It was the smell of Hogwarts that told Draco he'd arrived. It hit him in a wave of feelings and memories as he stepped out of the Floo and into the Entrance Hall. He hadn't been back since Snape dragged him away after Dumbledore's death. The scent in the air was damp stone, cinnamon and gravy from the kitchens, and the trace of sulphur rising from the potions lab.
There was no time to reflect on it. No sooner had the Floo smoke cleared than two massive, meaty hands grabbed Draco by the front of his jacket and shoved his spine against the fireplace mantle.
"Let go of me, you oaf," he said. "Honestly, Crabbe, what kind of welcome do you call this?"
"It's Malfoy," Goyle said from over Crabbe's shoulder, as if Crabbe might lack the wits to recognize him. He was grinning and twisting Malfoy out of Crabbe's clenched fists.
Crabbe let him go but remained serious. "Things have changed around here," he said, his voice lower than Draco remembered it. "We got sentry duty. Guarding the castle from undesirables."
Malfoy brushed the wrinkles out of his clothes. "Yeah? Well, keep up the good work. As for me, I've got my own business here today. Excuse me, gents."
"What business?" Crabbe said, side-stepping into Draco's way.
Draco blinked hard, speaking to Goyle. "What's got him all wound up? Get him out of my way."
"He takes our responsibility seriously," Goyle said, growing graver himself. "We're not kids no more. Everything is serious now."
"Yeah," Crabbe agreed. "If you don't take things serious, your enemies get away right under your nose. Know what I mean, Malfoy?"
Though Draco could scarcely believe it, here was Crabbe with the nerve to block his way, scolding him for Potter's escape from the manor. Theo had said Crabbe and Goyle had been dazzled by the new order at the school. This was what it looked like. Annoying, and perhaps dangerous.
"Just leave your wand with us and we can let you in," Goyle said, keen on ending the impasse. "Everyone has to. It's the Carrows' rule number one."
Malfoy scowled. "What do you mean, leave my wand?" He maintained his offended tone, trying to keep them on the defensive. "You know Potter escaped our house. So you should also know that he nicked my wand on his way out. I don't have one to leave with you, obviously. Why else would I be traveling by this filthy Floo network?" He kicked at the hearthstone with the heel of his shoe.
Crabbe closed in on him. "Anyone who won't hand over a wand has to be searched. That's rule number two."
"So search me, if you must," Draco said, raising his arms to let Crabbe pat him down.
The fact was that Draco had come to the school with Bellatrix Lestrange's wand hidden in his sleeve. Under normal circumstances, Crabbe would be about to discover it. But these were not ordinary circumstances. Before Draco left his Aunt Andromeda's cottage that morning, she had used her Black Sororal Triad wand and concealed Bellatrix's wand.
Draco held his breath anyway as Crabbe pawed at him. He flinched when Crabbe's hand clamped right over the wand. "Watch it. You know I'm ticklish."
But the concealment spell seemed to be tactile as well as visual and Crabbe said nothing of it. "Right, state your business then," he said, standing back, his feet wide apart, arms folded.
"The headmaster called for me," Draco fibbed.
"How come?" Crabbe pressed.
"That's confidential," Draco answered. This wasn't a lie.
"That answer isn't allowed."
"I'm not breaking the headmaster's confidence to satisfy the pair of you," Malfoy said.
"The Carrows said – "
Seeker swift, Draco veered around Crabbe mid sentence, darted past Goyle, and toward the headmaster's tower. They lumbered after him, huffing and grunting, arriving just as Draco clanged the knocker against the door.
Snape was so slow to answer that Crabbe had taken hold of Malfoy's arm again by the time the door was thrown open.
Snape glowered at them, stormy and dark-eyed. "How dare you disturb – " He abandoned the reprimand when he noticed that the student the Carrows' brutes were manhandling was Draco.
"You sent for me, sir?" Draco said. He was staring hard at Snape, one corner of his lip twitching, hoping he would play along.
"Mr. Malfoy," Snape said. "You are late. And you, Mr. Crabbe and Goyle, have left your sentry post unattended and put the entire school at risk."
Goyle gasped.
"Off with you," Snape said. He waved Draco inside, already muttering angrily as he swooped behind him up the spiral staircase. "Past the portraits. Keep your head down. Into the private chamber."
Draco obeyed, not raising his head until they were shut up in the little room which was the only place left where Snape told him the truth. Even with the truth, it would be a game of wits, one he would have to win if he was to leave the castle with Granger's wand.
"Can you really be rash enough to come back here?" Snape demanded. "Today, of all days. If you'd been a few hours earlier..." He didn't finish, spinning in a circle, his robes flying.
Draco startled. "Earlier? He was here – today?"
"Yes. On the grounds."
"The Dark Lord was here and looking – for me?" Draco stammered.
"No, of course not," Snape spat. "If the Dark Lord truly wanted to find you, he'd call you through your mark. No, he is now completely consumed by matters bigger than punishing the Malfoy family. But that is not to say he would pass up the chance to punish you if you happened across his path. Your mother was wise to hide you. You, on the other hand..."
"What's he done to them?" Draco said, his voice rising. "My mother, is she..."
Snape stopped his pacing, meeting Draco's frantic gaze, dropped a hand on his shoulder. "She was well last I saw her. She was asking after you and I can now tell her you're well, but don't tell me where you've been hiding. I cannot know. And don't come here again. For whatever reason you've risked everything to be here, I'll probably be unable to help."
"I need a wand," Draco blurted. "You know Mother will want me to have one, and they should still have Granger's wand at the manor. They can send it to you for me."
"And you'll take it to Granger straightaway," Snape finished for him, sneering. "You'd arm one of your family's adversaries and leave yourself wandless. Honestly, Draco, how can you be so easily subdued by a woman?"
Draco tossed his hair from his face. "Either I get can Granger's wand from my mother, or I can start using this." He slipped Bellatrix's wand from his sleeve, showing Snape just enough of the distinctive handle for him to recognize it.
Snape's eyes bulged. "Are you mad, bringing that here? If it was discovered – "
"It wasn't," Draco said. "Once I use it for the first time in public though, everyone will know I have it, and then the theories will start to fly about how I got it. Puts us both in a dangerous situation, doesn't it?"
Snape spun out of the private chamber, into the main office beneath the gallery of portraits. He whispered something to a portrait not of a headmaster but of a great lady Draco recognized from a portrait in the manor library. She scowled into the dark office, looking for him before she left her frame, sniffing as if disgusted as she took a message to his mother.
"Don't look so self-satisfied," Snape snarled as he returned, slamming the chamber door behind himself. "It won't be Granger's wand they send. Bellatrix has taken it as her own. She's sworn to sever Granger limb from limb with the girl's own wand before making the final killing curse after she's won her Black Sororal Triad wand back."
Draco shuddered. "That's Auntie. Delightful as always. And how is it I've never heard the wands referred to as a sororal triad until this week?"
"Because as things currently stand, it hardly matters," Snape said, flicking his wand at the kettle to set it boiling. "Andromeda has been estranged from the family for your entire lifetime. The wands haven't been a set all these years. But do not mistake me," he said, his voice darkening. "That is a dreadfully powerful, terribly difficult wand. It is not to be handled lightly and certainly not to be used by – outsiders."
Draco took a quick step closer. "What does that mean? Outsiders? It's not just family members the wand resists. I already – "
Snape was interrupting, keeping Draco from revealing anything more about the wand, as if he knew it would involve Andromeda and wouldn't dare have her name in his mind. "Suffice it to say, I know of no family quicker to level judgment and disownment on their own than the Black family."
He pushed a cup of tea into Draco's hands.
Snape sat in the hard leather chair behind the desk. "Now wait quietly for whatever wand arrives. Perhaps if you'd been a more diligent reader of your own family history when you still had access to the manor's library, something might occur to you as an explanation. Black family lore is not my interest nor my responsibility."
Draco frowned, thinking hard. "Malfoy Manor isn't the only Black family house with a library," he said. "Grimmauld Place – I remember walls of books at Grimmauld Place."
"Absolutely not," Snape said.
"But the Fidelius spell is broken," he said.
"As is every last bit of glass and crockery inside the house," Snape said. "Since the charm ended, it's been looted several times over, not to mention ransacked by our Lord's forces. There's nothing left intact but Walberga's portrait and..."
"And the tapestry which may hold exactly the family history I need," Draco finished.
A chip flew off the bottom of Snape's cup as he set it hard on the desktop. "You will not go there. It is too – "
He left off when the window began to rattle in its pane. A large eagle owl was outside, pecking at the glass, one from the manor's owlery. Snape let the beast inside, untying the long, thin bundle from its ankle – the wand Narcissa Malfoy had sent her son.
The owl winged away, and Draco watched as Snape unwrapped the bundle. There were three levels of spells protecting it but eventually the fabric unfurled. What was revealed was 12 inches of hawthorn, a hair from the ancient Veela sires of the House of Black at its core.
Draco gasped. "It's Mother's. She sent me her own wand." He didn't dare touch it yet, standing with his hand over his throat.
It was Snape who lifted it from the desk. "She must have her reasons," he said.
Draco shook his head. "Well they're not good enough. She's left herself caught in that house with the Dark Lord with nothing but Loony Lovegood's wand for protection. A wand she didn't even win for herself."
It was true. Lucius Malfoy wouldn't bear her using a wand they took off a half-blood wizard like Dean Thomas.
Snape held the wand in the fingertips, presenting it to Draco like a royal scepter. "You are now in possession of two of the Black Sororal Triad wands," he said.
"What does that mean?" Draco asked, almost pleading. "What does she want me to do?"
"I do not know," Snape intoned in answer, still holding the wand in his fingers, waiting.
Draco snatched at it, sliding it up the opposite sleeve to the one where Bellatrix's was stashed. "I'm going to the Grimmauld library," he said, turning to leave.
"You are not," Snape ordered. "Hogwarts library is not to be underestimated. Search it, and then we will consider what to do next."
—--------------------------------
The Hogwarts library shelves were leaner than Draco remembered them, as if at least a quarter of the books had been removed by the school's new order. The DADA section was gone, and potions seemed to have little more than cookbooks and cosmetic formulas. The Restricted Section was set off not by a rope but by a spiked, padlocked, hexed gate.
It might have been for the best that Granger couldn't see it like this.
In the history section, Draco found books on the country's founding wizarding families. Most were new, bombastic propaganda, loosely researched who's-whos. But low on a shelf just off the floor he found a volume by a true genealogist, something published the year he started school.
The Black family tapestry, it said, was indeed stuck forever to the stone wall of 12 Grimmauld Place. Though it was listed as a reliable historical source, the book noted that the tapestry had been vandalized by its latest keeper, Walburga Black. Unfortunately, she had scorched the images of certain family members from its surface, literally defacing it. As for the tapestry's original form, it was fabricated in sections, the first dating back to the 14th century.
Draco pinched his arms to his side, feeling the wands he'd stashed there. "The 14th century," he whispered to himself. "That's the same time Crispin de Black made the sororal..."
"There you are," a voice chided him. Pansy Parkinson was gliding into the chair beside him.
"Hiding in the library where Crabbe and Goyle are sure to leave him alone," Blaise surmised, shoving at Draco's shoulder and sitting on his other side.
"Once again, we're glad to see you're not dead," Theo Nott said, leaning over the table from his seat on its opposite side.
"Tell me you're coming back to school. PLEASE," Pansy said, smoothing Draco's already perfectly arranged hair and collar.
"No, actually," Draco said, sitting back. "I've just come to meet with the headmaster."
"And yet here you are in the library without him," Theo mused.
Blaise winked. "The library. What did I tell you? It's all true."
Draco's cheeks flushed pink. "There's nothing odd about finding me in a library. Last we all met it was in a library, for stars' sake."
"Now Draco," Pansy cooed in a placating tone, "all they're wondering is whether this place reminds you of someone or not. Someone you've somehow come to like an awful lot."
He slammed the book shut. "As a matter of fact, it reminds me of myself working hard at school for six years – five, anyways."
Blaise laughed and patted him hard on the back. "Enough, mate. Your secret girlfriend, the one you were sneaking around with in the countryside all winter, is none other than Hogwarts' longtime resident library rat: Granger."
Draco sat as if stunned, his jaw working.
"Didn't I say he was obsessed with her every bit as much as he was with Potter?" Pansy said into Draco's speechlessness. "And of all the ways for him to be identical to Weasley – "
"Will you shut it?" Draco finally managed to say.
"Come on, Malfoy," Theo pressed. "How else could she and Potter have fought off a werewolf, three wizards, and two witches, one of whom was Bellatrix Lestrange? You sprung them from the manor yourself because you've fallen for Granger. And it's like I said before, a huge failure in the Death Eater movement is that it ignores our generation, wastes our insights into each other, insists on using us as pawns instead of letting us strike out as knights."
"Well put, Nott," Blaise said.
"No, it isn't," Draco raved. "I've never heard anything more ridiculous."
"That is not a denial," Pansy said. "Admit it, Draco. I overheard Lavender Brown talking about it with the Patil twins, and she said she overheard it said between Neville Longbottom and Ginny Weasley, who heard it from her own mother, who had been talking to Fleur Delacour Weasley who saved Granger's life when an elf fell off a chandelier and pricked her with a cursed dart he was hiding from Fenrir Greyback for Bellatrix Lestrange."
Draco swore. "That is rubbish."
"Still not a denial," Blaise said.
He pushed his chair away from the table, its feet grating noisily against the floor. "Look, you're all losing your minds in captivity here. It's true for Crabbe and Goyle and for all of you."
"Might be some truth to that," Blaise said. "Pansy is still talking about how fit Weasley was by the time he left school."
"That's not crazy, that's a fact," Pansy said. "He didn't happen to tag along with you, did he Draco? I'd stand a better chance with him than ever now he's on the rebound from Granger."
Draco dropped both of his hands on her shoulders. "I need you to stop your nonsense," he said, looking intently into her eyes. All at once, he knew what to do next, and he wouldn't go back to Snape to ask permission. "I need your help with something. Do you remember anything from that posh internship your mum got you in Italy last summer? The one where you spent all that time in the Milan Museum of Magical Millinery?"
Pansy wrinkled her nose. "Yes, but this is usually how people begin asking me for help mending lost buttons. I was training as a fashion conservator, not as a tailor."
"I know, I know," said Draco. "And that's exactly who I need you to be right now. I need help with a very old, very damaged tapestry. I think it might be magically connected to a – to a problem I'm facing."
"A life and death problem?" Pansy asked, returning the intensity of his look.
He swallowed. If he told her the real danger they might face in breaking into the abandoned, unprotected Grimmauld Place to look at the Black Family tapestry, would she refuse to help? And what kind of a friend would take anyone there, especially after Snape told him not to go?
A fit of honesty seized him. "Yes, life and death," he admitted.
Pansy took a deep breath, her shoulders rising and falling beneath his hands. "That's what I was hoping you'd say. Count me in."
—------------------------------
After spending the rest of the day planning his forbidden trip to Grimmauld Place with Pansy Parkinson, Draco apparated onto the beach outside Shell Cottage. The sun had just touched the horizon over the sea, and he hoped it was still early enough that Bill hadn't sealed and alarmed the house for the night.
As he approached, the curtain in the kitchen window fluttered, as if blown by the wind. Fleur opened the door before he could knock. "Avez-vous déjà mangé?" she asked.
"Oui, à l'école," he answered.
Their French greetings served as passwords and she let him inside. She continued in French, telling him that Harry, Ron, and Hermione had been shut up in the spare bedroom since he'd left that morning. They'd hardly stopped for a bite to eat at lunch and suppertime.
Draco understood perfectly what she meant. Stepping heavily, coughing as he went so they'd hear him coming, he passed through the sitting room and into the back of the cottage, rapping hard on the bedroom door.
Potter stuck his head out, not hiding the slight grimace that always fouled his expression at the sight of Malfoy. He was all business. "The wand, did you get it working properly?"
"Not yet," Draco said, crowding the doorway until Potter made room for him. He exaggerated a gag as he entered the room. "Would it kill you to open a window in here?"
"It might, actually," Ron bristled. "We haven't locked ourselves away to plan a tea party. We need security."
"Yes, and you also need to make sure that anyone recovering from Cruciatus curses followed by a stabbing with a poisoned blade gets enough fresh air and rest," he said, taking Hermione's hand.
"Draco, it's alright," she said, closing her other hand over his.
"Not anymore, it isn't," he said. "Let's take a break, yeah? The day's almost over. Come with me to the beach, just until the sun sets."
Weasley was growling audibly as Hermione followed Draco out of the room.
Draco asked Fleur to borrow one of her pretty scarfs for when the temperature dropped with the sun. Hermione felt silly in it, but Draco assured her it suited her well enough.
"If you can't overdress so close to the end of the world, when can you?" he said, stepping onto the stair below her as they descended from the garden to the path to the beach. "And now, I'm going to carry you on my back."
She laughed. "I can walk perfectly well."
"Of course you can," he said, "but I want you to spend your break actually resting. So let me carry you, like the gentleman I am."
"A gentleman?" she said, skeptical as always but still draping her arms around his neck and hopping up for him to catch her under each of her knees.
"Yes," he said as he hefted her higher and started off down the path between the high, sharp seagrass. "A gentleman who has no objections to getting better acquainted with the shape of your legs."
"I knew it," she said, leaning over his shoulder to kiss his cheek. She let her face sink into the collar of his jacket. He smelled heavenly, and a little bit like school, which made her sigh. "I was afraid I might not see you again tonight."
He tipped the side of his head against hers, still walking quickly, making for the boardwalk with the railing broad enough for her to sit on. It was extremely satisfying to have his body held firmly between her knees again, but she decided to savour it silently instead of tantalizing him in full view of anyone passing by a window in the cottage.
"Well," he was saying, "I'm afraid I didn't manage to get your wand back. I tried to trick Snape into sending for it but he's not stupid, and Aunt Bella is taking some perverse pleasure in using it herself."
Hermione groaned. "She really does have a talent for making what's bad worse."
Draco hummed, the soles of his shoes tapping against the slats of the boardwalk. "They did send me a wand from the manor to use. But it doesn't belong to anyone here." He slouched backward until Hermione shifted herself to sit on the railing. "It's my mother's own wand."
He turned to face her, stepping between her knees where she sat, and drawing the wands from his sleeves. With a sigh she accepted Bellatrix's as he returned it to her. "Your mother's wand won't work for me either, will it," she said. He held the wand between them and she grazed it with her fingertips. It was hawthorn wood, like his own, but smoother, as if it had been worn by the grip of dozens of hands over the centuries.
"It's so strange," Hermione went on. "I was able to use your wand easily. Clearly it's not a matter of family connections alone causing all the problems."
"There are more than one kind of family connection. All families have sub-classes, and special designations," he said, and he told her everything he knew about the Black Sororal Triad connection between his mother's wand and her sisters.'
Hermione frowned as she listened. "Don't mention it to Harry yet," she said. "He's been rather..." she wanted to say "obsessed" but settled on something less ominous. "He's been fascinated with the Deathly Hallows lately and he needs to set it aside and focus on – on other things."
These vague references to secrets between her and Potter and Weasley that they wouldn't even speak of to Bill, let alone to someone bearing the mark of a Death Eater, always left Draco with a dismal, hopeless feeling. He wouldn't let that overtake him during the few moments they'd have together today.
He cleared his throat and re-tied her scarf, eager to speak of anything else. "I hope you don't mind me saying, but I noticed on our walk down here that you are not nearly heavy enough – "
"Heavy enough for what?" she interrupted.
"For good health and strength, of course. And since I dined at Hogwarts tonight, I brought you my favourite from their dessert offerings." With far too much flourish he produced a small wax paper packet from inside his jacket. She waited as he gently tore it open.
"No!" he said as the paper came away. "It's been completely squashed."
She pushed the wrapper aside to see. "What is it?"
"An apple tart," he moaned, heartbroken. "It's just mush now."
She dabbed her finger into the yellow and gold mess of baked apple and smashed pastry. "It's not ruined. Look, it tastes the same if I eat it this way." She stuck the sweet mess on the end of her finger into her mouth.
Draco groaned again. "You're getting all sticky. Leave it. You don't have to – "
His protest ended when she stuck the next finger-full of apple tart into his mouth. He'd fed her with his own hands before, and while it had been provocative enough to flush his cheeks and make his hands warm enough to melt chocolate over both of them in spite of the winter night, this was different.
She had stuck her finger into his mouth far enough to find the warm softness of his tongue and drag his gift of sweets over the surface of it. Without a thought, he closed his lips around her finger, a light suction slowing her retreat, the wet tip of her finger crossing over his bottom lip as she withdrew it.
This was definitely different than when he fed her biscuits on a hay bale. For a moment they watched each other over the flattened tart before Draco threw it over his shoulder for the seagulls to finish. She swallowed, then he did too. And still in plain sight of the cottage as she was, Hermione's fingers were in his hair, and his thoroughly tantalized mouth had found hers. His hands were in the small of her back, pulling her toward himself where he stood between her knees. The sudden close contact raised a breathy gasp from her but she didn't back away.
She let him keep her body close as she spoke into his mouth. "Promise me – " she began before he devoured her words.
"Anything," he said, one hand raised to tug Fleur's scarf away from Hermione's neck.
"Promise me you'll be careful at Grimmauld tomorrow," she said. "And whatever you find out about your family there, no matter how awful, promise you won't hide it from me."
He tipped his head back far enough for her to see his smirk. "The devil himself is my parents' houseguest. What could be more worthy of hiding than that?" he said, stooping to kiss the base of her throat.
She tilted to urge his mouth lower. "I don't know. But promise me."
"Fine, of course," he said, frustrated with wasting his mouth on talking. "I promise."
Hermione let out a squeal as white light flared in the sky over the cottage. Draco's arms flew up to shelter her head. But it wasn't an attack. It was Bill trying to teach Ron how to set the protective spells for the night. She and Draco could hear him scolding Ron for the sudden flare while Ron blamed Pettigrew's wand for it.
Draco whispered a swear at him, disengaging from Hermione with a shaky sigh. He helped her down from the railing, and, like a gentleman, walked her slowly back to the house.