The bed turned out to be exactly the right size. Sleep, however, didn't want to come, and after Draco had spent some time remembering just how good things with Hermione could be, he lay awake, his eyes on the strip of lamplight slicing its way into their room.
Someone else had the stone. Harry Potter, he assumed, still had the cloak. But where was the wand? He'd be a monkey's arse if that thing was still sitting in Dumbledore's tomb, waiting to be turned off by Potter's death.
Hermione stirred in his arms. "Wake up, sleeping beauty," Draco said. If you were going to be a grave-robber, best to do it at night. People had a bad habit of saying things when you went about poking into crypts during the day, starting with What are you doing? moving alone to, Creep, and ending with, Hold still right there while I call the Aurors.
Hermione shook herself awake and put to rest any misconception he might have had about how long it took women to get ready. Her hair was up, her trousers on, her bag clutched in one hand before he'd finished rinsing his mouth and checking his pocket for his wand and Weasley's little toy.
They walked in near silence, staying by unspoken, mutual consent to the shadows that edged the streets, and then the darkest parts of the road. The moon made a habit of popping out to cover them with inconvenient brightness, and Draco thought again about how much he hated the countryside. In London, you could count on people being blinded by streetlights, their pupils sized to see in the glow. That let you slip through the pools of darkness with near invisibility. More, the spots of light made people feel safer when they were really anything but. But out here, with nothing to shelter him from the sky, anyone coming along the road would see him. Everyone's eyes would be wide enough to see in the night's dark.
"I hate Scotland," he muttered.
Hermione glanced at him but didn't respond. He kept twitching to look over his shoulder, then up the road, then off to the sides. Someone should be there. It was impossible to think he was making this trek unobserved, but he never saw a soul. He'd give a lot of money to have already gotten his hands on the invisibility cloak.
He fervently hoped whoever had the stone hadn't grabbed the cloak too. He was already down by one, and if he were down by two, if he were being followed, whoever else was out there looking for these damned things would have the third in his grasp tonight.
Or maybe they weren't being followed because the bastard already had the wand and just needed the cloak.
"You're sure Potter left that wand in Dumbledore's tomb?" Draco asked.
"Quite sure," Hermione said. "I watched him put it there myself."
"And you aren't lying to me."
She stopped walking, set one hand on his arm, and dragged his attention to her face. "God as my witness," she said. "I saw Harry put that wand in Dumbledore's tomb."
After what felt like a thousand years of dreary wandering, the Black Lake shimmered before them, moonlight skimming its surface. Dumbledore's White Tomb sat on the edge of the water. The light reflected off it so much that the small building seemed to glow. "Well," Draco said grimly, "that's hard to miss."
Hermione pulled a wand out of her handbag and murmured, "Alohomora."
A door Draco hadn't seen swung open. Hermione tucked the wand back into recesses of her bag and waved him forward. "I think I'll let you go first," Draco said.
She shrugged and ducked her head to enter. He followed. A white marble bier lay uncracked and unbothered, a sheet draped over a human form. Afraid of decay – or maybe a vengeful ghost, unhappy at being disturbed – Draco tweaked the sheet back. The body under it seemed to be merely sleeping. There was no smell of rot. Dumbledore's nails hadn't grown into curved claws. His cheeks hadn't even sunk in. Someone had a dab hand with preservation spells.
"Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam, rexque futurus," Draco murmured.
Hermione looked at him, surprise obvious on her face.
"I did go to school," Draco said with annoyance. How typical of her to assume she was the only smart person in the room. He reached cautiously forward and lifted one of Dumbledore's hands. There was nothing. He checked the other, then met Hermione's eyes. "There's nothing here," he said.
He wasn't even surprised.
. . . . . . . . .
A/N - Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam, rexque futurusis the fabled inscription on King Arthur's tomb, reading, Here lies Arthur, the once and future king.