There is always a price

by quinault

In which Voldemort wins the Battle of Hogwarts only to disappear without a trace, leaving Hermione on a cold case. When a desperate tactic with the time turner goes wrong Hermione must contend with finishing the hunt with no other than Tom Riddle himself.

i.

The first time I saw you I wanted to destroy you. I remember being shocked by the intensity of the sentiment. Death, fear, despair—these were the mortar of the new foundation you, the other you, had forced me to build upon, to strip layer after layer of myself until nothing remained but bare bones, crumbled halfway to dust.

But then there you were, staring down at my sprawled figure in the courtyard, head spinning, reality poundingto the same tattoo as the icy rain on the cobblestones and you didn't even say anything, only cocked your head to the side as though it was all so fascinating—a wonderful gift delivered to your feet upside down and inside out and shattered into something foreign—something that hummed with the ecstasyof tearing you apart.

Later I would learn to pray, just to beg that ecstasy to give me strength. I was so tired and the road stretched so long and your eyes—

Your eyes promised to hunt me down.

ii.

What would it have been like, I wonder, had I succeeded? If I'd managed to become just another blank face in the crowd, another of the thousands who everyday slip happy and oblivious through the cruel emptiness of time's expanse. Would you still have known? Would you even have bothered to know?

Of course, you'll say there's no use asking.

The universe will assume order, you proclaim, no matter how annoyingly random it may seem now.

You are curiously superstitious for one who counts your meetings in minutes and friends in galleons.

I tried for a long time to stay away from you.

I kept my head down in my books and my hand down in class and I wandered voiceless and bodiless as though I had not had to abandon my childhood on those very grounds, the midnight lessons at the Astronomy tower, the crisp autumn mornings by the shimmering lake, the sound of Ron's jokes and Harry's rocking laughter.

I watched you laugh hollow in the corridors and I watched you collect teachers the way one might collect trading cardsand I watched the way your entourage of 'friends' replaced each other by the week, Malfoy and Mulciber and Rosier and Malfoy again, depending on whose Quidditch schedule let up, or more likely, who you happened to have a use for that week.

I fought your half-finished war alone in my mind as you sat in front of me devising it. I outlined and I strategized and I squinted at volumes, scrolls, manuscripts tattered and crumbling, just to try and understand how a simple tweak in a time turner could go so terribly, infuriatingly, tear-your-hair-out fucking wrong.

Or right.

And therein lay the irony.

Because what do you do when the worst comes to pass? When the battle is lost, your friends dead and buried in the ashes? What do you do when the monster tears apart your future with bloody teeth, only to disappear at the very moment the prize is waiting to be claimed?

A year on the heels of an MIA mass-murdering psychopath and it had all unravelled before the final clue, one of your pet Death Eaters—murdered, as it turns out—whom I had foolishly thought I could track back to you, if only I appeared in the right place and time.

Yes, I suppose I had found you. Fifty-threeyears in the past.

I was never a good actress.

I tried to be—one has to have a penchant for the dramatic if one is to make it in this Hogwarts,your Hogwarts, but the fact I had to try at all, the fact I had to struggle to keep up with your smiles and impeccably-bredmanners and your constant, cloying fucking fascination at every one of my tiny, stupid blunders—

You never let me live that down.

You chased me like you were drunk off my furtiveness, that distinctive scent of desperation that I couldn't strip from my pores for all the French perfume and elaborate, imported narratives that you'd turn on your heel to make me spin out, from the beginning again,like a child with his favourite storybook.

You chased and chased and chased and I could almost pretend it wasn't words I was tripping over but the treacherous twist of roots and not your eyes searching for me in the unnerving darkness of a fully lit library but the viscous gleam of other eyes, slinking through the shadows of a half-remembered forest with a list of traitors and a nose hungry for blood and then I was slipping I was pitching forward I was falling and of all people it was you, you who was rushing to my side—

It was vertigo from every direction.

iii.

You always took too much.

You were always under this impression, I believe, that you were owed something. That you had come into the world battered and betrayed and thus the universe was yours to carve out as you pleased. I was enraged at your greed—you had taken my home, my family, my very future and somehow you kept on taking, even when I thought I couldn't possibly have anything else left to give. You took my name and you took my secrets and you intended to take me, bent over some shadowy alcove in the restricted section like an awful, glorious study in victory itself—all the chaotic pages of me shuffling back into the correct order, the story folded back into the shape that always was, the shape that you had always intended it to take from the very beginning.

It was never personal, sweetheart.

But then my wand was pressed beneath your throat, square on the throbbing pulse of your jugular and my chest was rising and falling with every shaky breath and there was that glint in your eyes—not fear at all no, you were so unpracticed at it then—but the silent thrill of the hunter at the very moment the hunt turns, when the jaws of the trap that snap emptysound like a bullet through the clearing and the game is suddenly transformed into something deliriously, deliciously real.

But at the blink of an eye it was all over and with a hex you were stumbling back into the shelves and as I darted out, away—have to get the fuck away—into the biting darknessI could not ignore the insistenttwist at the pit of my stomach.

iv.

Fall withered frosty and hard and made way for the siege of icy gales. They crashed and clawed at the chinks in the castle walls like soldiers feeling for weak spots, seeking entry.

It was Christmas day that I realized I may very well be stuck here forever.

As the holiday festivities moved into high gear and the sound of carols drifted lazy as the smell of pastriesthrough the dormitoriesI paced in front of the Room of Requirement with only one wish itching desperately in my mind.

Someplace soundproof.

It was a room full of mirrors.

I walked slowly through the seaof shards when I was finished. Broken fragments reflected back to me a face detached, bloodless, ghostly. The timeturner in my pocket felt heavy and all of a sudden I wanted nothing more but to smash it, stomp it into dust, with all the other broken, unwanted things I had taught myself to carry.

I remembered a broken and ravaged courtyard, the hardened gaze of children made war-wearied soldiers. The crumple of Harry's face, not even a second to understand, when the wand—Draco's wand, I'd managed to note through the haze—had slipped out of his hand, sailed through the air right into Voldemort's open hand, the sickening wide-eyed wonder in those serpentine features,and then the flash of green before any of us could even blink, could even register that something—something has gone terribly fucking wrong.

How much can a person lose before they disappear altogether?

I remembered the exhausted acceptancein Harry's eyes before he'd walked into that forest. It was only afterward, seeing his body limp on those stones—not breathing, oh God, someone, someone help! Get him—that I'd realized just how desperately, childishly,I'd been clinging onto the hope that it would all turn out alright after all.

What do you do when you have nothing left to lose?

When the mirrors were whole once moreI rolled up my sleeves and got to work.

v.

There has always been one thing I wanted to ask you. Something I have wondered for months on our long days poring over records, in the first dawning of light after sleepless nights standing guard, alert to the doom that could blow us to pieces any moment should we be unprepared for it.

Why did you come?

You knew what it was. I should have known you'd be attentive—and I have slipped up more times than I can count—but instead I only felt the trap tightening around me. A laughable excuse really, when it was me doing the luring, me with the wand grasped tight in my palm and a smile anything but the friendly and non-threatening I had been trying for.

You knew.

I could sense it from the way you didn't even hesitate before following me into the Forbidden Forest, as though it were a game you had played thousands of times until you had memorized all the moves.

This is how you really win, isn't it?

Not by terror, the violent seizure your followers have perfected into science. Not the stench of burning buildings and burning bodies—no, these are too vulgar to function by the intoxicating rhythm of persuasion. Yourself laid bare at the very centre for any daring the sacrifice.

"Don't move."

"I wouldn't dream of it."

You looked at me straight on. "You know me." It wasn't a question.

"I know what you will become."

There was a quick, almost imperceptible narrowing of your eyes, as though I had just handed you the final piece in the puzzle.

"And this is you preventing it?"

My fingers fluttered, wand dropping half an inch. "This. This is repayment."

"For the crimes I've committed? Or the ones I have yet to?"

"Both" I said, careful to keep my voice steady.

You nodded gravely, gaze wandering above the tree tops, far away, as though searching for something before breaking into a smile. It cut like lightning through the haze.

"Everything has a price, Hermione. What are you willing to pay this time around?"

My heart skipped a beat.

And then all of a sudden you'd stepped forward, out of the way of the jinx and the clearing was awash in blinding red that lit up our wrestling limbs, wild, thrashing, distinctly unmagical therebetween the dried grass. I felt the wand snatchedfrom my fingers, heard the rustle as it disappeared into the weeds. Wildly, I thought that you, too, were wandless, helpless, and when our eyes met I had the satisfaction in seeingyou were just as breathless, just as chaotic as I felt.

And then, before I knew what I was doing, I was the one drawing you closer, kissing you back, your hands fiddling with the zipper on my skirt and mine with the buttons of your shirt, your pulsesurging when my touch landed on your throat and you grasping my hand tighterwhen I tried to jerk it away, pressing it closer, closer, while my mind could only sputter,gasp around a single thought.

Don't you dare stop.

vi.

"It's impossible" I shook my head. "I've tried everything. The time turner magic is…Fragile. And none of the books herehave any answer to fixingthousand-year-old temporal magic."

The table at the Restriction Section was heaped with dozens of volumes open one atop another. I leafed through them haphazardly, fuming at having to go through this again.

You backed up from perusing the shelvesto squint down at Ancient Runes for Time Manipulation—Chapter 6, the interpretation of logograms—before flipping it shut with a tsk.

I watched you saunter down the labyrinthine recesses until the pinpoint of light from your wand vanished.

When you returned it was with a single book—black binding, surprisingly slim. You had already marked out a page.

Temporal magic that has witnessed decay is particularly liable to […] In such cases it is possible that the stability of the magical object and temporal frequencies for advanced temporal magic may be achieved by means of a doubling of the life forces.

I had to read it three times before I understood.

"Perhaps we can help each other after all," you remarked smoothly.

vii.

There can be nothing to envy about those six months we spent on the run.

The days stumbling through bramble and thicket, up endless hills and across countless moors as we uttered protective enchantments under our breath like a mantra, hoping they would be enough to keep us out of the path of the snatchers and the death eaters and the Snatchers turned Death Eaters that had only grown in number and persistence following the recent string of muggle murders in London—preparing for a new attack, you had remarked with distaste before I, grimacing, had turned off the radio.

It was rare to encounter them here, so far from the cities they could so fearlessly terrorize now that there was no Ministry to stand in their way, the Order scattered and useless. All the same, it's much more difficult to fool yourself into a semblance of safety when you find yourself stumbling upon the still warm ashes of an abandoned fire, and on those days I made sure to check and recheck the enchantments with a meticulousness bordering on compulsion.

It should have been easy for me, this lifestyle. After all, it wasn't so long agothat I'd been wandering through the countryside with nothing but a beaded pouch crammed with the bare necessities, and even before that, a time when there had been two other boys, just as war-weary and frayed, but united, in the way we'd always been. But it was too late for all of that now—I was too late.

You never complained.

Winter raged icy and bitter and even the extra stakes we drove into the frozen ground quickly became futile against the drafts that rushed in from under the flaps of the tent. When the fatigue set in and neither of us could sustain a heating spell for more than twenty minutes we got in the habit of layering up sweaters and socks and gloves and any spare blankets that were not already being used to patch up tears. There was warm soup for a while, until there wasn't, and it was only then, thinking back to the Great Hall and its near obscene daily displays of food that I realized just how much my unplanned seventh year had veered me off course. You were always better at going hungry than I, but that was a fact I credited more to childhood adaptation than anything else.

I would find you there every morning long after I had given up and called it a night, the piles of newspaper articles and eyewitness reports spread out on the table, some new stomach-turning crime against a muggle family and the honour said pureblood had earned in his service to the cause. The most recent attack only a week ago—Parliamentthis time. Fifty dead, more than a hundred injured. Every once in a while the radio would pick up the BBC and we would be struck by the angry voices of muggle politicians as they tried to pin the attacks on one terrorist organization after another, never guessing at the true cause.

There was something not right about it—all of it. It didn't make sense for the attacks to still be going strong when the figurehead was gone, disappeared without so much as a bloody shoelace to indicate where.

"All of them?"

It was after the account of the horcrux hunt, the abridged version, flashes of memories flitting across my mind so quick I wondered how you could catch them all. The legilimency sessions had become a necessity of our uncomfortable partnership. A nationwide manhunt demanded evidence after all, an endless series of dates and names to draw it all together, to make it fit.

Your eyes were troubled—already I could feel you flitting throughthe memories—my memories—trying to piece together the events, pinpoint with razor precision where, how, it could have all gone so very wrong. But instead all I could think of was Harry stumbling out of the lake, gasping and contorted in pain. He knows, Hermione. He knows and he's furious—

Your precious horcruxes, dark magic collapsed upon dark magic upon shards of your own soul—they should have been invincible. Unassailable. We had been amateurs, children, really. Barely out of school. How many was it that we'd destroyed before you even noticed? Before you even registered the need to notice?

"Believe it or not. This was never what I envisioned." I ignored the unmistakeabledisgust in your voice.

"A bit late for that, don't you think?" I remarked coolly.

You came to me, on the nights when the very howl of the wind was enough to chill to the bone and snow blotted out sky and earth in a sickening grey oblivion. There in that suspension of the world it seemed inevitable to forget, forget the same maddening smile imprinted on my skin with each languorous kiss you lavished down my neck, forget the hot, unmistakeable brush of dark magic against my skin, the dim glint of a familiar ring as your hands grasped me closer, your hips rocking erratic and out of control as I squeezed my thighs tight in a frenzied, desperate attempt to hold on. You cried my name as you came. And foolishly, fucking traitorously, I wanted—

But in the darkness I saw another name. I saw it in ink, swimming on blank vellum. Slanted spidery handwriting, blazing torches, and a little girl fleeing down castle corridors, her shadow thrown monstrous, larger than life upon the stones.My name is Tom Riddle.

When I stretched my arm I thought I could almost reach it again.

viii.

"There was…A prophecy. Harry wouldn't talk about it. Not really. All I knew at the time is that it confirmed a lot of things for him. That he had to be the one."

The day's research lay ignored on the table in front of us—a variety of eyewitness accounts detailing the events and casualties of the Battle of Hogwarts that had thus far proven fruitless in tracking Voldemort's movements following the battle. I rubbed my temples, sensing another argument was in the works.

"Dumbledore tell you that?"

Your voice was low, nonchalant from where you were sat listening, arms crossed. I had the urge totell you you had no idea what the fuck you were talking about, that you'd never known Dumbledore, not the way we had, that you had no right to speak of him that way.

But then in my mind I was storming into that familiar office past the pair of stupefied Death Eaters, the bookshelves, the ludicrous spinning trinkets not a hair out of place even as the castle below was no more than a smoking husk. I was staring back, stonier than I could ever have imagined myself in his presence, as in a frame of dust tears trickled down Dumbledore's face.I do not understand. It was never meant to turn out like this.

"Neither can live while the other survives."I spat. "That's what he told me, afterward. Harry was the last horcrux.

I wanted to scream at the absurdity of the whole thing. Harry coming out of those woods alive should have signalled that the prophecy had been fulfilled. And if he had truly been master of the Elder Wand at the time…. He should have been the one to disarm Voldemort, not the other way around.

He should have been the one who lived.

Your expression was closed, a mass of dark swirling water, as you processed this new information.

"And what happened to the one who foretold the prophecy?"

"Trelawney?" I exclaimed. "What does she have to do with this?"

"I imagine Voldemort would be very intrigued should a prophecy that appeared so decidedly hopeless suddenly unravel right before the final battle.I imagine further investigation would be in order…Wouldn't you?"

I grimaced at the logic of this.

"—And yet" you drew your brows, your eyes flitting as though struggling through a particularly trickyline of reasoning. "The scenario still doesn't feel quite right. Almost as though there's something missing. Tell me, Hermione" you met my gaze, slyly, meaningfully.

"What do you know about the Deathly Hallows?"

I could hear the blood pumping in my ears.

"It's a fairytale." I attempted to speak evenly.

"I'd thought so too, funnilyenough. But it is decidedly odd as a children's story, wouldn't you say? A cloak, a stone, a all together—the master of death. You are familiar with Gellert Grindelwald, I suppose?So many ravaged villages, followers won and in such a shockingly brief period of time. There were these…rumours at the time. Most of them quite silly, really. How he would pay off his opponents, or have his followers curse them beforehand, that it was pure luck, or more ordinarily, pure skill. But some…Some thought there was more. They whispered of an invincible wand—Curious isn't it?"

You had been circling me slowly as you spoke, and it was only when I felt your lips hovering above the shell of my ear that I realized just how close you'd gotten.

"Yes," I cleared my throat. "It is rather."

"Pity it did not help him in the end."

Duel of the century, Rita Skeeter had written in that horrible autobiography. The only thing she'd gotten right.

"Pity" I muttered.

ix.

It happened before we had time to react.

"Tom."

You abandoned the makeshift fire to follow my gaze to the crest of the hill, reaching instinctively for your wand.

"Well, well, well. Look what we've got over here"

There were three of them—dirty and threadbare and clearly long accustomed to roughing it on the streets, but it was impossible to mistake them for what they were. They nudged each other as they stalked forth, grins frozen on their hardened faces.

I did not even have time to question how it was possible they had found us before you were shouting at me to run. We made a break for the opposite edges of the forest at the same time, away from the tent, away from the research that had cost too much to risk losing now.

All around me was a sickening blur of motion as I threw my body forward through the overgrowth. Branches and roots grabbed at me, snagged at my clothes. Over the strain of my breathing—too close, too fucking close—I could hear the crunch of footsteps through snow.

I pushed through the ever-growing heaviness of my limbs. I had to keep going—I had to—

The curse hit me square on my side. I tripped as the pain ripped through me and cried out when I did not fall to my knees but kept rolling, all the way to the bottom of the hill in a flurry of snow and agony. I quickly wobbled to my feet again, ignoring the crimson splatter left in my footsteps. My mind heaved with images of blood soaked drawing rooms, echoed with the crunch of bone, pinched laughter. No. Dead or alive I would not be captured again.

"Come on darling where'd you go?" There was a pause followed by the snap of a twig.

"If you come out I promise we'll make this quick!"

I broke through the shrubbery, fighting uphill through the low hanging branches that scratched at my skin with every step. Where was the fucking path? My hands refused to stop shaking and I soon gave up trying to stop the bleeding.

I half-fell, half stumbled through the bushes into a small clearing.

Bit by bit, the haze of panic cleared enoughfor me to gather I wasn't alone. Two dark shapes stood some distance away from the treesbut it only took me half a second to recognize you. The warning formedon my lips instinctively—I must have doubled back in the confusion, led the others right back to you—but no, there was something not right about this, about any of this. Why couldn't I place it? What the hellwas wrong with me? The pounding in my skull had become almost blinding,images fast swimming out of focus in front of me. I squinted until the shadows formed figures once again.

You were handing something in the shape of an envelope. With a jolt, I watched as the Death Eater accepted it, slipping it smoothly into his pocket. There was something strange about his movements. Almost as though he was not there at as though he were asleep.

You turned to face me first. In the split second before your face went impossibly blank you had been smiling.

And then all at onceyou were at my side, and I could not quite remember at what point I had collapsed but your hands were fumbling at my side and with a distant shock I watched them come away drenched in blood up to the elbows. When I glanced down the snow was soaked red.

"Hermione!"

My eyes fluttered open again—when had I fallen asleep? The emotions were flitting past your eyes quicker than I could make sense of them. It was dizzying to watch. I thought I saw confusion and rage and for a brief moment almost fear. Almost…Devastation.

But I may have imagined that one.

You kept up an incessant stream of words and I wanted to ask you what kind of a prayer you could make of a name anyway but at some point it all began to dim again and the sounds started to tumble into one another and in the rolling of the words there was only a single question. It rose. It swelled. When it crashed into avalanche it blighted everything in its path.

Where is your wand? Where is your wand? Where is your wand?

There was screaming and the crack of apparition, and then everything cut to black.

x.

Through the gap in the tent flaps I could see the lazy play of campfire. I watched the glow through slitted eyes for a moment, caught halfway between consciousness and sleep. I could feel myself slipping under again before they parted. I struggled against the sheets, suddenly convinced I had to get away—far far away.

"Shh."

You pushed me back on the bed, gently, your face close, too close. In the dim light of the lantern the shadows elongated to unnatural proportions.

"Where—"

"It's alright" you whispered and already it sounded far away, as though I were hearing it from the other end of a receiver. "You're safe."

Safe—Safe—Safe—

It rang out all around me. I wanted to ask how you could be so sure. What you really knew about safety anyway.

"What happened?" I croaked, before grimacing and reaching for the glass of water on the wash I tried to sit up a sharp pain shot up my torso. I lifted the hem of my shirt—a clean one, I took note—to trace an angry pink scar trailing up my abdomen.

"Dark magic" you nodded at the scar. "Not the worst—I doubt the idiots could manage more than a common hex if you'd really put them to the test. But strong enough. I was able to remove most of the residue but the blood loss was…Significant."

Something complicatedflashed across your face but it was gone before I could pin it down."There may be side effects."

I tried to make sense of what this could possibly mean before giving up entirely. "But the death eaters? How did they find us?"

"I believe they were scouts of some sort, combing the area. Low rank. It was…Bad timing. Dawn."

It occurred to me, distantly, that I had indeed been in the process of renewing the protective enchantments prior to the attack.

"—We need to leave right away. It's not safe here. We need to start packing!" I attempted to get up only to fall back gracelessly as the pain shot up my body again. But instead of helpingyou were studying me intently.

"Hermione" you looked troubled. "How long do you think you've been asleep?"

"I don't know. The attack was two days ago wasn't it? We don't have time for this. We should have left already!"

"We have left" you stated. "Don't you remember?"

And suddenly it seemed to me the air was different after all—warmer. A wind moved the flap open and I could see there was no snow outside. Panic was building up in my throat again, giving me an eerie sense of déjà vu.

"How long?" I finally asked.

"Two weeks."

My mind reeled at the implications. Two weeks unaccounted for. A total blank. How much research had I missed? How much news?

But you had been busy, you explained.

A list of seer disappearances—amongst which, with a jolt, I recognized Trelawney's name—as well as a general and curious lack of Death Eater activity all concentrated in a single region. The photograph you showed me was of a manor house, battered and unkempt, photograph itself yellowed at the edges. Something I realized you had been keeping for quite some time. You looked triumphant.

We have him at last.

It only occurred to me afterward that you had not mentioned what happened to the Death Eaters.

xi.

The manor rose square and imposing, the sole building in miles of desolate heathland. It was obvious at first glance that age had not served it well. Large cracks ran down the stone façade and the entire east wing gave the impression of having been frozen in the act of crumbling away.

Tangled vines clung to a stone archway on the far sideand just beyond I could see the remnants of what must once have been a lush garden but now seemed to be no more than a dried up plot of earth, dead and forgotten, dry branches of the few bushes that remained scratching with the bitter breeze.

"The Gaunt estate. What's left of it."

Apparition was impossible in a five-mile radius, just as you had predicted and we had had to traverse the fields on foot, made all the more treacherous with the ice of the Irish winter,

all the while expecting an ambush of Death Eaters past every hill, hidden behind every bush.

You didn't seem concerned.

"If he's as isolated as I suspect he has been he won't be expecting company."

By the time we reached the house the sun had already set and the last remnants of light were fast fading, leaving behind an eerie glow in the horizon. The gate was rusty and, I found with some surprise, unlocked. I hesitated for a moment before I swung it open, clutching my wand tighter in my hand as I waited for the enchantments to kick in.

Nothing happened.

I only realized I was frozen when you walked past me, marching up the driveway with your wand carelessly at your side, as though you had only just returned from an evening walk.

When I got to the main entrance you were waiting for me, meeting my gaze before going to unlock the door with a single flick of the wrist.

But there was neither alarm nor attack—only silence greeted us. I cast a lumos as I walked slowly into the foyer, empty save for a single chair in the corner.

"It's weird…" My voice came back in waves. "Even if it's abandoned there should still be some kind of magical signature. Something to indicate wizards once lived here but there's…Nothing."

"Don't let down your guard" you muttered as you cast a quick glance around the room. "Don't touch anything."

Beneath a thick layer of cobwebs, I could see the hallway was filled with portraits—dark haired men and women who stared back and whispered as we crept along. We worked methodically, checking every room on the main floor. There was a half-demolished kitchen, brass sink torn straight out of the wall, and a library with a heap of books decomposing on the floor. Most of the windows were shattered, though given the fact nothing seemed to have been looted it seemed more likely that was the work of storms than anything else.

I soon found myself in a room that looked like the drawing room. A moth-eaten upholstered couch stoodin the middle of the room, next to a pair of equally tattered lamps. Antique furniture lined the walls, their varnish gleaming weakly under the light of my wand.

Something moved at the corner of my eye.

I whipped around, a spell already on my lips before I noticed the blackened mirror above the fireplace and realized I had only caught sight of my own reflection. I sighed, mentally scoldingmyself for being so jumpy as I sauntered closer. More picture frames crowded the mantelpiece next to a foul-smelling vase that must once have held flowers.

Behind me the door swung shut with a bang.

I immediately ran to it, shaking the handle, firing off every spell I could think of in frustration. "Tom!"

"Hermione! What's going on? Hermione!"

You started banging on the door from the other side, but there was another sound building up through the noise—a coat of armour that I had overlooked in the corner was shaking, the pieces rotating into place. And then the makeshift knight was raising up its arms, and two crossed swords above the fireplace were straining towards it.

"It's a trap! I must've set it off somehow!"

I remembered Grimmauld Place with its Order prepared curses. It had been foolish to think the house would be completely undefended, foolish to think trespassing would not come with a price.

I planted my feet, wand drawn, and waited for Voldemort's welcome.

The swords flew into the knight's hands with a loud magnetic bang.

"Go!" I shouted. "I can take care of this, just—Just find him!"

xii.

The drawing room was a wreck of blasted and twitchingarmour.

I managed to blast apart the door and then I was bolting upthe stairs two at a time, throwing open every door with a flick of my wrist. When I found the right one I knew right away.

The heavy oakdoors flew open and it only took me a second to register the decrepit dining room before I noticed him.

He was sat at the head of the table, somehow more drained and skeletal than the last time, but his eyes were the same blood red—eyes in which I thought I saw a flicker of recognition—and all of a sudden it was as though I were in that courtyard again, only this time the vantage point had shifted.

You were standing by his side, your wand drawn. I could not see your face.

"Avada Kedavra" you said, quietly, casually, and just like that, before I could even react, it was over.

For a moment I remained frozen, almost afraid to breathe, and then I was walking across the room in a daze, unable to look away, as if I could find some sort of answer in the shapeless mass, but everything stayed still and lifeless and I found I could no longer summon any rage.

But behind me you were already searching through the drawers, as though your corpse was not cooling just a few feet away.

xiii.

It took us a week to search through the house. We worked methodically, combing through each rotting room one by one—mostly the same junk of discarded furniture and debris scattered around everywhere, as though the last owners had been in the process of moving before having to desert the place. And all around were framed portraits, photographs and every time I stumbled upon a new one I could not help remarking on the family resemblance—the pale, ghostly faces, the dark hair framing dark shining eyes. It was all too familiar, and the figures followed our presence with uncanny gaze.

You were curiously unsentimental about it all.

"I'd always intended to return—to salvage whatever rubbish my family deigned to leave behind."

It was only when we came upon the study heaped with books, handwritten notes, all manner of magical trinkets on the unlikely subjects of divination and prophecies that the nature of Voldemort's obsession began to take shape.

"He was…Terrified to see me. Rather out of his mind" you muttered, ducking, digging through the dusty artifacts. Behind your flippant behaviour I could sense a peculiar catch in your voice, almost disappointment.

"Die by your own hand. That's what he said Trelawney told him—a new prophecy, right before the battle. He must have assumed the implication was suicide."

I chewed on this information, this further evidence to Voldemort's cowardice, but I could not act surprised. Not anymore.

"Was that all?" I asked, no longer caring to disguise the suspicion.

But your gaze was as steady as the framed pictures of your family over your shoulder.

"Really, Hermione. What would I have to hide?"

xiv.

It was only when we found the plots of freshly turned earth on the grounds behind the garden could we make sense of all the disappearances.

"Graves" you confirmed with careful neutrality before I had to rush behind a bush to release the contents of my meager breakfast.

That afternoon we watched the house and everything with it go up in a blaze of heat and smoke. I imagined the flames reaching the dining room, the corpse of the now nameless monster still unmoved from where it had dropped.

I smiled. It felt like the first in years.

[epilogue]

Voldemort's death set off a chain reaction that was unprecedented,considering the fact there was no body to show for it. It was only days before the tone of the newspapers, the radio broadcasts had changed completely. Rumours of death reached the upper echelons of Death Eaters first before leaking to the lower ranks, and soon the whole country was mired in a mixof speculation and pure chaos. A week later the Order was storming the Ministry in the effort to round up any of the Death Eaters who had not already fled into hiding. It was as though Voldemort's existence, feeble and distantas it was, had served as some kind of stopper for pure anarchy. But now the levee had broken, and there was no longer any place to hide.

"Would you like to dance?"

I was lost in thought, and the eager young aurorhad to repeat the question twice before I shook my head politely. I was at the new Order headquarters and all around me was glittering lights, champagne flowing faster than people could gulp it down. I had sought a refuge from the laughter and the raucous rumble of the band by a shadowy table in the corner. It was extravagance I had not seen in years, that almost hurt to find again,and from the nervous, half-disbelieving laughterthat populated the banquet hallit seemed I was not the only one who felt distinctly out of their element.

When the song ended and the crowd on the dance floor started to thin out I spotted you through the applause. A small circle of people was gathered around you, none of whom I recognized, but that was hardly a surprise—almost no one seemed to remain out of the Order I had once known. You seemed to be in the middle of an anecdote, and I hated the way you could stand there, so primand straight, basking in the spotlight as though you had been born into this world.

There had been court-ordered legilimency sessions for both of us—I suppose there had to be, when the one who returned from the dead was not only a member of Dumbledore's Army, but a friend of Harry Potter's to boot. There was no need for communication beforehand—what with our own unnervingly close sessions in the months prior and a sort of unspoken agreement it seemed we had both arrived at the same conclusion. It was a game, really. What perfect balance of heroism and tragedy would grant us the life we envisioned? The life that had, almost without either of us noticing, converged into one.

But of course, I should have known you wouldn't be satisfied with anonymity for long.

With a shock bordering on outrageI had watched you finish one hunt only to leap into the next, not even stopping for breath before you were charging in the flanks of the Order, flushing out old Death Eater hideouts, laying forth webs of names,always ingeniously, miraculously, one step ahead of the old a month of our return you were gone again, liberating rebels and Muggleborn POWs out of detainment camps that had popped up in the wake of Voldemort's initial seizure of the Ministry.

And the next day every newspaper had had your photo plastered on the front page, triumphant under the sameheadline: The Mastermind Behind the Incredible Rescue.

I sensed it there again as I watched a particularly perky blonde throw her head back in laughter at something you remarked—that fast pooling rage of watching you become, after everything, not just a war hero, but a fucking celebrity.

More than anything though, I hated the way no one even bothered to question your story.

The quiet yet brilliant orphan taken in by relatives in France only for them to be killed in rebel clashes, how you would wait out the war there in small resistance groups, all the while dreaming of the day you could return home, join an organization that could make a real difference. And now, by a miracle, the monster had fallen and his long shadow with it. And here you were, just as eager to take up the reins as the day you saw your poor aunt Cruciod right in front of you.

It's a moving story, with just the right amount of untraceable to not rouse too much suspicion—who's there left alive who could recognize you, after all? —and though I hate to admit it, your French is far more convincing than mine.

When our eyes locked across the crowd I felt a jolt of electricity run down my spine. I watched you saunter over, weaving your way through the crowd to settleinto the chair beside me. For a minute neither of us spoke, following the festivities with impersonal gaze.

"Enjoying yourself?" you finally murmured.

"Not as much as you."

"Don't tell me you haven't been up to dance yet. Waiting for the right partner?"

"I haven't been waiting for you to sweep me off my feet if that's what you're implying."

No, the truth was far simpler and more embarrassing—I was a terrible dancer and I didn't know anyone there.

You smirked, as though seeing through my bluff.

"It's not going to work you know."

You gave me a sidelong glance.

"Oh?"

"You can't keep up the act forever" I sniffed. "One of these days you'll slip up."

"And how long do you wager before that happens?"

"—You won't win. Do you know how I know that?"

I heard the smile in your voice as you spoke slowly, deliberately. "Please, enlighten me as to what move I may possibly make in the future that will lead to my undoing—"

"—Because you don't have the Elder Wand."

You stopped in your tracks, pretending to observe a tray of sparkling martinis shuffle its way above the crowd, balanced precariously in the white gloved hand of a waiter. I smiled privately, pleased at having unbalanced you at last. When you next spoke there was an unmistakeable strain in your voice.

"And what would you know about that, Hermione?"

I finally turned to face you, feeling another pulse of pleasure at the way you'd frozen in your seat. I thought back to the envelope, the probability of there being not one, not two, but three Death Eaters wandering a North England woodat dawn. Master of death, you had said, and forall your best efforts you had not been able to disguise your delight.I thought back to the frantic way you'd searched the manor, as though you had known exactly what you were looking for, had known from the very beginning.

But that had always been yourweakness, hadn't it? Believing yourself the only one paying attention, the sole visionary in a room full of distracted mindless fools, to do with as you pleased.

I remembered the uneasiness in my stomach when I'd gone back to those graves, the sorrowof uncovering them one by one, the thankless task of making sure. I remembered a small patch of dirt, almost hidden, deep into the bushes away from the other graves and the surrealmoment of recognition when I'd unearthed the small wooden box therein.

Later, as I'd tossed it into the flames I'd thought back to all those priceless artifacts made horcruxes, each more cleverly hidden than the state of mind Voldemort must have been in to take one of the bloodiest weapons of destruction the wizarding world had ever seen and bury it in a hole in the goddamnbackyard—I could not fathom. And as I stood there, watching you with your back turned, silhouette of pitch in the backdrop of the inferno and gaze still, still fixed unfailingly on that manor it had occurred to me that, maybe, you couldn't understand it either.

There was a unified cheer as tiny fireworks exploded near the ceiling. They cascaded down in showers of glittering colours.

"I destroyed it."

I watched your eyes darken bit by bit, your jaw set as you slowly leaned back, and all of a sudden it was as though our positions had been switched, and it was I, I who was peering down at you, battered and bloodied in a timeline where you did not belong.

"Hermione" you said at last. But there was no fury in your voice. No. It was almost…An acknowledgement.

"Tom" I replied.

I felt your magic flare.

"Now this is what's going to happen" I continued, swirling the champagne in my glass before taking a slow, leisurely sip. "You are going to stay on with the Order. You are going to continue to rebuild, renew and otherwise restore to democratic order the institutions that Voldemort and his goons—your goons—tried and failed to will be hardworking, diligent, and you will appear in charity functions, panels, conferences with other such…. Devoted activists. You will continue to do this until you establish a reputation for yourself as a leading advocate for peace."

You crossed your arms, the expensive silkof your wizarding robes stretching tight in the movement.

"And if I choose not to comply with these oh-so-reasonableterms?"

"Then you will find there is a worse conviction than being a time-traveling Dark Lord aspirant."

"Which is?"

I placed a hand over the growing bump of my stomach. "Statute 35 Article 6. Impregnatingtime travelers on political missions."

I will savour the look on your face to the end of my days.

"How long?" you managed to choke out when you had finally recovered from the initial shock."Three months, I think" I paused, considering the bouts of morning sickness I had, at the time, explained away as side-effects of the wound's magical residue. "I only realized after the Death Eater attack."

But you weren't listening. You seemed to be in the throes of some powerful emotion.

Your mouth opened and closed silently, your eyes far away, transfixed. And then I could almost see the cogs turning in your mind again, lurching into new strategies, throwing out old assumptions, old plans to accommodate for this new development, this new future.

"And I almost let you die" and to my utter surprise you looked absolutely guttedbefore you could school your features again, only for a moment, before an expression of utter enthrallment seemed to seize you.

"I'm going to be a father" you muttered, and in spite of everything I found myself dreaming dreaming—

But no. This was reality—had always been reality, only I had woken up at last.

When you kissed me your lips were searing, hungry. This isn't over, you seemed to say. I only pulled you closer. I know.