Turn 31 of 36

The owl arrives on Thursday morning, six days after the inspection, while Hermione is eating toast at the kitchen table and Draco is standing at the counter reading the Prophet with the particular stillness of a man who has not yet decided whether the day is survivable. The owl taps the window. Hermione opens it. The bird drops a cream-coloured envelope on the table and leaves without waiting for a response, and the envelope sits between them on the charity shop plates and the jar of seasoning Draco still has not explained and the morning light coming through the south-facing window, and Hermione reads the Ministry seal and feels the binding magic go cold.

It is the first formal event. An invitation — a summons, she corrects herself, because invitations imply choice — to a Wizengamot reception on Saturday evening, held in the atrium of the Ministry, attended by senior officials and selected members of the post-war reconciliation committee. The documentation requires at least two documented displays of physical closeness. The word *documented* is underlined. The word *closeness* is not defined. Hermione reads the paragraph twice and sets the envelope down and looks at Draco, who has set down the Prophet and is reading the invitation upside down from across the table with an expression that is not the mask but something harder — the face of a man calculating exits.

"Saturday," he says.

"Two displays. Documented by Ministry observers." She pushes the envelope across the table. He picks it up and reads it properly, his eyes moving across the text with the speed of someone who has been reading Ministry language since childhood and knows where the traps are buried. His jaw tightens at one point — she cannot see which line, but she sees the muscle in his cheek shift and she knows he has found something she missed.

"There is a dress code," he says. "Formal robes. And a note here — accompanying spouses are expected to arrive together and depart together. The Ministry will provide a photographer."

"A photographer."

"For the reconciliation archive." He sets the invitation down. His fingers are very precise on the edge of the paper.

"They want a photograph, Granger. They want evidence that the arrangement is functioning in front of people who will sell that evidence to the Prophet if it looks like a failure. This is not an inspection in a flat. This is a performance on a stage with an audience."

Hermione looks at him across the table. The toast is cold. The coffee is cooling. The binding magic is pulling, steady and low, and she can feel his anxiety like a second pulse beneath her own — not a thought, not a word, but a frequency, a vibration in the magic that binds them that she has been learning to read the way she learned to read his face. He is afraid. Not of the event — of what the event will require him to show in front of people who knew his father.

"We have practiced this," she says. "Your arm on my shoulder. We agreed it was tolerable."

"We practiced in a café with one observer and a clipboard. This is the Wizengamot. This is Thicknesse. This is — " he stops. His mouth closes on whatever he was about to say and he picks up his coffee and drinks it and sets it down and the mask comes up, smooth and fast, and she watches it settle and hates it.

"My mother will hear about this," he says. "If she has not already."

The words land in the kitchen like a stone in water. Hermione sets down her toast. Six days since the inspection, six days of cooking meals and leaving evidence and sleeping in separate rooms and pressing her hand to her sternum at night — and they have not told Narcissa. They have not sent the owl. They have not kept the promise Draco made at three in the morning when his hand turned palm-up on the kitchen table. The fourteen-day window is shrinking. The formal event is in two days. And Narcissa Malfoy does not know about any of it.

"We said together," Hermione says.

Draco looks at her. The mask is up but his eyes are not behind it — they are in front of it, grey and direct, and she can see the cost of what he is about to say before he says it because the binding magic shifts cold and then warm and then cold again, like a lamp flickering in a draught.

"Then we go today. Together. To the Manor." He pauses.

"She will not make this easy for either of us."

"I do not need her to make it easy. I need her to hear it from us before the Ministry tells her."

He nods. It is the nod she remembers from the Ministry office — sharp, precise, the nod of someone sealing an agreement they cannot afford to break. He stands. He takes his coat from the hook by the door. The binding magic pulls warm and steady, and Hermione takes her coat from the hook beside his, and they leave the flat together.