OMG! I honestly did not expect so much excitement for this story! Thank you SO much! TBH, I was kind of more expecting everyone to be like "Weekly updates? You? Yeah, okay, Freya," because we all know I have rubbish self-control and constantly want to share things with you guys the SECOND they're written, which often leads to that 'many updates in two weeks, and then NONE for a year' mess I typically find myself in. So, thank you for being so excited and so supportive and so eager for more of this story (it would suck to have a bunch of chapters lined up and waiting if everyone was like "yeah, this um, this really isn't your best work DX." So, seriously, THANK YOU!


Chapter Two

Tipping his head around her shoulder as he held the unhappy witch's gaze, he narrowed his eyes. After a moment of appraising her expression—and oh, she did not like that he not only wasn't letting her go, but that he was able to keep her put precisely where she was with so little effort on his part—he said, "You honestly have no idea what I'm talking about, have you?"

She shifted side to side in his hold before she seemed to become painfully aware that she was squirming against the wizard's lap. Sitting up straighter, she tried to remain perfectly still. "No, I 'honestly' don't. My real father? My real father is the Muggle of whom you speak so unkindly. He's currently far away from here and would have no reason to encounter any wizards, let alone give them a message for me."

"Shit. No wonder you're having fits right now!" Thorfinn shook his head, a truly frightening scowl marring his features. "The charm was supposed to break when that snake-faced bastard died."

She was too startled at hearing a known Death Eater refer to Voldemort in such a disparaging manner that she couldn't think of anything to say just then. This man was clearly mad.

"You really can't remember—"

"Wait." There were so many thoughts suddenly crashing around in Hermione's head, but there was something in what he'd just said—when that snake-faced bastard died—that stood out to her. Hadn't she already connected that precise moment to what she'd been feeling recently? Being watched, being followed . . . the strange, repetitive dreams about that dark-haired wizard?

Swallowing hard, she tore her gaze from Thorfinn's as she said, "What charm?"

He frowned, watching her expression. "Going to actually listen now, or are you going to thrash around a bit more? Because I was honestly starting to not mind you bouncing about like that."

Warmth flooded her cheeks as she gaped at him. There was so much wrong with whatever was happening here.

"Oh, suppose you are all about listening now. Fine, then." He retrieved something from within the folds of his cloak and set it on the table before her. Wrapped in black silk, Hermione wasn't certain what it was—though if she had to wager, her money would be on a wand—but she clasped her hands in her lap in response, almost afraid to brush even the tip of one of her fingers against the shrouded object by accident. "Hope you're comfortable, because it's a bit of a story."

Hermione hated that she wasn't actually uncomfortable in his lap. She covered over the entirely other sort of discomfort the realization caused her by talking. "Maybe you could sit me in a chair, then?"

"And give you the chance to go scampering off again? I don't bloody think so."

Her brow furrowed as she became cognizant of one very simple thing about this . . . interaction. "Why haven't you used your wand? You chased me down on foot when a Stunner or a Petrificus would've been faster. You've not even drawn it."

"Because if I use magic on you, I'm going to have a whole mess of people angry with me."

She shook her head. "Wha . . . ?"

"Feeling like you're going a bit mad, yeah?"

"You think?"

Thorfinn actually snickered.

"Oh, for pity's sake, Rowle! Will you just tell me what's been happening to me since Voldemort died?!"

He went very still beneath her. Leaning his head down just a little further, he caught her gaze once more. "So you do remember something?"

Well, this was getting her nowhere fast. "Remember what?" Frustrated at her own lack of understanding as to what the bloody hell was going on, she slammed her fists against the tabletop. "I have no idea why a Death Eater might be in trouble with a 'whole mess' of people for using magic on a Mudblood like me, and I still can't for the life of me figure out what any of this has to do with my dad, or why you'd think he isn't my father. I haven't the foggiest idea about anything!"

There was a flicker through his blue eyes in that moment of something she thought might be sympathy. "Okay. So then, tell me what you meant by 'what's been happening' to you?"

She didn't want to have this conversation with him of all people, but then who did she really have to turn to just now? And he might actually have answers.

"All right, let's do it this way," he said, sounding oddly reasonable. "You tell me something, I'll tell you something. Fair?"

Hermione managed a slow nod. This was all so bizarre and . . . . She was suddenly very aware of her own breathing, of how deafening the silence was when they were both quiet. This couldn't be happening.

"Since Voldemort fell . . . as in the moment he fell, I've had the sense of not being alone. There's never anyone there, but sometimes I could swear I see someone, there and then gone before I can really get a look at them." She had no idea why, but as she answered, there was the rough, thick feeling of tears clogging her throat.

He nodded, dropping his gaze to the tabletop, where his fingers toyed with the very edge of the black silk. "Is that all?"

Her shoulders sloped as she watched his hand. She wasn't sure if she should tell him—what could he possibly have to say to her that would give reason to all of this? What could he possibly do with the information she furnished him?

Nothing. If he was full of rubbish, he was still considered a war criminal, still at large. There was no one he could turn to with the notion that Hermione Granger might be going 'round the bend who'd believe his words.

Exhaling slow, she closed her eyes. "In my sleep, there's a man I see. I don't know what's happening at first, I never know what's happening at first, and it's terrifying." She thought she must be imagining the sensation of his arm tightening ever so slightly around her, even more so that if felt like a reaction to her speaking of her fear. "But then he stops whatever he's doing and he comes close, like he's checking on me, and I'm not scared anymore. And then I wake up. It's been the same every night since War's End."

Thorfinn nodded. "Would you know this man from your dream if you saw him?"

Pursing her lips, Hermione nodded back. Of course she would! She'd been watching his face, drawing nearer, watched him loom over her as he sat on the edge of her bed and reached toward her every night for the last five weeks and a half weeks!

He sank his fingers into the black silk, but only on one side, she noticed. To her, he seemed a bit afraid to accidentally unshroud the item. From the folds, he pulled out a rolled up bit of canvas. She could tell from the size of the piece that when unfurled, it would be no larger than a Muggle Post-it.

Sliding it before her, he asked as he tapped a finger against the roll, "He look anything like that?"

She could feel it as her brows pinched hard, furrowing particularly deep as she stared at it. Why on earth was she afraid? There was no way the face of the man she'd seen could be on that. The edges were shorn, as though the scrap had been cut from a larger piece, or out of a small frame. Regardless of what it had been separated from, however, she could tell by how worn and discolored the back appeared that it was quite old.

"It isn't going to bite you."

Hermione jumped at Thorfinn's voice breaking the quiet of the room and she rolled her eyes at herself. Snatching up the ruddy piece of canvas, she unrolled it between her fingers. At first glance, she dropped it back down on the table. Once again she felt strangely aware of her own skin, of the weight of the air in the room and the air filling her lungs and escaping again as she breathed.

Steeling herself, she picked it up and looked again. It was him. The long, jet curls that brushed his shoulders, the green eyes—the ones that crinkled at the corners when he drew close to her each night—the medieval nobleman's beard. The image was only a bust, but it was enough to give her a glimpse of the fine, richly green robes he wore and how he held his wand arm across his chest, brandishing the weapon proudly. In true form of a Wizarding portrait, the man was tilting his head and readjusting his posture, as though trying to decide on the most regal pose, but clearly the magic had been depleted somehow, because the image moved like a photograph, not the full range of motion and vocal capacity of a portrait, and he seemed to take no notice that he was being observed. Unable to help herself, she brought the bit of canvas closer to her face for a better examination. The striped pattern of his wand felt . . . familiar.

"Is that snakewood?"

"It is."

She shook her head, cognizant of Thorfinn sputtering and waving his hand in front of his face as her movement brushed her wild hair back and forth over his nose. "This isn't possible, though. How can . . . how can this be him?"

"So this is the man you see?"

"Yes. Who is he? Am I being haunted?"

"In a way."

Oh, now Hermione'd just had it. She shifted in his lap to sit sideways so that she could actually look at him while holding this conversation, since he'd made it clear he wasn't going to let her go any time soon. "What d'you mean 'in a way?' It's obvious this painting is ancient. So, that means he's a ghost and he either is haunting me or he isn't!"

"You're being haunted, I guess you could say, yes." He pursed his lips for a quiet moment as he held her gaze. "But it's not a ghost that's haunting you. It's a memory."

"I don't understand."

"You really don't know who he is?"

Frowning, she looked again.

"The wand doesn't seem familiar? Maybe you read about it somewhere? I mean, how common are snakewood wands, really? Not even Voldemort, the self-proclaimed heir of Slytherin, had one!"

There it was again, that note of condescension in his voice as he mentioned Voldemort, and the sense that the words dripped loathing as he said heir of Slytherin. There was also a dread pooling in the pit of her stomach. "He was the heir, the Basilisk obeyed him."

Thorfinn tutted at her. "He was an heir in the term of being a descendant and distant relation, yeah okay, and he spoke Parseltongue, so I suppose he fit the bill 'close enough,' sure."

Shaking her head again, she ignored that point. " But . . . Salazar Slytherin? This man—" she held up the square of canvas for both of them to see clearly—"is Salazar Slytherin?" The face in the scrap of portrait didn't match the pale, white-haired old man with the angry, red-rimmed eyes she recalled from her school texts, but then she supposed no one was born old. This could be the same man in much younger days.

"The one and only."

"You're not making what's going on any clearer, Rowle." Hermione knew something was wrong. Her brain was refusing to process whatever was happening here. "I can't be seeing Salazar Slytherin. He'd have killed someone like me if he'd ever met me while he was alive. You said information for information, but I seem to be the one doing most of the information-giving."

His brows drew upward as he spared a moment to study her features. "True. Well, okay, then." A smirk curved one corner of his mouth as he gave a minute shake of his head. "I'm going to warn you, though. You're really not going to like this story."

The witch rolled her eyes. "Can you please spare me the—?"

"Salazar Slytherin is your father," he blurted out, his patience with her finally reaching its end. "Bollocks, woman. Ask me for information and then interrupt me? Merlin! D'you ever stay shut?"

"My fa . . . ?" She shook her head, a strange feeling of nothingness stealing over her as her face fell. In her mind, she understood she should be brushing him off for saying something so unbelievably ridiculous, or angry with him for whatever idiotic trick he was trying to play on her, because that was what this must be, but she could only stare back at him in that state of bizarre numbness.

"That's impossible." Her words seemed to hang in the air between them, utterly lifeless.

"Why?" That infuriating smirk of his reappeared.

"He lived a thousand years ago. That's pretty much it." She forced herself to shrug, the gesture more out of trying to approximate some proper behavior in response to this utterly mad scenario than driven by any genuine feeling. "This is completely ridiculous, Rowle. Even if my dad wasn't my father, I was born in 1979. As for lineage, there's no way I'd even be his great-great—"

"Were you?"

Her brow furrowed. "What?"

"Were you born in 1979?"

Hermione's head was beginning to ache—an awful hammering right behind her forehead. "What are you asking me?" Why couldn't she make sense of what was going on? "I don't understand, of course I was."

Thorfinn frowned darkly, his gaze scanning hers before looking around her head, as though he could see some affect in the air caused by the sudden screaming pain inside it. "Really did a number on you, didn't he?"

"Who did what to me? For fuck's sake, Rowle!" She pressed her hands to the sides of her head.

"Goddammit, witch!" He hissed the words from between clenched teeth as he wound his free hand around her upper arm, holding her tighter. "If you'd stop fighting this, you'd start realizing what was done to you. I'm trying to help you."

Unaware she'd started struggling anew in his grasp, she stilled. Confusion widened her eyes as she locked them on his. "Why on earth would you be trying to help me?"

"Because you were wronged. We both were." Again that look that might just be sympathy flashed across his features and he shook his head. "You and I have known each other much longer than you think, you self-righteous little spitfire."

"Wha—?"

"You and I," he said again, cutting her off quite intentionally, "were promised an empire. And I mean to collect."

From the expression that overtook her, he knew she'd just gone from merely wondering if he was mad to wholeheartedly believing he was. She was terrified to move because she didn't know what the 'crazed Death Eater' might do to her in this circumstance if she fought against his delusion—even as recollections teased from the corners of her subconscious. Even as her own magic was struggling to chip away at the bindings cast upon the deepest recesses of her mind.

But that utter bewilderment remained, buried beneath it all. He could see it in her face. She was fighting, aware she should be easily putting everything together—that she should've spoken the words herself by now. She was completely cognizant that something was hindering her ability to think clearly in this.

With a sigh, he pulled the cloth from the table, revealing the heirloom.

She'd hate herself later for the way she shrank away from it, practically seeming to cuddle sideways into Thorfinn Rowle's lap. "Salazar Slytherin's wand?" It looked exactly like the one from that torn scrap of portrait. She had read about it—of course she'd read about it, she was Hermione bloody Granger, for all the good that did her right now. "But I don't understand. By all accounts, his wand was destroyed in some tragic debacle involving one of the Ilvermorny school's founders."

"Oh, no." He chuckled, shrugging. "A snakewood wand was destroyed. A very convincing reproduction. Did you really think anyone was going to be stupid enough to let your father's wand out of Wizarding Britain?"

There it was again. That mention of that she was the daughter of the pure-blood against whom all other pure-bloods had been measured for a thousand years; the notion put forth that she could be related to him at all, let alone so directly, was absurd. Yet, that absurd notion still drained the color from her face and made her feel as though she might just choke on her own heart. "I can't believe anything you're saying. You've no proof of any of this, have you? No. Just a load of rubbish, that's what this is!"

"Now, whoever said I didn't have proof?" Those blue eyes narrowed in a calculating look as he returned his attention to her ashen face for a moment. "I wasn't sure I ever expected you to believe me without a little help."

Clamping his hand over one of hers, he reached for the wand. A scream tore from her throat as they gripped the weapon and were pulled from her kitchen into the swirling vortex of Portkey travel. As much as she hated his closeness, she was—for the moment—grateful that he still had hold of her as they were sent whirling about. He was the one solid thing amid the unexpected frenzy of motion around her.

He landed hard on his back on the ground and she was not at all happy with the way the entire mess ended with her spilt on top of him. But at least he'd finally relinquished his hold.

Sitting up, she swatted at him arms and chest repeatedly, her features pinched in anger. "What the hell is the matter with you? You are completely fucking barking! I'm a Muggleborn, my father is a Muggle! I was born in 1979! The moment I figure out where I am, I'm going home! You can stay here and rot, you great lummox of a Viking!"

Though her slaps were about as effective as a pixie hitting a troll, Thorfinn showed the good grace to hold up his hands in a gesture of surrender.

Looking about—she hated what she was thinking, but it would be the only way back home and away from this completely insane person and whatever completely insane story he was trying to sell her—her gaze landed on the wand. Yes, yes, fine, Salazar Slytherin's long-missing, believed-to-have-been-destroyed-for-centuries wand that had doubled as a Portkey to bring her wherever she currently stood, but now the charm was used up, and she did need a wand to Apparate.

Bouncing off of him, she snatched up the weapon from where it lay on the ground beside him. As she gripped it tight, she aimed it square between his eyes.

"If I ever see you again, I swear, I'll—"

"Isn't it a bit early in the day for a lovers' spat?"

Hermione froze. That was the voice of Lucius Malfoy calling from behind her. Swallowing hard, she lifted her shocked gaze from Thorfinn's to look over her shoulder.

Malfoy Manor. And all three Malfoys stood there on the wide front steps, the vast home's double doors open behind them. Lucius, for his part, appeared perfectly awake despite that it was still a few hours until sunrise and was dressed in proper robes as though awaiting company, while Draco was in nightclothes, slippers, and a matched dressing gown, his face and hair visibly sleep-rumpled. Narcissa, with her perfect hair and equally perfect dressing gown over a matched nightdress looked like some starlet from a black and white detective film, ready to tell the police she had no idea why they would think she could have anything to do with her millionaire husband's disappearance.

What chilled Hermione was not who stood there, nor even where they were—though their location was an unpleasant surprise. It was that Lucius Malfoy didn't sound the least bit astonished to see either of them on his property at this ungodly hour.

"Should I guess she doesn't believe you?" he asked, coming down the stairs toward them as he addressed Thorfinn.

"Of course she doesn't believe me, but I wasn't even able to get into the entire story," the younger wizard said as he climbed to his feet and began brushing himself off. "Dumbledore was a bit heavier handed than we thought."

"You're all mad! All of you!" she shouted, backpedaling from the house as she shook her head.

"Oh for pity's sake," Narcissa Malfoy said in a breathy tumble of sound, infuriated that men could be such bunglers. Stomping down the steps in a series of light strides and heel clicks, she bypassed the wizards entirely and came to Hermione's side. "I know this is frightening for you, you've no idea what's happening and he's not really explained anything, has he?"

The pure-blood witch's uncharacteristically maternal tone caught Hermione off-guard. It both unsettled her and put her at ease at the same time. "He . . . ." Hermione shook her head, fighting the pain in her skull that seemed to be getting stronger the longer she stood here—or perhaps the longer she held the wand? "He tried to but, I can't believe the things he said. I can't . . . I can't understand anything, and I can't understand why I can't understand," she admitted, her voice dropping decibel by decibel as she spoke, swaying on her feet as the pain kicked off a ripple of nausea in the pit of her stomach and her head swam.

"Get her inside, now," Narcissa snapped, her icy blue eyes wide as she noted the beads of sweat breaking out along the girl's hairline.

Too overcome with the pain pressing behind her eyes and sourness twisting in her gut to fight anyone, Hermione showed her displeasure for her circumstances by letting loose a string of hushed curses while Thorfinn scooped her up. "I hate you," she said as they all started for the doors of Malfoy Manor, her voice barely a thread of sound.

"This might surprise you, but those are the very same words you said to me the first time we met."

Her brow furrowed. Why wouldn't the world stop dancing around her? And why the bloody hell was she still gripping this evil wand as though it were a life line? "When was that?"

He nodded, sucking his teeth as they reached the top of the steps. "Merlin, we've got a lot to talk about."

Hermione turned her head, catching Draco's gaze with her own.

Her former classmate held up his hands. "Don't look at me, I'm the last one they told about this. Well, except for you, apparently," he said as he pivoted on his heel and followed them into the manor.

The doors swung closed behind the group and Hermione thought—even amid her pain and disorientation and nausea—that there was a chilling sense of finality in the sound, in the way it seemed to echo through her head as they sealed shut.