Thank you all for being so understanding about the last chapter's abrupt nature. I very much appreciate it. I hope the reveals in this chapter make up for it 😊


Chapter Twenty-Seven

"Well."

Helena's voice startled the three standing inside the newly excavated ritual chamber. Nerves still wired from the only recently ended war, they turned as one, wands trained on the source of that lone word. The specter, however, was too distracted with looking about the freshly revealed space to take issue with their threatening gestures. Even had she not been distracted, she'd likely have started, but then settled for merely arching a brow at them. After all, it was hardly as though magic posed very much of a danger to her.

"This place looks spooky," she went on as Narcissa, Minerva, and Lucius all lowered their weapons, "and I suppose from a ghost, that is saying something. But in all sincerity, the centuries have done this room no favors."

Minerva frowned. There were simply some moments when Helena's behavior highlighted how very young she'd been when she had died. "Haven't I asked you not to sneak up on me like that?"

Wide-eyed, Helena set her head level and met the elder witch's gaze. "Oh, yes, apologies. If I may be so bold as to remind you, however, ghosts do not make noise when we move unless we mean to do so." She shrugged, clasping her hands before her in a picture of perfect innocence. "Most often it is simply unintentional."

"We have the same problem with some of the ghosts in the Manor," Lucius revealed with one of his graceful, nearly-bored-seeming shrugs. "Turn around and there they are, with no idea how long they were there before you noticed them."

Helena drifted a little closer to the wizard before she appeared to realize what she was doing and stopped herself. Now that he was facing her, the sensation of mindless infatuation that had taken her over when they'd first met threatened once more. It was easier to speak a moment ago, when he had been turned away from her. Though, in truth, he was not that bad of a view from the back, either.

Clearing her throat and centering herself, the ghost said, "It is hardly as though it is my fault I am dead, now is it? Do you wish to know what I learned when I tracked down Sabina and your boy Draco, or not?"

Lucius arched a brow at her forceful tone. Minerva folded her lips on a grin, aware the young woman was trying to push past her little crush. Narcissa shook her head and stepped in front of Lucius, redirecting the Grey Lady's attention to herself. She found the ghost's fascination with her husband utterly amusing and adorable, but information about the children took precedence over humor.

"Please, Lady Ravenclaw, if you'd tell us?"

Helena opened her mouth, but paused, sparing a moment to take in the blonde witch's demeanor and visage. She was so . . . collected and poised. It was easy to believe the woman could not make an ungraceful movement if her very life depended on it. Elegance personified, yes. It was no wonder this dashing figure of man had taken her for his wife. They were well suited. Oddly, that comforted the infatuated ghost. It felt right. Though Helena imagined that were he married to some useless, unappealing sow—like that insufferable Umbridge woman who had tried to take over the castle a few years ago—it would cause her pain.

"You are so very lovely," Helena informed the Lady Malfoy with a gentle, approving smile before she went on to explain her first adventure outside the walls of Hogwarts castle in a thousand years.

"You're all going?" Minerva asked afterward as Helena hovered along behind the hurried footfalls of the couple.

Halting, Lucius and Narcissa exchanged a look before their collective attention landed on Helena.

The ghost's shoulders drooped as she turned pointed glances on all three living people in the room, in turn. "Oh, do not make such faces."

Minerva frowned. "It is only that we worry for you, Helena."

Appearing very human for a moment, Helena Ravenclaw rolled her eyes and made an unattractive scoffing sound in the back of her throat. There went the resemblance between the Grey Lady and Miss Granger, again. "I am the safest person among the four of us. And might I remind this quite small assembly that should anything unfortunate transpire, I am the only one among those leaving the castle who can literally return here as fast as she can think to inform you of such?"

The elder witch's frown deepened. Helena wasn't wrong, but still . . . . Minerva was worried while she'd been out looking for her sister, and she was worried now. The closer she'd become with Helena over the past few weeks, the more she came to see her no differently than any of the children in her care as a teacher, or as new Headmistress. And it was a worry which only grew with the knowledge that for all their sakes, she could not openly follow the Malfoys about in public herself without the risk of drawing undue attention.

"All right. But be careful." She felt odd tacking on this last part, given she was also speaking to the Malfoys, but they were allies now, and they all needed to act like it, "All of you."

Narcissa and Lucius answered her concern with gracious nods before turning away. Helena vanished from sight as she followed along in the Malfoys' wake.


They popped into existence on the breezy white sands of a stretch of beach. Uncertain what to expect, exactly, Hermione and Draco both looked around, wands drawn.

Not a person or structure—beyond the not-far cottage—met their eyes. Draco exhaled a sigh of relief and lowered his wand. He'd suspected, though it had seemed highly unlikely, that this might be a trap. The only way for that to be possible would've been to know that Hermione had been able to follow some very disparate bread crumbs that had only been left unintentionally. Of course, she had, but he'd been there to witness how entirely coincidental the entire scenario had been.

Hermione did not lower her wand, instead setting the cat in the sand and dispelling his Transfiguration. She also dispelled the charm on Salazar as Thorfinn stretched and grumbled about a suspicion that he might well develop a deep hatred for cats after all this. The little serpent immediately made his dislike of their sunshiny environment known.

"Bright," the poor little thing whined in a hiss close to her ear.

Making a cooing sound, Hermione gently stroked his scales with the tip of her finger. "It's all right," she hissed back. "Just tuck your head beneath my collar. You'll be okay."

She looked up to find Draco staring at her. "What?" she demanded in an exhausted tone. "You know I'm a Parselmouth. Well, you know that now I am, anyway."

The Malfoy heir nodded and cleared his throat. "Yeah, I do know, but it's still fuckin' weird to watch Hermione Granger speaking Parseltongue."

Exhaling a deep sigh, she turned her attention to Thorfinn. "Are you all right?"

The Viking wizard nodded and held out a hand. "My wand, please?"

"Oh, right. Sorry." Hermione opened her bag and rooted around for a bit. After a few seconds of searching, she extracted his weapon and placed it into his waiting fingers.

"Whatever we find here, let's just Apparate back to the Manor or your house, yeah? I've had it up to my eyeballs with not being 'me' for the day, I think."

"I'm just happy you weren't me this time," Draco said with a grimace.

"Yes, because I'm sure it was such a strain for you."

"Okay, you two, stop." Honestly, it was like Ron and Harry all over again. Actually, if she were being wholly truthful about it, it was like Ron and Harry when one of them was in a bitchy mood. It was always a chain reaction—one of them woke up on the wrong side of the bed, and the other wouldn't be able to stop themselves from responding in kind and suddenly they'd be arguing like children. "Dolohov might hear us."

Turning toward the cottage as one, they held their wands steady as they started forward.

"Remember to look before you strike. If he does have my parents in there, we don't want to hit them by accident," the witch cautioned in a whisper.

"Speaking of parents," Draco said, his voice as low as hers, while they crept toward Shell Cottage. "Seeing as we might be about to go up against a surprised Antonin Dolohov, perhaps we should've left word for mine by, I dunno, sending an owl to McGonagall, or something? Just to let them know where we're going."

"He's right, actually," Thorfinn piped up.

Hermione rolled her eyes, growling out the words in an angry breath of sound, "All right, so I made a mistake. I was thinking on the move. Maybe if everyone would stop leaving the planning to me all bloody time, hmm?"

The door to the cottage swung open and all three started. Their wand arms steady, they held their weapons trained on the entrance.

"I'm telling you, I heard something," a woman's voice drifted from the open doorway.

"Then I should be the one to check, or we tell him you heard something. It might not b—"

"Mum? Dad?" Hermione knew those voices. Knew them so well a thousand memories chased through her mind and her heart lightened, her wand arm immediately falling slack at her side.

The response was immediate. Dahlia and William Granger emerged. They looked normal, looked healthy, if surprised. But they did not look confused—they were, indeed, not under the effects of a memory charm, modified or otherwise.

"Hermione?" Dahlia ignored the men accompanying the witch for the moment as she hurried across the sand. "How did you find us?"

"It's a long story," Draco offered in a confidential-sounding whisper.

"Mum, you're okay?" Yes, she saw it with her own eyes, felt it in the sure strength of the woman's arms as Dahlia Granger hugged her tight, but still, after everything else these past few weeks, the simplicity of it made this seem impossible.

"Of course I'm okay," Dahlia said as William joined them. Pulling back enough to look in her adoptive daughter's face, she asked, "But why are you crying?"

Hermione hadn't even realized it, but she was. Her vision was blurred for the tears gathering in her eyes and her throat had closed up on her. The tip of her nose stung as though she'd just been punched square in the face.

Giving herself a shake, she forced herself to speak. "I thought something had happened to you!"

"We're fine, dear," William assured, touching her cheek with a gentle palm. "But it's happened? You remember?"

She nodded, sniffling. "I remember."

The Grangers cast a split-second glance on Draco—they knew him already from that lovely second year incident in Diagon Alley when Lucius Malfoy and Arthur Weasley had gotten into that spectacular row in the bookshop—and then turned their attention to Thorfinn.

"Then, you must be him, hmm?" Dahlia gave a watery smile. "The Bronze Boy?"

Thorfinn had no idea how to feel about any of this. "I am."

William drew himself up to his full height. Hermione'd seen him do this before, and at an even 6ft tall, it was often a somewhat intimidating gesture . . . until he was standing before Thorfinn Rowle, who still had four inches over him at his tallest.

"Now, you see here, young man," William started, his expression severe—obviously the height discrepancy didn't faze him, "I may be only a Muggle, but so help me, if you hurt this girl, I will make you sorry."

The Viking prince's brows drew upward as he nodded. Just like that, he was overwhelmed with respect for the man. "So noted, sir."

"Wait!" Hermione and Draco said in the same breath, drawing the attention of the other three to them. For their part, Hermione and Draco shared a quick look, frowning at one another and then returning their gazes to the rest of their little group.

Draco made a go ahead gesture that Hermione caught from the corner of her eye. "I don't understand. Where's Antonin Dolohov?"

"He's here."

The wizards and witch immediately aimed their wands at the voice. There he stood in the doorway, exactly as each of them remembered him. "You needn't be so on-guard. I brought these Muggles here for their protection." He started toward them, making no move to draw his own weapon, and seeming utterly unfazed by the weapons trained so unfalteringly on him.

"You mean to protect them?" Hermione demanded through clenched teeth. "Why would you ever want to?"

As he reached them, she noticed the chain—the oddly familiar chain of thick, dark silver around his neck and disappearing beneath the collar of his black robes. "Because I understood the breaking of the charm I placed on your memories was imminent and I knew you would wish them safe."

"Wha . . . ? The charm you . . . ." Hermione could not even string together a coherent sentence.

Thorfinn darted his gaze about, as thought an answer would appear in the air. "Uh . . . ."

"Hang on," Draco said, his wand arm dropping to his side as he pinched between his brows with his free hand.

Hermione, sick to her bloody eyeballs of all the confusion and fear and everything she'd had to suffer recently, stomped right up to Dolohov. He—quite annoyingly serene at the moment—held up his hands in a gesture of surrender as she pulled the chain from beneath his robes, revealing her long-lost locket.

"No." She swallowed hard, backpedaling. "How . . . ?"

"This was far too precious. I could not let it be found, so I secreted it away, let the world believe a duplicate was the real thing."

Her features pinched. So Regulus replaced a copy with a copy? Hermione could only stare up at him. Oh, this had the potential to get very complicated.

"Like my wand, which is now yours."

"It can't be," she said, her voice falling from her lips in a lifeless whisper.

"I told you, I needed your necklace in my research. I trust you remember?"

Her head was swimming. This was not something she'd been prepared for, not remotely. "Researching a means to defeat death."

Antonin Dolohov smiled and it was only now that Hermione noticed the faint wash of green in his dark irises. "And I did. Much like I encased you in Bronze to traverse the ravages of time, so, too, did I encase some of my soul in your necklace; the man before you is but a vessel. I can't tell you how long I've waited to see you again, my little serpent."

Hermione's entire frame drooped where she stood, tears welling in her eyes anew. "Father?"

He nodded, a smirk just like the one she remembered plucked one corner of his mouth upward. "I missed you, Sabina."

Before she could even think to stop herself, she threw her arms around his neck, hugging him tight. He returned her embrace, holding her to him for a few heartbeats as she tried to muffle her crying.

"And now I've seen everything," Thorfinn said with a nod. He gave a start when he found Antonin/Salazar's gaze on him. He made an awkward, throat-clearing sound. "Sir."

Salazar smiled. "I am happy you two found each other."

"Wait, though, wait," Draco said, his hands up in the air. "How? How? How!"

Hermione realized that Draco didn't actually know about the Horcruxes. A chill when down her spine as that word went through her. She'd been so happy to have her father with her again, she'd not really thought about what it meant.

Pulling back from the possessed wizard holding her, she met his darkened green gaze. "That's right, it's a Horcrux. Bloody Voldemort actually did manage to follow you without even knowing he was doing it!"

"Oh, yes, heard about that poor sod. As though my descendants don't have troubles enough without fools like him mucking up our name further."

"No, no!" Hermione stepped back from him, entirely. "That's not . . . . To create one, that means you had to have split your soul." She often surmised that the reason Voldemort was so deeply inhuman was that after splitting his soul so many times over to create his own Horcruxes, he had not so much as a sliver left over for himself. "You had to kill someone."

Her father's shoulders slumped. Lowering his gaze from hers, he nodded, currently oblivious to their audience. "Yes."

"You had to know I wouldn't want that, not for me, even if it meant seeing you again." Her voice was cracking. She barely felt it as Thorfinn stepped up beside her and looped an arm around her shoulders.

Salazar lifted his head, a pained smile on his face. "He deserved it. I waited until he was on his death bed. I made it look like he had passed naturally, but he deserved it. Had deserved it for decades, and if our reunion came about as a result of his demise, then it would be some form of justice served."

Her heart fell into her stomach. She was pretty sure she knew, but she had to ask. If she was right, then she couldn't actually say she disagreed with him, and she was beginning to wonder if being the daughter of Salazar Slytherin was changing her, after all.

"Father? Who did you kill to create that Horcrux?"

He reached out, taking her hand between both of his. She'd always had a temper, which sometimes led to rash decisions, but the accuracy of her moral compass depended entirely upon the circumstances; how badly that man had hurt their family might not be reason enough to kill him, or it might be reason that his death should've been long, drawn out, and insanity-inducingly painful.

"I killed the man who murdered your mother." His voice was firm yet solemn. "I killed Godric Gryffindor."