Draco sat, motionless, staring at the partly bitten apple she had left behind. What in the world had happened to her? She had clearly suffered some sort of physical aggression, that was unmistakable. His first assumption was that she had been in some sort of situation where she could not have used her wand to defend herself. Maybe attacked by a muggle somewhere in a populated area of muggle London?

He closed his eyes and pictured it: he could see her walking, a man coming from behind and attempting to steal her bag. He could see her reacting to reach for her wand or what the aggressor might have thought was something else to defend herself with, so a physical struggle ensues. He pushes her against a wall, using extreme force by restricting her arms and thus causing the bruises. That would have been plausible enough.

Two very important factors put a span in that theory. The first being her immediate reaction to realising he had noticed the bruises. She had been so startled she had actually choked on the apple - he had been seconds from using anapneo on her. Then she literally dropped, not placed, the apple back on the table so she could cover her arms again as quickly as possible.

It had been a lapse in judgement to put her sleeves up. It would have been acceptable for one to feel self-conscious about having ugly bruises up and down ones arms. However, something told him Granger wasn't the type to be self-conscious about her appearance, judging by the way she dressed anyways. It would be more reasonable to think Granger was embarrassed about not having been able to defend herself when attacked. Yes, that sounded more in line with her character.

If she had simply finished her bite, placed her apple on the table and then calmly pulled her sleeves back down while telling him to sod off, he would've accepted embarrassment as a correct analysis. But that was not what happened. Her attitude led him to believe that those bruises represented not embarrassment, but shame.

Then there was the second telling point that discredited his theory. Draco was no stranger to bruises. He had his fare share of them, whether caused by quidditch, his father, Granger herself or war. He knew some of the bruises in her arms had been inflicted more recently than others. The telling yellowish tint on some and the deeper purple on others were evidence of that. Which meant only one thing: whoever had attacked her had done so on more than one occasion. Which in turn indicated she either found herself at the wrong place and at the wrong time on a regular basis, or, she knew her attacker.

Perhaps she had frequent contact with children. He was sure he had seen the Weasley hoard parading with minions around Diagon Alley. Maybe she liked to play rough with kids? Maybe she liked to play rough in bed? He lifted an eyebrow at the thought, now there was an interesting image - the eternal bookworm, goody-two shoes, War Hero, Order of Merlin First Class, Hermione Granger, a freak in the sheets. He smirked to himself.

At this moment, the door flung open and Granger stormed into the room. She turned to him, frowned slightly at his smirk, but let the thought go.

"Malfoy, I think I've got something," she said, slightly out of breath.

He turned to her but refrained from showing any other emotion.

"How much do you know about the Peverell famiily?" she asked, pulling at the collar of her turtleneck top, still trying to catch her breath. "What is up with this heat today," she exclaimed, more to herself than to him.

"Peverell? I know it's an ancient wizarding name, but it died out. Why?" he asked interestedly.

"Ok. How much do you know about the Tale of the Three Brothers?" she continued.

He took a few seconds to respond.

"The children's story? As in the one in Beedle the Bard?" he frowned, remembering the bedtime story his mother used to read to him.

"Exactly like in Beedle the Bard," she said, taking the seat in front of him. It seemed she had all but forgotten the earlier mishap and was back into student mode.

"Yeah, I know it. Get to the point, Granger," he said impatiently.

She was biting the inside of her bottom lip again. He sighed in exasperation, a few days with her and he could already identify her tells. It was infuriating.

"Ok, since this is a classified mission, I suppose there's no harm in telling you," she mumbled, once again talking to herself and not him. Maybe the heat did funny things to her brain.

"Tell me what, Granger." It wasn't a question, but more like a barked order.

She recoiled slightly and glared back at him, but regained her composure before continuing, "The Tale of the Three Brothers is a fable, written by Beedle to teach children about the consequences of arrogance, greed and selfishness. The Deathly Hallows, however, are real."

Draco took a second to assimilate this. A short laugh escaped his lips.

"Are you about to tell me you're a Hallow Hunter, Granger? I thought you were all about facts and figures, not myths and legends," he laughed.

"The Tale of the Three Brothers is the fictionalised story of Antioch, Cadmus and Ignotus Peverell," she continued as if she hadn't heard him mocking her. He could see the seriousness in the eyes that bore straight into him now.

"Granger, please don't tell me you believe that nonsense, seriously," he said. He was still laughing, but part of him was actually worried now.

"They're real, Malfoy," she retorted, her patience slipping. "You know the Elder Wand is, you were it's master for the better part of a year," she added.

A surge of anger ripped through him at the reminder. As if he needed another jab at his failures. "Unbeknownst to me, as you well know," he said spitefully.

"How about the cloak? You've seen Harry disappear under that how many times now?" she asked pointedly.

How many times indeed. He had always been jealous of that cloak at Hogwarts, although he did come to appreciate it more when it came particularly handy in auror missions.

"So, what about the cloak? Invisibility cloaks are a purchasable good," he replied.

"Malfoy, he's had that same cloak since Christmas day in first year. It renders unsurpassed invisibility, it's impervious to summoning charms. A regular invisibility cloak, no matter how expensive or how good it may be, is still a cloak, albeit a charmed one. And charms wear off with time," she argued.

Draco was silent, trying to find fault in her reasoning.

"Harry inherited his cloak," she added. "He's Ignotus' descendant."

"Not possible," he shook his head, but his resolve began to waiver.

"The stone-

"You're not going tell me you believe there's a stone that brings dead people back to life?!" he shot at her.

"-was passed on to the Gaunts, from whom, I assume you know, Voldemort was a descendant," she continued, despite his interruption.

Draco felt silent and just stared back at her.

"It eventually came to his possession. He didn't know what it was, not having grown up in a wizarding home and therefore unaware of Beedle the Bard. If he had, he would have probably recognised the Peverell Coat of Arms," she pulled a piece of blank parchment towards the middle of the table. "Wand, stone, cloak," she narrated as she drew, "engraved on the stone."

Draco glanced at the parchment and then back at her.

"But he didn't. So he turned it into a Horcrux," she finished.

He met that with more silence. Where the hell did she learn about Voldermort's past? Bellatrix would have given her wand arm to have known half of this.

"I'm going to skip some of the details, but by May 1998, when he finally faced Voldemort at the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry was in possession of the cloak, obviously, the stone, and the loyalty of the Elder Wand after... overpowering you at the Manor," she finished rather sheepishly.

He ignored the casual reference to his blunder by biting down on his tongue.

It took a couple of seconds for the meaning of her words to connect to reasoning. "You're telling me Potter finished the Dark Lord because he was the true master of death?!" he asked incredulously, his tone bordering on disgust.

Of course. I mean, the world isn't skewered enough, of course Scar Head discovered possibly the most hunted legendary artefacts in wizarding history and defeated the evil dark wizard with them. I mean, why wouldn't he.

His breath was coming out in short breaths now. He glanced back at Granger and noticed she was watching his reaction.

"How is it no one knows about this?"

"Harry preferred to keep it classified."

Of course.

"He's got the three of them, then? He's truly the owner of the Deathly Hallows?" he asked. The words coming out of his mouth sounded absolutely insane.

"Hm, not exactly. He, er, threw the stone away and… and the Elder Wand too, so it's power will die with him," she finished.

Draco actually laughed mirthlessly now. Right, of course. Master of Death, Saviour of the Wizarding Kind, Noble and Stupid, Harry Fucking Potter.

He rubbed his eyes, "as enlightening as this was, Granger, please tell me what this has to do with the research?"

"1214," she said simply.

"Pardon?"

"1214, the date I couldn't figure out. The Peverell Brothers are from that time. It's believed Antioch and Cadmus perished in 1214," she said, he could sense her excitement building again.

He just looked at her impatiently. Did she always need a reaction from an audience? As though to prove his point, she actually stood up and began pacing, flourishing her hands with excitement as she went on.

"No one really knows the exact date Avada Kedavra was invented, or Cruciatus for that matter. There are stories of fatal wand duels throughout the middle ages, but if I'm not mistaken, none earlier than 1214. According to the story, after Antioch gets the Elder Wand-"

"Which was fashioned by Death itself, don't forget," he mocked.

Hermione stopped her pacing and turned to him. "Actually Dumbledore thinks the Peverell brothers were just exceptionally gifted wizards who devised these artefacts themselves, and the whole Death character in the story was Beedle's fictionalisation of it," she said, rushing through the parenthesis before resuming her pacing and her ranting.

"So Antioch uses the Elder Wand in a duel and wins," she said. Then she began to speak as if reciting, "leaving his enemy dead upon the floor, the oldest brother proceeded to an inn, where he boasted loudly of the wand he snatched from Death himself, and of how it made him invincible…" she trailed off.

"You know it by heart?"

"Shut up, please."

Only Granger would ask someone to politely shut up.

"What if… what if that was it, the origin of the killing curse?! Why would he have boasted of it making him invincible? Maybe because duels weren't fatal before! Antioch, who was known for being a violent and combative man, created an extremely powerful wand which intensified his power. He enters a duel and kills his opponent. If duels weren't fatal before, then this time there was absolutely no chance his opponent could defeat him in the future! Thus rendering him invincible!" she smacked her fist on her other hand in excitement.

She went on as Draco watched, quietly flabbergasted, "chronologically, it makes sense too - the invention of Avada Kedavra has always been estimated to have occurred in the early Middle Ages by dark wizards. And well, a wizard that boasts of having snatched the wand from Death itself was bound to have acquired a reputation for being a dark wizard!"

Draco was getting dizzy just by following her incessant pacing while trying to assimilate her rambled reasoning. She stopped and turned to the desk.

"This is it, Malfoy. The creation of Avada Kedavra," she concluded with fervour.

"Calm down, Granger. You have a theory based on a children's bedtime story, this is hardly a historical discovery."

"It's more than just a theory, Malfoy, think about it," she returned to her pacing. "It could've been yet another reason why Voldemort was so obsessed with the wand! We know Rookwood was continuing his research on Voldemort's orders, maybe he told Voldemort he would be able to develop the curse, but the Elder Wand was essential for its inception. It was the wand that gave birth to the Killing Curse, it had the necessary power to channel something as unstable as a fatal, torturing, exploding new curse!"

She turned swiftly around and deftly took a seat in the chair in front of him.

"Malfoy, I need you to focus," she said gravely. He recoiled slightly and moved back defensively on the chair with a quizzical look.

She continued, "there was a total of…" she paused for a few moments and closed her eyes, her hands intertwined in front of her as in a silent prayer, "eight or nine days between the moment Voldemort took the Elder Wand and the the Battle of Hogwarts," she said looking back up at him. "You were home for at least part of that time, do you remember at any point, Voldemort and Rookwood together?" she asked fervently. Her eyes were darting to his as she waited for a response.

"You do know I didn't exactly win Death-Eater-of-the-Year, right? I wasn't privy to his strategic meetings," he said irritably. This inquisition was beginning to irk him.

"Ok, but think, Malfoy. You might've seen or heard something, anything," she pushed.

"Enough Granger, I didn't see anything!" he retorted as he stood, barely registering that his chair had actually turned over behind him.

"But-"

"I said enough!"

"I'm not asking you to do anything but think and try to remember-"

"If you had my memories, Granger, you would know that's asking too much already! Also I don't know how this makes any difference anyway!" he bellowed.

She stood up and also began shouting, "it makes every difference in the world! If we know with certainty the Elder Wand created the curse, there's loads of implications, especially if we have to devise a mechanism to stop this! Please, Malfoy just try-"

"Granger! No!" he bellowed.

"Why are you being such a prat, can't you see this is important?!" she shouted.

"I can see you're deluding yourself with a barely strung together theory and placing me in the interrogation chair! I'm not going to subject myself to this!" he shouted back.

"Malfoy! You've got to-"

"I don't got to anything! After the Tower, Voldemort only wanted me around if he needed an audience for taunting his victims, or when he was bored and wanted to practice his Cruciatus skills on someone!" he yelled, immediately regretting having revealed so much.

They both went silent, breathing heavily from their shouting match. This time it was Draco who turned and left the room.

Hermione had paced the room for about thirty minutes, aggravated by the humid warmth, waiting for him to come back. Then she had gone to the cafeteria, from where he was also absent. She bought a sandwich and some pumpkin juice and went back to their room. She picked at her food, glancing at the door every other minute. Pushing aside the remains of her lunch, she conceded that he might not return anytime soon.

God, he was infuriating! She knew she had come close to something important, she knew with every fibre of her being. The creation of the curse was absolutely essential to their mission. Why was he being so stubborn about this? She hadn't asked much. She admitted, maybe, she could've been less, intense, about the way she approached him.

But she couldn't stop herself. It had been so long since she had felt this way. The thrill of logic coming together like a weaving thread, the tapestry of the discovery being created right in front of her. It had coursed through her veins like electricity. Hermione had completely forgot what that had felt like.

There was no point to sit and wait for him to come back. So with a defeated sigh, she returned to her work. She went to the crate that held Rookwood's research and decided she would spend some time organising the scrolls by theme. An hour later she had given up trying to separate the scrolls, as some addressed different issues within the same text. However, she had come up with broad themes that would help organise her mind. Now all she was missing was somewhere to put all of this down.

She walked to side of the sofa at the back of their room and pushed it towards the left side of the wall. She then left the room and made her way to the secretary's desk.

"Excuse me, Mrs. Stainthorpe?" Hermione requested politely. The old spectacled lady looked up from the filing system she was bent over.

"Yes, how may I help?" she asked.

"Could you please ask someone from magical maintenance to come down?" she requested.

"Sure," Mrs. Stainthorpe said, giving her a practiced, phoney smile.

"Thanks." Hermione smiled back, hoping hers didn't look as fake as the secretary's.

She observed as she wrote a message in a pink coloured slip. She then tapped it with her wand and it immediately disappeared.

Hermione waited at the reception for around ten minutes before a man with mousy brown hair and a round face appeared through the main entrance of the Comittees' Office.

"Oh, hello William, how are you?" she asked, recognising the magical maintenance worker.

"Mrs. Granger! What can I do to help?" he asked, smiling broadly.

"Would it be possible to get a large writing board? And some marker quills, please?"

"Sure, no problem, I'll bring it down."

"Thanks," she said. "Oh, and do you know what's happening with the temperature in the building today? It's awfully warm," she added as nicely as possible.

She saw Mrs. Stainthorpe giving her a sideways glare at her understatement.

"Ah, yes, well we were caught by surprise by the sudden peak in the weather outside, it's taken a while to adjust the internal temperatures. It should be better soon!" he said cheerfully.

William returned with the levitated white board behind him not long after their conversation. Hermione denied his offer for taking it all the way to the 'office', and levitated it herself, placing it by the empty corner she had freed near the back window.

She then proceeded to write the following headers across the centre of the board: Death; Pain; Delayed Continuum; Dissipation. These were the main elements Rookwood was studying order to create the charm. She began adding bullet points beneath the themes. Under death she wrote creation: 1214 - EW and added (?) for Malfoy's sake. She then added some of the occurrences she had found on the dates Rookwood had highlighted. Under pain she wrote nociception but refrained from writing anything else down; he could do that when he decided to end his strop.

The remaining two themes explored the two main criteria necessary for the charm to work. The Delay Continuum was the necessary time that elapsed from the moment the curse was cast and the pain element succeeded, to the culmination in death. This required calculations that would provide enough stability for the curse to sustain itself; she assumed the scrolls filled with arithmancy charts and diagrams pertained to this theme. Finally, there was the dissipation element, which projected the curse outwards, allowing it to claim more than one victim at once. She wrote stability on the top right corner of the board and underlined it, certain it was a challenge Rookwood would have to have overcome to make the curse work.

She took a few steps back and observed the board. Satisfied with her progress, she returned to the desk and began working on the arithmancy charts. Malfoy did not return that day.

It was around seven in the evening when she opened the door to her flat to find it empty again. She showered immediately - even though the temperature had dropped with nightfall, she was glad to finally be out of those clothes. Feeling refreshed, she made herself a cup of tea and stretched on her sofa with her copy of Tales of Beedle the Bard, determined to try and find something in Dumbledore's annotations. She must have gotten a little too comfortable because she awoke with a start when the front door opened.

Ron walked through the door as she sat up. His eyes fell on hers and they held each others' gaze.

"Hi," she said in a low voice.

He didn't respond. His face was ashen, his eyes red from drink or lack of sleep, or both, she deduced. She checked the clock on the kitchen wall, it was past one in the morning. He walked in and sat in the armchair across from her, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands in front of him.

"I feel like we should talk," she tried.

"About?" he rasped, his voice hoarse. Definitely drinking.

"Where have you been?" she asked.

"Out. Where have you been?" he retorted, his voice devoid of emotion.

"At Harry's, then I was here last night." she replied.

Silence filled the space between them.

"George came by, looking for you," she continued. "I thought you would have been with him."

"I was."

"Not last night-"

"Why do you care?"

"Because I care."

More silence.

"Gawain Robards is dead," she said.

"I know, had to read it in the fucking Prophet."

"I meant to tell you on Monday, but… I didn't get to it."

Silence. Her heart sank a bit, only realising now she had been expecting an apology. Any show of emotion would have been better than silence.

"His funeral is tomorrow, it's a closed service, to which you're invited," she said, her voice colder.

"I'm not going."

"Why not?"

"Why would I?"

"Because he meant something to us. He trained us, you worked for him," she said harshly.

"I'm not going," he replied calmly.

"Ron… we have to go."

"We don't have to do anything," he retorted angrily. "Why do you want me to go?"

"Because it's important. And it will be good for you, to see people-"

"No, you want for people to see me, to pretend everything is ok."

"No, Ron, there's no pretending everything is ok!" Her voice began to crack. "Everything is a mess! I don't know how to get us out of it, but I do know that hiding in this house and drinking your way through life isn't going to solve anything!"

"Solve? Do you have a time-turner handy, Hermione?" he asked in angry sarcasm. "Can you go back in time and stop Fred from dying? Can you go back and make sure Potter protected Ginny?! No, right? So there's no way to solve anything!"

She took a second to take in his implication, staring incredulously at his face.

"Ron, you can't be serious! You think Harry-"

"Oh I am very serious! If he had done his job and protected his wife like he should have, Ginny might have still been around to see her son grow up!" he barked.

Hermione's insides were in disarray. Ron was blaming Harry for Ginny's death. The injustice of it stung through her like poison spreading through her, shutting down her organs.

"What about me, Ron?" she asked.

"You don't need protection," he dismissed.

She hadn't meant her accusation that way, but it didn't stop her from saying, "maybe from you I do."

His eyes were full of emotion. Unfortunately, it was neither regret or love that filled them.

Hermione was up for most of the night thinking about what he had said. His anger towards Harry had reminded her of their Horcrux hunting days. She could see a glimpse of the way he was now in the moments back when he had the locket around his neck. The anger, the spitefulness, the aggression, it had all been there before. Now, it was as if Ron had given into the Horcrux completely.