An hour earlier:

It was a visibly more composed Ron who explained what was known about Ginny's disappearance to his parents while Hermione examined the Weasley family clock. The clock hand displaying Ginny's name was pointing ominously to "In mortal peril," and Molly was overcome at the thought that she had not noticed this development earlier. Arthur's mouth was set in a firm line.

"May I search Ginny's room for clues?" Hermione asked politely.

"I'll join you," Arthur said immediately, and they retreated up the rickety staircase at the back of the kitchen. Molly remained frozen in her seat at the kitchen table.

"I think we should notify the auror force," Ron said to the Weasley matriarch, sinking into a chair beside her. "Hermione and I will stop by Harry's next; he'll know who to reach."

"Do you think Ginny was taken by someone who wants to get me out of the ministerial race?" Molly asked suddenly. "I couldn't bear it if someone hurts her because of me."

"I'm still hopeful that she went off with someone of her own accord and is just trying to scare Harry," Ron said gently, wrapping an arm around his mother.

"Ginny doesn't want to be with Harry anymore," Molly said. Ron gaped at her as she continued, "It's true. She and I had a heart to heart about it. She thinks that their relationship hadn't been moving ahead for a long time. His heart didn't seem to be in it. As much as I love Harry, Ginny wants more. She deserves more." Molly choked on a sob.

"Mum, that's …" Ron was at a loss for words. "Mum, this is all so hard."

"If anyone can find Ginny, it's you, Hermione, and Harry." Molly smiled through her tears. "And after all this is over, I promise that you and I will have a heart to heart of our own. I know that you aren't pleased about my political career."

"It doesn't matter what I think," Ron said. "I just want you to be happy."

"I just wanted a sense of purpose again," Molly said. "But I'll quit if it makes you unhappy or makes my family a target."

"I was thinking about it, and there's no one who could strike greater docility into the hearts of wizards than the vanquisher of Bellatrix Lestrange," Ron smirked halfheartedly. "You'd be the best person for the job, Mum. I mean that."

Molly smiled softly at her youngest son. "Bring Ginny home, and then we'll revisit this conversation. I love you, Ronnie."

There was a shout and a clatter on the stairs. "Molly! We found Ginny's celly phone!"

Ron jumped to his feet and met his father and Hermione at the foot of the stairs. Hermione's face was curiously blank. She extended her hand, which was holding Ginny's cell phone, towards him.

"Missed call from M. Evans?" Ron read on the screen. "Who's M. Evans?"

"Do you have any idea where Draco might have gone, Harry?" Hermione said urgently, dragging a confused Ron by his shirt collar past the front stoop of 12 Grimmauld Place and into a dark lobby.

"Malfoy? What's going on, 'Mione?" Harry asked, peering blearily at his best friends through glasses that badly needed cleaning. His normally shorn face was peppered with the beginnings of a mangy beard, and his eyes were rimmed with red. Hermione did not want to know where he had obtained the ratty old Weird Sisters nightshirt that he was currently sporting.

"Have you been drinking, Harry?" Hermione asked severely. "For Circe's sake, it's barely suppertime!"

"Leave him be for now," Ron said pointedly to her. "There are more important things to worry about."

She sighed. "You're right."

"What's happened?" Harry demanded. "You lot wouldn't show up here together if something weren't up."

There was silence as Ron and Hermione looked at each other uneasily, neither wanting to voice the words aloud. "Ginny is missing," Ron said finally.

Harry gaped. "Ginny—Gin's gone missing? What do you mean, missing?"

As Ron explained the incident with the owls to Ginny to a surprisingly calm Harry, Hermione's mind went back, as it was wont to do these days, to Severus and Tori. What must they think of her, late as she was to their dinner party? She imagined them in Tori's cozy quarters, heads bent over the endlessly fascinating new baby, every now and then idly making a potions-related comment or placating a fussy Rico. It was a sweet picture. It was everything she'd never known she wanted.

"Evans must have taken her to a Secret-Kept location," Harry said finally, Ron nodding along furiously. "But how can we track them down? Hermione, what were you saying about Malfoy?"

Hermione hesitated. There had been something potentially volatile in Harry's tone when he had said Malfoy's name, and she was afraid to stoke the fire. "It's a long story, and it's not mine to tell, but Mark Evans fathered a child with Snape's sister, but luckily the baby is really a Malfoy. Oh, and Draco probably is hunting Mark Evans down as we speak."

Both Ron's and Harry's eyes went very round at this pronouncement.

"So," she continued, when it became apparent that the boys had been rendered speechless, "it only makes sense to track Draco down and join forces with him to take Mark down. Draco knows Mark better than we do. He might know how to find Mark—and, by extension, Ginny."

"I didn't understand anything that you just said, Hermione," Ron said weakly, "but then again, I never do."

"How am I supposed to know where Draco—I mean, Malfoy—is?" Harry asked sharply. "I fell out with him ages ago."

"Well." Hermione gulped. "I suppose he's gone missing as well."

"What the hell, Hermione?" Harry burst out, this latest bit of information exciting a reaction where the news of Ginny's disappearance had not. "He can't just go missing for a second time in his lifetime!"

"It isn't like anyone missed him the first time," Ron said shortly, a suspicious look dawning across his freckled face. "Let him bugger off to France again like the coward he is. Good riddance, I say."

"I missed him," Harry averred, and Hermione groaned. Ron had turned so red that he looked like a tomato on fire.

"Please, Harry. Don't tell me that you're obsessed with him again like you were back in school; I really don't think I can handle it. And what about Ginny? Aren't you worried about her? I thought you missed her! I thought you wanted her back!"

Harry suddenly looked very small and young. "Of course I'm worried about Ginny. I did—do love her. But I realized that I was a terrible boyfriend, even before Malfoy moved back to England. I didn't want to let Ginny into the horcrux hunt, and I had bullshit reasons for pushing her away at that time and after. I didn't support her enough, personally and professionally. I didn't want her to move in with me."

Harry's best friends were quiet, digesting the words. Hermione could tell that there was more to come, and suddenly, she knew what Harry would say. And she was sad, for she had had no idea that Harry had been going through this epiphany alone, and she had no idea what the words Harry would say next would mean for him and for everyone else involved, from Ginny and Ron to Malfoy and baby Scorpius.

"When Ginny and I broke up, I was devastated. It felt like I had had this perfect girl, this perfect friend for life, and I had failed her. She told me that I had been selfish. She said that I had to prove myself worthy before she would give me another chance. The thing is, I really don't deserve a second chance with a great girl like Gin. I don't think I even want one."

"Harry—"

Harry rushed on, "Because I realized that I had never really made an effort when it came to our relationship. Ginny was so perfect in every way, and I still didn't want everything with her, didn't want to try." Harry paused as his voice wavered perilously on the verge of tears.

"Harry," Ron said softly, almost helplessly. Hermione placed a placating hand on Ron's shoulder.

"Go on," she whispered encouragingly.

"I'd see her around after the breakup, at the Burrow and other places, and I would feel like I'd do anything to make her smile at me again, but then I'd think about what it would mean if we got back together, and I just. Well. It wasn't what I picture for myself. Or for her."

"What do you picture for yourself, Harry?" Hermione inquired kindly.

"Muggle high tea." He smiled involuntarily. "Andromeda and Teddy underfoot. Quidditch matches with the one I love beside me instead of far away, up in the air. Someone to watch during all of those Merlin-forsaken Ministry galas." He hesitated, then continued doggedly, "Spontaneous lunches. Godric's Hollow. A well-matched duel. Midnight duels, even." He snorted, even as his smile faded. "It doesn't matter. It was over before it could even begin."

Ron cleared his throat. "We'd better get a move on," he said, his voice strange. "It's piss-poor luck, even for you, mate, to lose both your ex-girlfriend and your … Draco Malfoy… in the same night. Let's rectify that situation."

Hermione burst into noisy tears. "I love you boys so much!" She threw her arms around Ron and Harry. The boys exchanged perplexed looks over her head.

"Women," Ron grumbled as he patted Hermione on the head. Harry emitted a watery sort of chuckle.

For Draco Malfoy, high tea at Harrod's represented the pinnacle of mortal happiness. He was well aware of the place's reputation as a tourist trap, yet, sitting among the foreign muggles hoping to partake of a little bit of Old World elegance, he often reflected that he himself was as much a tourist as they were. Anything mugglish was still a novelty, a bit alien. He, once afraid to go against the grain of his own family's dictates, delighted in the small rebellion represented by a cuppa of Earl Grey and a raspberry scone that was not prepared by house-elf hands.

Draco stared intently into the empty teacup before him, as though reading the tea leaves. His scone had long been reduced to crumbs. The usual sense of peace that stole over him during a crowded hour in the tea room had never arrived. His mind was filled with baby Scorpius, Astoria, and, on the fringes of his mind like an obstinate stain, green eyes and a lightning bolt scar.

"Enough of this incessant moping and running away from your problems," rumbled a distinctively peeved baritone. "I need your help."

Draco looked up warily into his godfather's forbidding face. "Kind of you to invite yourself to tea, uncle. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll take my leave."

"It's far too late in the evening to indulge in caffeine, Draco. You'll have nightmares."

"Like you do, you mean?"

Severus flinched. Draco looked momentarily sorry.

"I didn't mean that."

"You did, but it's all right. You wouldn't be the first young wizard to say something he regrets."

"Hmm." The two fell silent. They made an interesting pair: the one dark and stoic, the other pale and flighty. The happy roar of the tourists, punctuated by the rare ironic laughter of a jaded local, fell onto the deaf ears of two wizards lost in thought.

"Ginevra Weasley is missing, believed to have been forcibly taken to a Secret-Kept location," Severus said finally.

Draco replied in a bored voice, "And this concerns me how?"

"Mark Evans," Severus said, watching his godson carefully.

"Oh, you must be joking," Draco said incredulously. "What on earth would he want with the Weaselette?"

"It seems to me that holding Harry Potter's girlfriend for ransom would be a good enough reason for lowlifes of Evans' breed," Severus said casually. Draco growled.

"They broke it off ages ago. Potter was a right mess over her. She's a bint."

"It's lovely how you care for Potter's feelings."

"That's enough, godfather." Quiet fell over the wizards' table again.

"Tell me, Draco," Severus ventured at length, "what you're planning to do about my sister and my nephew."

"I don't owe them anything," Draco said, but his face belied his words.

"Draco." Severus shifted uneasily in his seat, looking as though what he had to say was being torn from him against his will. "Astoria may be my sister, but you are as good as a son to me. And the truth of the matter is that you do not owe Astoria anything. Just because she was—and possibly still is—in love with you does not mean that you owe it to her to love her back. You did not do anything wrong."

"I cared for her very much," Draco said haltingly. "I found her intriguing. She was different. She treated me kindly. She reminded me of the best of you. She has borne a child who is as good as my son. I might even love her. There was a time when I thought I might marry her."

"If you felt all of this, then why did you never once broach the subject with her? You had plenty of time and opportunity to do so in France."

"I kept making excuses, and I was never sure why," Draco said after a moment. "At first, it was that she was too young. Then it was that she was your sister, and it seemed a bit incestuous. And then the thing with Evans happened, and I couldn't bear to see her again. I couldn't bear it so much that I made us run away back to England."

"Why? Did you think she was used goods?" Severus asked, beginning to look angry.

"No," Draco said simply. "It just felt like I'd had a narrow escape. I still don't know what I was escaping from."

"We Princes have a way of … loving, I suppose … that is very intense," Severus said delicately.

"There's nothing wrong with the way Tori loves," Draco sighed. "On the contrary, there's something's wrong with me, since I can't seem to bring myself to give her what she wants."

"Your father loved your mother in an aloof, cold sort of way. Astoria's love is all fire and impetuousness. It has always seemed to me," here Severus hesitated before plunging onward, "that you need something that looks a bit different than both of those options. It doesn't mean you're wrong or broken."

Draco met his godfather's steady gaze. "You're a far better father to me than my real one was," he said. "I mean to be emulate you when it comes to Scorpius, you know."

Severus bowed his head. "You honor me, Draco."

"You told me you needed my help earlier. What can I do?"

"I have an idea about where Evans might be keeping Ginevra, and I need you to join me in my … negotiations."

Draco stood, his face set into lines of determination. "Let's take him down once and for all, uncle."