Disclaimer: I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).

Note on posting schedule: Due to Real Life commitments this week, Amends is being updated early. The usual schedule will resume next week.

I blindfolded Draco and cast Silencio on him for the trip down the staircase to the foyer. The winter afternoon was darkening, and the gloom gathered in all the corners, as if to remind me what all this was, after all: the dying of the year and a tryst with the dead; the boy whose warm hand clutched mine so desperately was dying as well—or had only three months to live. Paradoxically, for all his icy Nordic looks, he runs a few degrees hotter than a normal person… or maybe he's just feverish, the lamp burning brightest right before it gutters out.

When I pulled him into the closet and looped the chain of the time-turner about both our necks, he tried to kiss me. I almost objected, and then realized that it served to distract him as I counted out the turns of the hourglass, but he noticed me pulling back and contented himself with rubbing his cheek against mine, an oddly feline gesture that gave me a little pang of longing for Crookshanks, at this hour no doubt about his business in Neville's rooms.

Neville. Yes. Another order of business, that.

I consulted my watch, and counted off the seconds until I heard the unmistakable crack of Apparition. I saw us going up the steps, myself leading and Draco feeling his way blindly, his pale hand reaching along the wall as if to read it with his fingertips.

I pulled him into a close embrace and side-along Apparated us back to Hogsmeade, lifted the Muffliato,and strolled back out of the alley to meet the Aurors, out of whose sight we'd been for too brief an instant—a few paces around the corner in that blind alley—that it excited no comment whatsoever. Constant vigilance. I wouldn't have been able to give Moody the slip like that, no.

But Moody is dead, and so is Tonks, and so are any number of people. Bellatrix Lestrange, for one—and now, thanks to Draco, I can't get rid of her face. I hope it does not follow me into my dreams tonight.

I did in fact have real business at the post office. I confided my reply to Victor to one of the Owl Post birds; yes, they're in the employ of the Ministry, but this letter is under heavy encryption, almost as heavy as what's on this notebook.

When I emerged from the post office, Draco asked if we might go to Honeydukes.

From the way that he looked at me, I could tell that he still wanted to kiss me, which would have been touching in anyone else. But the one I had to do with was not Draco, but his dead cousin—forever lost to me now. He was only the substrate.

Nonetheless, we walked into Honeydukes with our escort. Draco stood at the counter, ignoring the glare of the shop assistant, and pushed his coins across the counter to buy two Chocolate Frogs. He handed me one.

"The least I can do," he said. "Otherwise I wouldn't have had a Hogsmeade outing."

From the journal of Hermione Granger

Saturday night

All day revising for NEWTs, and then in between I remembered some queries I wanted to run at the Ministry, and nipped out for a brief two hours that turned into six, but with the time-turner there's no such thing as being late for anything.

What's peculiar in all this: I love the work, I am drawn into it, even as I know that I'm being used. It's like a sick love affair in which you know that the other doesn't love you at all, that you are waltzing with the walking dead, and yet you persist … from habit. No, in this case, from the sheer joy of technical detail. I know I'm making history, though I'm finding increasingly disquieting the question of what that will look like a hundred or even ten years down the road.

Of course, there is the question of the debt to the Goblins. It's not as if I can leave.

And there's the question of Fidelius. Derwent told me that I'm to be put under the spell some time in December, once I'm given the ledgers from Malfoy Manor. It's odd that they've trusted me this far, isn't it? I could have answered any of those questions that Neville asked, about what Harry did in the war. I could have shouted from the rooftops what I saw in all those files.

Derwent looks at me with that considering glance of hers, and tells me that this complex variant of Fidelius is very specifically of her design, with some escape clauses to permit discussion of technical matters as needed. She will be the Secret-Keeper, and the secret is rather narrowly defined.

It has to do with money. Specifically, it has to do with the Malfoys' money. It strikes me odd that this is the crux of the matter, given the open discussion of the solution that supposedly will release me from my indenture some time in March or April…

I am beginning to suspect that all is not well, to put it very mildly. Bill Weasley sold me out—or so Augusta Longbottom hinted—and it's clear enough to me that Molly didn't either know or care. When I broke off with Ron, she drove me off, actually, by setting conditions that she knew I wouldn't accept… until October, when the weather-working got her attention. Given her reaction to my accusation—a stab in the dark, really—I'm very strongly suspecting that she did in fact dose Tonks with Amortentia, to what end I don't know.

Ginny knocked me out of the air with a Bludger at Harry's birthday party, and then assaulted me another way in the loo of the Three Broomsticks, back in October. There's something wrong with her, as well, though what I don't know. She was disagreeable to me more than once in sixth year, but never this vicious or random.

Back in October seems like a very long time ago now. So much has happened—in my several lifetimes—since then. Augusta Longbottom's offer is enticing, and then I realize that it's another case of my being useful. Muggle-borns are increasingly rare, and oddly enough, prized, at least in certain circles, for our conspicuous competence—not a matter about which we have much choice, given our lack of family connections.

She mentioned Sophonisba Chattox. When I was at the Ministry this afternoon, I looked up the archives of the Muggle-born Registration Committee and learned what I already suspected: they didn't take into custody any of the Muggle-born staff of Chattox & Device, who instead turned up on Percy Weasley's extradition list. And we know what Percy did about that. The lot of them ended up in North America, and I imagine that the North American Minster for Magic had a good laugh at Percy's request. He likely managed to work in a few insults to the Micks and the Yanks there… or maybe just the hint, a nudge and a wink, that it wasn't to be taken seriously.

Sinead Pierce O'Halloran, her name is. I've seen her photograph once or twice in the Prophet since the war; she's a black-haired Boston Irishwoman, with a square jaw and a dimpled cheek and a profusion of very stylishly windblown hair. From the allusions in the Prophet, I gather that the O'Hallorans are a North American political dynasty like their Muggle counterparts the Kennedys, and in fact came over to North America from Ireland around the same time. How they do not resemble the Kennedys is the reputation for political martyrdom. The O'Hallorans have died in their beds, every last one of them, ripe in years and ready to embark on the next great adventure. Bridget O'Halloran, the great-great-grandmother of the current Minister, died just before Voldemort's return, at the age of a hundred and sixty.

Well, that's an American example we'd do well to imitate, though it's highly unlikely. The reprisals continue, and I don't think that the trials are going to stop them. Rather the contrary; war crimes trials with two major defendants are so plainly an act of ritual sacrifice that no one is taking them seriously, but taking matters into their own hands, as is the wizarding way. Strip off the veneer, and wizarding Britain is less the nation of shopkeepers than the Wild West, with its duels in broad daylight, its lynchings and its shootings in the back.

Though with the population estimates that I ran and Derwent confirmed, they can ill afford that. Someone aside from the Senior Healer and I ought to see those estimates, someone who might be able to do something.

Harry treated me to the news of the ongoing reprisals, in the first conversation we've had in a while. He approached me after History of Magic revision this afternoon. He wants something, of course; why else be friendly with me after a lapse of months? No, I have to remember that the wild magic at the Burrow was in October, mid-October, and it's mid-November … late November, now.

Months have passed in my timeline, and I resent my friends for abandoning me. I was useful to them, and that's all. I asked Harry to show that I wasn't just the convenient walking encyclopedia and he proved it, all right, in the negative.

Nonetheless, I listen as he tells me about the reprisals, and the growing sense that the families of dead Death Eaters and Snatchers are gathering a sort of resistance, a mutual-protection league. With a shiver, I remember that the Mafia began so, as well. And then he hints around that something is seriously amiss with Ginny, and might we talk about it.

I told him that I'm busy all week, but I might be able to pencil him in for Thursday. On his tab, of course, because as he knows I have no money in this world. I'm done with being ashamed of it; I'm carrying the debt for the whole lot of them. Why should I slink?

And Neville's Gran has been kind, but it's very plainly self-interested; I'm reading between the lines that she's looking to cultivate me, to win me over to her side from the Ministry. What will she do, buy me out? And then whose bond-slave will I be? I'm no fool; nothing is free in this world, particularly not when you're not one of theirs.

And Neville …

Neville may be a stalking-horse for his grandmother's political schemes, or not.

I wonder if they're all still afraid that I'm the next Dark Lord, and have simply changed tack. That's why they're being kind … after all, everyone was rather nasty to Tom Riddle, and look how that turned out.

I am exhausted, of course, and this doesn't help my faith in human nature…

"To the essential rottenness of human nature," I toasted Neville, "and to your beautiful eyes."

I wish that had been a joke.

There's one other piece of business I transacted at the post office. I sent a letter to Gringotts, a request to meet with Griphook, this time on my own, about the state of my debt. I want to see the balance sheet, and know the details so far as he's willing to tell me. Before I believe anyone else's blandishments on the subject, I'm going to talk to the source. Maybe I can find out something about their position and how negotiable it is. I'm not sure I trust the Remus Lupin Foundation; they have their own agenda, and it's some of the same people who laughed at me when I started S.P.E.W.

I remember, with some bitterness, that Draco Malfoy had better success with his 'Potter Stinks' campaign than I had with S.P.E.W. If he'd been a Muggle, he would have been a public relations genius, practically a natural. In an alternate universe (one in which I had a budget and he wasn't headed to Azkaban) I would hire him to run the publicity campaign for S.P.E.W. version 2.0.

The letter I just sent off to Viktor is a commitment, as well, to something I may not survive. The debt to the Goblins may be a moot point, after all. The less they give me to live for, the more of a gambler I become. I'll wait to see what these books of his say, but if, as he hints, we might have even the slimmest chance of Banishing that not-so-ancient evil…

… we could bring down the Ministry.

… or fail, and suffer nature's penalty on unsuccessful Necromancers.

Another layer of encryption. I didn't write that sentence. Either of them.

I want to know what's happening with my parents, before I go forward with this. Surely someone, somewhere in wizarding Britain can talk to someone in Australia, and find out. They've all kept me in the dark for far too long.

Or I can make use of Muggle connections. Not every bit of magic requires a wand. All I have to do is to find their track in the ether of the electronic world of money. That might give a hint as to whether they're healthy or not, sane or not … a hint. At this point, a hint will suffice.

That shouldn't be too difficult; no more difficult, I would imagine, than conjuring the Wilkins couple out of nothing in the first place. As long as they're all right, I will feel somewhat better about the possibility of Plan B, what we would have gone with had Voldemort won.

From the journal of Hermione Granger

Saturday night, or early Sunday morning

I never thought I would write this sentence, but I have a great deal of fellow-feeling for Draco Malfoy just now. I'm staring into the pit and thinking a great deal about last things. Things have shifted rather a lot in the last thirty-six hours, between Saturday morning and Saturday night, Hermione time.

I'm remembering Neville's Gran quoting Omar Khayyam, or FitzGerald's version of him, by her fireside.

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness--
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

Substitute the Lancashire moors for the wilderness, good English ale for the wine, and that would be the idyll I dreamed when I reached up to kiss Neville, and flinched away at the last minute. Flinched, as I always have, from committing myself… ever since the disaster with Ron. Amortentia isn't required for making a fool of oneself. Adrenalin will suffice. And there's the unanswered question of the silver and onyx clasp—a lover's gift, it would appear.

After Potions revision, I took Neville aside and asked him point-blank why Draco had given it him, really why, and he blanched, and stammered, and then blushed. My heart plummeted, and I turned away before I could hear what words he would try to wrap around that reaction. I didn't want to know.

Funny that I'd sent the letter off to Viktor before that, or I'd look like the sort of Gryffindor who signed up for the Foreign Legion (or whatever this world's correspondent is) after a disappointment in love.

Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!

Too late for that; that drum is rumbling in my ears now, though there's little prospect of paradise, rather the contrary. Nonetheless, I will take the cash in question—a little recreation for the warrior. I did make a promise, although it's by no means an Unbreakable Vow, and the one to whom I made it is compact of bad faith, by name and birth, and he tricked me into it very like the serpent in the garden.

Which is to say, I shall be having a rather profane Sunday afternoon's diversion. There is quite enough Polyjuice left for that. After that, these episodes are at an end, because I have work to do, before this golden thread I am doubling over itself comes within range of the shears of Atropos.

From the journal of Hermione Granger

Sunday night

Dervish & Banges have on display in their closed case a rare instrument, an antique Chinese thaumaturge, lately acquired from a distinguished private collection and on loan from the Ministry. Draco was going to tell me about it, since he's the scion of a a Pureblood family with its own collection of magical artifacts—well, at least before the late dismantling of the Manor.

At any rate, that's what we planned to do after.

That establishment stands at the other end of the High Street, and this time our escort included the Auror whose excessive zeal in the performance of her duties led to my first episode with Draco. Ironic, that.

I thought that the best thing was to make friendly conversation with her, by way of diversion, to which she was more than amenable. Her name is Addie McConnell, and it turns out that she was in training with Tonks. She knows who I am, of course—who in wizarding Britain doesn't?—and she knows Harry and Ron and Ginny, all of whom she commended in the highest possible terms.

"Nobody's going to replace Moody and Tonks," McConnell said, "but those youngsters aren't as green as they look. That Dumbledore's Army lot is something to behold. Raw, I'll grant you, but not green—and they don't hesitate to fight dirty when it's called for." She smiled before continuing. "The Weasley girl, for one. The one they're calling the Mrs. Potter that's to be. You'd think she grew up in a Dark Arts family, the way she can throw hexes—nasty combinations, too. Her mother's the one that finished the Lestrange bitch." She laughs. "Molly Prewett that was. Mostly boys in that line, but when they finally do birth a witch, she's nothing ordinary."

The other Auror, whose name I didn't catch, chimed in, "I was in the Auror office when Weasley was talking about what she'd like to do to Lucius Malfoy, and it was something to chill the blood. Started with chaining him up in the Chamber of Secrets and went worse from there. Nothing so clean as Crucio—some ugly stuff with knives, and a good slow finish. Glad enough when I had an urgent Owl and had to leave."

McConnell laughed, and I could feel Draco flinch and grow tense. "Well, I'll have to ask her, because that's something I'd like to hear. I have a few ideas of my own on that score." And she laughed. "Did you hear the story that's going around about Malfoy's lovely consort?"

It seemed a really good time to change the subject, so I asked, "So you knew Tonks?"

"Merlin, yes," McConnell replied. "That girl had spirit, all right. Sirius Black's second cousin, and she announced it right there in the tea room day one, along with all her nasty Dark connections by marriage, Lestranges and Malfoys, and then she said loud and clear that she knew what they were and that's why she was an Auror. That she was the renegade daughter of a renegade daughter and that ought to be good for some luck. Her mother taught her well—she knew some hexes they don't teach at Hogwarts. And funny?—you don't know what she could do with her face. I hear she would have been a prefect at Hogwarts except that her Head of House saw no point, since it would be herself she'd be docking most of the time." She paused. "And there was nobody else I ever saw laugh at Mad-Eye Moody, and make him like it. Moody said there hadn't been anybody he'd liked as much since Frank and Alice Longbottom."

She added, "A shame that Lestrange bitch is dead, because there's a whole lot of us that would queue up for a go at her after what she did to Tonks. Made us understand why Moody was on about the Longbottoms all the time, if they were even half the Aurors that Tonks was promising to be. Lestrange had herself quite a scorecard there."

I didn't ask what they meant by having a go at Bellatrix, whether they meant Crucio or gang rape; from the tone, it could have been either or both. I gritted my teeth, hoping that Draco would keep his nerve through the Apparition at least. I never thought I would object to ill mention of Bellatrix Lestrange, but this was turning my stomach.

When I put my arm around him for the side-along Apparition, I could feel him trembling all over.

Into the foyer, once more the blindfold and the Silencio, and then I remembered that I was sleeping off a programming marathon in my own bedroom … which left my parents' room. At least this time, mirrors were not going to be a problem; we were both acquainted with the dramatis personae of this afternoon's program.

And in any case, given the state he was in, he might not want to do this at all. I was rather sickened by what I'd heard Ginny proclaiming to the world. So this was the distressing behavior Harry was hoping to discuss with me. Maybe I could move up that lunch date…

I helped him to sit down, on the bed, as it happened. He was in a bad way, for he didn't resist me at all. His teeth were chattering, nearly as loudly as when we'd encountered the Dementors in Hogsmeade.

Once relieved of the blindfold, he took off his boots, then draped himself across the bed with as sultry an expression as he could manage, which sat oddly on his dead-white face.

He said to me, with more defiance than seduction, "I'm ready when you are."

Author's notes: Verses quoted are stanzas XII and XIII of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

Atropos: the one of the Three Fates who snips off the thread of life. Her Roman alias is Morta, the one whom Tom Riddle was trying to evade.

The thaumaturge, including the description of it in the chapter to follow, is owed to A. J. Hall (see Dissipation and Despair, in which a long-lost Malfoy in-law makes a timely reappearance.)

Sinead Pierce O'Halloran: readers may know the North American Minister for Magic by way of the other fic in this timeline, In Which the Princess Rescues the Dragon. By the principle of Chekhov's Gun, you may be assured that this will not be the last such mention.