Chapter Text
Hermione stood at the foot of the marble staircase, determined not to move until Crabbe and Goyle came back inside the castle. When they reappeared, they merely nodded to her across the Entrance Hall, the only sign they would give while they still didn’t trust her to show that Draco had been taken away, back to Malfoy Manor to answer the call of the Dark Lord.
Reporting to Defense Against the Dark Arts class as if it was a typical day, as if Draco wasn’t being interrogated by Voldemort, seemed like a ridiculous prospect -- surreal. But Hermione knew herself, and knew she might feel a little less helpless if she could be close enough to Snape to let him know Draco had been taken, so she went to his classroom.
Strangely, class still hadn’t started by the time she arrived. She sat by Harry but wouldn’t look at him. They waited in peevish silence for half an hour -- her reading, him pretending to read -- until some of the other students started to leave.
“Come on, Hermione,” Harry said. “Snape’s not coming. It’s like I said. Something’s up.”
“Of course something’s up,” she hissed at him, slamming her book shut. “Didn’t I just tell you, in the corridor? Didn’t you just see it for yourself?”
“All the more reason why we’ve got to find Snape, yeah? Let’s go. We’ll start in his study -- ”
She stood up. “I am not going anywhere with you, Harry Potter. I’m going to see Ron, like I promised to this morning. He said he’d found something out and this," she waved at Snape’s emptying classroom, “is going nowhere for now. Snape could have been dragged off to the manor himself, for all we know.”
In the corridor, Harry jogged to catch up with her. She might have been right about Snape’s trail having gone cold. And anyway, it would be safer for Harry if his first exposure to Ron since snogging his sister happened in the presence of a third-party.
Ron shot up in bed when he saw them. “Oh, here they are, at long last. I’ve only been dying to tell you something all day. Harry, you didn’t even come on your free period.”
“Sorry. Meeting with McGonagall,” he said. “They’ve tossed me off the quidditch team, as punishment for -- yesterday.”
Ron gasped. “No. Wow. Sorry, mate.”
Harry shrugged, glancing guiltily at Hermione. None of the defenses of sectumsempra that Ginny had raised outside McGonagall’s office sounded any good as he remembered them while standing in front of someone who loved Draco Malfoy.
“They could have done worse,” was all he said. Eager to divert the conversation away from himself, he added, “Katie is the new captain, now she’s back. Probably should have been her all along, really. More experienced and all.”
Ron shook his head. “She’ll do alright. Still…” He shook his head again.
Hermione cleared her throat. “So I started my research with Snape this morning,” she said, gently reminding Ron he had something to tell her. “He had books on Mitrian charms stowed in his office, good ones written in plain language rather than cyphers, so that’s promising.”
It might have been promising for her, but the boys had no idea what she meant by it.
Ron began with an extraordinary comment. “Look, Hermione, forget the books for a moment. Pansy and I were talking and she thought of something better.”
Hermione raised both of her eyebrows, assuming her battle stance for the second time that morning.
“Don’t give me that look,” Ron said. “All we’re saying is, if you’ve got questions about old monks’ spells, if you want some of their missing pieces filled in, who better to ask than an old monk?”
Hermione frowned. “That’s a fanciful line of reasoning, but -- “
“No,” he interrupted, rising to his knees on his bed. “No, there’s nothing fanciful about it. Remember the Hufflepuff ghost -- he comes out every sorting ceremony to wish everyone a happy sorting into Hufflepuff. You remember, Harry, from Nick’s deathday party, years ago?”
Hermione’s jaw fell open. “They call him the Fat Friar. He’s a monk.”
“Yes,” Ron was beaming, “been here since the early days of Hogwarts.”
“Around the tenth century!” Hermione squealed. The girl groaning over her aching tummy, three beds over, rolled away from the noise. “All this time, there’s been a monk floating around in the basement who might have known the Mitrians.”
“Or even been one.”
“Yes, Ronald, it is brilliant!”
“That’s my Pansy.”
Harry rolled his eyes.
Ron saw it and pointed a finger sharply at Harry's chest. “None of that from you, Harry. You’d better not have anything to say about other people’s girlfriends now you’ve gone and -- “
Hermione jumped between them. “Not now, Ron. We need to find this ghost. I can’t wait until the next sorting ceremony to see what he knows about corporeal love charms.”
Ron scoffed. “Right. Now you’re in a hurry -- “
“Ron, are you coming?” she said.
He slumped back into his bed. “No, I’m not allowed to leave here before tomorrow at the earliest.”
Hermione and Harry slowly turned to each other, like a pair of siblings forced to make up. It had not been a good morning for them. The noon hour was about to start and all Harry wanted to do was find Ginny and disappear. But the sooner Hermione figured out how to use that charm against Voldemort, the sooner Malfoy’s vanishing cabinet could be destroyed.
His resistance to helping Malfoy -- it was deeply ingrained and always felt virtuous to Harry. After all these years, how was he supposed to be able to tell whether the resistance came from his own good instincts, or whether it was manipulation through the nightmare link between himself and Voldemort?
Dumbledore had told him love was his strength and he should let it lead him. And when he took a moment in the hospital wing, his eyes fixed on Hermione’s face while Ron watched on hopefully, he sensed his power to love leading him to stop resisting, at least long enough to join the hunt for the Hufflepuff ghost.
-----------------------
Severus Snape stood in Narcissa Black Malfoy’s bedroom, between her and her son, his arm extended, his fingers grasping a quill. “Sign it,” he told her. “Sign your consent for the matrimonial charm.”
She pressed her fists to her temples and gave a strangled scream. “The Blacks and Malfoys are pure-blood families.“
“Bollocks!” Draco shouted. “Aunt Andromeda -- “
“My line, your father’s line -- both are pure. Your line, Draco, will honor that purity. It’s settled.”
“It’s not, Mother. Nothing is settled. Everything changed the moment that creature downstairs came back.”
Snape’s fingers closed, vice-like, around Draco’s chin. “Silence,” he said. “Both of you. The Dark Lord gathers with his servants in the dining hall downstairs. You are excused, Draco, to care for your mother while Bellatrix attends the meeting. You will take this time to say what you must, and when I return, Madam Malfoy, I expect your signature to be in order. If it is not, we may proceed, at greater risk, without you.”
He spun on the spot and marched out the door.
Draco finished dressing, fastening himself into one of his father’s odd, old-fashioned shirts, black overlaid with a slightly less black pattern, high collared, and closed with a buckle at one shoulder. He smoothed it over his abdomen and looked up to find his mother building to a crescendo of weeping.
“Lucius…” she wailed.
“Mother, enough,” he said, leading her to sit on the edge of the bed. “Father tried to make us safe and strong in his way, and it hasn’t worked. It was awful. I can't continue in that way. And I can’t continue on my own and unattached either.”
“Tell me her name,” Narcissa sobbed. “You won’t even tell me her name.”
“Mother, it’s Hermione Granger. Yes, a Muggle-born witch. You’ve seen her. She was with Harry Potter and the Weasley boy in Madam Malkin’s this September.”
Narcissa frowned. “I remember the incident, but nothing about her.”
“No you wouldn’t,” he said. “Through the whole confrontation, she was poised and perfect. She’s flagrantly brilliant and under-statedly beautiful. And I’ve been mad about her since the Yule Ball in my fourth year when I taught her to dance for the dignitaries. She deserved that honor, Mother. Her magical abilities are astounding. She’s the best in our year -- in the entire school. She’s powerful enough to force the Dark Lord himself to take notice.”
“With Potter,” Narcissa repeated. “Was she with Potter -- was she there -- in the Ministry -- the night your father -- Sirius and Bella?”
He nodded, eyes cast down. “Yes, she was there. She came away badly injured, but not by Father himself.”
Narcissa’s hands fluttered from her lap to her face. “Draco, how can we accept each other? After all of that? I don’t understand -- has she abandoned Potter for you?”
“No, Mother. She’s loyal to both of us.”
Narcissa shook her head. “That is not how loyalty works, darling.” Her eyes grew wild again. “It’s a trap. She’s tricked you. They’ll kill you.”
Draco gathered her hands in his. “No, Mother, it’s the people downstairs who are going to kill me. And Hermione hasn’t trapped me. It’s me who wants her. If you try to interfere, I’ll find a way to enter into the matrimonial charm without you. It was crafted in the tenth century, after all. At my age in the tenth century, I’d be a seasoned married man and a father several times over so -- “
“Draco, don’t,” she said, tearing her hands away from him, clamping them over her ears. “You can’t.”
She was on her feet and running toward the door, down the stairs. When she reached the bottom, she didn’t seem to know where to go, and fell to sitting, as if by default, on her piano bench.
Draco followed her, chasing at first but slowing as he descended the stairs, approaching her as if she was a skittish animal. Gently, he slid onto the piano bench beside her, as if the heated conversation in the bedroom had never happened.
“Shall I play, Mother?”
“Yes, Draco. That would be lovely.”
He began from the top of the Rachmaninoff prelude he'd been playing when Wormtail interrupted him earlier. He played the low, deep opening chords softly, like thunder heard from far away. Narcissa settled beside him, leaning against his arm.
“I couldn’t finish the song before. You haven’t heard all of it yet,” he said to her. “Hold tight. It gets louder.”
In a few bars, he was playing the dynamics as written, low and loud. “Remember the name, Mother? Rachmaninoff, our brilliant Muggle composer. Listen to it -- all the emotion, the power, the deceptively simple sophistication. Feel it behind your sternum, it resonates in your heart’s core, just like it does in a Muggle’s heart.”
He beat the piano keys, faster and harder, playing the instrument as loudly as it could be played, filling the vaulted spaces of the manor’s grand entrance hall, the music dashing itself against the hard stone walls, amplified and multiplied.
The sound piled on top of Narcissa, crushing her, and she slid from the seat of the piano bench, onto the floor where Draco’s feet worked the pedals. Her head drooped to rest next to his knee, and her tears renewed themselves, crying against his leg as he played.
“It hurts,” she said.
“Just enough to open us up,” he answered, the speed of the music abating, reaching the end.
The crashing of keys and chords had not gone unnoticed by the Death Eaters attempting to hold a meeting not far away, in the dining hall. If there were more rests in the middle part of the piece, Draco and Narcissa might have heard Wormtail knocking from inside the dining room door, calling out to them to stop, wrenching on the doorknob to get out of the room and force them to stop. But the house held him inside -- held all of them inside, ignoring their demands and threats as they realized they were imprisoned, if only for a few moments, until Draco finished his song.
The music ended, the reverberations of the notes dying away through the halls. The angry voices of the captive Death Eaters, now led by Bellatrix’s shrieks, were audible to the Malfoys now. In seconds, the house would click its lock open and let them out -- either that or the Dark Lord would rise from his seat to blast the door off its hinges himself.
In the momentarily quiet hall, Narcissa lifted her head, wiped her tears with the back of her hand. “Rachmaninoff,” she said. “Draco, the quill.”
-------------
Harry had got the Map from his room and he and Hermione stood in the corridor outside the Gryffindor Tower searching it for the Fat Friar. It was hard for Harry not to be distracted by Ginny’s dot, pacing in front of the entrance to the Great Hall, as if she was waiting for him to go into lunch with her.
Malfoy’s dot had still not reappeared.
“There’s hardly anyone in the Hufflepuff basement,” Hermione observed. “They do like a good lunch, don’t they?”
“Lunch, right,” Harry said. “Would a ghost known for over-eating enjoy haunting the halls outside a kitchen, or would it just make him miserable that he can no longer eat?”
“However he feels about it, he’s not there now,” Hermione said. “Wait, Harry. There’s a portrait of the monk somewhere. I’ve seen it. He might stay close to it.”
“Portrait,” Harry echoed, examining the corridors they knew to be most densely festooned with portraits. “There,” he said, “on the fourth floor.”
Hermione followed him down the stairs, to a quiet corridor where a wispy white figure floated above the stone floor, a large stein lifted to his mouth, his head tipped back, trying to drain it. He lowered his cup, closed one eye, and peered inside, sighing.
“Death is alright,” he said, as if in soliloquy. “Not bad at all until it’s time to eat. And then -- woe is me. Woe indeed.”
He reared back, as if he was about to throw himself into his portrait, stopping only when Harry called out to him.
“Ah!” he said, floating toward them. “A pair of poor souls sorted into Gryffindor. You’re missing your lunch, young lions. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die, whatever the good book says...”
“Please, Friar,” Hermione began. “We've come for your wisdom in magic.”
“You have?”
“Yes. You see, I’ve cast a charm," Hermione said. "A powerful corporeal love charm, after the Mitrian way. But I’ve only just learned I’ve done it by halves.”
The Friar sat back, hooking his thumbs in his belt. "Best not take half measures with old, strong, beautiful magic like that. Takes a steady hand and the entire heart."
She swallowed, a quiver in her voice as she agreed. "Yes, it was a beautiful charm. But it was attacked by a dark wizard who fractured it. In the act, he accidentally bound himself to it -- to us. I need to restore the charm to just -- just me and my loved one.”
Harry shifted from foot to foot.
The friar was openly scandalized. “A third? In an ancient corporeal love charm? How can there be a third? In this part of the world, all matrimonial charms are crafted for two."
"Yes, sir. The trouble was I cast it knowing only half of the manuscript, with none of the matrimonial rites. I need to fix it, and soon."
"Yes, yes," the Friar agreed. "If your third is a dark wizard, you are in danger by being so close to him. Your very life is in peril."
"It's true," she said. "Please help us."
"Wait," Harry interrupted. "Is there any way to repair this without simply adding the matrimonial rites? Can't it be simply -- ended?"
The Friar clucked his tongue. "The Mitrian brethren did not anticipate modern ideas like matrimonial endings. Why do you ask, young Gryffindor? Don't you like her?"
Harry sputtered. "No, no -- yes, I like her but -- er -- it's not for me, sir. The charm involves someone else as her partner.”
“Oh, I see. And you’d prefer her unattached,” he chuckled, his insubstantial elbow poking at Harry’s ribs.
Harry jumped away. “No, Friar. It’s just that she’s so young, and their families don’t get on, and the boy with the charm, he’s -- he’s bloody awful.”
“Harry!”
“Come on, Hermione,” he burst. “I can’t stand here and listen to another word about you marrying him, or marrying anyone. Not now, and especially not them. Listen to me, Hermione. He offered me his hand once, in friendship, and refusing to take it was the best decision I ever made.“
She took Harry’s hand herself. “You were both eleven years old that day, Harry. An awful lot has happened since then.”
He tugged his hand away. “Yes, and nothing to recommend the Malfoys as in-laws, I’m sorry to say. And how could you be married and still in school. It’s a mess.”
“It’s not ideal,” she said, her voice rising. “But there are worse things in life than marrying someone you love at the wrong time.”
“Are there?”
“Yes, and you would choose the same way if you were in my position, Harry. Just like you, I won’t let anyone die over this. And I won’t let the castle fill up with Death Eaters over it either.”
Harry growled in frustration. “Then let’s go upstairs, destroy the cabinet, and figure the rest out later.”
She stamped her foot. “We are not going anywhere until the Friar tells us what he knows,” she said. “If you please, Friar.”
The ghost drifted in a figure eight around Harry and Hermione. “True enough, you won’t find anything in the old texts on how to end the charm. There may be a way to do it, but you’ll have to craft it yourself. It will be an experiment, with nothing promised.”
“Can’t we end it for just one of us? For just the third?” she asked.
The Friar pursed his lips. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. Either way, you will have to craft new magic, either to end the charm or to sever the third. Both would be untried. No,” he said, rubbing his belly with his palms, “the only promise I can make is that the matrimonial charm will restore the charm to a covenant between two individuals, new and stronger. The third will be cut off, but left torn and damaged, weakened.”
Hermione grabbed Harry’s sleeve. “I told you, Harry. He’s close enough that we can hurt him.”
“He said you could hurt a third person, but Voldemort is no ordinary third,” Harry said. He turned to the Friar. “What could he do to them, as he’s tearing away? Could he lash out and hurt them in return?”
The Friar drew his figure eight between them again. “The third will be in a subordinate position, but not a helpless one, especially if the third is a wizard of great power. There will be significant risk to all of you.”
“I accept that. Now, what do we do?” Hermione rushed, before Harry could make any more objections.
The Friar hummed. “If the spell is half cast, then I assume only one of you has been inscribed with a charm? Well then, the other member of the pair will need to be inscribed, in the same way and with much the same mark as the first. Same familiar, same incantation -- “
“There was no incantation,” Hermione said.
The Friar gaped at her. “No incantation?” He circled around her, looking her over from head to foot. “And it worked all the same? It worked well enough to withstand an attack and enslave the attacker?”
Hermione's eyes followed him as he circled. “I suppose it must have.”
The Friar drifted to a stop in front of her, floating so close that her face sank into his misty barrel chest. The Friar’s jolly tone was replaced by one of awe. “What manner of witch are you, young Gryffindor?”
“Is that it?” Harry interrupted. “One matching tattoo and they’re free of Voldemort for good? But will they be stuck married after that?”
The Friar’s drifted away from Hermione. “Of course they will be. And if they’re lucky that will be the only lingering effect. The tearing away of the third will be dangerous and must not be taken for granted. Talented as you are, Miss Gryffindor, I advise you to use a verbal incantation next time. Compose it carefully. Take what you can from the old texts. Follow them scrupulously. And for the second inscription, you will require witnesses. It cannot be done in private.”
“It’s a bloody wedding,” Harry groaned.
The Friar’s jolly tone was returning “Yes, if you want to gather strength, make it a wedding. Bring your loved ones. Draw power from them. But don’t delay. As soon as the stars are right, proceed, before either of you or your familiar are attacked again. And,” he added, “what was the word you inscribed, on the first charm? Which of the virtues did you choose.”
Hermione stood taller. “I chose hope.”
The Friar beamed at her. “Very good. Now, for the second inscription, you must advance beyond that. For the second, the name of the charm must be ‘faith,’ as you will need to have faith in and show faith to each other.”
Harry sighed, his face in his hands.
“And finally,” the Friar finished, rounding on Harry, “if this one can’t find any joy in your matrimonial rites, then don't invite him to come along.”
--------------
The rest of the day passed at a painful crawl. By suppertime, Draco still hadn’t returned to the castle. Hermione had the Map, and sat reading it like a terrible book where the letters kept rearranging themselves, and the story never moved any farther along.
No one answered whenever she knocked on the door of Snape’s study. He was still away from school himself, the books she needed locked behind his well-guarded doors.
The sun still set early during this time of winter. She dressed herself in her warmest cloak and went outside to wait for Draco in the dark. She settled herself on a wooden bench not far inside the castle gates, out of the view of the sentry Aurors, where the path split into two -- one path heading up the hill to the castle, and the other curving toward the ice encrusted expanse of the lake.
In the dark, she waited, breathing on her hands, gathering her cloak closer and closer. Time passed, the stars moving through cold space overhead.
At last, she heard voices, the silky voice of Snape identifying both himself and Draco to the Aurors. She sprang to her feet, rushing forward to meet them. Snape could see her, the Aurors could see her, but she did it anyway. She flung her arms around Draco’s neck and pulled him down to kiss his cheek as he stepped back into the safety of the Hogwarts grounds. She said nothing for fear that she’d be crying of relief the moment she tried. He felt like a miracle between her arms -- her boy who had survived another day of terror with Lord Voldemort.
She was so cold his heart ached to think of her waiting outdoors for him. With a hot mouth, he kissed all over the surface of her face, raising the temperature of her skin, assuring her he was alive and well, still himself. He cleansed himself of the filthy aura of the Dark Lord which could not cling to him in the presence of the way he felt about her.
He pulled her inside the warmth he still held against himself, within the heavy folds of his father’s cloak. In the dimness, she seemed to disappear into the lush, black fabric, as in a Muggle magic trick.
Snape rolled his eyes at the scene. “Mind your curfew, Draco. Don’t take too long getting back to the castle,” he said, leaving them there, on the frozen grass.
“You’re safe,” she finally said against his neck.
At the sound of her voice, he held her even tighter. “Yes, I’m alright. And you? Nothing hurt you today?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.” She looked up at him in the moonlight, smoothing his hair with her palm. “Draco, we’ve made some excellent progress today.”
“So have I. And I’m ready,” he said, “for what comes next.”