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Many months later, when December was a cold and distant memory and they sat bored in the lighthouse, Hermione said they ought to have realised what was going on a lot earlier. Spent more time with Ginny. Paid more attention to what they knew of the past. Draco and Harry knew it was vain to try and persuade her otherwise. They discussed it at length, the small signs, the random choices. Hermione remembered the moment she bought the mirrors, their square heavy weight and how easily she could have put them down and found another present. Draco remembered a list and how his eye had settled so quickly and decisively on one name. Harry remembered Hermione standing on the dormitory stairs in a pair of white pyjamas in the middle of the night. He supposed that wasn't a choice he had made, so he said doubtfully that he couldn't seem to separate himself from the spell and Hermione had looked at him, earnest with affection.

"Of course you can't," she had reassured him. "Isn't that the point? But if we had known earlier..."

Draco had been participating in the conversation with his eyes shut and his feet up on the table. Now he opened his eyes and sat up crossly.

"Don't be ridiculous," he said flatly. "Nothing we could have done would have made any difference whatsoever. That's the point."

He shut his eyes again, irritably, whilst Hermione and Harry sat in miserable silence.

**

December

"But he hasn't been initiated," said Avery petulantly. Lucius looked down his long, shining table.

"That is a formality. He is my son." He slanted his eyes to where Draco sat in the line of Death Eaters, unmoving and expressionless, straight as a young tree. It was time to make him involved; Lucius was beginning to be impatient. He looked at the list in his hand, and then passed the thick parchment down the table to Draco. "You may choose one."

. Draco looked at the list on the table and then, slowly, reached out a hand and picked it up.

"Which list is that?" said Goyle doubtfully.

Lucius' mouth tightened with impatience. "I would not set Draco against a wizarding family. Not yet. It is a list of Muggle families with prominent wizarding members. And I shall give him six of you for assistance. But he will give the directions." He swept the gathering with cold eyes. "Is that acceptable?"

Draco appeared to be absorbed by the list. Lucius said sharply, "Draco?"

There was a moment's silence.

Then Draco said quietly, "The Grangers. I'll take the Grangers."

**

"Gin?" said Charlie. His head emerged from the fire in his little sister's dormitory. There was no response. Ginny's corner of the room was filled with her characteristic junk; books and cushions and shells and a cage containing a very small green and yellow parrot. The parrot gave Charlie an unfriendly look but he nevertheless poked his head out beyond the fireplace and called again. "Hey, Gin?"

There was a scraping noise and Ginny's head emerged from behind a great tilted board of wood that she had leant against a box, near the window.

"What on earth are you doing?" asked Charlie blankly. Ginny came out further, revealing that she was wearing one of Charlie's own old shirts over her clothes, and in her left hand was a paintbrush. Charlie looked at both these things with interest.

"It was an old shirt," Ginny said defensively into the temporary silence. "You hadn't worn it for years."

Charlie grinned at her. "I know. It's fine. What are you painting?"

"Don't look!" She nervously edged the makeshift easel a little away from him.

"OK, OK, keep your knickers on, woman." Charlie paused and looked at his sister's face carefully. She wasn't a good secret-keeper and he knew her expressions like his own. This was a guilty one. "Just tell me," he said finally, "Plain paints or magical ones?"

"Magical ones," said Ginny reluctantly. Charlie opened his mouth but Ginny hurried on, "It's just a self portrait, so she can't really do anything. She hasn't got any other pictures to move into either."

Charlie sounded dubious. "She can talk."

"That's the whole point," Ginny snapped.

Charlie looked at his little sister and realised what she was getting at. "I see. Feeling outnumbered?"

Ginny nodded.

Later, Charlie wished he had not been so unseated by sudden affection for his beleaguered sister. He had always thought it would be difficult to be Ginny, only the centre of attention when she was being teased, always the last to know the joke and the one to whom it mattered most. He didn't have the heart to take away something that she was so clearly enjoying. So he quelled his unease, told her he'd see her soon, gave the parrot a doubtful look, and only when he was busy wiping the soot from his neck did he remember what he had wanted to talk to her about in the first place.

**

"We have been waiting for you," said Albus Dumbledore gravely, as the door opened.

Harry came hastily in, somewhat short of breath and high of colour, and dropped his bag by the door. "Sorry. Transfiguration ran late."

"What did you transfigure?" asked Dumbledore with some interest.

Harry frowned. "The task was to make a bed. From anything in the classroom."

"Ah," said Dumbledore. "One of Minerva's favourite lessons, that. Did anyone get squashed Transfiguring something they were holding?"

Harry grinned. "Several people," he said cheerfully.

Dumbledore gave him a rather sad look. "Well, I am glad you had an entertaining lesson," he sighed, as if he weren't glad at all.

Harry looked at him sharply. "Something's wrong," he said quickly. "What is it? What happened?"

A voice emerged from the wingchair near the fire. "You are paranoid, aren't you Potter? But yes, actually, this time something is wrong." Harry went quite still, and stared as the wingchair scraped round to reveal its occupant.

Draco Malfoy.

Once Harry would have gaped and stammered at this point, now he said shortly, "Anything wrong with you is good by me, Malfoy."

Draco looked expressionlessly at him. "Yes," he agreed amiably. "That's probably true. This one is pretty great by my standards so I hope you're worrying." Harry, despite himself, felt a flicker of unease. He slid a glance towards Dumbledore, who was busy looking reprovingly at Draco.

"Sit down, Mr Potter," he suggested when he had finished this.

Harry said crossly, "I prefer to stand." Dumbledore sighed. "Yes, when I was a young man, so did I. Now my knees, you know, prevent it." There was a moment's silence whilst Harry and Draco struggled with this. "Mr Potter, Mr Malfoy has, as you know, a position of unrivalled excellence among the followers of Voldemort."

Harry blinked at his headmaster. "You know this? And you're letting him sit here?"

"He has chosen to impart to us certain information which he has come across in this position."

Harry spluttered and Draco Malfoy looked at him with the faintest trace of a smile. "Malfoy a spy? You are asking me to believe that Malfoy is a spy for us?"

Dumbledore looked thoughtfully into the fire. "If you like to call it that."

"I do call it that, and I don't believe it, and neither should you," said Harry fiercely. Dumbledore coughed.

"It is valuable information and I think you will be pleased to know it," he said meaningfully. Harry swung round and looked at Draco.

"Why would you do a thing like this?" he demanded accusingly.

Draco looked bored. "For fuck's sake, Potter, who cares why? All you need to know is that I'm supposed to knock off your girlfriend next week."

The room seemed to swing about Harry, and the only still point was Draco's palely mocking face. He knew that he had a million objections. He didn't have a girlfriend for a start, but he could guess who Malfoy was talking about. And he didn't trust Malfoy, and why would he be spying for Dumbledore? And he was too young to be a Death Eater and killing people. Yet he knew, in the instant that he met Malfoy's cool blank eyes, that it was true.

But he was Harry Potter, after all, and this was Draco Malfoy, so it behoved him to say, "Why should I believe you? Why are you bothering to do this?"

Draco said, expressionlessly if predictably, "I have my own reasons."

Harry snorted. "That's what I'm worried about."

Draco gave a minute shrug. "You can take it or leave it."

Harry stared at him. More than anything he wanted to turn around and walk out, or perhaps throw Malfoy out of the tower window and then turn around and walk out. But there it was. If Malfoy was telling the truth, Hermione was going to die. Harry sat down.

"Tell me," he said.

**

"You are missing your dinner," said Nearly Headless Nick. Ginny jumped and her paintbrush clattered to the floor.

"This is a girls' dormitory!" she spluttered indignantly. Nearly Headless Nick gave her a reproachful look.

"Yes, and you are in your pyjamas at six in the evening," he said, as if this answered her.

Ginny said defensively, "Well I haven't been sleeping well recently." Then she remembered that she was trying to be angry. "And will you please go away? Men aren't allowed in here."

"Oh, hoity toity," said Nick "I'm not a man. You can't imagine that sort of thing is a problem for me," he added, a little wistfully. "Being... incorporeal... as I am, I have certain limitations..." He gave a delicate cough. Ginny gaped at him. Then she hurriedly put her hands over her ears.

"I don't want to know. I really, really don't want to know. Go away." Nearly Headless Nick gave her a hurt look and floated gently round to the front of her painting.

"Ah," he said, somewhat mollified. "For the Gryffindor common room, is it? I always did think she was going to go far - and I do recall hearing something about her after she left - got famous, did she? Not a relative of yours is she, with that hair?" Ginny froze.

"What?" she squeaked.

"No," the ghost continued "You're a Weasley, aren't you? You can tell by the freckles, you know, all the nine generations I've known of you anyway. Yes, you've made her very pretty, she was always rushing about so, I hardly noticed that about her."

"Who?"

Nearly Headless Nick looked sideways at her, distracted. "Who what?"

"Who is she?" Ginny pointed to her portrait.

Nick opened his eyes very wide, which had the unhappy effect of making his head wobble a little on his neck. "You painted a portrait of someone you don't know?"

Ginny looked hopelessly at him.

"Please," she said. "Just tell me."

"Oh, very well," said Nearly Headless Nick. "She was nobody particular, you know, you've probably never even heard of her. Her name was Lily Evans."

**

Another December

"Look," said James, exasperated. "I've known her all my life."

Sirius, Remus and Peter exchanged owlish looks.

"Absolutely," said Sirius.

"All your life," added Remus gravely.

James narrowed his eyes at them.

"I am not joking," he said with dignity. "I can remember her when she was four. Very unattractive. Snub nosed." He searched briefly for some more damning criticism. "Ginger."

"Still is," said Sirius agreeably. "Pretty, though."

"We're friends," said James, with a slight edge of desperation.

Sirius and Remus looked at him in silence. Peter was lying by the hearth with his eyes shut but he managed to assume an accusing expression.

"Oh, all right, all right. Don't you ever give up?"

Sirius leant back into the red plushy sofa and smiled.

"Well, I find this a very pretty story. Much too pretty to be left without a proper ending."

"Boy meets girl," said Remus encouragingly, from the other sofa.

James looked from one to the other of them, and sighed. "Boy meets four year old girl," he reminded them without much hope.

"Exactly," said Sirius, sounding pleased, "Touching. Small boy and small girl. Wizard and Muggle. Sandpit frolics. Childhood vows of friendship. Then - the revelation. Not a Muggle after all."

"I always knew," James interrupted, forgetting his objections temporarily.

Remus looked at him, interested. "Did you? Did she do unexpected magic?"

James frowned. "Not really. I mean, not that I remember. She just... felt powerful. Or wizarding. Or something."

Sirius ignored him.

"As I was saying, a revelation. Wizarding school. Boy meets other boys. Excellent other boys," he added, glancing around. James grinned.

"Whatever," he said indulgently, since Sirius was clearly unstoppable.

"Girl meets other girls. Boy and girl no longer talk. Girl despises boy. Growing up happens. Miraculous blossoming of ugly teenagers." Sirius eyed his friend, and then added cautiously "Blossoming of one of them, anyway." James rolled his eyes. "And now," finished Sirius triumphantly, "Romance. It's inevitable. Sorry. I really think the story demands it."

Remus had been watching his friend closely, now he said, "James agrees, don't you, James?"

James looked warily at him. "She hates me."

Sirius gave him a pleased smile. "You are a terrible liar," he said with finality. "I saw you two in the Charms classroom yesterday."

**

This December

It seemed to have been days since Harry had come running into the round office in the turret. He stood by the window, and the sky was leaden.

"We can't write a spell like that," he said dully. "To stop all that. A spell for Hermione's whole house? Her family? Against six people?" He looked doubtfully round at Draco. "Can't you just... sabotage them? Muddle the directions? Or something?"

Draco gave him a look of infinite contempt. "I could. And then next meeting, everyone would be eating Draco-liver paté for starters."

Dumbledore did not give Harry time to contemplate this potentially pleasing image. "I don't think you can write the spell alone, you know. I am going to call on a very experienced wizard to help you. "

He went to the fire and looed sternly into it. "Charlie Weasley."

There was a pop.

"Hi," said Charlie. "I was expecting you. How are the boys, then?" Draco and Harry simultaneously moved into view. Charlie's head gave them a careful look.

"A bad business," he said after a moment. "You know I'm in Romania, I can only help you by advising. But I can do plenty of that." Harry crouched down on the hearth.

"Do you think it will work?" he asked urgently. Charlie looked thoughtfully at him.

"Yes," he said gently. "But I think, in any case, we will find a way to keep Hermione here for the Christmas holidays."

"Meaning no," muttered Draco.

"Meaning no risks with Hermione."

"Just with her family?" suggested Harry bitterly. Charlie's head bobbed on the flames as if he were shrugging.

"I hope not. Look, Gryffindor common room at one this morning, all right? We'll go from there." He vanished.

The two boys stood looking into the fire until Dumbledore coughed.

"Yes," he said. "Quite so. Perhaps you had better get some sleep before supper, in that case." Harry scowled at Draco.

"Stand outside the portrait hole at quarter to, OK?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "I don't know where the bloody portrait is," he reminded Harry irritably. Harry looked at him with interest.

"Really? Well, meet me by the Charms classroom then."

Draco nodded. They looked at each other for a moment, a brittle mutual hostility freezing the air between them.

Harry said slowly, "I am trusting you, but only because I have no choice.'

Draco raised one eyebrow. "And I am helping you, but only because I have no choice," he said inexplicably, and left.

**

Hermione couldn't sleep. Three days till the end of term. Harry staring at her, when he wasn't falling asleep in class. Ron, Fred and George planning probably destructive Christmas pranks. She shifted uncomfortably in bed and her mind slid back to what she knew was the real cause of her wakefulness.

Harry again. Harry, crouching awkwardly before her as she lay on the common room floor, speaking in a low urgent voice which was new and adult. Hermione - I know this is an enormous imposition. Harry didn't really use words like imposition. Hermione wondered if he had planned this speech in advance, but its earnest jerkiness was so genuine. I wondered if you would consider staying for Christmas - here. I have to. It would mean a lot to me. Now she knew there was something funny going on. Harry's idea of sentimentality was a special wave in her direction from his broomstick in a Quidditch match.

She wondered whether someone was putting words in his mouth. But his eyes were fixed on her with such a curious look - guarded and intense and alien - that she had only said they could go to the Burrow. Better here. Awkward Harry again, biting his lips, flushing. Please, Hermione. She had stared at him, and said, of course, she would stay if he liked. His face relaxed into a kind of relief and the tension fell away. He smiled at her, still not a real smile, a sort of lopsided half smile. I'll try and make it a good one he promised, and Hermione had looked after him, wondering what she was missing.

She knew that sleep wouldn't come, so she slid quietly between the hangings of the bed and looked around the dormitory. There was only the faintest starlight but she could hear Lavender's quiet and ladylike snores from across the room. Parvati's bed was empty, but as she was in the throes of a new, passionate and very public romance with Seamus Finnigan, that was no particular surprise. Without any particular purpose, Hermione found her dressing gown and wandered down the stairs.

The common room was dark except for the fire, but as she stood on the second stair, Hermione realised that there were two heads outlined against the flames. Curious, she stood very still until a familiar voice nearly surprised her into stumbling.

"Exactly like that," said the voice, sounding pleased, a voice Hermione would have known anywhere. The voice of Charlie Weasley. Craning her neck, she could see the side of Charlie's head as it bobbed energetically in the flames. Now she was smiling. Fred and George plus Charlie meant bad pranks but usually funny ones. Hogwarts was in need of some laughs at the moment. She edged on to the bottom step and froze in surprise, as one of the heads turned a little and she caught the glint of the fire on glasses, and a profile she could have drawn from memory. So Harry was involved, was he? No wonder he was sleepy. A Harry and Ron special. She coughed pointedly, and was pleased to see Harry freeze.

He didn't turn around, but stared, quite still, at the fire.

"Oh, God." The note of despair in his voice chilled Hermione's blood. "Hermione." And then the other head turned idly and where there should have been the glint of copper there was the pure dull shine of platinum.

"Stop with the wet dreams, will you Potter?" it said. "Some of us are trying to work."

And Hermione's world started to spin and rearrange itself, because the voice belonged to Draco Malfoy.

**

"You have to hand it to her," said Draco Malfoy some twenty minutes later, "The girl can argue." He glanced up at the ceiling where the determined beat of Hermione making her way upstairs could be heard. "And stamp," he added.

Harry was in no state to remember that he was talking to his worst enemy. His worst currently corporeal enemy, anyway. He said dully, staring at the parchments scattered on the floor, "But why?"

"I think I put her back up," suggested Draco helpfully.

"Yes, and you meant to," exclaimed Harry, suddenly cross. "What is it with you? Can't you do things the nice way?" Draco looked at him.

"OK," amended Harry "Maybe just the easy way?" This Draco considered.

"No," he said cheerfully. Harry narrowed his eyes at him.

"You're awfully happy," he said suspiciously. "You wanted her to find out, didn't you?

You wanted us to fight."

"It is but the last dance before death," Draco intoned solemnly. He sat down cross legged in front of the fire and began to stack the parchments. "That is the end of that spell, so no I am not happy to have a week of sleepless nights wasted. But yes, I thought she should know. I would want to." This last piece of humanity floored Harry, as he had never thought empathy one of Draco's more prominent skills.

"Well, now she does," he muttered, a little sulkily. Suddenly he realised what Draco had said.

"Wait. The spell - it won't work now?"

Draco sighed. "She was in it, and then she was out of it," he said patiently. "That makes a hole."

"It's not that simple!" Harry protested.

"No," agreed Draco, "It's so complicated it's basically impossible so get that fucking redhead back and let's get cracking." Harry gaped. "Well?" snapped Draco irritably, looking up at the unexpected silence.

"You really want this to work," said Harry slowly, scrutinising the other boy's face. "I just want to know why."

Draco looked levelly at him.

"It's nothing personal," he said. "It's not that I like either of you, or any of those bloody freckled people." He made a faintly disgusted face. "Especially any of them. I just like my father even less."

By now this was not news to Harry and he persisted on his original theme. "But you said you chose Hermione. I mean her family. And you don't even like her."

Draco rolled his eyes, put down the parchments, and stood up. "Enough," he said. "We'd better get this straight. Liking is neither here not there. I know you're important. I know that because I know how many people are trying to kill you. Hermione belongs to you, therefore she is important too. She's not stupid either, which is more than I can say for any of your freckly friends. So if I was going to, theoretically, stick my neck out for anybody it might as well be someone who could at least contribute meaningfully to the whole affair."

Harry stared at him.

"Oh," he said finally.

Draco's expression implied that he might have expected something more in the way of response, so Harry pulled himself together and launched at the only tangible thing he could contradict.

"Hermione doesn't belong to me," he managed, wondering how many people were trying to kill him, exactly, and whether Draco was in fact sticking his neck out, and what precisely the affair was that Hermione might contribute her brainpower to.

Draco gave him a faintly reproving look.

"I am not an idiot," he said primly. "I saw the two of you in the Charms classroom yesterday."

**

The thin steel blade came clanging down inches from Hermione's fingers as she pulled herself up on to the flagstones of the Astronomy Tower's viewing platform. She stopped moving and looked slowly at the tip of the rapier, and then up at its owner.

"Friend or foe?" asked Draco Malfoy, with the sort of smug innocence that had to be practised.

"God knows," Hermione snorted, climbing the last few rungs. It was cold and clear on top of the tower and the flagstones were rimed with ice. She stood uneasily on them, feeling the cold through her thin shoes.

Draco lifted the rapier and resheathed it. "We say Merlin, you know," he said politely. "In the Wizarding world, that is."

Hermione glared at him, but forbore to comment. Instead she said crossly, nodding at the sheathed blade in his hands, "Why do you carry that stupid thing anyway?"

Draco shrugged. "I was practising with it," he said lightly. "Back up. When spells fail, and all that."

Hermione said shortly, "Good, now I feel better about you casting the charm that's going to protect my family."

Draco grinned. "Oh, you have Potter for that heroic stuff." He wandered to the parapet.

"Yeah, because he's great at Charms," muttered Hermione absently.

Draco shrugged. "You owe me, you know," he said casually, his back to her.

Hermione stood stiffly and looked at his thin upright silhouette with loathing.

"I know," she said bitterly.

Harry stood on the ladder, his head below the hatch, wondering what sort of a price Draco might choose to extract.