"What about the kids?" Weasley demands. He's pacing.

"Your parents will watch them," Granger grumbles from the sofa. "They raised seven. I'm sure they can handle a few more."

"'Sides," Potter mumbles, yawning, "they're too old to be dropped on their heads at this point, so what's the worst that could happen?"

Weasley doesn't seem comforted.

When Lavender despairs that she's going to get fired, Weasley counters with, "Not as fast as I am."

Everyone seems to have already accepted the truth of this.

"Are you sure we can't send any letters until tomorrow?" Parvati asks. "Maybe we should try convincing the Aurors again."

"They won't let us get any letters through until they've got someone to check them all and make sure we're not sending out sensitive information," Weasley says. "That's standard protocol."

Parvati throws her head back against the sofa. "How am I supposed to tell the clinic I won't be in for work? What'll they do in the meantime? The pet owners need time to find a proper replacement vet."

"Do you think I'd look good with long hair?" Blaise asks Draco.

"Ravishing."

Luna sits on the floor beside Rolf, where he flopped down earlier. She runs a hand up and down his back.

"I think he needs a Healer," she says quietly. "I think you all need Healers."

"Maybe the Aurors will let one letter through," Draco says. "If it's for a Healer on staff. Do they have one of those?"

Weasley shakes his head.

"Pomfrey, then?"

"It's not ... impossible," Weasley says. "It'll be hours, but it's not impossible. You'd probably have to dictate the message to them."

"Can you do it?" Draco asks Luna. "We'll need five Invigoration Draughts."

She stands without hesitation.

"Will she send those over without seeing us first?" Granger asks. "That doesn't seem particularly legal."

"It's over the counter," Draco reminds her.

"And if the Aurors won't agree to send the message?"

He hesitates. "Have you got the ingredients here, Potter?"

Potter turns his head towards him. "I haven't even got a cauldron."

"Let's figure that out when the time comes," Draco says.

While Luna doesn't seem as concerned as she might, she isn't her usual self, either. She hasn't once told them to be proud of themselves or rejoice for the work they've accomplished. Still, she says, "It will all work out in the end."

"What makes you think so?" Scorpius asks drearily. "We're on house arrest. The Ministry will be working to turn the Prophet against us. All of our goals are dashed. We can't even finish helping the Wallygagglers, because all we have to work with is right here."

Luna says over her shoulder, "There are some things you just know," as she leaves the room.

The rest of them stay quiet.

Teddy's legs are drawn up to his chest, his pale cheek resting against them. He scans the room and seems to decide it needs a bit of brightness.

"I, for one, am just glad to have my eye back to normal," he says.

That was the first thing they noticed once they were inside, Teddy, Lavender, and Potter all at once, it seemed. With the ward separating them so powerfully from North Moor, the Wallygagglers can no longer project their magic into the outside world. Everyone's prostheses are working again, and the moving portraits are perfectly alive-not-alive once again.

He wishes it were more of a comfort.

"Cheer up," one of Professor Lupin's portraits says. He's the only one paying them any attention. "It's never as bad as it seems."

~

That night, Draco tosses and turns in bed. The Invigoration Draught has had the nasty side effect of making it impossible for him to sleep. He should have forgone it like Blaise.

But he knows that's not the real reason he's still awake. Never before has he done something he's so sure is right, only to feel so awful about it afterwards.

It unnerves him, too, to think about the letter Madam Pomfrey penned in reply. 'Are you sure these are the only potions you need?'

Carefully worded, he's sure, in case the Aurors read it. But why? What was she alluding to?

Besides all that, he's still worried about Scorpius.

"We can best the Ministry," Scorpius had said, in the late part of the evening, when everyone but the two of them and Potter had gone to bed. "It's been done before."

"We're already in a load of trouble," Draco replied. "Don't go making it worse. I'd like to get us out of here with at least a sliver of our freedom left."

Scorpius scowled, but his dark eyes still held that hopeful shine. Somehow, the day hadn't beaten the stubbornness out of him. "That's up to you. But I'm telling you what I'm doing, and that's fixing this."

"Don't you still want the job? If you make them your enemy—"

"I have to show them that I'm not going to let anything stop me from helping magical creatures. Either they'll respect it or they won't."

Potter's magical eye had followed Scorpius as he left the sitting room. His other eye was trained on Draco.

"This is going to be bad," Potter had said.

"I suspect you're right."

"You're not going to do anything to stop it?"

Draco remembers then with great clarity how high Scorpius held his head as he exited the room.

He'd said to Potter, "The best thing I can do now is support him well enough that he'll let me minimise the damage when the time comes."

Potter hadn't said anything, but his magical eye had swivelled to face Draco too, and Draco felt the weight of it pushing on him.

"It'll be fine, Potter. It'll be ... it won't be worse than anything I did at his age."

Now, sleepless, Draco slams his hand into his pillow, adjusting it for the thousandth time. How can Scorpius honestly think he's still got a shot at this job? How can he want this job? More importantly: what does Draco have to do to convince him this is a bad idea? Defying the Ministry might work out splendidly for people like Potter, but Scorpius is a Malfoy, through and through. If Draco had ever had a single doubt, it would have been quashed watching him schmooze people at the moor.

Draco rolls out of bed, finally giving up. He just wants to get away from all of this for a minute, but there's nowhere to go.

Draco takes the stairs down to the second floor two at a time, stopping at the bottom only because he has no idea where to go. He can't see very well in the dark, and since the Aurors confiscated their wands, he can't cast a Wand-Lighting Charm. At the far left end of the hall, the knob of a door twists. Draco backs into the shadows bracketing the walls, waiting.

No one comes out.

He peeks around the wall once more. The door swings open entirely, but no one steps out.

After a moment, Draco whispers to the door itself, "Are you ... talking to me?"

The door flaps on its hinges, and he jumps at the sound.

The rest of the house is quiet. He wonders if the house is laced with Silencing Charms or if everyone else is already asleep. It must be nearly three, so it wouldn't be that surprising.

Still, he keeps his steps soft as he pads down the hall.

Draco makes it inside the room and doesn't check what's there before shutting the door behind him with a snap. Darkness hugs every inch of the room until, one by one, the wall sconces come to life.

He leans back heavily against the door, the flicker of fear trailing away from his still pounding heart. Canvases sit spread out around the room, one after another. Some of them are clearly copies of works Potter made for other people. A few seem empty despite fully painted backgrounds, giving the appearance that their subjects left. The rest...

"Hello," he says gently.

The woman from the largest canvas looks up at him. Her expression is less hostile than he remembers it — Ginny Weasley, at least six versions of her spread about the room, all beautiful. On the largest canvas, Ginny's hair hangs off the edges. It's a vibrant orange slash against the background, tangled with autumn leaves. Potter painted her in an emerald green jumper, one which the other Ginnys have foregone in favour of Quidditch leathers.

He steps closer, and she seems to sit up, though the angle doesn't change. Her hair sweeps down around her face in layers, and her clever brown eyes follow him. The leaves do not fall out.

"Malfoy. I should have known."

Ginny's older than he remembers her, but he doesn't think it's a recent portrait. She looks like she's in her late twenties.

'Are all your portraits dead?' Draco remembers asking Potter.

'No, there's one set that isn't. A rather large mistake on my part. I'd rather you didn't meet them.'

"Should have known what?" he asks now.

"The other portraits mentioned a snobbish, blond man was visiting. I knew it was you that first day you came, but Harry hasn't exploded yet, so I thought you couldn't possibly be back."

He spreads his hands wide. Here I am.

Ginny tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear, looking at him for a long time without saying anything. He hadn't been able to tell from farther away, but she's got a light smattering of freckles covering her nose, something mirrored across the other portraits. She doesn't seem nearly as irritated with him as the portraits in the sitting room had. Then again, he hasn't heard anything bad from them, either, since they started moving again.

Ginny tilts her head to the side. "You've been good for him."

"Who?"

"Harry. He's doing better."

It certainly doesn't seem that way to Draco. "He is?"

Ginny twists her lips. "I don't want to say anything he doesn't want to tell you. But I think if you ask him properly, he'll explain it all. If you could see how he looks at you, you'd understand."

Draco's heart thumps. "What?"

She raises a sardonic brow. "I recognise it, even if the others don't. Even if you don't."

Draco stays quiet.

"And here I was, worried I'd be telling you something you'd use against him. Guess we're not in any danger of that."

"I don't..."

She leans forward, resting an elbow on the edge of the frame like a desk. "Normally, I'd be rather jealous."

"Jealous? Potter told me you broke things off with him."

She shrugs lightly. "I couldn't be what he needed, and he couldn't be what I needed. That doesn't mean we didn't love each other. Sometimes people don't fit."

He thinks of Astoria.

"Right."

Her smile is almost soft. "But you're here, now, so I take it he's making things fit."

Clearly she's made some wrong assumptions. "My circumstances for being here are ... less than ideal. We're on house arrest, the whole lot of us."

"Who?"

He counts distractedly, still thinking about her words. You should see how he looks at you.

"Long list. Eleven, including me and Potter. What do you mean, 'ask him properly?'"

"You know how he is. If it feels like too grown-up of a conversation, he ends it."

"Ah." That's all Draco can manage.

"Say," one of the portraits from the floor pipes up, "you went to Hogwarts, didn't you?"

The boy is faintly familiar: mousy brown hair and a camera slung 'round his neck. He's sitting propped haphazardly against the wall.

Draco steps closer, squinting. "Do I know you?"

The boy tilts his head at Draco in consideration. "Definitely. I can see it now. I don't much like you, you know? But I trust Harry's judgement. If he likes you enough to let you be here, you must be a decent bloke now. Then again, Harry's the charitable sort, so—"

"Creevey."

The boy grins. "You should see your face." He snaps a photo, and the flash is brighter than paint has any right to be. "Surprised you, didn't I?" He shows Draco the back of the camera as though he's supposed to see something there, but it's blank. "Ha!"

Draco doesn't remember precisely how he treated Creevey in school, but he imagines it wasn't well. If Draco's not mistaken, he's a Muggle-born, and a Gryffindor to boot. Draco also knows he was killed by Death Eaters.

"I ... I'm sorry. For lots, I'm sure. However I acted at school—"

The boy shrugs. "Doesn't matter to me, does it? I'm dead. It's pretty wicked being a portrait, you know. You might like it."

"I ... might."

He's about to say more when he hears the door open behind him and spins around, guilt already tugging at him.

Potter is standing there, his face set in firm lines. "What are you doing in here, Malfoy?"

"I just — your house called me in, and I stopped to chat. Only for a minute."

"Harry," Ginny starts, but Potter holds up a hand to stop her.

"Don't. It's not important. Just get out." He aims the last part at Draco.

Draco hesitates, taking a slow step to the door and looking back behind him.

A few of the Ginnys shoo him off. The main one gives him a hopeless tilt of her lips. Creevey snaps another photo.

Draco leaves the room, letting Potter close the door behind them.

He's about to speak again when Potter turns away without a word, but instead of going up the stairs like Draco expects, he heads towards the bottom floor.

Draco hurries after him.

"I didn't mean to upset you."

"You didn't."

He's not sure how to respond to that. "Right. Of course not. But you seem upset, so let's say for theory's sake that you were, how could I fix that?"

"Leave me alone, for one."

"It's a small house, Potter, and I'm here for Merlin-knows-how-long. Avoiding you would be ridiculous."

"For the night. Even just five bloody minutes."

Draco stalls, but then he rushes forward and meets Potter at the bottom of the stairs.

"Why do you act like everything's fine when clearly it's not?"

"You want a cup of tea?"

Draco blinks at him. "Aren't we going to talk about—"

"Let's have a cup of tea."

Potter flees towards the kitchen, and Draco braces himself for whatever's coming.