The story was one that Draco had revisited many times when he was a boy. Growing up in the Manor, mainly isolated from other children except during the social season, Draco spent most of his time living in the multitude of history books available to him. Malfoy history was so long and-he was taught-so glorious that the library in his ancestral home was nearly comparable to the one at Hogwarts. The majority of the books were personal journals and accounts of the various Malfoy heirs and their siblings.

There were stories of Malfoys fighting off hordes of Muggles, escaping unjust and tyrannical foreign laws, wooing royalty and nobility into close friendships and love affairs. One particularly exciting historical account, from his great-great-great-great-granduncle Armel Malfoy, detailed the way in which he bred a new species of dragon for the sole purpose of courting a young woman from the wizarding royal family of Romania.

But the best story was always the mystery of Perseus Malfoy's death on his wedding day. Because what interests young bored boys more than murder and mystery, really?

The accounts were incomplete, unreliable, and mostly lost to the wear of such a long history. Most of Perseus's personal journals were lost in a terrible fire that laid waste to the original structure of Malfoy Manor. The remaining documents were only partially legible and very fragile. Draco had never been allowed to actually hold the journal himself. It was kept behind glass under a reinforced stasis charm at the Manor.

But that was before the war and the Ministry's determined plundering of his family's legacy. He tried hard not to imagine where that book, as precious as it was to him and to their current predicament, might be in this vast storehouse of books.

"A diary," Granger mused to herself, tapping the tip of her wand against her bottom lip. An involuntary echo of his mother's voice played out in Draco's head. She always warned him against habits like that, telling him he would hex his own nose off if he wasn't careful. Wands were not toys. "You say it was badly damaged in a fire? If it really is that old and important enough for your father to keep it under a stasis charm, I don't imagine even the Ministry was foolish enough to cast it off."

A flicker of hope in his chest, Draco shifted next to Potter. The pull between them seemed to wax and wane, but it was growing again. The lulls were shorter now, and he could feel himself itching to close the distance between them.

"Have you found any books like that in your searches of this place?" Potter asked, his knuckles white where he gripped the edge of the Pure-Blood Directory. Potter was feeling it too. He glanced up at Draco with apparent difficulty, and Draco felt his breath catch.

"There have been a few unique pieces thus far," Granger said more to herself than either of them. "I could use a modified summoning charm to trigger any books under statis in this storehouse." Before either of them could answer her, she flicked her wand and waited.

For a few moments, nothing happened, and Draco felt his heart sink a bit. Granger looked even more disappointed, her bushy hair deflating somewhat, but then the softest hint of a whizzing sound met Draco's ears.

They all strained to hear, and after a second, Potter's eyes widened.

"Duck!" he cried, and Draco and Granger obeyed just in time. Three books, each in increasingly worse condition, zoomed through the air and narrowly missed Granger's head. She had not ducked as far or as fast as Draco and Potter, though her massive belly may have been the cause.

Potter was quick with his shield charms, though, even if he'd shielded her stomach instead of her head. Draco felt a warmth blossoming inside him that he was determined to ignore.

"That's it!" Draco said, spotting the book he'd studied from afar for much of his childhood. He couldn't quite keep the excitement out of his voice.

Granger lowered it to the table with another wand gesture, cushioning its descent so that it floated just above the surface of the desk. The cover was dark green leather with embossed, gold-leafed lettering. Or at least, it had been once. The bottom-right corner was burnt so badly it curled around the singed edges, and the leather and parchment inside were both black and crumbling.

Using a modified levitation charm so delicate it was only known to those who work with antiques, Granger opened the book and leafed through the pages. She scanned the writing so quickly Draco barely had time to take in the wonder of having this book so close at hand. Perseus's scrawl was worse than Potter's had been in school, and Draco had spent days decoding the few pages he'd been able to see through the glass when he was young.

Granger, meanwhile, read through it as though it was inlaid by a magical printer.

More impressed than he cared to admit, Draco waited on her for an assessment of the information. Potter, who showed only a cursory interest in the book, apparently had much experience waiting for Granger to finish reading and tell him what was important.

Suddenly most of Potter's Hogwarts years were explained in crystal clarity.

A moment too late, Draco realized he was both staring at Potter and smirking at him. With an expression Draco could only describe as hungry, Potter smirled back at him. All the moisture disappeared from Draco's throat, and he felt himself inching forward, reaching for Potter.

"Perseus Malfoy was a fascinating man," Granger said, shattering the palpable draw between Draco and Potter. "And very progressive, given his time period and-er, lineage."

As though doused in a cold rain, Draco turned his attention back to the book and tried to sidestep Granger's clearly uncomfortable comment.

"Progressive how?" Potter asked.

"Perseus was a staunch believer in the advantages of inter-magical breeding," Draco said with as even a tone as possible. "Unlike most pureblooded wizards of the time, he believed that the mixing of magical and non-magical blood, particularly through half-blood marriages, could amplify magical strength as well as dilute negative inherited traits in magical bloodlines." Draco's gaze fell back to the burned edges of the book. "It was an unpopular opinion."

"You don't say," Potter said, presumably before he could stop himself. His cheeks were flushed a delectable pink, and Draco fought hard not to lick his lips at the sight of them. "Why was he marrying another pureblood, then, if he cared so much about mixing bloodlines?"

Granger heaved an exasperated sigh at her friend and said, "he was in love, Harry, honestly."

"Perseus was the eldest Malfoy child, the eldest son, and therefore the heir to the Malfoy line and fortune. Helena Peverell was the youngest of her family, beautiful, kind, and deeply in love with Perseus in return." Draco felt the urge to reach out and stroke the book but held himself back. He'd felt such an affinity for Perseus Malfoy, growing up, that the tragic story of his life felt much more personal to Draco than he could explain. "A marriage between the two families was more than beneficial to both parties, but not everyone in each family was so trusting of the couple and their love."

Potter nodded, stepping away from the desk to pace around by the stacks of books instead. Even the few extra feet of distance between them felt agonizing to Draco.

"So they fell back on old pureblood traditions to keep everyone happy," Potter said. "What happened to them?"

A shadow passed across Draco's mind, and he hesitated.

"They were murdered," he said. "Just after the bonding ritual was complete, they were attacked by a werewolf. It killed Perseus and tried to run off. But Helena, driven mad by grief, went after it. She managed to kill it but died in the process."

A heavy silence fell around the three of them, the weight of it only distorted by the insistent pull in Draco's stomach. Potter was suddenly next to him again. Draco swallowed hard.

"How did a werewolf manage that?" Granger asked. "Was the ceremony open air?"

"No, it was in a heavily warded wing of the Manor," Draco said. "Helena was marrying into the Malfoy family; pureblood custom requires the ritual take place on Malfoy ground."

"But we weren't on Malfoy ground when we-" Potter said, his expression scrunched in confusion. Draco tried his best not to find it endearing. "Your shop. The magic must count it as Malfoy ground." Draco nodded.

"This is much too complex for a fully transformed werewolf," Granger said. "It's extremely suspicious."

Draco nodded again and said, "absolutely. Which is why the two families fell almost immediately into paranoid arguments. But no one has ever discovered the truth. Not in all the centuries since."

"Who inherited the Malfoy estate then?" Potter asked. Draco knew full-well the line of thought. He'd travelled it himself, as had most of his ancestors.

"Nicholas Malfoy," Draco said with a minute grimace, "best known for having murdered Muggles under the guise of the Black Death. Not at all like his elder brother, I'm afraid."

Potter gave Draco an almost triumphant look with just a hint of incredulity. "Sounds like a fantastic candidate for prime suspect, don't you think?" Draco waved him off.

"Yes, which is why he was investigated," he explained. "But Nicholas Malfoy came up clean. Or as clean as anyone at that time could be. He even requested another contract bond with another Peverell sister, Imelda, to try and salvage the union. But both families were against it. They deemed the union cursed and handed over the bonding ring to Bond Keeper. They thought-" Draco stopped abruptly, his thumb playing over the shank of the ring. His eyes travelled from the ring to Potter.

"What?" he said.

"They thought that any couple who wore the rings," Draco said, "would surely die."

There was a moment of fraught tension before Potter barked out a laugh and shrugged at Draco.

When Draco gave him a look that clearly said he was worried for Potter's sanity, Potter answered, "this is hardly the first time I've been cursed to die." Then something changed in Potter's expression. It looked almost fond to Draco. "Plus you've had-what-six attempts on your life, and you're still walking around. I think we'll be fine."

There were only inches between Potter and Draco now, and the smile on Potter's face made his eyes crinkle at the sides just slightly. Unable to stop himself, Draco licked his lips and watched as Potter's eyes followed the trail of his tongue.

Granger cleared her throat loudly, and Draco found her staring between the two of them with a pointed look. "If you two are both done flirting, perhaps we can get back to finding a way to break the bonding spell." She paused and added, "unless, of course, you'd prefer to stay bonded."

Draco coughed, and he and Potter both stepped away from each other abruptly.

"How do we do that, again?" Potter said, tugging at the neck of his robes.

"Find the Bond Keeper, remember?" Draco said.

"Unfortunately, these documents don't list a Bond Keeper," Granger said, clearly put out. "I imagine that was part of the fail-safes, so outside parties couldn't meddle with the spell or something of the sort. I'm not sure how to find that information, mind you."

"The painting," Draco said suddenly, the thought coming to him so violently he felt struck by a bludger. "There's a painting of Perseus and Helena. It was from the wedding."

He had stumbled across it one day when he was bored over the summer before first year. The Manor had so many rooms and even more hidden places. He found a small secret passageway behind the staircase to the North Wing. The passage was narrow, and even at eleven he was almost too large to fit through it. It led only to a small window-less room filled with old broken furniture and some grotesque paintings from the middle ages.

But one painting, actually hanging on the wall when the others were littered on the floor, was different. It was a wedding portrait of a young man and woman. The man, blond and fair and striking, was clearly a Malfoy. The woman was rosy and black-haired with blue eyes. When Draco read the plaque, he jolted with amazement.

Perseus and Helena, in all their painted love, standing before him. He tried to ask them questions, to get at the truth of their deaths, but they wouldn't speak a word to him.

"I suppose Perseus and Nicholas were never on good terms," Draco said. "And Nicholas must have been the one to place them in that hidden room. Perhaps they decided that any descendent of Nicholas was inevitably going to be just as bad as he was." Prejudice works in all directions, Draco thought but knew enough not to say. "Still, I'd found something none of my ancestors had. It was the most brilliant moment of my childhood, prior to meeting you, anyway," he said to Potter, and Potter, to his credit, had the decency to be taken aback. "So I continued to visit them until I went to school and other things began to occupy my mind."

"Where are they now?" Potter asked, his voice rough.

Draco studied him. "I was hoping you could tell me. The Ministry took that too."

Potter sheepishly ran a hand through his hair. "I'm not sure where the confiscated artwork ended up." He cast Granger a hopeful look, but she only shook her head.

"I haven't begun my catalogue of artwork yet," she said. Without looking at each other, Draco and Potter began to lean towards one another. Granger's expression shifted to mild alarm, and she added, "but given the urgency of this situation, I think maybe I'll start early. I'll let you know the moment I find anything."

"Brilliant," Potter said. "Now what?"

Draco checked his watch, his fingers running over the worn engraving on the back as they always do. Pushing away thoughts of the day he received it, he focused on the time.

"Now, we have done your job," Draco said. "It is my turn. I have clients waiting on orders, Potter."

"Yeah, yeah," Potter said. "Clients with an urgent need for diamond baubles and trinkets. Let's go, then. I take it you'll need to Apparate to get us into your wards?"

Draco nodded stiffly, pushing aside the panic at the idea of touching Potter. But Potter didn't wait. He reached out and grabbed Draco by both arms.

The pull tightened without warning, like a clamp snapping shut, and Draco dragged Potter into his arms. His head was just barely clear enough to get them from the storehouse to Draco's shop, but the moment they materialized, his thoughts clouded.

Then there was only Potter. Draco crowded him against the wall, hands roving up and down Potter's body, touching every inch of the auror he could reach. Potter gasped and husked, his own hands clutching greedily at Draco's robes, urging him closer.

Draco leaned in, his face buried in Potter's hair, his neck, breathing in the scent of him. His lips brushed against Potter's jaw, just below his ear, and Potter led out a low, deep sound that sent blood rushing through Draco. His trousers grew uncomfortably tight, but he didn't notice. He only noticed the taste of Potter's skin, the sound of his hot, ragged breath at Draco's ear, and the feel of his hands on Draco's back.

Draco turned his head as Potter did the same. Their lips parted, their mouths a hair's breadth from touching, Draco felt Potter's breath on his face. Potter licked his lips, his breathing hitched, and-

Draco pulled away. Rather, he pushed away, by forcing himself off the wall, and released his hold on Potter. Gasping, panting as though he'd been playing Quidditch for days, Draco tried to ground himself, to remember they weren't meant to-they couldn't-

But the look on Potter's face was a demanding one. It demanded kissing, snogging, all-consuming tasting.

Carding fingers through his hair, Draco turned away, unable to look at Potter any longer for fear of what he might do. Of what they both might do. When he turned back to Potter, it was to find him smoothing out his robes and trying not to look shaken.

With a laugh that barely veiled his lust, Potter said, "when they say 'consummate,' what do you think that means precisely?"