Chapter 16: Master and Marionette

Once they'd exhausted themselves on the logistics of appealing Harry's Obliviation, Draco was content to fish Hot Elven Knights out from under his arse and suggest they pick up where they'd last left off. They didn't get very far in that before Draco's eyelids drooped again. Harry's voice started to sound far away as he read. It eventually went quiet, and then Draco was nudged back to full consciousness.

"Come on," Harry said. "Let's turn in."

Draco reached the bed first after going through the bathroom, and had nearly dozed off again when Harry slipped in beside him. He wondered upon waking why he'd dressed—but Draco hadn't been naked to begin with. It was the first night since he and Harry first fell into this bed together that they hadn't fucked each other to sleep.

Trying not to jostle Harry, Draco reached for his watch on the bedside table to check the time. A couple more hours of sleep was an option before he ought to get started on breakfast. However, as Draco closed his eyes to drift back off, his mind kicked into some sort of gear.

There actually was a possibility for him and Harry to keep what they'd started here. Harry had hinted before that he sought a way, with things like suggesting potential loopholes about just how secret Draco's work was. He wanted to keep this context of who they were together. They had already come too far for him to care to start over.

That Draco ought to get his thoughts on the matter off his mind had him sneaking out of bed. He closed the bedroom door so that Harry could sleep through the sound of the kettle coming up. Draco settled on the sofa with his tea and journal, feeling a little silly to approach his personal life like a job. It was only natural to wonder what the future could look like, he supposed. Clearly nothing was ever fully written into stone, given the turn Draco's life had very suddenly taken when that red folder appeared in his office's inbox.

He shifted back to Weasley's case while getting started on breakfast. Between flipping bacon, Draco leaned against the counter and went over his notes regarding Dumbledore and Voldemort. He lifted his chin when the bedroom door opened. The corners of his mouth automatically pulled up.

"Morning," he said.

"Hey."

Harry stumbled into the bathroom, and then out into the kitchen. He picked a piece of bacon on his way to where Draco stood. Their shoulders touched as Harry mirrored Draco's lean.

"Been up a while?" Harry asked.

"A few hours." Draco shrugged. "I started thinking about our next steps, and it seemed rather a lost cause to try and go back to sleep."

"I need to wake up a bit more yet before we get into it." Harry stifled a yawn. "Breakfast first, for sure."

Puttering around the kitchen felt so painfully domestic that Draco's chest hurt a little. He left Harry to cleanup while he had a shower, and then accepted a fresh cup of tea when he emerged. Draco took up on the sitting room sofa with his journal, waiting for Harry to join him.

"All right," Harry said. "What're you thinking, then? What's our first move toward Ron?"

Draco ran his thumb over the edge of his journal pages. "I think we need to touch base with Voldemort."

Harry stilled with his tea halfway to his mouth. "Under what pretence?"

"I have some ideas for simple ways to handle Weasley's extraction, but we can't bank on everything going how we want it to," Draco said. "We need to plan for any potential worst-case scenarios, such as if we cross paths with Dumbledore. It's like you said: if we cock this up, we may not get a second chance. Everything must go off without a hitch this one time."

"Yeah," Harry agreed.

"We have a fairly clear idea of where Dumbledore currently stands with us. He's going to be a problem if he catches on that we're interested in another one of his students. He'll be a hard sell to get out from between us and Weasley."

"Which is why we discuss proposing a trade in the event of that contingency."

"If we wish to do that, we have to ensure that we can actually fulfill our end. We can't just assume that Voldemort would answer if I summoned him." Draco paused. "On that note, we need to test that I actually can summon him with my Dark Mark. I never have before, in other universes."

"Yeah, that wouldn't be a bad idea." Harry hummed. "So—okay, I see the value in doing this."

Draco hid hesitation behind a sip of tea. "I have a concern."

"What's that?"

"Your Occlumency skills," Draco said. "We aren't dealing with sixteen-year-old Voldemort anymore. We'll be approaching him at the height of his power, and he was a proficient Legilimens long before even now. We cannot allow for a margin of error that he might see one of us as hiding something. . .such as a potential plan to double-cross him."

"I'm fine at Occlumency now." Harry came off stern.

"Fine is not proficient," Draco replied. "Fine is not enough."

Harry's brow settled into a furrow. "So, what, then? Do you think you're proficient enough to go up against Voldemort like that? And surely you aren't suggesting you do it alone."

"That's exactly what I'm suggesting." Draco turned more to face Harry on the sofa. "This isn't something we can afford to cock up. If a meeting with Voldemort doesn't go well, then striking a deal with Dumbledore is off the table. We wouldn't be able to bluff that. And then what happens if we come up against Dumbledore, but have no recourse? What happens in the event he declines to trade in the first place? He's rather impossible to simply pin down, so you would have quite the terrible decision to make."

Harry stared at Draco, clearly unimpressed.

"Were you not prepared to discuss the absolute worst-case scenario today?" Draco asked.

"No."

Draco drew a slow breath to quell the discomfort natural to rise with this topic. Harry had taken to chewing his lips, head bowed.

"Maybe, er. . ." Harry spoke again. "Let's not go there yet. If—dealing with Dumbledore—is the absolute worst-case scenario, then that means there's plenty else to explore."

"Meeting with Voldemort to organize either a double-cross or helping hand is suddenly not quite so terrible a prospect, is it?"

Harry sighed. "It's still not great."

"No," Draco replied. "I believe we're in agreement that the absolute worst case be avoided at all costs. We start with the hope that settling things with Weasley goes smooth and quiet. If Dumbledore happens to interrupt us, we hope instead that he could be persuaded to a trade—one of which we would have to deliver on."

"Yeah."

"If Dumbledore refuses to trade, we would then have means to get him out of the way that doesn't include one of us doing the deed. We know my limits on the matter, and it's not a good idea to test yours in the heat of the moment."

"There's no need to test them." Harry rubbed his forehead. "I can't do it."

"In that case, meeting with Voldemort must go well." Draco brought them back around to the topic at hand. "Therefore, even the smallest uncertainty surrounding your Occlumency skills means writing them off completely."

"That's all fair and fine," Harry said. "But if the quality of my Occlumency skills are up for debate, then so are yours."

"They're sufficient."

"You're absolutely certain?"

"They have been before, when it comes to deceiving him." Draco's left thumb gave a slight tremble. "How do you think me, my parents, and Aunt Bella lived to tell the tale after you escaped from the manor during the war?"

Harry blinked a few times. "Well, I'd heard you'd been locked up. I knew you'd all been punished."

However long ago it was, the memory of Father and Aunt Bella screaming and pleading for mercy wasn't far enough away for Draco not to clearly recall. "That was only because Aunt Bella had called Voldemort for what he concluded to be a false alarm. Had he known that we actually had allowed Harry Potter to escape, that would have been certain death for all four of us. We were already on his last nerve."

Harry studied Draco. "What all happened with that, exactly?"

Draco hesitated to think. "I don't know that just telling you a play by play can really do how terrifying it was justice. You could nearly smell the dread when Voldemort arrived. It was like he sucked the air right out of the room."

Harry stayed quiet.

"He just stood there, looking at all of us," Draco kept on. "He was winded, like he'd run the whole way there. Then, he calmed down. He said—and, of course, you can only imagine how he said this. It was almost like he was teasing us. He said, 'you're all afraid you're about to die. Why?'"

Harry grimaced.

"I realized he couldn't tell what had happened. He couldn't see past our fear—not the fear for our own lives, but each other's. That was all fine for Voldemort though, because Greyback was there." Draco wrinkled his nose. "So Voldemort revived him. Of course, Greyback was quite happy to tell him that he'd brought Harry Potter to the manor. He told Voldemort that I had identified you."

"You hadn't, though," Harry slowly said. "But you did know it was me, right?"

"Oh, immediately." Although Draco would normally smirk on that jest, the muscles in his face were too heavy for it at the moment. "Voldemort squeezed it out of Greyback that I hadn't explicitly identified you—not while he was conscious, anyway. That then became the issue to settle. I was the only person in the room that had gotten a close look at you. Voldemort moved on to me."

"And what did you tell him?"

"I looked him dead in the eye and said that it wasn't you," Draco replied. "I said that Father and Aunt Bella had gotten excited, and I felt pressured to say yes—hence my hesitation."

Harry made a sound in his throat.

"I kept as calm as I could." Draco ran his thumbs over his tea cup. "He knew I was scared, certainly. That wasn't anything new. I can still see his face, how it contorted with absolute rage. I thought he'd realized I was lying and that was it, but I didn't let myself fall to pieces just yet. Then, he called for Aunt Bella. He turned on her. He wanted to know why she'd wasted his time."

"But—Dobby," Harry said. "He did identify me."

"After Greyback was down. But yes, we all knew at that point it was you. Again—they weren't going to tell Voldemort that either, were they? Knowing where that would land us? Voldemort didn't give them much a chance to speak anyway, before the first Crucio struck."

A moment passed, after which Harry spoke again. "Fuck."

"The point is, my Occlumency skills are sufficient," Draco replied.

"Okay. . ." Harry hesitantly agreed. "And—what exactly would you tell Voldemort if you met with him? What's your approach—or have you thought that far yet?"

"I have, actually. I came up with a story that fits with his line of understanding, while keeping certain things secret."

Draco had a handful of pages about it in his journal. Harry stayed quiet while Draco ran through them, spare a few times he asked for clarification. Were it not for that, the blank expression on Harry's face might have convinced Draco that he'd shut down. It remained devoid of emotion when Draco finished. A succession of blinks and a sip of tea seemed to put Harry's mind back into motion—enough at least to point out a few issues he saw with everything.

The pages of Draco's journal were marked up by the time he penned the last modification in the margin. "Anything else?"

"Erm. . ." Harry had ended up with his legs pretzeled on the couch, his elbow sharp in his knee while his fist balled against his cheek. He held his empty tea cup in the other hand, which he peered into as though he expected to find something there. "Run me through it all now?"

"Bear with me, because I'll need to rewrite everything to accommodate the changes. It's a bit messy."

When Draco finished again, Harry pressed his lips together. His brow was low.

"I'm not hearing anything that doesn't fit," he eventually said. "I'm not sure if that's because it's clean, or because I'm too close to it at the moment."

"We could take a break," Draco suggested. "That would give me time to write it all out fresh. We could make some headway elsewhere."

"I wouldn't mind going into Hogsmeade, maybe," Harry replied. "That requires a lot less thinking. It would make a good palate cleanser."

"Sure."

Draco's head felt rather thick, as well. He also didn't much care for the weighty discomfort that seemed to sew itself through the front of his rib cage. Harry had a similar pensiveness to him as they readied to leave for the village. When they set off, they each packed a bundle of the newspapers due to be returned to Rosa.

Harry sighed when they'd rounded the first corner in the path. "It's hard to believe we're doing this again, isn't it?"

"Doing what?" Draco asked.

"Just—going through it again," Harry said with a glance at Draco. "It feels different, now that things have changed. That day at your manor, especially. . .it's one I would've preferred to forget. I didn't realize—or maybe just didn't really think—that I might've left you to die."

Draco shrugged. "What's there to say, all these years later? I survived. We both did."

Harry fell quiet for a long while, his bottom lip vanished between his teeth. "Because I was one of Voldemort's Horcruxes, I could see into his mind sometimes. I could see through his eyes."

Draco's nerves gave a flutter, as if to remind him of their presence.

"I saw a lot that day—well, sort of." Harry cleared his throat. "Voldemort had returned to your manor from Nurmengard. He literally killed Grindelwald right after Bellatrix summoned him."

Draco thought again of the drawing room when Voldemort had materialized inside of it, mere milliseconds after Harry and the others had vanished. He hadn't realized that Voldemort arrived with such fresh blood on his hands. It was rather par for the course as far as he went, but it felt much more significant now to consider that that blood belonged to Grindelwald. However defenceless and weak he'd likely been, that hadn't always been the case. What would have been four more Killing Curses to Voldemort, that day?

Drawing a deep breath, Draco pushed the emotion out of himself the same way he had when toe to toe with Voldemort. "There's no value in discussing it. Things like this are what I meant when I told you we couldn't afford to get lost in the minutia."

"Well, I want to talk about it—"

"I know," Draco said. "I do too. But we really need to focus, Harry. I didn't tell you about what happened at the manor to turn this into a conversation about what you might regret, or how things have changed because of how we've changed. I only wanted you to appreciate the same way I do how difficult dealing with Voldemort like this is. I don't suggest approaching him lightly."

"It's not that." Harry came to a stop on the path. "I basically left you to die, but you're still willing to do this for me. You're willing to do this for Ron."

"It's more I don't want you in a position where you have to either choose between actively killing Dumbledore or passively allowing Ron to die," Draco said. "I've been in that situation, and there's no winning. The arguments made at my Death Eater trial about proportionality, lesser evil, and duress during wartime don't make you feel much better either, later on. You're excused by the court, but never justified. Even when. . ." Draco hesitated, pushing back a flicker of emotion that attempted to push through. "Even when every time you hear your mum's voice after all's said and done, it seems worth it—like it was all the right thing to do."

A strange tremor passed over Harry's facial muscles, like a ripple on a pond.

"You shouldn't bring that burden home with us," Draco continued. "I don't want you to think about it every time you look at Ron, or watch him play with his children, or whatever else. If I do this one thing, I can spare you."

"You're willing to do it for me," Harry repeated.

"Well. . .yes." Draco furrowed his brow. "Wouldn't you do the same?"

"Yeah," Harry said right away, then swallowed. "I guess it's easier to offer something like this than accept it."

"Don't I know it," Draco replied. "I couldn't even accept you speaking at my trial."

Harry toed the ground, drawing deeply into his lungs. "I dunno. I swear I'm not getting stuck in the minutia. I just. . .you're putting yourself in danger for the hope you might make things easier for me. It's not something I would have expected from you."

"Really?" The corner of Draco's mouth twitched toward a smirk. "I've proven how far I'm willing to go for someone I care about. Is it that much of a surprise, all considered, that that includes you?"

"No." Harry paused. "I don't know what I'm trying to say. I guess that I understand how significant this is. How am I even going to know—? What if you don't come back?"

"Harry."

Harry rubbed his face with both hands. "I know. I have to stop."

"To be honest, you going to pieces is helpful to me," Draco said. "It's good practice to hold my nerve."

The strained nature of Harry's laughter made it clear he did so very much against his will. He went serious quickly afterward, and failed to soften when Draco stood in front of him. Draco held him by his upper arms.

"I'll do it sooner than later," Draco told him. "Then it's over with. For now, come. We have work to do."

Draco was aware his emotional availability slipped away out of necessity as he prepared to go up against Voldemort. Since Harry understood that, Draco wouldn't let himself feel bad for it. He liked to think that it balanced Harry's nervous energy, grounding him.

Dumbledore still defeated Grindelwald in this universe, so that was good news. Draco and Harry had also asked Rosa for papers from the spring of 1943, to look into whatever else might be publicly available regarding Yaxley's disappearance. The Prophet didn't say much other than Yaxley was ruled dead because 1943 had etched itself as a year of death on the Black family tapestry. Draco decided it wasn't a good idea to muse aloud that the tapestry in their home universe likely marked him dead every time he travelled elsewhere. If anything happened to Draco here that rendered him unable to bodily return home, it would remain that way.

That thought put Draco to work late the next morning, as he did some final prep before he would Floo to Malfoy Manor.

"I need to show you something," he told Harry.

"What?"

Draco opened his journal to the latest page he'd written a slew of runes on. "If anything does happen to me, this is how you get home."

Harry's hands shook as he took it to look over, but Draco felt nothing for it.

"Okay," was all Harry said, hardly audible.

"Right," Draco brusquely replied. "I'm going, then."

He headed for the fireplace, letting Harry slip out of his mind as the space between them grew. Harry might as well have been a thousand miles away when Draco tossed a pinch of Blue Floo into the flames.

Draco stepped out into his chamber at Malfoy Manor. It was as quiet and undisturbed as when he'd come to look in on last Sunday's family dinner. Sunlight streamed through the skylights at an angle, illuminating red highlights in the western wall's mahogany.

After soundproofing the room with a wave of his wand, Draco pressed its tip to his forearm. The faint black of his Dark Mark flooded in like ink. He clenched his hand into a fist in attempt to hold off the tightness that came with it. Unfortunately, nothing much could be done about the heat that also arose when summoning the Dark Lord.

A black cloud like ectoplasm manifested in the centre of the room. It coalesced into a man now Draco's height. The Dark Lord's jawline had filled out from when he'd been a teenager, and his face matured. The whites of his eyes had turned red. Lines on his forehead and on either side of his mouth smoothed out as he assessed Draco. That cold smile hadn't changed in the slightest.

Draco bowed. "My Lord."

"Well, well." The Dark Lord's tone harboured a jest. "We meet again."

"The time has finally come."

The Dark Lord peered around. "Where's the other one? That Potter?"

"I thought it best he not accompany me," Draco said. "I can explain why if you wish, but it would require everything else I summoned you to discuss as context."

"There's a lot, is there?"

"Potter and I didn't want to waste your time by reaching out whenever we made some incremental bit of progress." Draco slipped his hands into his pockets and leaned against the back of the closest sofa. "I have a bit of a list, as result."

"I see."

"I'll do my best to be swift about it all, as you've become a very busy man." Draco smirked. "Potter and I had jumped ahead in time from 1943 to see how our assistance panned out. The seventies seemed like a safe bet for their quietness. . .or so we thought, anyway. Not only are you gaining power at an alarming rate according to your adversaries, but Corban Yaxley's role in betraying you wasn't taken up by someone else. That was something we sought to confirm."

The Dark Lord grew serious again, his eyes narrowing. Draco felt a probe into his mind. The Dark Lord's gaze turned more curious as whatever he'd found fell in line with Draco's apparent earnestness.

"What do you mean by that?" he asked.

"The removal we performed with Yaxley was partially a test for a larger issue," Draco said. "The manner in which he betrayed you in the original timeline was by informing Dumbledore of your Horcruxes."

It was very slight and very quiet, but Draco caught a sharpened inhale. Another search flitted through his mind before the Dark Lord stepped off for the other side of the room. His disquiet birthed a suspicion in Draco, which quickly bloomed into realization.

"You created your Horcruxes this time in response to Potter and I's first visit," he spoke. "You sought a way to make yourself immortal, to avoid any other means of death that might find you."

The Dark Lord turned his head so that the silhouette of his face became visible. "I created them in the original timeline?"

"Yes."

"Yet I was still killed."

"Because Yaxley divulged the fact that you had them—more than one—and then Dumbledore set off on having them destroyed before Potter delivered the final blow."

"You fixed it, though?" The Dark Lord turned to face Draco again. "You're saying that the manner in which you removed Yaxley—with that circle—has kept my Horcruxes secret?"

"Yes." Draco thought fast, working the information he'd just gleaned into the greater story. "Prior to that, the timeline had proven itself naturally resistant to being altered. Potter and I performed Yaxley's removal to confirm a theory that once someone is removed, they take certain significances with them. Had we just allowed you to kill Yaxley and leave his body in the Chamber, someone else would have been the one to follow through regarding your Horcruxes."

The Dark Lord pondered it for a moment. "I see."

"Originally, the next attack you orchestrated with the basilisk resulted in the creation of your first Horcrux—your diary," Draco said. "Potter and I interrupted you on that, although were confident you would have found a way anyway. You did, although with different motivation. This is an example of how the timeline tends to keep itself tidy."

"But that removal ritual bypasses the concern."

"This is what we've learned through the process with Yaxley, yes."

"Interesting." The Dark Lord had recovered from his earlier shock. "Yaxley was only a test for a larger issue, you said?"

"We've identified another person that needs to be removed," Draco told him. "Handling him would eliminate the manner in which you were killed."

"You mean Potter."

"Yes. . .but also no." Draco tilted his head back and forth in feigned thought. "It was originally Potter's role. Potter and I altered the timeline to relieve him of it. That's how we discovered the need for full removal. Potter's role had merely shifted to someone else."

"Who?"

"Ronald Prewett."

The Dark Lord's eyes narrowed. "I'm not familiar with that one."

"He's the son of Gideon and Amelia. Surely you know them."

The Dark Lord curled his upper lip. "I've lost a couple good followers by their wands."

"Ronald is soon to be the subject of a prophecy," Draco said. "He is destined to be the one that defeats you. If we remove him, that almost certainly negates the prospect of a prophecy."

"'Almost certainly'?"

"Since it shifted away from Potter, clearly it's a malleable trait of the timeline."

"So why haven't you done it yet?" the Dark Lord asked.

"We would have preferred just to handle it, and then inform you afterward of having done so." Draco bowed his head in concession to the point. "However, we've come up against a problem."

"What sort of problem?"

"An Albus Dumbledore sort."

The Dark Lord's expression straightened into one of utmost seriousness.

"Ronald is a student at Hogwarts," Draco said. "Dumbledore is wise to us. His proclivity toward clemency is currently staying his hand, but I don't believe that will remain the case once Potter and I make our move."

"You've come to request my assistance, I take it?"

"In considering doing so, something else occurred to me," Draco told him. "You must have realized in 1945 the event Potter referred to during our first meeting, yes? The 'something big' that would happen in a few years?"

"Grindelwald's defeat."

"Dumbledore acquired the Elder Wand in the course of doing so. You're familiar with that artefact, of course?"

The Dark Lord's spine straightened. "I am."

"We could kill two owls with one stone." Draco hesitated enough for the Dark Lord to notice. "I must confess. . .it was my fault in the original timeline that you never actually mastered the Elder Wand. You had it in hand when you and Potter faced off, but it refused to work for you because I was its master by the time you had tracked it down."

As Draco had prepared for, the Dark Lord assessed him with a very hard, studious gaze. "You aren't anymore?"

Draco shook his head. "It was a mere technicality, borne from yet another failure to you on my behalf. I failed the first task you ever gave me as a Death Eater. You instructed me to assassinate Dumbledore while I was a student, but I lost my nerve after I had him cornered. I only disarmed him. By the time you and Potter had your final duel, I myself had lost mastery—to Potter. The Wand refused to perform a Killing Curse on him. Potter, in a grand show of nobleness, snapped the Wand afterward in the original timeline. However, it's still here now. It's in Dumbledore's hand. . .ripe for the taking."

While he pondered all that over, the Dark Lord settled into a gradual pace. He eventually hummed. "So what you're telling me then is that you and Potter intend to remove Ronald Prewett the same way you removed Yaxley back in 1943. Dumbledore has potential to get in the way, and you see this as an opportunity to transfer the Elder Wand into my possession should I lend you another hand."

"Yes, my Lord," Draco replied. "That's exactly it—well, so long as Dumbledore actually gets in our way. If things go smoothly with the Prewett boy, we can attend to the Dumbledore matter later. It's more pertinent that Ronald be dealt with."

"Indeed, if he's the one destined to strike me down." The Dark Lord scoffed with derision. "Dumbledore, that old fool. . .he never would. He would be more concerned with trying to spare my life in the process of stopping me."

"He would be," Draco agreed. "He will be. Such are the advantages of dealing with men who refuse to step one toe off where they've decided the moral high road to lay."

The Dark Lord let out a short, cold laugh. "Speaking of which. . ."

Draco wrinkled his brow slightly as the Dark Lord returned to where he stood, burying slight nerves behind sheer curiosity.

"It sounds to me as though you don't intend to tell Potter I might show up to move Dumbledore out of your way," the Dark Lord said. "Will he be surprised, if I do?"

"He'll be informed of the possibility."

"That doesn't say much for his happiness toward the idea. Will that make him a liability further down the road?"

Draco shook his head, brushing away concern to the depths of his mind. "Potter understands that there's already no going back on the things we've done. Keep in mind, we essentially killed Yaxley by removing him. He was a child who had done nothing wrong at the time, and who was regarded after the original war as a hero for betraying you. He was someone that Potter once deeply respected."

The Dark Lord hummed.

"As for Dumbledore. . ." Draco shrugged. "Who do you think was the one to fill Potter's head with all the ideas that led him to become a murderer at seventeen?"

"I'm surprised Potter isn't advocating to kill Dumbledore himself, in that case." The Dark Lord paused. "I would ask if this is why we're meeting alone, but it doesn't seem so. Why did you wish to exclude him?"

"Just to clarify, Potter can't deal with Dumbledore himself. That would make him the master of the Elder Wand, which puts him at odds with you all over again. He doesn't want that." Draco made another show of pausing, clearing his throat slightly. "As for why you and I are meeting alone, my past with Potter is. . .contentious, for lack of a better word. We were on opposite sides of the war. For me to have gotten what I wanted out of the whole thing—you to have triumphed—meant his death."

"Ah," the Dark Lord said. "It's personal."

"We agreed to ignore that in pursuit of the end goal here, but one can hardly blame him for getting heated if it comes up," Draco replied. "It's not productive. I'm honestly just tired of defending myself, especially when he can see the value in a world where you and him are aligned."

"I don't suppose having altered the timeline shifts his perspective on the matter."

Draco shook his head. "I was still once at peace with the prospect of his death. I never considered the possibility he might come out on top. How could he? He wouldn't have, were it not for a string of technicalities with the Elder Wand. I certainly never imagined that Potter might seek me out thirteen years later to make this right."

"His opposition of me was a matter of survival," the Dark Lord mused. "Not necessarily a rejection of my vision for the wizarding world."

"It's like he told you in 1943," Draco said. "It needs to change, and you have the means. His disposition has certainly gotten better now that he's no longer attached to that prophecy. It can only improve further with its complete removal from the timeline. Until that has happened, I'm keeping Potter as far away from this part of it as I can. It doesn't suit any of us for him to get into a strop. It's a waste of time and energy that could be far better spent."

"Indeed."

Another silence passed, in which Draco drew a slow breath. "I believe that covers everything I wished to touch base with you about, my Lord. Unless you have any questions?"

"What's the timeframe on handling the Prewett boy?" the Dark Lord asked. "When should I expect a potential summons?"

"We're only beginning preparations, so. . ." Draco made a show of considering it. "Within a week, perhaps? Two? I don't want to put a definite frame on it, but this is certainly our primary focus. Oh—I might suggest that you keep an eye on the Daily Prophet. A member of the Prewett family going missing will be huge news. Should Potter and I succeed without your help being necessary, I'll wait for that to become public knowledge before I summon you. You'll know in that case you're not walking into a hot situation."

The Dark Lord nodded. "Until we meet again, then."

Draco sank into a deep bow. "My Lord."

The scarlet hue of the Dark Lord's eyes seemed to deepen when he gave Draco another cold smile. From there, black smoke crept up and he silently vanished from place. The very air lightened, the chamber's fresh silence pushing in on Draco's ears.

His next exhale punctuated it. Draco relaxed now that he was alone, and allowed emotions to begin creeping back in. Relief overwhelmed anything else possible to feel, which was probably the exact opposite to what Harry currently felt back at the cabin. Each moment that Draco lingered here was another seed for Harry's anxiety toward his safety.

Draco retrieved his Floo pouch from his pocket. Putting his back to the room, Draco felt a chill run down his spine. Although he knew Voldemort was gone—that he had no reason to linger—Draco still glanced over his shoulder to be certain. Sure enough, the room remained empty.

Before anything might happen to contest that, Draco turned the fireplace blue and departed.