3

Draco hummed to himself as he stirred his potion three times anti-clockwise, half a turn clockwise and then ten and three quarters of a turn anti-clockwise. It was a tune from an old muggle biscuit advert, though the pureblood wasn't sure how he knew that or even that he should know that. His mind told him that he was disgusting for knowing it at the same time as telling him that he knew it. It was all very confusing. Things were easier when he holed himself up in the dungeons with Severus, but only just.

Turning off the heat, he sighed and ran a hand through the short side of his hair. It had just been growing out of the haircut he'd had when he was with Potter when his face had been torn to pieces. When he'd been seen in the hospital wing, Madam Pomfrey had seen fit to simply vanish one side of his hair so that she could see the entire wound clearly. There was a good inch or so growing back now, and Blaise had been bugging him to just cut the other side to match but Draco found that he didn't much care. He had to wait for his mind to grow back, after all, so why not wait for his hair?

A tapping sound drew his attention back to his surroundings, and specifically to his godfather. The older man had been less lucky in his recovery from his wounds, his physical ones at least, than Draco had, but his recovery still looked good. Draco was dreading Severus being able to speak again though, sure that so much time without being able to make sarcastic comments every five minutes would just result in an overload of sarcasm once he was finally healed. Mind you, so long as he was put in the vicinity of some Gryffindors beforehand, it could be quite amusing to watch.

His godfather tapped the cauldron, pointed to the jar of minced Bowtruckle hearts and made a gesture with his fingers that Draco couldn't quite understand. It didn't help matters much that Severus had always lost at charades every Christmas at the Malfoy household when Draco was growing up.

"Did you ever see the old greenhouse in Black's garden?" Draco asked and then frowned. He was sure that was not what he meant to say. It couldn't have been because those words did not make sense in this conversation. Did they? "Stop being sarcastic in your head!"

There was a moment of silence in which Draco knew his godfather would be thoroughly checking his Occlumency shields and then Severus narrowed his eyes and tapped the cauldron again. Before he could begin his game of charades again, however, Draco's head shot up, his eyes rolling backwards into his head slightly.

"Godfather," he tilted his head to one side and almost smiled. "We need to go and visit my mother. Right now." And with that, he dropped the long-handled spoon with which he'd been stirring his potion and marched out of the door. Severus gritted his teeth and followed quickly after, wondering what the hell his godson was thinking this time. A visit to Narcissa Malfoy was surely the last thing that any of them needed.

Harry was the only one of his small party to notice when Draco and Snape apparated nearby. He was standing at the front door of the Malfoy mansion, leaning against the door frame and swigging from his hipflask, watching in amusement as Dobby knocked a tune on the door. Moony and Padfoot were too busy arguing to notice the newcomers.

"This is practical," Sirius insisted, "Perfectly practical."

Harry snorted. For some reason his godfather was unable to admit that he just wanted to ransack the mansion. He couldn't blame him, of course, although Harry's own feelings went more towards burning it to the ground. Mind, as Lucius was dead already, he didn't suppose that would do much good either. Just lose Draco a buttload of money.

"Is it, really though?" Remus asked, one eyebrow almost reaching his hairline.

"Yes! He had one of them, why wouldn't he have two?"

"Oh yeah, because Voldemort would really have entrusted two pieces of his soul to the same follower. He wasn't that dim, Padfoot. Besides, we all know you just want to nick stuff."

"Do not!"

"Do too!"

Harry smothered down a laugh as he could see Snape jiggling around slightly on the balls of his feet, clearly dying to say something rude and offensive to the bickering adults. The bickering adults that still, somehow, hadn't even noticed the Potions master's presence. Draco's either, but Harry was rather determinedly not looking at his ex-boyfriend ever since the kidnapping debacle.

"Did not! And besides, you didn't have to come along!"

"Didn't have to- Are you kidding me? Someone had to stop you two going on a rampage!"

"Oh, stop acting all high and mighty. We all know you'll be the one to steal the best stuff, anyway. And pup," Sirius turned to Harry with an outstretched hand and pleading eyes, "Gimme a swig of that will you? I feel like I'll need it to deal with dear cousin Ciss-"

Just then the door opened and Harry almost fell into the house. He righted himself and almost fell over again at the sight he saw in the doorway. Narcissa Malfoy was no longer the tall, imposing, and almost obnoxiously well put together woman that she used to be, it seemed. Instead she was looking rather dishevelled in a set of rumpled green silk pyjamas and a grey bathrobe. Her usually coifed hair was pulled into a messy bun on top of her head, strands falling out haphazardly and her makeup was smudged down her cheeks. She held a half-empty bottle of wine in one hand.

"Visitors," she muttered to herself, casting a disapproving eye over Harry who was closest, "You could have made yourself a little more presentable, dear."

Harry raised his eyebrows incredulously, ignoring the snort of laughter from Draco behind him. He wasn't dressed that badly. Not compared to the get-up he'd woken up in that morning. He glanced down quickly, just to check that Pads hadn't pranked his clothing in some way. Nope. Green jeans and a sleeveless grey vest with a day of the dead skull plastered over it.

"You're one to talk, mother," Draco giggled and Sirius and Remus jumped about a foot in the air.

"What?" Sirius gaped, "When the hell did you two sneak up on us? What are you, ninjas now?"

Harry sniggered, imagining Draco and Snape dressed up in black and sneaking up on people. And then he looked down at the flask in his hand and decided that he might possibly be a little bit drunk already.

"Drakey-poo!" Narcissa squealed, trying to barge past Harry and Sirius who stood immediately in front of her to get to her son. Harry grabbed her arm and stopped her in her tracks.

"If you think we're going to let you near him after what you let your dear husband do, lady, you're fucking crazy," he snarled.

"Pup, have you seen her? Pretty sure she's what comes up in the dictionary when you look up the word crazy," Sirius grinned, obviously enjoying his cousin's fall from grace.

"Ahem," Dobby squeaked, a little put-out at having been ignored for so long. He'd been trying to get their attention for a good two minutes now. "We's be having a job to do, remember?"

"Ah! Yes! The quest!" Sirius thrust one fist valiantly into the air and Remus dragged a hand down his face. Harry missed his sword more than ever. It just didn't feel like a proper quest when he didn't have his sword anymore. All of his favourite quests had involved swords. There was the basilisk thing, the stabbing Voldie in the back thing. It just wasn't the same.

"Move, wench," Sirius demanded, pushing Narcissa to one side and barging into the house. "Come, minions!"

"Oy, you twat, if anyone's the leader here, it's clearly me. I'm the most famous, after all," Harry protested, although he followed his godfather inside anyway.

"But I'm the most roguish. And that's all a good leader needs, minion."

"Whatever you say, Pads," Harry said, picking up an expensive looking vase from the sideboard that stood in the hallway and examining it suspiciously, as though a horcrux might be hiding in the bottom of it. "Split up?"

"Sure, see ya!"

Before Remus could protest, and before Snape could do more than widen his eyes in panic, Sirius had taken off down the hallway in dog form, disappearing around the corner. Harry shot them a grin, enjoying the twin looks of horror on their faces before he ran off down a different hallway to his godfather. The two men traded looks as Draco and Narcissa stared at each other awkwardly behind them in the doorway.

"This house is fucked," Remus said finally. Snape could only nod.

When Harry found the others again, he was feeling a little bit more than just tipsy. This was in small part due to the hip flask he carried with him constantly, but mostly due to the fact that in his exploration *cough* looting *cough* of the mansion, he had stumbled across the Malfoy's wine cellar. Suffice to say, it wasn't quite as well stocked now as it was when he'd found it.

Because of his rather drunken state, he wasn't entirely sure whether what he saw in the main receiving room of the mansion was actually happening or not. Remus was sat in one corner, surrounded by books that he'd *ahem* borrowed from the library, a large tome open on his lap. He was giggling to himself slightly manically. Sirius was in the opposite corner, using a large crowbar in an attempt to lever the glass doors of the liquor cabinet open. Narcissa and Draco were simply staring at each other from opposite sofas, and Snape, well Snape was just sitting there glowering at everyone around him. Harry almost felt sorry for him. Sarcastic remarks were his life.

"Pup!" Sirius greeted Harry enthusiastically, abandoning his pursuit of the bottles of amber liquid inside the cabinet for the time being. "What the fuck is that?"

Harry looked down to his hip, where he'd shoved the fanciest sword he could find in the armoury through his belt. With green jewels covering the hilt, and filigree silver decorating the scabbard, it was a stark contrast to the rest of his outfit but he wasn't letting it go. He'd already lost one sword, and this was his way of getting a replacement. Or an upgrade.

"Oh, I found it in the armoury. Sparkly, huh?" He moved his hips a little to make the jewels sparkle in the sunlight streaming through the windows.

"You have an armoury?" Sirius turned to Narcissa, who abandoned staring at her son for long enough to grin happily at her cousin. Sirius pouted. "I don't have an armoury."

"You should check the hidden vault under the dining room floor," Draco piped up suddenly, "If you actually want to check for horcruxes. If you just want to steal my family heirlooms, then you still might want to check the vault."

"Oooh! A hidden vault! Adventure!" Harry grinned, struggling to get his heavy sword out of the scabbard.

"Quit with the sword, pup, and come on already," Sirius cheered, halfway out of the room already, "And then you're showing me the armoury, and wherever you got all the booze from because you're clearly fucking wasted!"

The journey to the dining room was interesting, to say the least. Made even more interesting by the fact that halfway there they finally figured out where Dobby had wandered off to. It was Remus who actually found the house-elf, luckily distracting him from grumbling about being taken away from his new books.

He stopped in his tracks and Snape walked straight into his back. The potions master glared at the werewolf and stamped his feet a little to try and convey his annoyance but was generally ignored by everybody.

"What the…?" Remus murmured, turning his head towards a closed door that lead off from the ostentatious hallway along which they had been walking. His ears, better than the others' thanks to his furry little problem, were picking up an odd sound from behind the door. He stepped towards it.

"Oi, Moony, what the hell are you doing? Let's get on with the adventure already! And then we can get on with the tour of the wine cellar," Sirius waggled his eyebrows up and down, Harry grinning indulgently beside the older man.

"There's something behind this door, Padfoot."

"What is it?"

"I don't know, I haven't opened the bleeding thing yet!"

They all gathered round, interested now, and Remus pushed open the door. A high pitched cackling filled the hallway and half of the group shuddered involuntarily. Draco and Narcissa both started grinning. Draco, Remus reflected, had probably 'heard' something funny, and Narcissa… well, she was wasted. It could be anything.

Peeking around the doorway, Remus looked into the darkened room and saw that the sound was coming from Dobby. The room looked to be some sort of laundry room and the house elf was sitting in the middle of it holding a large sack and rifling through the piles of clothes. Every time he came across a sock he would cackle a little louder in triumph and throw it into the sack.

"What the fuck?" Sirius whispered, almost reverently, looking over Remus' shoulder. "That house elf has some proper fucking issues…"

"Shit yeah," Harry added. They all backed away and Remus shut the door as quietly as possible behind him.

"Detour!" Draco announced cheerfully after a moment of silence in which they all contemplated the scene they'd just witnessed. And he stomped over to a section of an elaborate tapestry that covered a length of the hallway and pulled it up to reveal a hidden passageway.

"But… the armoury… the wine cellar…" Sirius whimpered as they were all forced to follow the blonde down the passageway in single file.

"Cheer up, Pads," Harry laughed as they came out the other end into a large bedroom painted stylishly in tones of grey and silver. "If I'm not pretty fucking mistaken, Draco just led us to his dickhead father's bedroom."

"Shut up, Potter," Draco snapped, the vagueness that usually laced his voice these days absent for once. Harry just rolled his eyes and took a long drag from the cigarette that seemed to be permanently stuck to his lips but Remus saw the frown that marred the Gryffindor's forehead and knew how much it hurt Harry to have Draco speaking to him like that still.

In his reflection, Remus almost missed what Draco did next. In quick strides, he went to the bed and started to rummage in the bed sheets. When he emerged he was clutching a stuffed teddy bear in his hands.

"Aha!" He cheered, happy again all of a sudden.

"You found it," Narcissa breathed out in awe.

"Umm… is that what I think it is?" Sirius asked, a snort of laughter threatening to spill from his lips. Snape, Remus noted, looked positively pained at not being able to take the piss out of Padfoot at this point. Either that or he was feeling really constipated.

"Shut up, Black," Both Malfoys turned and snapped in unison, before their attention was once again focused on to the bear.

"Shall we burn it?"

"Burn it to ashes."

"Stamp on the ashes."

"Eat the ashes."

"Mum!"

"Okay, too far, sorry dear. Feed the ashes to the dogs."

"Better."

The other four occupants of the room exchanged a glance and as one began to back out of the bedroom on tiptoes, not speaking until they reached the other end of the hidden passageway and had put the tapestry back in place.

"I'm sure we can find the hidden vault without them," Remus said, hoping that they could just forget about the scene they'd just witnessed.

"Oh, fucking god yes," Harry groaned, turning and half running away down the hallway. The others had no problem following.