Author's Note: This is the sequel to my 2016 Indiana Jones Remix "The Search for the Sun Disc." You need to read that fic first for any of this to make sense. It's only ~25k words. Go on; I'll wait.

Thanks to my alphabet team, inadaze22 and dreamsofdramione, for satisfying my need for external validation whilst I WIP. To Ina for alpha'ing and making sure this mess made sense; to K for the final clean up and beta polish. Because I'm a notorious fiddler, I've been at this since K's final read. Any remaining mistakes are my own.

Please mind the warnings below. More may be added as I edit and tinker during posting. I'll do my best to include content warnings before chapters that include sensitive topics. If you find something missing, please let me know!

Warnings/Tags: Sequel, Mystery, Action/Adventure, Romance, Humor, Snark, Banter, Co-Workers, Forced Partnership, Post-Hogwarts, Malfoy Manor, Diagon Alley, Gringotts, Greece, France, The Ministry of Magic, The Department of Mysteries, The Death Chamber, The Veil, Smut, Vaginal Sex, Fingering, Praise Kink, Shower Sex, Violence, Early Term Miscarriage, Mild Gore, Swearing, Simp Draco, HEA

Chapter 1

The fire was messing up his hair.

To be fair, there were myriad other concerns that should have taken precedence in Draco Malfoy's life. But alas: he was vain and petty, and the matter of unnatural hair loss felt immediately solvable against an ever-accumulating backlog of problems awaiting solutions.

The Daily Prophet, for example, continued to haemorrhage money despite half a year of steady investment. He had sacked most of the shoddy journalists and paid handsomely to recruit new talent, yet subscriptions were still down.

And falling.

The Prophet needed an intriguing scoop to regain the public's trust, but without the threat of a new Dark Lord and with a government that functioned more or less how it ought, there were precious few scandals to report. His investments were diversified enough to absorb the losses, but the downward trend couldn't continue forever.

Draco's ever-deteriorating relationship with his parents probably should have registered somewhere near the top of his list of concerns, as well. Narcissa had extended her Grecian sabbatical to seven months and showed no interest in returning to Malfoy Manor. Her owls had become increasingly infrequent.

The Blacks were stubborn as a matter of genetics. Draco, who was both a Black and a Malfoy, had thus inherited a double dose of mulishness. Without him going to Greece, or Narcissa returning to Wiltshire where she belonged, he wondered at the chance of seeing her before the year ended.

It didn't seem likely.

Of less importance was his father, imprisoned in Azkaban since the Battle of Hogwarts seventeen years prior. They were not on speaking—or writing—terms. While Draco had no plans to change that, he thought Lucius would have caved by now. His father was not known for his ability to trust, and his disapproval of Draco's business decisions was not what one would call subtle.

Finally, there was the exhaustion, which sat like lead in his bones. Draco had learned to work through the thick fog in his brain. Under professional pressure, he had accepted the gruelling effort of pulling half-formed ideas from his mind's haze as part of the strategic process, ignoring the fact that running several businesses had once come naturally. He had endured his investors' prodding when his proposals made little sense, all the while wondering if he had lost a step.

If, at the tender age of thirty-five, he'd peaked.

He had grown accustomed to the lethargy, too.

Caffeine—an early and decreasingly reliable palliative measure—had been banned from his diet upon the advice of his Healer. Energy potions were similarly forbidden, and the commercialised varieties of Dreamless Sleep made him cotton-mouthed, nauseous, and paranoid.

Sleep didn't help, anyway. And when he did bother with it, the morning after brought nothing but regret.

Sometimes, it was only noise: that train wreck of a sound, grating and twisting, the death knell of a universe tearing itself apart.

Sometimes, it was silent flashes of memory: explosions of light in a dark, deadly chamber; the tug of churning water against his trousers in a subterranean cave; the smell of cooked sausages against the fresh scent of morning desert, the sand beginning to heat with the dawn.

Sometimes, it was everything: a full replay of what had started in Egypt and ended in the Ministry of Magic six months ago.

Draco's arrival at the ancient site of Maru-Aten, the dig, and the death of Ministry intern Todd Aiken.

The unfolding mystery of the Sun Disc, the treachery of Theodore Nott, and the quiet of Draco's life slowly seeping away.

The concussion that had changed everything.

The possession of the woman he loved by a force beyond his comprehension. The easy gesture that had sent Nott through the Veil and set time spinning back into motion.

So, yes, there were other things he should have been handling. But each of those things, even when considered in a vacuum, had the potential to send him over the edge of sanity.

Last April, an ancient artefact had capsized the steady ship upon which Draco had sailed for most of his adult life. Far from swimming effortlessly through the changes and righting his overturned vessel, he felt caught beneath it.

He was treading water in rough seas and barely holding his head above the swells.

He could summon just enough energy to maintain the status quo, to keep up appearances of a pure-blood playboy and turn a profit.

But a tip in the balance would upset everything.

It would sink him.

He needed a lifeboat, and to keep his breath as he swam toward it, he thought about his hair.

As he waited with his head in the flames, Draco considered the latest issue of Wizard's Quarterly, one of his better investments. The magazine had featured an article about frequent and extended Floo usage. Its effects on the body were many: uneven skin pigmentation, premature wrinkles, hair thinning. Hair loss.

This was his third call of the day. His longest attempt yet, approaching five minutes, if the mantle clock's steady ticking was reliable. What had the article said? Ten minutes as the lower threshold for irreversible follicle damage?

Very few people were worth losing his hair over; the recipient of this Floo call was.

At last, his view brightened. Draco swore he smelled the sweet scent of fresh soil and heard a seabird's call as Hermione Granger appeared in the grate. She sat hunched in her office chair, curled into herself, uncomfortable.

Still, the sight of her gave him hope.

"Hi." He smiled as he said it; it felt like the first real one he'd managed since spring.

She tried, and failed, to match his expression. The movements were there—the curl of her lips, the tightening of the skin around her eyes. But instead of pleased, she looked tired.

"Hey."

"How have you been?"

"Okay." Her voice pitched a touch higher. It was subtle, but he caught it: a lie. He didn't know why she bothered. Dishonesty was the one life skill she couldn't seem to master. "You?"

Since she was only asking to be polite, Draco felt comfortable lying to her.

Besides, she'd started it.

"Good. I've been trying to reach you all afternoon."

"I know. I've been busy."

He looked past her, into the familiar, boring grey of her new office. The space had formerly belonged to Nott, and Hermione had been pressured into taking it upon her former supervisor's unexplained disappearance. The Floo's heat haze obscured the room's finer details, but it was clear that she had yet to adapt to her new workspace. The walls appeared empty of personal photos and recognitions, absent the small touches he expected from a woman ordinarily so devoted to her friends and family.

At least she wasn't lying about her workload. Stacks of parchment rose from her desk like the great pyramids of Giza, the tight rolls sealed with pressed wax.

"New project?"

"What?" She glanced behind her, then back. "No, nothing new. Just routine work. Follow ups, filings, literary reviews."

"Sounds exciting."

She grimaced. "It's not."

"That doesn't mean it's not worthwhile. Or easy."

"Draco..."

"In fact, it sounds positively gruelling. How about we both unwind over dinner at my place tonight?"

On cue, her expression tightened. Draco hardly felt the sting of disappointment anymore.

It was part of their routine.

He would extend an invitation; she would hedge.

He would attempt to reschedule; she would invent an excuse.

He would throw the metaphorical Quaffle directly into her hands and leave the hoops wide open; she would drop it by failing to name a date, a time, or a place.

"I don't know… I'm working late tonight."

Round one: complete.

"Tomorrow, then. There's a new sushi place that opened up on Diagon Alley. Great reviews, very trendy."

"I'm booked with interviews all day tomorrow." She'd never used that one before.

Draco lifted an eyebrow. "Interviews?"

Her look turned loaded, her voice full of significance. "We have a position open, in case you'd forgotten."

He hadn't; he dreamt of Nott's death at least once a week.

"But on a Friday afternoon?"

"New management," she said with a not-quite-casual shrug.

Nott had murdered their former department head, Ptolomea Price, at the end of last year. Though a position in the Department of Mysteries was considered a risky proposition to begin with, the current turnover rate was significant enough that Ministry leadership—historically content with a hands-off approach to employee welfare—had decided to get involved. They'd completed a cursory investigation, appointed a new department head after a thorough vetting, and increased their oversight model, all in an effort to prevent future mishaps.

Draco questioned the Ministry's follow-through on that final commitment. Hermione seemed to think they were sincere.

But they had been careful after their showdown with Nott. They had repaired the Death Chamber's broken benches and Vanished the skim-coat of dust caused by the Sun Disc's explosion.

Hermione had checked the room logs. Sparse to begin with, there was no paper trail of suspicious activity or unauthorised access to the department that fateful, late April night. There were no witnesses who could attest to their guilt or innocence. In fact, there was nothing to arouse the question of guilt or innocence in the first place.

It was as if the Sun Disc's halves had never met.

As if the world hadn't narrowly escaped a genocidal cleansing orchestrated by a man whose mind had been radicalised by a literal think tank.

As if Hermione hadn't been the one to harness the power of creation and destruction to stop it, and save Draco's life in the process.

It was as if nothing had happened at all.

And yet, Hermione had kept her head down: no new archaeological excavations, no new projects, no new leads.

At least, not that she shared with him.

"Then how about you name the date, time, and place? My schedule is open."

He'd tossed the Quaffle with supreme accuracy, ceding control and placing the opportunity for further connection into her lap.

He'd left the hoops entirely unguarded.

All she had to do was shoot.

"Draco, please..."

"Dinner, lunch, brunch…" He sounded desperate, but he didn't care. "I'd settle for a cup of coffee if it means seeing you."

Her brows pulled together. "It's not a good time."

And the drop.

Expected, yet still disappointing.

Draco followed her gaze down to her hands. Her knuckles were white, pressed into her knees.

"Hermione?"

For the first time in months, she met his gaze. Draco's stomach lurched.

How had he not noticed it before?

Dark circles ringed her unfocused eyes, an unusual, dull brown, their typical animation absent. Her curls lay lank, falling limp over thin shoulders that were tense and hunched high by her ears. He'd attributed her posture to taking his call from the relative comfort of her desk, as opposed to kneeling on her office's stone hearth, but it wasn't how she sat that weighed her down. It was something else.

If Draco had been treading water since April, then Hermione had been drowning.

He'd been so preoccupied with his own pain that he hadn't noticed hers. No longer: he was going to drag them both to shore if it killed him.

"We need to talk."

"There's nothing to discuss." Hermione waved away his concern. Her voice shook, falling far short of nonchalant. "I'm—"

"No, you're not fine. And neither am I." Even admitting it aloud relieved some of his stress. "It's been six months since Egypt. I know things wrapped up…" He was conscious of how carefully he needed to tread. "Things wrapped up in a less-than-ideal manner, and we've each had to deal with that. And I know you said you needed time…"

His chest tightened. The old argument stung like it had happened hours ago, not months.

The week following their Unbreakable Vow occupied a rosy place in Draco's memories. They'd survived a near-death experience and saved the world. He'd felt invincible, unstoppable, like he could have had anything he'd wanted.

And what he'd wanted more than anything was Hermione.

With the Vow, he thought he'd have her. It was deep magic, after all. Soul magic. The spell bound them together tighter than promises exchanged before a minister or a contract signed before the Ministry ever could.

Draco hadn't expected her to move into Malfoy Manor, or fall into his bed, or even openly admit to liking him.

At least not right away. But he'd at least thought they would try… something.

He understood that their history was fraught: enemies at Hogwarts; failed lovers at the Ministry; antagonistic acquaintances for the intervening decade. And he was a practical man. If love was too great a leap, they would start small and build toward the future he wanted.

A future that, once upon a time, she'd wanted, too.

He'd seen the Unbreakable Vow as the start of them being unbreakable.

The start of a life lived by her side.

But the more Draco pressed, the more Hermione withdrew. Until, finally, she'd snapped.

A messy row in May had started at the dinner table and wound through the manor like Fiendfyre. It ended with her storming down the gravel walk, too furious to Apparate.

Draco had watched her go, certain that it was their end. In his pique, he'd been bitterly grateful for it. They'd both said things they couldn't take back, hurled accusations that hurt worse for the barbs of truth they contained.

After two weeks of silence, he'd cracked. Apologised. Sought understanding. Promised patience. Agreed to her request for distance and time. Respected her boundaries.

It hadn't worked.

Draco's apology had treated the surface wound, but sepsis had already started circulating. He hadn't recognized the disease until now.

Maybe he hadn't wanted to.

Maybe, like the sundry other problems in his life, it had been easier to ignore the truth, because facing it meant subjecting himself to more pain than he thought he could handle.

He'd let things fester between them for too long. Now, he could not ignore it.

"We can't do this anymore."

"Do what, Draco?" she asked with a heavy sigh.

"Whatever this is." He gestured between them. "This distance, this silence. It's not working. In fact, I think it's hurting. And if we could—"

A knock sounded on Hermione's office door. She sent a tired look over her shoulder.

"I have to go."

"Hermione, wait. We can't keep—"

The charmed fire extinguished with the whoosh of absent oxygen as the Floo connection snapped shut. Left with only warm cinders, Draco pulled his head from the firebox with a scowl.

He was through.

Through being rebuffed by her. Through being ignored. Through being treated as though the Sun Disc hadn't hurt him, too.

He and Hermione needed to talk. Their current strategy of acting like nothing had happened wasn't good for either of them, and it was clear that figuring out what came next couldn't be resolved via Floo.

They needed to be in the same bloody room for a change.

But how?

His fireplace flared green, and Draco leaned forward, heart racing. It was absurd to think that Hermione had not only realised how wrong she was, but also admitted it to herself and decided to rectify the situation in less than five minutes. At the rate she was going, such progress might take closer to five years. Despite that, he couldn't help but hope.

Then Mitchell McVean's bespectacled face appeared. Draco sat back on his heels with a frown.

Mitchell had been Draco's research assistant for years. He spent his days leisurely categorising the Malfoy family's extensive collection of dark artefacts and his nights pestering Draco for additional funds. Merlin knew for what: Mitchell had a private workspace with all the latest equipment and was paid well over average, as evidenced by the precipitous loss of Galleons in Draco's coin vault at the end of each month.

Though he had to admit—grudgingly—that the young American was worth his fee. Mitchell's involvement in the Sun Disc fiasco had been limited to drinking too much in the desert, waiting on a tropical island for a Patronus, and sealing an Unbreakable Vow. The first had been greatly amusing, the second had saved his and Hermione's life, and the third had guaranteed that neither of them would go to prison over a slip of the tongue. Draco struggled to think of anyone else who would have done half as much without twice as many questions.

Still, Mitchell was not the person Draco wanted to see.

He seemed to get the hint. "Is this a bad time?"

"Quite," Draco answered.

He cocked his head to the side. "What's wrong with your face?"

"What's wrong with my…" Draco caught his reflection in a window. He looked like a common chimney sweep, streaked with soot on his forehead, nose, cheeks, and chin. He scowled and drew a kerchief from the ether.

"Problems with Ms. Granger?"

He shot Mitchell a glare, less effective for the ash in his eyebrows. "That's hardly relevant."

"I've always thought she was a bit much to handle."

"A bit much for you, perhaps," Draco shot back. Though admittedly, sitting alone in the dark of his study, shedding soot onto the expensive Persian rug did not paint Draco in the most competent of lights. "And as it happens, I am a bit preoccupied at the moment. Can this wait?"

"No."

He stopped wiping his face to send a scandalised look at the fire. Rare that Mitchell would push back against a clearly stated preference. Indeed, one of the shining aspects of Mitchell's personality was his obedience to Draco's every whim.

"Excuse me?"

"You need to come to my lab. Right now. It's about the mirror I was working on before Egypt. The one with the odd magical signature. Do you remember?"

He didn't. "Vaguely."

"Well, I was about to put it back into storage, when—"

Draco waved a dismissive hand. "I'm not interested in the details."

He never had been: Mitchell did the research, advised Draco as to whether it was more profitable to store or sell the item of interest, and moved onto the next puzzle. This process had worked for years; Draco saw no need to begin engaging with it now.

Besides, whatever Mitchell's problem, it couldn't be more urgent than the state of his and Hermione's fractured relationship.

"You should be interested," Mitchell pressed. "It's about—"

"This isn't the time."

"But Malfoy—"

"Use your best judgement." Draco scrubbed hard at his face, hoping the soot hadn't sunk too deep into his pores. Maybe Wizard's Quarterly had some suggestions for effective cleansers. "Buy whatever you need."

"That's not—"

"Fine, I'll send you an advance."

Stunned silence. "I mean, yes, thank you, but I don't need—"

Draco closed the Floo connection with a wave and replaced the fireplace screen to prevent further interruption. He eased off his knees, wincing as his locked joints loosened, then leaned back against the leather sofa.

The few candles placed around his study flickered to life. It was Draco's favourite room, filled with the things he loved most: his desk, his bookshelves, and his bar cart. Hermione had once belonged here, too. They had sat at the massive table at the room's centre, searching in vain for clues of the Sun Disc's significance. She had occupied his favourite chair next to the window, propped against the arm, dozing as the tome she held slipped from her fingers and into her lap. She'd caught it before it hit the floor, her instincts for literary preservation sharper than Madame Pince's.

Though Hermione had never lived in the manor, it still felt empty without her.

What would it take to bring her back? Not to the manor, but to him?

Draco was no stranger to trauma. He'd survived Voldemort's attempt at dictatorship and internalised his own role in the Second Wizarding War. He'd seen people die accidentally, categorised in that catch-all field of collateral damage with all its ugly, impersonal connotation, like their lives were no more valuable than blasted-out windows or heaps of broken stone. He'd seen people murdered, extinguished like candle flames, exsanguinated and eaten, erased through the Veil.

He'd come close to doing the deed himself, but hadn't had the courage to say the words, or the will to mean them.

He'd visited a PsychoSocial Healer for months after his trial had concluded and had resumed the sessions after Lucius' sentencing. Draco wasn't a Healer, but he'd experienced enough to understand that sometimes trauma had to be confronted to be healed.

But Hermione couldn't confront what had happened to her. The Vow bound her to secrecy, making it so she couldn't talk to anyone about Egypt.

Couldn't talk to anyone else about Egypt, at least.

But Draco knew what happened. Hell, he probably remembered more of it than she did, considering she'd been possessed by the literal spirit of creation for most of the important bits.

The question of how much Hermione remembered nagged at him. Draco dreamt of her more often than Nott.

He'd memorised the Sun Disc's perfect arc across the Death Chamber; the slow pull of his soul as it had drifted toward the Veil; the touch of her hand as she granted him a second chance.

The kiss that had lit him up like a galaxy.

When the spirit had finished its work, its vessel had collapsed. Draco thought he'd shielded Hermione from the worst of the impact. The fall would have killed her had he not intervened, he was sure of it. But afterwards, when he'd asked her what she remembered, her answer had been: Nothing.

Draco chose to perpetuate the lie. The Vow bound him to it.

Yet, if her dreams were anything like his, the truth was making itself known.

Maybe that was the source of her pain: the violent discrepancy between her conscious and unconscious memories. The scale of the difference would be enough to drive anyone mad.

Still, there were limits to what they could discuss. The Unbreakable Vow activated whenever they came too close to the truth, whenever they touched on a detail that only they could have known.

Their current solution, of course, was to not talk about the details. To not talk about the truth.

Draco straightened from his slump, struck by inspiration.

He and Hermione had been avoiding the subject to appease the spell. If they wanted to live, that's what they would keep doing.

But how they did so mattered.

They didn't have to remain silent. They could create a code.

That was the loophole.

It wasn't the Sun Disc they had found in Egypt, but a rare, intact collection of canopic jars.

And it wasn't the second half of the disc they'd sought in the Cook Islands, but evidence of a marae that mirrored the construction of Maru-Aten.

And the Ministry…

Well, Draco didn't know how to twist what had happened at the Ministry yet, but the fact that he could was key.

Speaking in code circumvented the Vow's restrictions and allowed them to discuss what the spell required they avoid.

The Vow's golden magic, instead of irrevocably binding them together, had nearly torn them apart. And while their lips might be sealed about Egypt, their futures were not so neatly decided.

There was still hope for them.

They could fix this.

He could fix this.

At the moment, Hermione might not want to talk to him, but he saw the price of her denial paid in the sunken lines of her cheeks. And the cost was exorbitant.

If she wouldn't meet with him willingly, then he would have to force a confrontation.

And, as he understood it, the Department of Mysteries had a job opening.

End Notes: WELP, there it is! I hope you stick around. :)

If it's any incentive, this fic is completely written. Chapters will be posted every other week for my schedule, my sanity, and in support of my dream of Seamless Content Delivery™️. Hopefully, by the time this story finishes posting, I'll have another one ready to go.

Feel free to scream at me via socials:
FB: Mis Demeanor
Tumblr and Insta: Misdemeanor1331
Discord: Misdemeanor1331#8940
Reddit: Mzdemeanor1331