Shell Cottage was a love nest meant for newlyweds, but for the moment, it was more crowded than cozy. All of its exhausted, wounded, mourning, malnourished occupants were settling down to rest for the night. With Ollivander and Griphook in each of the spare bedrooms, Luna and Hermione slept in the garret while Ron, Harry, Dean, and a supremely uncomfortable Draco crammed into the sitting room.
The boys duplicated both of the sofas and stacked them like bunk beds, one hovering over another. As soon as it was done, Ron vaulted into a top bunk and pretended to fall instantly to sleep while it rocked and swayed like a boat. Harry waved Dean into the bed below Ron before climbing into the bunk above Draco, like a guard mounting a tower to watch over a dangerous charge.
With the lights out, the silence in the room was restless, tense, each one of the bunkmates wondering how bad it would be if they just got up and left to sleep alone on the beach in the stiff March wind. If Bill hadn't warned them about the alarms on the protection spells hemming them all safely inside, they might have done it.
Harry cleared his throat. "So did Hermione have any luck with your aunt's wand?"
It took a moment before Draco realized Harry had been addressing him. "Uh, yeah, a bit. She was too tired to try very much," he said, tossing from his stomach onto his back, speaking to the bottom of Harry's bed. "But she did produce a Lumos."
"Great. So why do you have to sound annoyed about it?" Ron snapped from the other bunk.
Draco bit back a counterattack, his tone barely even. "Because she struggled, and I've never seen her have trouble with any spell, let alone a beginner-level one."
"Trouble how?" Harry pressed.
"Trouble controlling the light," Draco said. "It was sparking and popping, like the wand was trying to scare her off, like when you meet a bad lapdog that won't stop snarling. The light was like that – not really dangerous but still hostile."
"Not good," Dean mumbled. "Small wand control problem like that could turn into a big problem if she tried anything tricky. And something tells me the lot of you are itching for exactly that."
He was right, of course.
Something was working in Harry's mind. "We all saw the way that wand jumped when you accioed it," he said, still talking to Malfoy, working to keep the remark from sounding like an accusation. "Does its allegiance depend on family loyalty?"
"I've been wondering the same," Draco said, not saying anything more about how the wand quieted at his touch. "Bellatrix wasn't the first person to use that wand. It's been in the family for generations. It's part of a set of three. My mum and her sister have its counterparts."
Ron thrashed on his sofa. "What, like copycat ripoffs of the Deathly Hallows?" he said.
Harry sat up so fast his head hit the ceiling. "What? Hallows? Are they?"
"Of course not," Draco said, his voice rising. "They don't have power over death. They're just antiques. Like that cloak of yours, Potter."
Harry felt no better, sitting up with his head bent against the ceiling. His heart was racing and he forced himself to take a deep breath. No, it was impossible for Voldemort to have failed to notice if Bellatrix's wand was the Elder wand. Malfoy was telling the truth. Harry lie back down, impatient for morning to come so he could get back to their mission.
Ron, on the other hand, was very much in the moment. He was leaning over the edge of his bunk, sneering at Malfoy. "Or maybe the problem magic in that bloody wand isn't something warm and fuzzy like a family connection," Ron was saying. "Maybe that wand came to your hand so eagerly when you summoned it because of what both you and dear auntie have got on your arms."
Beneath Ron's bed, Dean gave a low whistle. "Here we go."
Draco was speechless, straining to stay calm.
Across the room, Ron's voice was rising. "Has she seen it? Has Hermione seen that disgusting tattoo you let the devil mark you with?"
Draco was sitting up now. "It's not a tattoo, it's a brand. And I had about as much choice as a dairy cow does when they brought me in and burned it into me."
"I asked if she's seen it," Ron demanded.
"No," Draco said, feeling the mark's rough edges through the thin knit of his black cashmere jumper.
Ron scoffed like it was a victory. "It will never work, you know. She's never going to be one of you. This bit with a wand that only works for arms with Dark Marks is just the beginning of her seeing what a blight you are and throwing you over."
Draco swore. "I am not discussing this with you. Go to sleep."
"I will not," Ron said. "But yeah, there's not much point talking to you since you'll be back in your manor for good by lunchtime tomorrow."
"Yeah? And then what?" Draco said. "You think she'll go back to you?"
Dean broke in, determined to derail the duel he was afraid was coming. "Look, pipe down," he said. "It doesn't need to be like this. Harry and I snogged the same girl and you've never seen us at each other's throats. Right, Harry?"
"And you can shut up about that too!" Ron barked at Dean over Harry's reluctant muttering.
But the floodgates of Draco's temper had been blasted open, and he was just as mean in that moment as he was at age thirteen. "But Weasley and I haven't snogged the same girl, have we," he said. "The one time Granger pecked him on the cheek he just stood there gaping, wrapped up in his own problems, cold and stupid as a lobalug, selfish enough to let her walk away without so much as a smile."
Ron choked. "And who was tormenting me about quidditch badly enough that I was all but catatonic that morning?"
"Oh no," Draco said. "You are not blaming that on me. For years, she tried EVERYTHING with you and you let her down, over and over. Ask Potter. You can even ask Thomas there. Anyone could see it. Humiliating her like that..."
Ron was blustering. "Like you can talk after all you've done to her."
"True enough," Draco agreed somewhat ferociously. "For a thousand reasons, no one deserves her less than I do. But even right after I was accosted by a werewolf, I knew enough to jump at the chance to kiss Hermione Granger back."
"She did not kiss you first, you filthy, lying – " Ron choked out the words as he hurled himself out of bed. In the dark, he landed hard on the little table made of driftwood in the centre of the rug and the whole thing collapsed into sandy splinters. He sprung out of the wreckage and threw himself at Draco, tumbling into the bottom bunk, upsetting Harry's bed above them and sending him plummeting to the floor.
There was scuffling and grunting as Ron and Draco tried to fight without getting caught by the sleepers upstairs. But Dean and Harry were soon shouting, calling for them to stop it. Dean had found a pencil on the floor, mistaken it in the dark for a dropped wand, and was ordering it to light up. He stopped abruptly when the room was suddenly awash with a crackling, flashing blue glare.
Squinting and blinking, the tableau of scuffling overgrown boys was revealed. Dean was still gripping the pencil. With no specs, Harry was sitting on the floor, his arms wrapped around two legs, trying to keep them from kicking. One was Ron's, the other was Draco's. The pair of them were sprawled on Draco's bunk, Draco's arm bent around Ron's neck, pulling his head back. Even restrained like that Ron managed to keep one elbow in Draco's gut, and with his free arm he had yanked Draco's sleeve up his arm, exposing it. By the light of the angry blue Lumos spell, the Dark Mark seemed to twist like something living in his flesh.
Standing in the doorway of the sitting room, Luna was even more wide-eyed than usual, her arm linked with that of a ghostly figure in a long white nightdress. It was Hermione, holding the only light in the room, Bellatrix Lestrange's wand, like a cursed lantern.
The scene was tainted with dread and shame.
Harry felt somehow responsible for letting Ron get out of control. Ron was mad at himself for being caught on top of the pile of brawling limbs, obviously the instigator. And Draco was hating himself for losing his temper and lashing out with too much information about his private time with Hermione, the secret circumstances of the first time she'd kissed him, when she was still Psyche. He'd let his anger run rampant over something too precious to be dragged into a stupid fight.
And then there was the mark...
Draco unclamped Ron's neck and shoved at him, jerking his long black sleeve back into place. Ron snatched his hand from Draco's flesh, as if the mark was contagious and he might catch it. Harry might not have noticed himself leaning closer to the mark, unhanding the other boys' legs, his fingers rising toward the twists of raised, charred flesh until Draco swept it out of reach.
At the sight of it, Hermione winced, speechless but for a tiny gasp everyone heard.
It was Luna who finally attempted to take charge of the room with her own version of common sense. "Oh dear. If you aren't getting along down here, maybe Draco had better come sleep in the garrett. I can take his place here. Ron and I are rather good friends so he shouldn't want to attack me."
This was met with a chorus of variations on, "No way." Everyone had to say it, eager to have anything to talk about besides what they'd just seen on Draco's arm.
"No, she's not having any of us sleep upstairs with her but you, Luna," Ron said, louder than the rest. "Especially not when she's dressed in that get up. Honestly, Hermione, we found the beaded bag tucked into your sock. It's not like you haven't got your own pajamas."
"I will wear what I want, and sleep where I want, with whomever I want," Hermione hissed back at him, her sadness giving way to defiance.
Draco startled. "You will?"
Harry sputtered to life. "What is wrong with that wand, Hermione? It's acting like it's about to blow."
"It's just like I told you," Draco answered for her.
Harry lit the hawthorn wand so Hermione could extinguish Bellatrix's.
"Don't worry. I'll get the hang of it," she said, speaking to Harry but with her eyes on Draco. "We've got a few ideas of things that might help. Draco can start investigating them tomorrow while we get back to work on – our project."
Harry let out a breath, relieved to hear someone else making sense at last. "Right. Fine. Now, for stars' sake let's go to sleep."
There was grumbling and shuffling as everyone moved toward their beds – everyone but Draco. As the rest were lying down and Harry was extinguishing the light, Draco was darting after the girls as they climbed the steep, narrow stairs to the garret. He crashed into Hermione in the dark just as she was feeling her way back downstairs to him.
He grabbed at her to keep from knocking her off her feet, holding her wrists in each of his hands, their arms bent between them. They could hear each other's breath in the small space, but for a moment, neither of them spoke. Hermione tugged her wrist from Draco's grip, and closed her hand over his left forearm. Through the fine knit of his sleeve, she used her thumb to trace one curved, raised outer edge of the mark. Draco flinched but she held onto him until he let out his breath and the tension left his arm. As he relaxed, she slid her hand up to his shoulder, away from the mark. She crossed her wrists behind his neck, bringing him close.
She sighed against his throat, whispering. "It's not like I didn't already know it was there," she said. "Harry saw it once and you admitted you had it your second night with Psyche, while you had me down on my back, pinned to the ground with my arms above my head."
Even now, he almost smiled at the memory.
She lifted her head to look for his face in the dark. "Maybe it's always been stupid of me, but I thought I could handle you and your mark that night, and I still think I can handle it now."
Draco groaned as he finally began to speak. "I'm sorry all the same. I knew you'd see it someday soon, but I didn't want the first time to be like that. I've been planning what I'd say when the moment came. Making an introductory speech and then a dignified reveal of if. It was supposed to be solemn and – at the very least private, without Potter and Weasley shouting and pawing at me."
She was standing a stair above him so their faces were level, her brow pressed to his. "Maybe it's better it happened this way," she said. "It's like my mum always said, just rip the band-aid off."
Draco paused, puzzled. "What does that mean?"
"The band-aid? The plaster?" she tried.
"Something's been plastered over?"
She sniffed a laugh. "Never mind. It's a Muggle saying about doing painful things quickly and all at once – and without magic, of course."
The word painful told him all he needed to know. She felt his posture slump, disheartened at the thought that they'd hurt each other just now.
Her hands moved from his neck, over his shoulders. He wasn't so upset that his breath didn't hitch as her palms tracked in mirror images down his chest and beneath his arms, coming to rest on his back. From where she stood on the upper stair, with a tilt of her head she easily found his mouth with hers, kissing him softly. Dismayed as he was, his response was quick, his lips answering. His arms had been hanging limply at his sides but now they curved around her, gliding over the now familiar thin white fabric, his skin just a fibre's breadth from hers.
Could she feel the outline of the mark through their clothes as he held her now?
At the thought, he withdrew slightly but she surged forward. His back was thrust against the wall of the stairwell, fixed there by her ardour.
"Hermione?" Luna's tiny voice was drifting down the stairs to them. "Are you alright? Are there nargles? I did check earlier, but – "
Hermione broke the kiss, breathless, still leaning hard against Draco's front. "It's fine, Luna, I'll be right there."
He still wasn't sure what to say for himself when it came to the mark, but Draco knew how to touch her, standing in silence as his hands traced her waist and sides. His mouth returned to the interrupted kiss, taking the lead himself now, barely letting her catch her breath, driving her to cling more desperately to him, letting him brace her leg with his as she balanced on her stair.
Hermione held his face in both of her hands, as she tore herself away. "I hated seeing that mark on you. But listen to me. Don't you get any heroic notions about leaving me over it. Never forget that the only Draco Malfoy who was ever nice to me is the one who bears this mark," she said. "The only Draco I ever miss has this mark." She kissed him again, pulling away just as he sprang forward to return it. "The only Draco I ever long for has this mark."
He tipped his brow against hers again, making sure she felt him nod in agreement. "I do realize that even if I wasn't promised to the most evil force of our time, I would still not be good enough for you."
She scoffed. "Stop."
"No," he said. "I'm just starting. Like you told Potter, tomorrow, while you get back to your very important, very secret plotting, I am going to be busy solving the problem of your new wand's bad temper."
She clucked her tongue. "Very thoughtful of you. We'll go over the details with Harry in the morning."
Draco was scoffing now, jostling her playfully in his arms. "I'm not about to go begging Potter's permission to take care of you. No one else is doing it, certainly not him. Weasley botched his chance and would like a second crack at it but I say he goes to the back of the line and you let me try."
Hermione gave a laugh part way between flattered and pained.
He kissed her forehead, tender instead of teasing. "I'm just going to go with Bill to see my cousin – that Tanks woman – "
"It's Tonks," she laughed, swatting at his shoulder.
"Yeah, I obviously can't bunk with Weasley another night. And everyone's thinking we've got to get my marked arm away from Potter. Besides all that, there's something I'd like to ask my cousin about the wand anyway. So I'll go along with their plans for now," he said, bowing his face into her hair, speaking the rest against her skin, "even though it means no more of you in your nightdress – for now."
—------------------------------------
It was embarrassing, taking Bill Weasley by the arm like one of his mother's fine lady friends being escorted to the dinner table. Draco snatched his hand away as soon as their new surroundings began to materialize around them. It was a cottage almost invisible with vines covering its walls and thick green turf over its roof. There was a pond in the garden, and Draco had arrived almost standing in it, wheeling his arms for balance, but refusing to grab Bill again even if it meant plunging into the water.
Bill watched him, one hand extended, one eyebrow raised, waiting to see the limits of Draco's pride. He sniffed a laugh as Draco regained his footing. "That's what I thought," was all he said. "Come on, Malfoy."
In spite of the new baby, the house had a gloomy air they could sense as they approached.
"Not sure you'd have heard," Bill said in a low voice, "but your Aunt Andromeda's husband was killed in a skirmish last week. Funeral was yesterday."
Draco stopped on the path just shy of the door. "Then we can't ask them to take me. Not now. I'll ask my questions and go."
Bill was the one taking his arm this time, tugging him forward. "We've already asked them and they're desperate to have you. It's a great comfort to them, actually, gaining family right after their loss. You're like the prodigal son coming home to them. They think they already love you. Don't let them down."
Draco blinked hard. What kind of mess was this? A family with a baby who might be a werewolf, one fully grown confirmed werewolf he had disrespected terribly as a boy, a new widow in a multi-decade feud with his parents, and a new mother who voluntarily called herself Tonks.
Bill rang the bell and shoved Draco forward. He would have collided with the door if it hadn't opened. A hand braced his shoulder and stopped his forward momentum. It was his cousin Nymphadora Tonks Lupin, her hair morphing from lavender to bright pink at the sight of him.
"Draco!"
"Hey, I know you," he said. "You were that Auror guarding the castle during my sixth year who winked at me every time we passed in the corridors."
She laughed, slapping his shoulder. "Creeped you out a bit, yeah?"
She was nothing like any of the Black family women he had ever met, loud and jocular, and she was linking their arms and leading him into the sitting room to meet his aunt for the first time he could remember.
Andromeda, on the other hand, was exactly as he expected her to be. At the sight of him, she stood up with slow, controlled elegance from the settee, passing the tiny bundle of her grandson back to Tonks. She was dressed in a black gown, a spidery veil over her hair, traditional mourning clothing. Her face was much like Aunt Bella's, but without the wild, untempered hatred in it. Her hair was smooth like his mother's but not as fair, and her eyes were darker too, and sad.
Just as Bill predicted, she took Draco in her arms. She spoke only two words before she cried a single, delicate sob into his shoulder.
"Cissa's boy."
It was the voice that undid him. Andromeda sounded like his mother would if she was heartbroken. And maybe his mother was heartbroken right now, after facing the Dark Lord with Potter escaped, and letting Draco flee into hiding. She would have been made to pay for it somehow. What was she doing right now? His arms rose and he placed his hands on his aunt's shoulder blades, patting her quiet.
Bill stood at Tonks's side, grinning almost smugly. "Told you they didn't mind having you."
"Of course not," Andromeda said, standing up straight and wiping her eyes. She waved Draco into a seat. "I'll bring us some tea."
Bill excused himself and they set about the conversation typical among long lost family members – questions and answers about everything but the details of how Ted senior had been killed. Tonks raved about their amazing new baby, tickling his cheek to try to get his hair to flash blue.
"Oh sure, he's too sleepy for any of that now. Just you wait til he's up at 3am, Draco. You'll see it then. He's bound to be up then. They say he's showing no signs of lycanthropy but I can't think of any other reason why he insists on being up with the moon all night," she said.
Andromeda clucked her tongue. "It's very normal baby behaviour. You'll leave our Draco out of it. I know you're excited Dora, but let your cousin sleep. They say he's been through so much lately."
Tonks rounded on him, remembering something delectable. "Is it true Harry made off with old Bella's wand?" she pressed. It was the first direct question anyone had asked him about what happened at the manor.
"Yes, actually," he said, saying nothing about his own role in handing the wands over to Potter. "She was completely disarmed."
Tonks gave her mother a look that was part horror, part glee. "Oh, they must both be livid," she said, a laugh in her voice.
Andromeda shook her head. "It serves them right. But it is a little sad to see that wand go out of the family after all this time."
Draco cleared his throat. "Is there something special about them besides being heirlooms?"
Andromeda sat back in her chair, her teacup in her hand. "Heirlooms? That's a quaint way to describe the Black Sororal Triad Wands. Hasn't your mother told you their lore?"
He shrugged and watched her sip her tea.
"Well, they were crafted in the fourteenth century by Crispin de Black, some distant great-grandfather of ours. Like our father, he had three daughters and wanted them safe and powerful. Each wand was meant to echo the Deathly Hallows as much as possible. None of them has anything so great as power over death. Still they are ancient and excellent, all wands of extraordinary power."
Tonks already knew the rest of the story and took it up. "You might have noticed your mum is a gifted healer," she said to Draco. "That's in part because of her wand. It's patterned after the resurrection stone, and though it can't bring anything back to life, it does heal like a house on fire."
Draco hummed, considering what he'd always taken for granted, feeling for the mark the flying chandelier crystal should have left on his face, and finding no more traces of it. He was piecing together the rest for himself. "And your wand," he said, not quite looking at Andromeda. "It's made after the hallows cloak, and it hides things, like this house."
She barely nodded. "Yes, it can hide us from anything but death itself. That is something I now know for certain."
The silence was too heavy and Tonks roared over it. "Which brings us to Bellatrix's former wand, which is not invincible, like the fabled Elder wand. But it is still a fearsome weapon made especially for battle. Awful old thing," Tonks said, shuddering at the memory of something. "Still, I wish we'd kept it in the family, just under the guidance of someone a little less mad for murder. Tell you the truth, I always thought it sounded well-suited for me in my line of work."
At that, Draco cleared his throat again, looked over both of his shoulders, and decided to trust his family. He reached into his traveling cloak, and laid the third of the ancient and excellent Black Sororal Triad wands on the table.
Tonks shouted a laugh. "You've got it? Well done, cousin Draco. Grandfather de Black salutes you, I'm sure."
"I've only borrowed it," he said. "Potter won it and gave it to Granger so it's hers. But it's," he paused, knowing it sounded mad, "it's resisting her. It performs perfectly well for me though. And I'm not sure why."
Tonks dropped to her knees on the rug beside the coffee table, her hand already reaching for the wand. "Can I give it a go?" she said.
"That's why I came," he said. "But be careful. Just a simple spell."
"Right, right," she said. "Just a little levitation."
Tonks eased her fingers around Bellatrix's wand. She held it with none of the awkwardness Draco had seen everyone but Bellatrix use to handle it. The odd, whip-like angle of it came naturally to Tonks somehow.
"So far, so good," she said, and then she pointed it at her empty teacup and spoke the words of the spell. The cup shot into the air, and Tonks barely stopped it from smashing itself to pieces against the steep peaked ceiling overhead. She held it there for a moment, high over their heads, fighting to even out the levitation into a smooth, gentle floating. But the cup pitched and jerked, as if buffeted in a storm. Tonks set her mouth in a hard line and lowered the cup back to the table, ending the spell.
"Well," she said. "Mark me down on the list of witches this wand resists. How about you, Mum?"
Tonks turned the handle of the wand toward Andromeda who glanced at Draco, questioning.
"Yes, please try it," Draco said. "I had a suspicion that it only works for Black family members but Cousin's performance seems to suggest otherwise."
Andromeda took the wand, and without even speaking an incantation led the teacup on a jaunty flight around the room. "As I thought," she said. "I've used this wand many times before and it's still the same. It's not as simple as a family connection. There's something else."
Draco sat frowning. Andromeda had no mark on her arm. That wasn't what made the wand work. It was an enormous relief to know this. But it wasn't enough.
He stood up, pocketing the wand, excusing himself. He would be back for the night but for now, he was off on his second visit, to Hogwarts to see Snape.