Narcissa's hands shook as she read the short note. One more Horcrux down, and without killing a boy she'd loved since he was a baby. Now all that was left was the cursed ring on Albus Dumbledore's finger, and Minerva assured her she would make sure that was taken care of as soon as they were in a position to strike.

She let the parchment flutter to the floor, murmuring the incantation as it fell. Flames consumed the note, and Narcissa vanished the ashes. They had him. She'd do it herself. With Minerva, of course. And maybe she'd call on Molly Weasley to help. Nor that she liked Molly. Dreadful woman, really, but no one questioned her magical skills, and if anyone would be sympathetic to the why of Narcissa's cause, it would be another mother.

And it didn't hurt that a whole lot of Death Eaters underestimated women.

She accioed a quill and began to compose a note.

Dear Molly –

#

Neville picked up a quill and wrote in his diary. The way his grandmother kept him away from parties and events had been a sore spot five years before. Yes, he wasn't permitted to go to Draco's over the summer, but he'd understood. His aunt tortured his parents. He wouldn't expect his grandmother to forgive that. But then he couldn't go to Harry's either – not that he wanted anything Harry had to give – and he hadn't even been allowed to go to the Ministry Christmas Children's party. Everyone else his age had gone. The whole school was filled with stories of actual fairies lighting the trees, and long tables of treats. That miserable Slytherin Blaise Zabini had spent the night at Harry's afterward, but not him. He was never included in anything.

The sore spot had become a burning canker.

And then something happened, he wrote with a furious self-pitying slash of his quill. Harry and Draco had a fight, and they aren't speaking. Harry is off in the Infirmary and Draco isn't even going to visit him.

The words swirled away.

Draco could be your friend now, the diary suggested. The words appeared on the paper and rippled across his soul. He could take Draco from Harry Potter the same way he'd taken girlfriend after girlfriend. And what were girls worth, really? It wasn't like Harry really cared about any of them. No, what he cared about was his almost brother. Draco Malfoy, the one person in the whole school Neville wasn't allowed to befriend.

But he could.

What did his old biddy of a grandmother know, anyway? Nothing. He could do magic that spiraled up around him in twining, twisting vines – he could darken the sky with his power – and she still thought of him as a near-squib. An embarrassment who forgot things, who didn't sit up straight enough, who wasn't good enough. He would reach out to Draco and become the person he trusted now. The person he invited home. And his grandmother would never find out.

#

"I can't find anything." Hermione didn't quite slam the book down on the library table, but that was only because she liked books as objects even if this particular one was being difficult. She'd spent the afternoon looking through one book after another, and so far, nothing on Horcruxes. Not even a mention in an index. Not even a single line buried in unrelated information. And she would know. She had an indexing charm Narcissa Malfoy had given her back in third-year and it was the most invaluable study tool ever. It hadn't ever failed her when she needed to look something up. Until now.

"Maybe there isn't anything to find," Draco said.

"Isn't anything of what?" Neville slid into a seat. He'd come into the library so quietly Hermione hadn't heard so much as a single footfall. He could have been a ghost. "Is there some paper I've forgotten about?"

He laughed. It should have been a slightly rueful sound. An acknowledgment of his forgetfulness. Instead, it sounded practiced. False. Hermione shook her head, trying to throw off the weird impression. Neville hadn't been the most friendly lately, but his gran was over-protective to the point of smothering, and it couldn't be easy to not be allowed to do anything with the rest of them on breaks. She should be charitable.

"Special research project," Draco said. "Nothing that would interest you."

"Why not?"

"It's about Dark magic," Hermione said gently. Everyone knew about Neville's parents, cursed by Dark magic until they lost their minds. She didn't want to bring up bad memories, especially not right after she'd just reminded herself to be nice even if he was awkward.

Neville gave her a guarded smile. "You might be surprised what I'm interested in."

Draco glanced at Hermione, and she shrugged. It wasn't like Neville would go around telling everyone. "We're looking up Horcruxes," Draco almost whispered.

Neville looked blank. "What?"

"Dark magic," Hermione said. "Just… the worst."

"And you're interested in it?" he asked.

Hermione tried not to bristle at the obvious implication that she wasn't the sort of girl who went around looking up curses. It was a compliment, even if Neville didn't make it sound like one. "Yes," she said shortly.

"Then you're looking in the wrong place," Neville said. "You need to be in the Restricted Section."

Hermione nervously checked to make sure the librarian wasn't hovering. Madam Pince had a knack for appearing right as she thought about pulling a snack out of her bag and this was very much worse than eating in the library.

"She's way on the other side," Neville said. "Pansy brought nail polish in."

"Idiot," Hermione said.

"So, if you want to look up these Horcrux things, now's as good as it's likely to get," Neville said.

Another stolen glance, and then the three of them slid away from their table, feet silent on the floor, and voices hushed. Hermione opened one book after another in the Restricted Section, murmuring the indexing charm, then putting them back. Draco and Neville stood, uncomfortably close to one another, keeping watch.

"Found it," she breathed out at last and skimmed the material as quickly as she could, then read it again more carefully. She was starting a third read-through when Neville said, "She's coming," and she slid the book back into its spot, pushing it just a little further in than the rest so she could find it again later. They were back in their seats looking at an O.W.L. study guide by the time Madam Pince walked by.

She glanced at their materials and sniffed with something almost like approval before returning to her perch at the main desk.

They waited until they were outside and away before Draco asked, "Well?"

Hermione hesitated. She wasn't sure she wanted to tell him in front of Neville, but it also seemed too rude to refuse. "We knew they were bad," she said. "And they are, but –"

"What are they?" Neville asked, so Hermione backed up and explained. "Shit," Neville said when she was done. "That's about as bad a thing as I can imagine. And he did that? The one who –"

The one ultimately responsible for destroying his parents he meant. Hermione nodded grimly. "We wanted ways to destroy them, you know? So, if we had to..."

"We could," Draco finished for her.

"And that's what Sirius died destroying?" Neville let out a low whistle. "I mean, I'm sorry and all, but you can't fault him. He went out in style."

"Yeah," Draco said. "But now Harry blames me."

"He's being a dick," Neville said. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"Yeah." Draco scuffed his toe along the floor, before saying, "I know your gran won't let you, but the invitation to come over is always open, Nev. I'm going home for Easter, and if you want –"

"That'd be great," Neville said too quickly. Hermione saw a flash of triumph in his eyes before he shrugged self-consciously. "Like, she'll just assume I'm staying here to study anyway like I always do, and what she doesn't know won't hurt her."

"Speaking of studying," Hermione said, and both boys groaned.

"We could do something else?" Neville suggested, and with that, the pair of them were skiving off together. Hermione knew she should tell them to be more responsible, but she figured it was better to do her own work and maybe figure out how to get some kind of Horcrux weapon, just in case.

#

Minerva knocked on the Headmaster's door. Days slipped away, and she'd put this off. It wasn't easy telling a man he'd put poison on his hand. But the Easter holiday was here. Some of the children had departed for home, ready to eat cakes with their parents and go to parties. The cleverer ones had stayed behind, using the handful of free days to double down on their studying. And if she didn't face this particular music, she'd find another reason to delay, and then another.

The door swung open. Albus Dumbledore – first her teacher, then her colleague and somewhat friend – sat behind his desk. The years had not been kind to him. When Minerva had first come to teach at Hogwarts, he'd still been a handsome man in dapper robes. His hair had been grey, yes, but he hadn't seemed old. Now he could have been five hundred. His hair was wiry and unbrushed, his beard story-book long. And his skin had sunk in on him. Wrinkles folded into bags, and all of it clung to him with unhealthy pallor. He looked like a man inches from his grave.

His eyes still twinkled, however, and his voice was steady when he said, "What a delight, Minerva. Do come in. How can I help you today?"

She took a few steps forward. Minerva wasn't the sort to wring her hands, but right now she wished she was. "Albus," she began.

"You wish to speak to me of Horcruxes?" he asked her. "You're concerned I will not take it well given there's one on my hand?"

A small smile tugged at the edges of her mouth. "I do not think it is your Horcrux, Albus."

"I am relieved you don't believe I could have sunk so low," he said. He waved to one of the ample armchairs in his office, and the cursed ring flashed on his finger. It was hard not to stare at it, but she forced herself to ease into a seat.

"You know, then," she said.

He nodded but looked melancholy. "I have been an old and foolish man, Minerva. When this is over, I hope you will be able to forgive me."

"Albus," she said. Her heart was tearing itself into pieces. She knew a goodbye when she heard one.

"I wanted to let young Potter be raised by a woman I knew to hate magic," he said. "I knew she would… not abuse him, perhaps, but raise him without love or kindness. I wanted him to come here, to Hogwarts, and see our world as the most special, the most wonderful. The only place he could be loved and thus a place he would love unreasonably in return."

"Why?" she asked. Why does this matter, she meant. She had scuttled that plan fifteen years earlier. Of all the things she thought he would say, that he was sorry about Potter hadn't crossed her mind.

"Because he was a Horcrux himself," Albus said. "And I knew that Tom had made them and that he would be back."

Minerva had not shared that with him. She'd taken the warnings a war-stained Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger had brought to her and kept them private. Which meant he had known from some other source and had planned to… her mind refused to accept what he must have planned. "You wanted him to –"

"For the greater good," he said softly. "Yes. How can we save a single life at the cost of a world?"

"You wanted him raised like a pig to slaughter," she said slowly.

"We needed him to be a soldier."

"We did not," she said. The words came out more sharply than she intended them to. She'd seen one generation of very young adults turned to soldiers in the battle against Voldemort. Against Tom as Albus so quaintly called him. She had used what she'd thought was private knowledge to make sure that this generation of children didn't turn their wands to weapons. That they wouldn't wake up at night screaming with visions of death and blood. And all this time he had known as well, but his answer had been to make a child soldier rather than work to avoid it.

She began to understand why he was unsure he would be forgiven.

"Harry had a vision," she said. "He could see through the eyes of Voldemort's snake."

"That is… unfortunate," Albus said.

Unfortunate was one word for it. Horrifying was what she would have called it, but she was privy to the content of the dream. Seeing one's beloved father die - being the creature who killed him – was a great deal more than unfortunate, even accounting for the British habit of understatement. "Yes," she said. "I was hoping you would be able to shed some light on what happened."

"Because he is one of Tom's Horcruxes," Albus said, "he has ties to the man."

"And those would be?"

"No one has turned a boy into a vessel for his soul before," Albus said. "I am sorry to admit that the consequences will be unprecedented and thus unpredictable." He paused. "He should probably learn to occlude, just to be safe. Severus is –"

"Oh, Albus, don't be ridiculous," Minerva said. The very idea that Severus could put aside his loathing for James Potter long enough to teach the man's son an art centered on trust and openness was absurd. If anything, Harry would end up throwing his mind wide open just to spite the man. "And if the issue is…. He's not a Horcrux anymore, so things should be fine."

"Severus' potion worked?" Albus sounded surprised.

It was irritating both that he knew what they had attempted, and that he had given it so little chance of success. "Yes," she said.

"How many are left?" he asked.

"Only yours." Minerva looked pointedly at the ring on his hand. Diary, goblet, crown, and locket - all burned. Snake and Harry poisoned.

Albus Dumbledore held up his withered hand and studied the ring. "I was an idiot when I put it on."

Minerva could not argue with that.

"I was warned," he said. "And I thought I could outwit the charms tied into it, but as you see…"

"Yes," she said. She tried to find an excuse. "Power tempts even the angels, Albus."

"And I am no angel." He continued to regard the ring. "But for one of the Hallows…"

"The Hallows are better left undisturbed," she said gently. She was too wise in the ways of magic to dismiss them altogether, but power over death was a thing no one should have. Not Voldemort. Not her. Not even Albus Dumbledore.

Dumbledore sighed. "Perhaps you are right, my friend. You plan to throw the ring into the Malfoys' fiendfyre incinerator?"

Minerva nodded.

"You know that I will die once I remove it," he said.

She wasn't sure what to say to that. She opened her mouth to offer all the potions Severus' near-genius could concoct, or all the magic she could summon, but he stopped her. "We have tried," he said. "And I think, perhaps, it is time that I meet Death. We have danced around one another for years, and I am ready to sit down with him and pass the time with a game of chess, perhaps, or a bottle of firewhiskey."

"If you're ready."

He met her eyes and she knew that he was. "Promise me one thing."

"Anything you wish."

"My wand is in my pocket. Don't remove it. Don't let anyone touch it. Bury it with me and let it stay undisturbed until the wood rots away and my bones fall to dust."

"Of course."

And Albus Dumbledore slid the ring off his blackened finger and laid it on the desk before him. A single shudder passed through his body and he sank down into his chair, eyes open and spirit gone. "Rest in peace," Minerva murmured, and scooped the ring up and into a small bag. She would take it to the Malfoys' at Easter, and they would destroy it then.

After that Voldemort would be ripe for the plucking.

#

Dear Diary, Neville wrote. I have been invited to the Malfoys' for Easter, and I'm going to go.

. . . . . . . . . .

A/N - Thank you to frostscribbles for beta reading!