Chapter 13: Nihilo Nihil

The rain had increased in fervency when Draco and Harry stepped out of the castle. Draco had to angle his umbrella to avoid receiving a cold face wash. The wind blew so harshly that conversation was a lost goal on the way back to the cabin.

It was like the wind had passed through Draco and pushed his emotions out. As soon as he stepped inside the cabin, it all rushed back in a wave of excitement, disbelief, and sense of accomplishment. Harry looked to be of similar mind, judging by the size and quality of his grin. He pulled Draco into a hug and spin, and Draco couldn't help but laugh.

"Fuck," Harry said. "That was brilliant. You were brilliant."

"I wasn't the only one," Draco replied. "Did you see his face when you owned up to killing him in the future?"

"I might have cracked if I was still pants at Occlumency." Harry released a heavy exhale at the same time that he pulled back from Draco. Holding Draco's upper arms, Harry's grin faded as he looked him over. A ghost of sternness bled back in as concern. "You're freezing. You ought to get into dry clothes."

Without the small amount of body heat Harry put off, Draco started to shiver. "I was thinking tea, as well."

"Go on. I'll handle that."

Draco grabbed the blanket off the bed after changing, and brought it with him out to the sitting room. The fireplace roared more intensely with a swish of his wand. Draco settled on the sofa, although didn't bother to wrap himself up until Harry had joined him.

"You don't have much body heat to leech," Draco commented once they had settled.

Harry laughed. "I'm working on it."

Draco ran his fingers through Harry's damp hair. They snagged in the messy thickness of it, so Harry just tilted his head back. Draco's stomach fluttered at the docile way Harry regarded him, and that only magnified when Harry's eyes closed at the gentle scratch of nails against his scalp. It hit Draco all over again that this Harry—comfortable enough to look vulnerable—was his.

A little wrinkle came to Harry's brow when the kettle was about to boil. His eyes cracked, although closed again briefly when Draco kissed him.

"I'll get it," Draco volunteered.

The sudden loss of tentatively-pooled body heat tensed Draco's shoulders up into a new shiver. He brought the pot and cups over to the tea table to steep there, then got back under the blanket.

"Well." Harry rested his hand on Draco's thigh. "What now?"

"Hm?"

"With Yaxley," Harry said. "You can sure tell Voldemort was starving for validation at this age, huh?"

"It makes him rather easy to manipulate, which might be sad if we didn't know who he becomes later on," Draco said with a shrug. "Most everyone has something that if you meet them on it, they'll go right happily along. Voldemort's is playing into the idea he's important."

"Yeah."

"He also tends to jump into things without thinking, if it's to get an obstacle out of the way." Smirking, Draco brushed the hair off Harry's forehead and ran his thumb lightly over his scar. "Case in point."

Harry exhaled a laugh through his nose. "So what are the details we need to sort out, that you'd mentioned?"

"Primarily how to get Yaxley out of the castle, although something occurred to me on the walk back," Draco said. "Do you remember me saying you can create your own annulus? That so long as you have the Spacetime Turner, you just need to know your destination?"

"Yes."

"What if Yaxley actually does vanish down in the Chamber of Secrets? We could put an annulus down there undisturbed, and head straight home with him."

"To see if he needs to be delinked?" Harry asked.

Draco nodded. "If he does, we could leave him in my lab. Yaxley would be registered missing here for a reason unrelated to us, so it wouldn't put on any pressure when we'd come back to deal with the Cabinets."

"Right."

"And, depending on how this plays out with Voldemort, we might be adding him to the Ally list on our blackboard." Draco toyed with Harry's hair again. "What would you think about that?"

Harry started lightly stroking Draco's thigh with his thumb. "It doesn't seem like such a big deal right now because he's only sixteen years old. He's already well on his way to becoming himself, is the thing. We shouldn't underestimate him."

"He believes that we're here to help him."

"Can we trust that won't change once he's had some time to think things over?"

Draco hummed. "Well, we know what the future holds. Yaxley definitely disappears, so Voldemort helped us."

"Unless Yaxley only ever made it as far as the Chamber, if that's where we decide to put an annulus down," Harry said. "We could disappear down there too, if Voldemort double-crosses us."

"He couldn't trap us down there," Draco replied. "I would just use an annulus to take us back to the Department of Mysteries. I also can't imagine you hesitating if Voldemort pulled his wand or tried to set the basilisk on us."

"I can't imagine it either." Harry shrugged. "This is just me approaching this as an Auror. We need to plan for these kinds of contingencies because we'll only have Voldemort's alliance for as long as he finds us useful."

"The future might add some context." Draco's elbow dug into the back of the sofa as he readjusted how he sat. "Dumbledore booted us off the grounds in 1975, but he did so politely."

"We must have left some sort of impression," Harry said. "Dumbledore recognized us right away, thirty-two years later. As sharp as he is, that's still rather significant."

"He would associate us with the disappearance of a student—Yaxley." Draco narrowed his eyes in thought, peering out the window. "You would think, if he wasn't to some degree certain in his suspicions, he would have humoured us rather than boot us. So he must consider us some sort of immediate threat to the student body."

"That's a lot of ambiguity." Harry wrinkled his nose. "Maybe looking at Dumbledore isn't very helpful."

"Well, what's certain, then?" Draco replied. "We definitely don't come to such blows with Voldemort through all this that he doesn't survive to 1975."

Harry laughed rather dryly.

"You've also said you wouldn't let him get away with double-crossing us, so I don't think we ought to worry about our personal safety while dealing with Yaxley's removal. We just don't know yet if 1975 Voldemort is an Ally or Adversary. It'll depend how things play out here, although I honestly believe he'll turn Ally. He's not stupid, and he knows that you've killed him once before."

"I've told him I did," Harry pointed out. "He doesn't have any way of knowing it's actually true."

"He knows we're time travellers. If we were going to hurt or kill him, we had our chance when we were alone earlier. He's seen my Mark. He would think he knows that I belong to him."

Harry's hand on Draco's thigh tensed into a squeeze. As much as Draco would love to believe it stemmed from possessiveness, he didn't see that in the way Harry contemplated him.

"What?" Draco asked.

"Are you all right with this?" Harry replied after a moment. "Teaming up with Voldemort?"

Draco furrowed his brow. "Why wouldn't I be, if he's useful?"

"It doesn't make you nervous, or anything?"

"No." Draco's brow knitted a bit more. "Does it make you nervous?"

"No."

"Why do you think it would make me nervous, then? Do I seem nervous?"

Harry shook his head. "As an ex-Death Eater, I mean. You're not uncomfortable?"

"Should I be?"

The answer to that was probably yes, which was why Harry stayed quiet in response. As hard as Draco tried against it, some defensiveness preemptively rose within him. He didn't really much care to derail a discussion on job tactics in order to justify himself.

Draco met Harry's assessing gaze with a shrewd one of his own. "I'm not uncomfortable, but I'm getting the impression that you are. Does seeing me this close to Voldemort again make you feel like you're sitting here with a Death Eater?"

Rather than fire off a reactive no, Harry slipped back into thought. Draco started extricating himself from Harry's grip and the blanket.

"Where are you going?" Harry asked.

"Don't worry, I'm not running off in a strop," Draco said. "The tea should be steeped."

"Oh." Harry relaxed enough to let Draco go. "All right."

"You can answer yes, you know." Draco glanced at him. "I'd rather you be honest if we're to discuss it."

"I can't say yes," Harry replied. "I can't give a definite no either, though."

"No, you can't—and that isn't me telling you I'm about to happily backslide into all that rubbish," Draco told him as he poured their cups. "I think you realize that—just not why."

"Yeah," Harry slowly replied.

"Let me tell you something I learned from my service to Voldemort," Draco said. "You learn very quickly what the limit of your humanity is, and what sorts of motivations exist that could push you to forsake it."

Harry stayed quiet, not saying anything even to thank Draco for the cup he accepted.

"I was granted full permission to be as despicable as I pleased." Draco stirred milk and sugar into his. "I knew that should I succeed in assassinating Dumbledore, I would see no trouble for it. I knew, exactly how things happened, that Dumbledore's death would rapidly lead to the rest of the dominos falling in resistance against Voldemort. I would be starting on a promising path toward his right hand. Voldemort and I were similar in our youth, after all. We craved validation, recognition, and power. I saw myself in him, and he said he saw himself in me, as well."

Draco turned toward Harry on the sofa. He wouldn't have been surprised if Harry would rather forego physical touch with this discussion, but he hadn't moved away. Although Harry had certainly gone very serious, he still rested a hand on Draco's knee.

"The point is," Draco continued, "I know precisely what I'm capable of. I can hurt people as means to an end, so long as I don't have to look them in the eye. I will forever be capable of that degree of harm, and it'll never bother me as much as it ought to. But—I can also state more confidently than most people that I'm unable to kill."

Almost like a second thought in the silence to follow, Harry took a drink from his tea. He continued to study Draco afterward. "I guess that's what you meant when we discussed it at your place in Oxford, right? All of that's made you who you are today. You have to stay aware of it so that you don't fall back in."

Draco nodded.

"It doesn't bother you to get this close to it, though?" Harry asked. "Even if you're just pretending?"

"No, because I know the difference." Draco took a sip of his tea. "Do you remember I also told you in Oxford that morality isn't written into existence? And, when we discussed Sirius, that a certain type of nihilism arises from dealing with dimensional travel?"

"Mhm."

"What I've learned going from serving Voldemort to being an Unspeakable is that Evil is very rarely committed for the sake of Evil," Draco said. "What's Good and Evil are relative. When I served Voldemort, my family's prosperity—and later their safety—was the moral Good. Anything I did in pursuit of that, even if the act itself was objectively Evil, was justified."

"Sure." Harry nodded.

"From my perspective on this job, getting Weasley home is the moral Good." Draco held a hand up, fingers spread, to emphasis the point. "I have no qualms manipulating or collaborating with Voldemort to do that. I don't care if I have to hurt or trick the people surrounding Ron Prewett, because I know who he really is. I know what Weasley means to his loved ones."

"Even if it puts you in a position similar to when you were an active Death Eater?"

"Yes."

Harry's gaze darted to Draco's left forearm, currently hidden by his jumper sleeve. Still in thought, he brought his cup to his lips for a lengthy draw.

Draco smirked with a tilt of the head. "Now you're uncomfortable."

Harry grunted with a new wrinkle of the nose. "I can't say I wasn't warned what this job might entail. You've told me multiple times that it would be morally challenging. We're already at odds with people like Dumbledore, the Auror office, and the Weasley and Prewett families. It's another reason for me to be Obliviated, isn't it? So I don't have to live with whatever we end up having done."

"I don't know if that's why," Draco said. "Theta's note never gave an explicit reason."

"Yeah." Harry bunched his lips off to one side while he thought. "You know what?"

Draco made a noise of acknowledgement, since he was in the middle of sipping his tea.

"I was trained as an Auror to think the way you talk about morality," Harry said. "You keep a goal in mind, and everything else is a means to an end—with honest attempt to keep damages minimal in the pursuit, of course. You'd said back in the Slytherin common room that Enforcement agents tend to struggle with moral dichotomies. I didn't agree, but didn't want to argue the point right then and there. It's all kind of the same thing, really. We individually decide who or what we're willing to go the lengths for, and everything else becomes relative to that."

"Exactly."

Draco set his empty cup on the tea table. He felt this conversation required they be face to face, so he shifted again how he sat. Rather than settle back beside Harry, Draco swung a knee over his thighs and settled in a straddle over his lap.

"We need to keep our ultimate goal in mind," Draco told Harry once he had eye contact. "Weasley must come home. We cannot compromise on that, and we will not compromise on that. Everything—and everyone—in this universe is either a tool or a detriment. It's easy to sit here and have a laugh about how we took Voldemort hook, line, and sinker earlier with the story we told him. We will have to do the same with Dumbledore, your father, and whoever else stands between us and Weasley. Regardless of who they were to us back home, they are all equally in the way here."

Harry nodded. "It's all relative to Ron."

"Unless you never want to see him again, you can't get stuck in the minutia." Draco ran a hand down Harry's chest. "Do you understand?"

"That's what I was going to say about being trained as an Auror." Harry laid his head back. "We're prepared to handle this sort of thing so that civilians don't have to. I guess even though your work is more on the theoretical side of things, the principles are no different."

"One way or another, you and I were both given the tools to make this job possible." Draco rolled up his left sleeve. "It's a disservice to the struggles we endured in the process not to make use of them. The Department of Mysteries certainly didn't recruit me for my outstanding moral fibre. People like me—and people like you—are necessary."

Draco laid his left arm on his thigh, Dark Mark up. Harry's gaze dropped to it, his expression rather straight in his study. He set his empty cup aside, then ran his fingers down over the skull, the serpent's body, and finally its head. Harry rested his hand over the Mark after that. His thumb started moving the same way it had on Draco's thigh earlier.

"If delinking is necessary, they're all essentially going to die," Harry said. "If it isn't, they're going to be hurt. There's no avoiding inflicting harm here unless we want that harm to come home with us—and all because we refused to act. Even worse, we would always be able to say where Ron is, and what means are necessary to retrieve him. We just didn't have the stomach to go through with it, and we would have to answer to that. I would have to go without my best friend for the rest of my life. I'd have to look in the mirror everyday and tell myself I did the right thing by taking the high road."

"You wouldn't," Draco replied. "Not after being Obliviated."

"Obliviation be damned." Harry met Draco's gaze again. "I'm not so weak I'd let myself be convinced I did everything I could."

His expression hardened with defiance. Draco felt his soften in contrast, resultant of a warm flutter in his stomach. It drew him in, to where his forearms rested on the sofa either side of Harry's head. He was too close then to pass up on a kiss. They took it slow, although a new kind of warmth was seeping into Draco's blood. Harry's hands creeping up the back of his jumper helped to spread it.

Draco stayed close when they broke apart, his voice low. "We're still on the same page, then."

Harry nodded, cracked eyes glassy with want.

"You know. . ."

"Hm?"

"I imagine that had we come this far only for me to balk, you would be rather put off," Draco said. "Cross, if it meant Weasley would be out of reach."

"That's why I asked earlier if you were all right with this."

"Would you think I was a hypocrite?" Draco feathered his fingers through Harry's hair. "Weasley was poisoned from my attempt to get at Dumbledore in sixth year, but I won't do anything now to try and even the score?"

"You care about the score?" One of Harry's eyebrows twitched upward. "This is the first I'm hearing about it."

"I'm asking if you would see it that way."

"Maybe, but not because of the mead." Harry ran slow, flat palms down over Draco's thighs. "That wasn't why you came on this job, and you haven't bothered mincing words about where your moral compass points. If you hesitated now, it would either mean you don't really care to see this through, or you've been lying to me this whole time about who you are."

"That would be rather difficult when we're crammed into such close quarters."

Harry exhaled a spurt of air and grinned. "Especially sharing a bed."

Draco leaned down to put his mouth against Harry's ear, his voice a whisper again. "Saccharine."

With a laugh, Harry wrapped his arms around Draco's middle. "Shut up."

"What should I do instead?"

Draco nipped lightly at Harry's neck, their chests and hips pressing in the pursuit of proximity. Harry's breathing changed with it. Draco felt the bite of nails in his back, even though Harry kept them short. Harry was hard.

His exhale sounded closer to a sigh. "Stay the course with me."

"Hm?" Draco tugged Harry's earlobe with his teeth.

"This job." Harry's voice was deep. "There is no Good or Evil here. There's only you, me, and Ron, and then everyone else."

Draco sat up straight, his heartbeat palpable as a throb throughout his entire body. What felt like molten lava pooled in his lower abdomen.

"My," he said, a smirk burgeoning. "Those are bedroom words."

Although difficult with a pair of sex-mushed brains, a plan of attack for Yaxley began to manifest throughout the afternoon. Draco and Harry discussed it further over dinner, and then put biro to parchment about it. It turned into a letter they intended to send Riddle the next day from Hogsmeade.

Riddle sent a response nearly right away. He'd been thinking as well, and suggested that everything happen early the following morning. Riddle and Yaxley weren't expected in lessons until Double Potions at ten o'clock. Slughorn would grow immediately concerned when neither of them showed up, which would set off a search. Riddle would sort things out on his end from there, since Draco and Harry would already be gone from the castle. Riddle's Time Turner would remain in his trunk like usual on Mondays, to avoid becoming a factor in any potential investigation.

The most pressing issue Draco and Harry needed to sort out for their end of things was how to get into the castle. From an Auror perspective, Harry suggested they not enter the castle like they had when meeting with Dippet. It would look too suspicious to have been around when all of this happened.

They only had one Invisibility Cloak between them now, and no Whomping Willow and Shrieking Shack. Draco, nose wrinkled, resigned to the idea of cutting through the Forbidden Forest. It was doable, but far from ideal.

With things concreted into place, Draco and Harry faced an empty Sunday ahead of them. In a way, Draco was glad for that since he could fall right back into what the previous day had mostly comprised of with Harry. Draco couldn't think of a better method to taper off his nervous energy toward the fact this was going to happen so soon. Then again, had they all just planned to get it done Sunday, Draco might not have had any reason to be nervous in the first place.

A better sleep that night would have been ideal, but alas. Draco yawned steadily as he and Harry prepared to leave. Harry, used to operations like these, was about the only thing keeping Draco from worrying himself into some stupid sort of state. He'd slept just fine, and was calm in the face of making palpable progress on their job.

Harry packed his Invisibility Cloak inside his jacket. Draco put the Spacetime Turner's chain around both their necks at just past seven o'clock, and they tilted away to where time no longer ticked. Fingers entwined to ensure they stayed together, they cut west into the Forbidden Forest. It was a horrid, complicated walk that took hours. Nearly running late despite the hour allotted for when running real-time became a necessity, they found an open door in the eastern courtyard. No other walls came up between them and the second-floor girls' toilet, spare that door itself.

They'd passed students and staff by, but this corridor was empty. Draco hoped it wasn't worrisome that they didn't spot Riddle along the way, considering the eastern tower was probably the quickest shot here from the Slytherin common room. However, after tilting back to reality and slipping into the toilet, it only turned out that Riddle had beaten them there.

He leaned against the wall beside the sinks with folded arms. As they all sized each other up, he smiled coldly. "Ready, then?"

"Whenever you are," Harry said.

Riddle lowered his head over one of the sinks and let out a slew of hisses. The sink started to lower in its place. "I shouldn't be more than, oh. . .half an hour at most?"

Draco hesitated. "Where exactly is the basilisk, so that we can mind ourselves with it?"

"It won't come unless it's called."

"He's right," Harry whispered in his ear. "Come on."

Even though they used Self-Levitation Charms, Draco still felt dirty when he and Harry reached the bottom. The smell of sewage curled his nose.

Harry pointed his chin deeper in, taking a step in that direction as well. "Come on. It's a bit of a walk."

They rushed along, Draco's heart pounding the whole way. It kept shortening his breath, but Harry was patient the few times Draco needed to stop. They came up on a couple of doors that opened automatically for them. An eerie glow cast green light across the stone floor. Water dripped somewhere. As they neared the far end of the Chamber, the stern, angular statue of Salazar Slytherin materialized out of the blackness.

"Do you need me to do anything to help with the annulus?" Harry asked.

"No." Draco slashed his wand at the floor to clear a spot. "It's simple."

Not a few minutes later, they were back to waiting. Draco's heart pounded again as he and Harry took seats on one of Slytherin's shoes. Although it was likely the combination of his and Harry's quiet breathing, Draco kept thinking he could hear the basilisk respiring rhythmically in sleep.

The doors they'd come through opened at the other end. Draco squinted into the darkness, but he couldn't see anything. Everything fell quiet when the stone doors ground to a halt.

There were slow footsteps, followed by Yaxley's voice. "Bloody hell, Tom. Do you really think this could be it?"

"I think it might be," Riddle replied, sounding just as awestruck.

Harry touched Draco's leg to get his attention, then pressed a finger to his lips. The doors closed again. From the darkness emerged two orbs of wandlight. Yaxley and Riddle made a slow approach. Yaxley's gaze was stuck upward on the greater part of Slytherin's statue. When it came down toward Draco and Harry, he gasped and jumped so hard that he almost dropped his wand.

The light extinguished, and then Yaxley pointed his wand at Draco and Harry. Draco illuminated his, although Harry held his wand intent for a quick Shield Charm should things go sideways. So far, this all went according to the discussed plan. That didn't slow Draco's heart, although Yaxley calmed down. It was perhaps comforting to him that Riddle hadn't reacted in surprise or hostility.

Yaxley's wand lowered slightly. "What is this? Why are you down here?"

The light behind Yaxley went out before Draco could come up with an answer. Harry's wand rose as precaution in the corner of Draco's vision, and Yaxley turned his head.

"Tom?" he said. "What's going on?"

"Stupefy."

A flash of red light burst against Yaxley's back. He propelled forward onto the stone floor. His wand clattered toward Harry, who caught it under his boot.

Shadows cast oddly over Riddle's face as he stepped up beside Yaxley's sprawled form. He studied him with near-boredom. "Well, that was easy. What now?"

Draco levitated Yaxley's body with a Mobilization Spell. Yaxley's arms and legs dangled loosely beneath him like tentacles. "We make our exit."

Riddle nodded. "All right."

While Draco set Yaxley in the centre of the annulus, Harry lingered over by Riddle. Riddle tilted his head enough to see past Harry, so he could watch Draco.

"You'd better go," Harry told him. "We'll be back to the castle once Dippet reaches out to us."

"Right," Riddle said, quieter than before. "When will I see you again? Will I see you?"

"That depends," Harry replied. "We'll keep an eye on things. If someone else seems like they need to get out of the way, we'll deal with it. It depends on the situation whether or not you'll need to be involved."

Finally, with that, Riddle turned his back on Harry. Wandtip lit again, he headed for the exit. Draco felt like he didn't draw a full, actual breath until the doors had closed and Riddle was gone.

Harry stepped into the annulus. "Let's leave before he has a change of heart."

Draco fished his journal out of a pocket. "Can you illuminate this for me?"

He referred closely to it as he inscribed the circle. Harry kept an eye on the Chamber exit. Another wave of relief washed over Draco when the final rune settled into place and they undocked from reality.

"Well." Draco pulled the Spacetime Turner out from under his cloak. "Moment of truth, Harry."

Harry gave a single nod.

Draco turned the Turner and let it go. He watched Yaxley for any sort of sign that he might transition out in a bolder way. They arrived in their home universe. Rather suddenly—as if Yaxley had never been a teenager in the first place—he was replaced on the floor by a grizzled, aged adult. Draco's eyes widened and his lips parted.

Yaxley stirred. He reached up to push scraggly blond hair away from his face. Blue eyes swept about as he groaned, then focused on Draco.

"Lucius," he croaked. "What happened?"