October 1st, 1996
"What is your full name?"
They were back at Castle Drake. Hermione and Theo had collapsed on their bed, half-asleep and half-awake. Theo winced, giving a hum as though he did not hear her before dragging his hand down his face.
"Theodore Dellingr Thadas Winston Nott."
"That's a mouthful," Hermione groaned, "What is it with you and all and your crazy names?"
"It's meant to pay homage to lineages," Theodore explained, shrugging, "It makes perfect sense to me. Theodore, to give me my own path. Dellingr is the name of the Norse god of dawn. I like to think my mom picked it. I think it gives me hope for what I'm doing, you know? Dawn-bringiner of new hope, a better life," He said quietly, "Thadas is after my father, of course," He added with a hint of disgust, "And Winston…"
He paused for a long time.
"My mother's name was Wynne. It wasn't part of my name when I was born, but I thought that if my father deserved a place in my name's bloodline, so did my mother. Winston. I added it when I was thirteen. Whole big ceremony."
Hermione's fingers linked with Theo's, "Now that your father is dead, are you going to take it out?"
"I could, sort of. It would be a whole big spell to drop it officially, but…" He clicked his tongue, "Some part of me wants to keep it. Not out of some lost love, but to remind myself."
"That's fair." Hermione laughed a bit, "My name is rather boring, all things considered. Hermione Jean Granger, well, Nott now. Hermione Jean Nott. To the point, clean," She said after a second. Her parents would have had a heart attack to hear all the extra names Theodore had. There was still a small spark of rebellion in naming her Hermione, but if she had hated it, she could have used her much more common middle name.
"Don't go around telling everyone my full name. Full names have weight and magic, you know?" Theo asked. Hermione nodded. She had never needed to offer her name for a ceremony, besides the marriage one, but she had picked up that names were incredibly important.
"So…" Hermione decided to touch the elephant in the room, "Were you expecting that?"
She was referring to Thorfinn and the last few hours at his family estate.
"It could have gone either way," Theo said with a blink, "Some part of me was expecting it, sure, but I guess...I guess I thought it was enough."
"Still might be."
Even after seeing the last memory, after Theo had briefly explained their plan and despite how distraught Thorfinn was, he was not completely convinced. It was, admittedly, a lot to take in. Hermione had been at her breaking point when Theo had found her, but Thorfinn wasn't there yet.
Right now, his life was pretty perfect.
"Can I think about it?" He'd asked.
"We don't have a lot of time, Thorfinn." Theo had said apologetically, "So, well, I'd rather need your answer soon."
"A month!" Thorfinn had pleaded, "A month to truly consider...you're asking me to give up everything, Theodore."
"How can it be a hard choice? Thorfinn, in a year you'll have nothing! No wife, no son, nothing! Just anger and sadness and a shitty overlord." Theo grasped his arms, speaking with a hard edge.
"If that's true!" Thorfinn said loudly. Theo stepped back, inhaling hard, turning to Hermione. He motioned for them to step to the other end of the large loo.
Hermione and Theo had conferenced. They had agreed a month was fine. It was aggravating, as Hermione had wanted to settle this all right then and there, but this was their first go-around.
Hermione orchestrated an Unbreakable Bond between Theo and Thorfinn. Thorfinn was not to speak a word of this to anyone, lest he wanted to die a most painful and immediate death. He could not utter a word, not even to his wife until he'd made a choice. Theo, similarly, would give him space for exactly 28 days, unless Thorfinn contacted him first.
If Thorfinn did want to, he was to tell his most trusted and secretive house elf to contact Twitzel with the codeword 'lamp'.
"It still might not," Theodore groaned, rolling to sit, "After all that, Thorfinn might think we're barmy and refuse. And then we'd…"
"Have to kill him," Hermione finished, "That would upset you, wouldn't it?" She prodded.
"A bit. He wasn't a perfect person, but he was a friend to me. And it's not that I don't trust your memory charms, dear," He looked back at Hermione, a sad smile, "I just don't trust Voldemort's ability to unravel them or to torture it out. He'd have to die."
"I know," Hermione said. She felt like Theo was working himself through it, "He has a month. We should ask him if he does agree, you know, what we should do differently. For the next Death Eater, what would convince them right away?"
"Like a processing interview?" Theo snorted.
"Might not be the worst." Hermione shrugged, "Learn from each one."
"So studious," Theo chuckled, standing up, to get ready for bed "Let's just pray to Merlin that we didn't make a colossal mistake."
October 16th, 1996
For the next two weeks, Theo and Hermione crept around in anxious and bated breath, waiting for their folly to be revealed. It was as though they expected Thorfinn to blabber immediately, despite the impossibility of it, and for Voldemort to cast down upon their lives and murder them in gruesome ways.
They didn't plan anything else, at least not with real heart. Until they knew if they had failed or succeeded in their first task, it was hard to tweak or make plans to try again.
For two weeks, they walked in a daze, but also just as average muggles. They still had a lot to unpack from boxes and settle a few legal matters so they threw themselves into their house and settled in for real. They had lunch with Gren and Chloe again, and it was entirely enjoyable, though both Hendersons made a joke about how out of it they seemed.
The notice from Twitzel came two weeks early, just as the sky outside was starting to turn bitterly cold and the leaves collected in piles around them. As her parents had done on their small patch of grass outside their townhouse, Hermione wanted to clean them.
"Why would we do that?" Theo snorted, "We're co-living with nature gods, Hermione," He reminded, "The leaves fall and rot and become soil and nutrients. We're not bagging and throwing them away."
It was a petty argument, true, but Hermione was of the opinion that it was unsightly. Besides, piles of rotting leaves sounded gross to her. Theo was unmoved.
They were in the middle of a heated discussion about this when Twitzel came inside.
"Master and Mistress, Twizel comes with a message!" She said, "Lamp."
That paused both Theo and Hermione in their tracks.
"Repeat that?" Theo said, staring wide-eyed at Twitzel.
"Lamp?" She echoed, unaware how momentous this was.
"Twitzel, we'll be gone for a few hours! We might be coming back with a few others, so make extras for dinner!" Theo said excitedly, grasping Hermione's hand and pulling them through space. Despite the fact that Thorfinn could decline their offer, Theo seemed to believe otherwise.
As soon as they landed unsteadily outside Thorfinn's house, Hermione huffed, "Theo! This could be a trap!" She hissed.
"Can't be. Per the rules," Theo reminded her.
"He might not have told anyone, but he could still have a lot of Death Eaters gathered," Hermione pointed out, grasping her wand at the ready.
"Oh, well," Theo frowned, "I mean…" He blushed and took his wand out too, "Right. If this goes sideways again, we need to have a better meeting place. An in-between."
"If we don't get murdered now," Hermione said dryly, "I think that's quite a fine idea."
"Okay, I get it," Theo groaned, "I'm an idiot."
He knocked on Thorfinn's door. At the second knock, before he could hit the door knocker a third time, Thorfinn threw his door open.
"Have you been waiting there the whole time?" Theo asked, sticking his hands in his pockets.
"You don't look like Theo again," Thorfinn narrowed his eyes, "What was the last memory you showed me?"
"Deneba's suicide. You thought she was going that way so you took her wand. She used yours."
Thorfinn twisted his hands, stepping aside to let them in. Before Hermione had even taken her jacket off, Thorfinn was talking.
"Take us," He blurted. Theodore shut the door, motioning for Thorfinn to shut up. He quickly checked to make sure no one was listening in where they were currently, before motioning for Thorfinn to proceed.
"Take us, please," Thorfinn begged, "Save all of us, Theo."
Theo grinned brightly, shoulders relaxing. He tried to quell it so he looked more pensive, but Hermione could feel him glowing on the inside.
"What changed your mind?" Hermione questioned.
"Not changed...I wasn't…" Thorfinn frowned, "Convinced me it was real, more like."
Theodore did the math in his head, "Trajan was born last night, wasn't he?"
"Aye. And it was exactly as the memory you showed me was, down to the second he was born. Exact same weight. Exact same measurements. Even the small details, like what Deneba was wearing when her water broke or the sound that Trajan made when he took his breath, it was all exactly there. How'd you get that memory?"
"You didn't want it in the future. Too painful. I removed it entirely but...I recognized it might be good to keep. I thought it would be to bring you back from the edge one day, but this works too." Theo shrugged.
"I realized it had to be...it couldn't be faked. And I loved him from seeing him in my memories, but I held him last night, Theo, and I asked myself if I wanted to take the chance that he'd…" he inhaled sharply, "I told myself that if the memories differed at all, then I could change my future, make sure I killed the whole family. But I'm afraid that even if I try, I'd fail. I have to take your option."
"You made the right choice, Thorfinn," Theo nodded, "And I'm pleased. You both should be gone by nightfall." He dug three items, buttons, from his bag, "Portkeys. They'll activate in two hours and will take you to us. They'll only work for you, your wife, and your son. For anyone else, they'll just deactivate permanently. It's a one-way trip, so take everything you need. They'll deactivate in five hours, so you have four and a half to settle everything you need to."
"What do I need?" Thorfinn asked, setting the buttons on the entrance hall table, spacing them out carefully for when they would take them.
"Anything you think you can't live without. It might be a few months, it might be a few years. You might never come back. As few highly magical objects as you can, unless you're confident you can mask their signature. If you have anything that could be easily pawned for money, that might be helpful for a pinch. Go to Gringotts and take as much as you think you can without raising suspicion. We'll change it over to Muggle money later." Hermoine said. Thorfinn listened with rapt attention.
"Right, yes," He turned, looking around, trying to decide what to bring, "And, erm, Theo? Thanks for saving Trajan. For caring."
"Thank you for believing us," Theodore said earnestly, "We'll see you soon. Good luck."
He and Hermione jumped back to their house. Theo immediately peeled away and started dragging out some of their medical supplies as well as some books.
"What are you doing?"
"Well, as soon as he gets here, the absolute first thing we need to do is deactivate his Dark Mark. That's no small feat. I think I have the theory of it down but…" He pursed his lips, "Well, can't be too prepared."
"How so?" Hermione curled up on the couch next to him, honestly curious.
"From what Draco told me and from what I know, it's like this," Theo clenched his fist, "All the Dark Marks, once activated, are on a string of magic connecting the person it's on to Voldemort. It's like he's holding them all in his fist. He can feel the general feeling of people, but unless he's truly focusing, he can't pay attention to all of them at once. If someone dies or someone is being tortured, it sends a signal and Voldy can sort a...catch onto that specific string and figure out who it is. I theorize that there's so much to pay attention to that if we just sorta...disintegrate the string, it would shutter the connection slowly enough so that Voldemort wouldn't notice until he realized it was gone at all. And, well he'll probably figure out who he lost, or he might not. Either way, by the time he realizes, Thor will be long gone."
"Dissolve the connection instead of instantly snapping it," Hermione nodded in agreement.
"Like layers." Theo agreed, "Burn off each part; the part that connects him to Voldemort's alert system, the part that connects him to Voldemort's calls, and finally the part that makes him identifiable by it. I figure that Dark Marks are highly complicated; even those that go through it don't know all the charms. But it's basically a highly evolved Protean charm, with some level of biology on top of it."
"And you think you know how to...get rid of it?"
"I believe so. I have to hope so."
Hermione nodded to herself. She was, of course, familiar with the Protean Charm, "How can I help?"
"Brush up on that book there," Theo patted a cover.
The hours flew by as they both ravenously read through their books with a renewed purpose. Hermione hoped that they could dismantle the marks because otherwise none of their plans could go forward. If they failed here...she shuddered to think.
Three hours and forty-two minutes later, Thorfinn, Deneba, and Trajan popped onto their floor. Trajan started bawling immediately, as port-key travel was rather upsetting to a child.
Twitzel was in their living room immediately.
"A baby?" She cooed. Theo sent Hermione a 'see, told you' sort of look with a slight grin, "Oh! Come into the kitchen. Twitzel is sure she has something for the little Master Rowle to suck on, please!"
Deneba passed Theo and Hermione and looked at them. Since Thorfinn had agreed, the vow had been lifted, though Hermione wasn't sure how much she knew.
"Thank you, sincerely, thank you."
"How does this work?" Thorfinn asked, "You said something about undercover as…" He winced hard, "mudb-err...muggles?"
Well, he was trying, Hermione thought with a raised eyebrow.
"First, your wands. Unfortunately. You'll get them back once we defeat Voldy and it's safe for you to return. Until then...we just can't take that chance."
Thorfinn grabbed his wand but held onto it a second.
"I'm not sure if I know how to do anything without it," He admitted after a long second, "How to, erm, change a lightbulb or...boil water or…."
Hermione tried not to let her shock known. How useless were pure-blood Wizards if push came to shove? Sure, Theo knew a bit, but he and Draco had been preparing to masquerade as Muggles. She had no idea what he'd known before that.
"You'll learn," Theo laughed, "And yeah, it will be hard, but we'll be here to support you through it."
"You sure you have to take them?"
"That's part of the deal," Theo said firmly.
Begrudgingly, Thorfinn handed it over. Deneba came from the kitchen and gave hers much more freely.
Hermione took them and put them in a box with a complicated lock. It was sealed to be near impossible to locate, but they would take it a step farther. Any wands they collected would go in this box and then be buried in their woods. Their connection with the gods that they tied here would protect and muddle any efforts to find these wands, so even the most impressive location magic by Voldemort would never find them.
"Okay, step two. Pick a face." Theo said, upending a box of male and female faces onto the floor before the pair. He spent much of his free time sketching new identities. He said he thought it would help people if they could pick their faces from a stack instead of him just assigning them one. Help them feel more in control of this.
"What about Trajan?" Deneba asked.
"He'd been alive less than twenty-four hours," Theo snorted, "Likely that no one would recognize him, at least for a while. When he starts looking like you or Thor, maybe in a year, we'd give him a new face too."
Thorfinn and Deneba chose their faces after some deliberation and discussions back and forth.
"Dear?" Theo turned to Hermione. Hermione dropped them into two potion vats, stirring and waiting for it to turn the optimal color, "So how this works is this; you'll be able to see me- my real face- once you take this." They'd adjusted the potion so they didn't see Hermione's true face yet, thought it best, "And I'll always be able to see yours. But if more people are added on, unless we specifically modify it, you won't be able to see their true identities." He said.
They hadn't figured out Bill's hiccup yet, but no one had gotten back to Theo. It wasn't that long after and they hoped to improve this potion bit by bit, month by month.
"You need to take this every month, on the dot. The potion will help you remember. We'll have you take it right before you go. I'll get this settled," Theo said, grasping for proof of documentation papers. He dipped his fingers in the potions, dabbing a bit of it onto the blank places where their pictures should be. Like a polaroid coming to light, their new faces appeared clear-as-day on the spaces there, as though this was always their identities.
"We've set you up in a flat the town over. Two bedrooms, modest," They'd had this flat prepared since they arrived. They figured that with their first person, whoever it was, it was best to keep them close. As they refined their procedure, they'd spread people farther and farther, "Here's all the information for it. You've lived there for three years. We'll come in behind you and memory modify everyone that lives there to remember you. It's up to you if you want to get a job right away or not; you likely have enough funds to last at least a year before you'd need to," Theo said, looking through the items and money that Thor had brought.
"If you do, we can help with that too," Hermione said, giving the potion one last stir.
Thorfinn looked a bit overwhelmed with so much information all at once, but Deneba was nodding. She seemed like she was taking it all in quickly and was likely to remember it, whereas Hermione hoped Thorfinn recalled even half.
"If you need to reach us for any reason, use these." Hermione said, throwing them each a muggle coin, "You just whisper 'lamp' and wait for the sides to go blank. Then, say your message. We'll get it on our end." She said, "No wands needed."
"Is that all?" Thorfinn asked sarcastically, rubbing his forehead.
"Well, not quite. There's still, erm, the biggest thing that could ruin this." Thorfinn looked blankly at it, "Your mark, Thor."
"Oh, great Merlin," Deneba whispered, "I didn't think...I thought you lived and died with that thing!"
"It would be easy for Voldy to track you down if we didn't disable it. So we will." Theodore said, taking out his own wand.
"You know what you're doing, right?"
Theo snorted, "Of course I do!" That was a lie, but why worry him, Hermione reasoned, "Sit here, please."
Thorfinn rolled up his sleeve, looking uneasily at Deneba and then at Hermione, as though she'd betray how theoretical this all was. Hermione hoped she looked confident in her husband.
The first step was to do a medical diagnostic charm, slightly tweaked. Theo inhaled hard since he hadn't had a Dark Mark to try it out on yet. He muttered the incantation under his breath and above Thorfinn's arm a sort of array of information popped up. Theo sat back in relief. Part one, done.
"Bloody hell…"
It tracked Thorfinn's heart rate, his vitals, and his current health. It also showed the Dark Mark, showing how it connected to so many parts of Thorfinn's body; to his brain, to his heart, to his veins...it showed just how deeply it dug into one's body and refused to be dugout. They had been expecting so, but that didn't mean it was going to be easy. It also showed that currently, Voldemort wasn't actively paying attention to it.
One tiny thread in a fist of hundreds, Hermione remembered Theo's theory. Why would he have cause to look at it now?
If Theo's timeline held up, unless there was a change in the timeline here, there shouldn't be a Death Eater meeting today, which meant there was a good chance that Thorfinn's 'thread' should go completely unnoticed.
Theo inhaled sharply, turned away to face Hermione before he put on a bright smile. Thorfinn looked pale and Deneba looked like she was going to chew through her nail. Even Hermione could not feign confidence like Theo could, and right now, he should have won an acting award for how at ease he seemed as he turned and slapped Thor's shoulder lightly.
"Well, right, are we ready to get started?"