WHO IS NOT A MUGGLE WAS BORN WITH THE POWER TO END THE WORLD.

ON THE EVENING OF HER TWELFTH BIRTHDAY, SHE WILL BRING FORTH DEMONS TO WALK THE EARTH AND THE LIVING WILL GO TO THEIR DEATHS. UNTRAINED AND UNAIDED, SHE WILL TURN TO THE DARK.

SHE MUST BE GUIDED TO THE LIGHT.

- - -

By now, the child's birthday had come and gone. The demons were defeated and the world did not end. Lilith (the real one) still lacked formal training, but McGonagall would soon be tasked with making sure Hogwarts’ newest student continued to develop into a decent person, and Neville and Pansy had already made respectable progress in that regard.

That only leaves the LIVING WILL GO TO THEIR DEATHS bit.

Pansy, of course, meant the French kind, wherein no one actually dies but it can feel that way if performed correctly.

Below is a partial accounting of the petites morts that occurred on All Hallow’s Eve:

Theodore Nott (1) and Charles Weasley (1)
They mostly just talked, as there was a lot to catch up on.

Ginevra Potter (2.5) and Harry Potter (2)
James’ accidental magic chose the worst possible moment to manifest as the ability to open locked doors.

Daphne Zabini (1) and Blaise Zabini (1)
He would’ve gone for more, but she fell asleep. He understood. Three babies is a lot.

Improper Use of Magic Office, Second Assistant (1) and Junior Unspeakable Benjamin Davies Preston (1)
The long and short of it is this: Benjamin, who was fairly certain the world was about to end, didn't want to die a virgin. As he blurted this fact on the precipice of a panic attack on a Ministry lift, it just so happened that the lift’s other occupant was one assistant who was fairly certain she was going to be fired and/or murdered by Hermione and/or Draco for revealing critical rubbish bin information to a certain Head Auror. A Ministry broom cupboard is as good a place as any to spend your last night on earth, and he was feeling considerably less hung up on Hermione by the time it was over.

Professor Ava Roberts (3) and Ronald Weasley (2)
Late that night, when she’d asked him what he wanted to do, he had no choice but to tell her the truth. And so she put on her professor robes and they located an empty classroom.

Pansy Parkinson (3) and Neville Longbottom (2)
His first one was a bit of an accident, but she was kind and understanding about it and he eventually acquitted himself admirably. She was very satisfied.

M.M. (4) and Kingsley Shacklebolt (1)
If there’s one thing powerful women are good at, it’s getting what they want.

Hermione Granger (6) and Draco Malfoy (4)
She won, although he would say that he did.

- - -

Three days later, as promised, Kingsley and M.M. arrived at the Sandals Montego Bay Resort to collect their employees.

“Hang on,” she said, leaning one ear against the door. “I thought I heard…”

There was an uncomfortably familiar noise coming from within the suite. She drew back sharply. “Oh dear. This isn’t a good time. We should probably come back later.”

Kingsley, suppressing a grimace, rapped his knuckles hard against the door.

“That’s enough of that!” he called, voice booming down the hall. “It’s time to go!”

For a moment, there was silence from within. Then the door wrenched open to reveal Draco, gleaming magnificently, wearing nothing but a towel held loosely around his waist and a fiendish grin.

“We’re occupied,” he told them brightly. “She does this thing with an ice cube—”

“Draco!”

He looked over his shoulder at the source of the horrified screech.

“It’s true!” he called, then turned back to the ministers. “We tell the truth all the time now. It’s exhilarating, if I’m being honest. Which I am.”

M.M. arched a brow at him. “Congratulations, but we really don’t need to know the details.”

“This is your fault,” he shrugged, unbothered. “You got us a bed. What else were we to do with it?”

Kingsley did not have an answer. It had just occurred to him that this new version of Draco and Hermione might be somehow worse, and certainly more disgusting, than the pining, miserable iteration from a few days ago.

“So, did the world end?” Draco was asking. “Were there demons? We didn’t see anything on the news.”

M.M. peered at him, uncertain whether he was being serious. “The world obviously did not end. Are demons real?”

“Good. That’s good.” Draco nodded, distracted. He looked over his shoulder then back at Kingsley, flushed and triumphant. “Come back later, then. If you’ll excuse me, I’d very much like to…erm, finish.”

Kingsley spluttered a protest as the door began to close.

“Don’t you want your wands?” he asked, face awash in horrified awareness of the fresh hell he’d just created for himself.

“Oh, right.” Draco accepted them gratefully. “Good timing, actually. There’s something interesting I’d like to try with levitation. Goodbye.”

He pushed the door shut, still grinning, and there was the unmistakable sound of a giggle from further within.

M.M. shook her head in astonishment. “I suppose we made our own bed. So to speak.”

“Yes, but Merlin. I’m going to have to start disinfecting everything.”

- - -

Any lingering questions Hermione and Draco had about whether they were really prepared to be the legal, ostensible parents to a twelve-year-old Muggle child were answered when, within five minutes of their return to British soil, they were called to Headmistress McGonagall’s office for a parent-teacher conference.

In the further ten minutes it took to arrive outside her door, Hermione had prepared a thirteen-point argument as to why Lilith Gemma should be allowed to remain at the school, and bugger the rules about it being built for magical children; all children were magical in their own right, and besides, Hermione had a truly disturbing amount of power and influence that she was fully prepared to flex.

McGonagall’s lips went very thin as she watched Hermione’s argument morph from maternal outrage into unsubtle threats.

“Am I to understand that the Ministry wishes to interfere at Hogwarts, Miss Granger?”

Hermione could only blink at her, slack-jawed and outmanoeuvred.

Draco delivered a consolatory pat to her shoulder.

“You may wait outside. I’ll speak with the girls alone.”

They moved to leave, although not too quickly so as not to appear defeated, but McGonagall spoke again, stopping them.

“That’s a remarkable child, Muggle though she may be. When Mr Potter arrived with the other girl, I feared we’d have a riot on our hands when word got out. But her friends have been taking it in shifts to come in here, an absolute stream of them from every house, endlessly pleading with me not to send her away. I haven’t known a moment of peace.”

“She really is the best,” Hermione said. “I don’t know that I’ve ever met anyone better.”

Draco and Hermione went out, and the two girls went in with determined expressions, holding tight to each other’s hands.

Gemma Lilith was also the best, judging from the pride on Pansy and Neville’s faces as they watched her go.

“Oh! What are you two doing here…” Hermione squinted in suspicion at their somewhat intertwined limbs, “…together?”

“Parenting, obviously,” Pansy replied. She nodded at Hermione’s own hand, which was wrapped around Draco's. “And do I get to be the first to say I told you so?”

Draco snorted. “There’s a queue, I’m afraid. Seven or eight people in front of you – oh! Here comes one now.” The sound of heels on the staircase made everyone turn. “Hello, Mother. Have you been called into the headmistress’ office for poisoning a student?”

Narcissa’s lips pursed in a frown, which everyone took as a yes.

At Draco’s side, Hermione took an unconscious step back, but he put a reassuring arm around her waist and pulled her forward.

“Mother, you know Hermione. Love of my life, future wife, et cetera. Oh, relax.” He looked at Hermione, beet-red at his side. “She offered me a Malfoy ring to propose to you with, you can’t possibly think she doesn’t approve.”

“That was for me? Oh my god…”

“I attempted to arrange a tea, too,” Narcissa said, with the air of someone still waiting for an apology.

“That invitation was real? Oh my god!”

“Congratulations, Hermione,” Neville said. “I’m really pleased for you.”

“No one’s getting married,” she grumbled. Draco exchanged a conspiratorial look with his mother before dropping a kiss onto the top of Hermione’s head.

“Will someone explain to me what happened?” Narcissa demanded. She meant about the demons, and the apocalypse, but soon the words “legal guardianship” were uttered, which threw her into an absolute tailspin.

“You thought we…Mother!”

“We hated each other back then! And I mean I really, truly despised him. I wouldn’t have touched him, let alone—”

Draco elbowed Hermione in the ribs to get her to shut up about how much she used to loathe him. His ego had recovered from all the beatings it had taken over the summer, and was once more a large, delicate, needy thing.

“Well, I don’t hate you now,” she amended, and he was mollified.

“So, the child’s not a Malfoy,” Narcissa said, looking relieved.

Oh dear, thought Hermione. Draco’s turn for paternal outrage.

“Yes, she most assuredly is," he said, staring hard at his mother. "And this is your singular opportunity to accept all of it, Muggle grandchild included, or none of us.”

Narcissa accepted. She thought Lucius might, too. The girl wasn’t a Squib, after all.

There were more details to iron out, and the whole story grew more confusing the longer they talked (“I knew demons didn’t really exist,” said Hermione confidently, to which Neville and Pansy shuddered but said nothing) but soon the door opened, and McGonagall stepped out to deliver her verdict.

Lilith would stay, obviously, because she was quite literally the most powerful witch to ever walk the face of the earth, and someone should probably teach her how to undo a spell properly.

Gemma could stay, too.

“Just through the end of term, on a trial basis, to help Lilith get settled in,” McGonagall said firmly. “Her Transfiguration and Charms classes will be substituted for Divination and Astronomy.” Besides, she privately added, I’d have a riot on my hands if I kicked her out.

She really was one exceptionally well-liked student. Even those Slytherin boys had come around, and, if rumours were to be believed, one of them harboured a secret crush.

“G-Lilith,” Pansy began. Both girls turned.

“We’ll be doing that for ages,” Neville muttered.

“Once the Prices are released from St Mungo’s, you can go back to living with them during breaks, if you want. But we’d like for you to come stay with…well, us.” She looked to Neville, experiencing the discomfort of shyness for the first time in her entire life. “We haven’t worked out the living situation yet, but…I hope…”

“Yes, alright.” Lilith rolled her eyes. “Stop being weird about it.”

But her scowl had a smile in it.

Pansy and Neville departed to go work out who had the better mattress so that they could solidify their living situation, and everyone else readied to leave except Narcissa, who was engaged in a baffling reunion while she waited.

(“Gemma. An excellent name. A star, did you know? In the Corona Borealis.”)

“Headmistress,” Hermione asked, “what do you plan to do about the veritaserum?”

“It was illegal, Miss Granger. By rights, Mrs Malfoy ought to be handed over to the Aurors along with Ronald Weasley.”

“Oh, that’s alright then.”

Mother and son tensed in unison.

“I outrank the Aurors, so you can just hand them over to me. Unless…am I to understand that Hogwarts wishes to interfere at the Ministry?”

McGonagall didn’t roll her eyes as she closed her office door, but it was a very near thing.

So then it was just Draco, Hermione, Narcissa, and two chattering twelve-year-olds, standing together on a small landing. It was entirely too many people, in Draco’s opinion.

“Mother,” he said, not taking his eyes off Hermione. “Will you see the girls back to the Great Hall? I’m going to kiss her now, and it will be absolutely obscene.”

Before he’d finished speaking, Narcissa was halfway down the staircase, gently herding the girls forward with a hand on each of their shoulders.

“Were they always like that?” Lilith asked, the horror in her voice carrying easily up the stone stairs.

Gemma giggled. “It took me ages to make that happen. I wrote a whole plan, want to see it?”

Hermione buried her head against Draco’s chest in mortification.

“You don’t need to be quite so honest, and in front of your mother of all people,” she moaned. “I hardly know her.”

“You have ages to get to know one another. Besides, she doesn’t mind.” He coaxed her head back with a finger beneath her chin. “She wants loads of grandchildren. She probably hopes we're currently getting an early start on the next one.”

Hermione lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “Well…go on, then.”

He delivered on his earlier promises and then some. Only when the stone gargoyle guarding the door to McGonagall's office growled in irritation did he take a leisurely step back, keeping his hands wrapped around her upper arms to account for the weakness in her knees.

“I suppose we ought to go,” she said, staring at his mouth as if mesmerised.

“Yes,” agreed the gargoyle. “Please do.”

That snapped her out of it in a hurry.

“Well, Granger, now what shall we do? Blindly stumble through our lives like normal people, with no prophecies to guide us?”

“No, of course not.” She reached into her dress (Draco didn’t see where, precisely, and looked forward to investigating her person in great detail later) to withdraw a slim black notebook.

“I wrote a list,” she said, already flipping the pages.

“Ah, right. How silly of me.”

He drew her beneath his arm as they began an unhurried stroll away from McGonagall’s door.

“It’s very boring, though. No ambiguous visions. No surprise Muggles. No pranks—”

“No pranks?” he laughed, and twirled a coil of her hair around one mischievous finger. “Did you think the pranks were over with?”

She looked at her neatly ordered list in consternation, then up at him.

“What, aren’t they?”

“Oh dear. Who’s being silly now?”

“Draco Malfoy,” she said, coming to a stop. “What have you done?”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” he said, and bent to press a kiss beneath her ear. “But keep saying my name like that, I like it.”

“Draco Malfoy,” she repeated dutifully, except this time it was husky with want, because he’d taken her earlobe between his teeth while his hands searched her dress for hidden pockets. “Incorrigible man…just you wait…oh.”

He kissed her deeply, and indulgently, and in total ignorance of the students that had begun to filter into the corridor after class.

“Gross,” someone muttered in passing, and she brushed a smile against his lips before stepping back.

They'd pulled up short beneath a portrait of a man on a horse leading his cavalry into battle. Painted sunlight glinted off the warrior’s golden breastplate. Draco scowled at the man, who was busy winking at Hermione, and hustled her away.

“Come, then,” he said, plucking the notebook from her loose fingers. “Let’s see what the future has in store for us.”

She sighed, and took his arm, and rested her head against his shoulder as they walked.

“Step One: Extension Charms on Shelves and Wardrobes. You can't mean to say that’s the first step of the rest of our lives? Better wardrobe organisation? You were right; this list is boring.”

“It’s an acute need,” she sniffed. “There isn't enough space in your flat for my books, not to mention the clothes. You haven’t seen half of them because I’ve been confined to dressing like a ward of the state in your presence for the past five years.”

“Is there any red?”

She smothered a teasing smile. “Perhaps.”

“Very well, I’m interested again. Oh! This one’s good, too. It says we’ve got to bicker more.”

“It does not say that!”

“It does; I’m looking right at it.” He held the page in front of her face. “Step Five: Argue More About Trivial Nonsense.”

“That says Argue Less.”

“Hmm. Well, I don’t agree to your terms.”

“These aren’t terms, it’s simply an outline—”

“I happen to like arguing with you about trivial nonsense. I couldn’t possibly give it up.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

“I might be amenable to a trade, though.”

Hermione pretended to think about this for a while. “Fine. What would you like?”

“Oh, lots of things. Shall I make you a list?”

The pale November sun streaked through the pane glass oriels that lined the third floor corridor, and as they bickered over trivialities, they drank in the sight of each other’s faces bathed in rich gold light.

Within their minds, they tucked away and hoarded this one perfect moment, and then the next one, and the next.

Because you couldn’t know, could you? Not about tomorrow, or next week, or a decade from now. Even with the entire contents of Junior Unspeakable Benjamin Davies Preston’s logbook at your disposal, you could still have it wrong, and besides, the real thing is so much brighter, and richer, and true.

There isn’t even a trick to it. You just have to grab on tight to what’s in front of you and make the most of it. With every word, every look, and every touch, they promised each other that they would.

And on and on they walked, hand in hand, toward the first day of the rest of their lives.

THE BEGINNING