Chapter 14: Even Trades

Grindelverse

"I suggest you give us what we came for," Draco said flatly, but Hermione nudged him aside, figuring his unfailing brand of entitlement wasn't going to be particularly well met by Tom's evasive techniques; specifically, his enigmatic beverage consumption. She'd already caught warning signs of Tom raising his teacup to his lips in non-answer yet again.

"We held up our side of the deal," Hermione reminded him, and he paused experimentally, cup floating in the air. "The contract between us was met on our end, Tom."

"And if I have new terms?" he prompted.

"You know better," she warned. His lips quirked up slightly with amusement. "That's not how leverage works. We made a deal. Payment is payment. We're not jumping through hoops."

"Very well," Tom permitted slowly, which was almost certainly too easy; Hermione braced herself for worse, and Tom didn't disappoint. "But the deal was made privately between us, Lady Lies," he reminded her. "Therefore, payment should be no different."

Hermione grimaced at the tell-tale motions of Draco stepping forward in opposition. She gave him a firm shove back towards Theo; the attempt to protect her was admirable, in a sense, but largely fruitless. Tom wanted control, per usual.

"He's not going to do anything to me," she reminded Draco under her breath. "He's just—"

(Setting the terms.)

(Marking his territory.)

(Flexing his authority.)

(Rehearsing for his reign of terror.)

(All of the above.)

She glanced at Theo, who was watching her. "How do you kill a monster?" she murmured to him, and he nodded slowly, tugging Draco back in deference to their previous understanding as Hermione turned her own attention back to Tom.

"Have it your way, then," she said, adding a touch of weariness to her answer. She'd watched Draco enough by then to know how to play her hand; the best lies were rooted in truth, and the truth was that she was tired, even if she wasn't beaten yet. She wasn't nothing, no, and she wasn't resigned, and she hadn't lost—but she was definitely tired, and for once, she let her exhaustion show. "You can leave," she told the rest of their party. "Tom and I will finish up."

Tom smiled, satisfied. "Remus," he beckoned, turning to him as mutiny immediately registered on the other faces in the room. "Escort them out, would you?"

"Wait a minute," Sirius began, but Remus had already risen to his feet, grabbing James by the arm and yanking him none-too-delicately from his chair. "After what you've just said? We aren't just going t-"

"We're going," Harry told him flatly, catching Theo's glance as he nodded.

"You know where to find us," Theo told Hermione, and though Draco was red-faced with frustration, he permitted his own stony nod, making a small motion for her benefit. He drew his hand up, touching his thumb to the inside of his wrist.

M for Malfoy, she heard him murmur in her memory, the ghost of his touch tracing over the mark Bellatrix had carved, and she nodded once in recognition. Then he stormed over to the Floo, disappearing through it, as Remus dragged James along and Sirius argued mutedly with Harry, all of them passing through the flames.

The room, having been emptied of its occupants, was pensively silent. Hermione turned to Tom, fighting a grimace, and resolved to get it over with as quickly as he would let her.

Which, she presumed, would not be nearly quick enough.

"Don't forget to take this back," Hermione told him, removing the compass from around her neck and tossing it to him. He caught it deftly with one hand, lifting a curious brow in her direction. "You'd better not be planning on tracking me anymore."

"I like to keep tabs on things," he supplied in flagrant unapology, tucking it into his pocket with a shrug. "Irresponsible not to, really."

"You have control issues," Hermione muttered. "You think of everything around you as an object to be used." She paused, momentarily considering the value of mysterious silence, but couldn't help adding, "Someday that will be your downfall, you know."

"I'm sure it will," Tom agreed, not looking as if it grieved him in any particular way. "In the meantime, though, thank you for retrieving the lost diadem of Ravenclaw. I presume you know what it is?"

Again, she considered silence.

Unfortunately, that wasn't really her style.

"It's a horcrux," Hermione said flatly, and again, Tom's lips quirked up, amused.

"That," he told her, "would be quite mad, don't you think?"

"Are you saying it isn't?" she said.

"I'm saying it would be mad if it were," Tom countered lazily. "Aren't you listening?"

"What else is there? The ring," she demanded, pointing to where it glinted from his hand. "Is that a horcrux, too?"

"Well, it's your price, isn't it?" Tom asked, pointedly slipping the ring loose from his finger and holding it out for her. "You asked for payment, and here we are. So why don't you tell me what it is, Lady Lies?"

She paused, unsure what to do.

She needed it; that much was obvious.

That, and more importantly, it was part of the deal.

But what would happen to her if she touched it?

She was beginning to think she might have been mistaken about Tom's insistence on getting her alone. What if he killed her now? That would be a plot twist she hadn't predicted. A rather sad way for the so-called brightest witch of her age to go out, now that she thought about it.

"Don't be ridiculous," Tom said, irritably interpreting her reticence. "I didn't keep you here just to harm you. There aren't enough hours in the day for pointless exercises." He fixed her with a long stare—a pursed look of I'm not mad, just disappointed—and then determined, flatly, "Just take it."

She hesitated.

"Fine," she mumbled, and held her hand out.

Irritability hadn't limited his capacity for dramatics. He placed the ring carefully (delicately, and with a sense of withheld breath) directly in the center of her palm.

Then he waited.

She waited.

And gradually, he permitted a flickering half-smile.

"It's a fantasy, you know," he informed her as she stared down at the ring, eyeing the stone set inside it. "You're all children, so I don't expect you to know any better," he added stiffly, "but whatever magic exists inside that stone, it's certainly no different from any other kind."

Hermione was cynical enough by nature that this—Tom's insistence the entire thing was some sort of elaborate hoax—appealed to her longstanding impulse to search for the most logical explanation. For a moment, her entire body wanted to believe him, but she reminded herself that he'd never had the cloak. He'd never held the wand. He couldn't possibly know.

He couldn't know some magics were more than others, but her Harry had taught her that.

"You're a collector," she noted instead, curling her hand around the ring and glancing up at him. Maybe feigning disbelief was an opportunity to discover what else he knew. "Are you telling me you don't want the Elder Wand?"

"I want Grindelwald's power," Tom said simply, shrugging. "Whether that comes from a wand itself or from an empire too afraid to fight back because they've all heard stories about said wand, it makes no difference to me. The end result is the same."

"So you admit it, then," Hermione said. "You want us to kill Grindelwald for you."

"We both want the same thing," Tom corrected with an absurd air of practicality, "which is Grindelwald gone. Who kills him is—" He waved a hand. "A trivial matter."

"Then why haven't you done it already?" Hermione countered.

"Who says I haven't?" Tom asked, shrugging. "I have money. I have time. Better yet, I have patience, and a vast network of people who are loyal only to me. In fact, this is the trouble with regimes that force people to the fringes of society," he added neutrally. "After a while they no longer go quietly, and instead, they come to me. Remus, for example," he said. "Lily. Yourself—and Harry, now, too, I expect."

"I'm not loyal to you," Hermione said fiercely. "I'll never be loyal to you, and neither will Harry."

"Maybe. Maybe not. But the fact is, you came to me," Tom reminded her with a shrug, "and when Grindelwald is dead, you'll realize I did it without ever lifting a finger."

She wanted to gape at him, or strike him. He was smug and narcissistic and terrible, and she was furious he could exist, knowing he deserved far worse than the capitulation he received in either universe she'd known him.

Worse, though, she was angry at herself, because he was right. She'd come to him.

She'd walked right in, and he hadn't lifted more than a teacup.

"I won't let you get away with this," she warned quietly. The ring in her hand was beginning to form itself to her tightly-clenched palm, digging into the flesh of her hand.

"I don't expect you to," he said. "In fact, I think I would find myself rather disappointed in you if you didn't at least try to kill me."

Points for self-awareness, she thought grimly. "You could at least lie."

"Why?" Tom asked, which seemed, outrageously, to be a genuine curiosity. "Lies are difficult. Hard to keep track of. And more importantly, I don't particularly need to delude you, considering you'll do precisely what I want you to whether you know what it is or not."

She hated that he was right. He'd trapped her, well and truly. Maybe he'd trapped her long before she even entered the game.

"Is it a horcrux?" Hermione managed to ask through gritted teeth. "The diadem."

He seemed entirely impassive. "Why would you think it's a horcrux?"

"Because I know you," she spat. "I know you better than you think."

"Then tell me what I'm going to do next," Tom invited.

There might have been mystery to silence, she thought. It might have been the wiser choice.

But on the other hand, she was beginning to think wisdom was overrated.

"You're going to wait for us to kill Grindelwald," she answered flatly. "Then you're going to kill us, take the wand, and take back the ring. Take everything. Take England. You're going to take the world, Tom Riddle, and when you're finished taking, you're going to burn it to the ground—except you don't realize yet you'll burn along with it."

She lifted her chin, glaring at him.

"You don't know yet that even you can make mistakes, but you will," she promised him, thinking of his cursed life and the people he would destroy with it; the things he couldn't know, but she did. "You'll live in fear, Tom, and always be in search of something more, even when you have everything. Wait until you see what happens to you, Tom Riddle," she finished bitterly. "Just wait and see."

He stared at her for a moment, considering her, and then sat back in his chair, steepling his fingers at his lips.

"Try it," he suggested.

She blinked. "What?"

"The diadem," he said. "Hold it. Try it."

"I—"

"You seem to think you know me, which is interesting," Tom said, "because it tells me much more about you than it does about me."

He leaned over, picking up the diadem from where Remus had left it, and held it out for her.

"Take it," he said, and for whatever reason, she did. Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe the entire thing was simply taking too long. Whatever the reason was, she held the diadem carefully in one hand, eyeing the words engraved around it: Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure.

She waited for the same sensation of wearing the locket around her neck. The buzz of unpleasantness. The whispers of her darker thoughts. She waited for something, anything, to prove her suspicions had been correct, but nothing came. When had Tom made the diadem a horcrux? She strained to remember. Maybe she didn't actually know. There were pieces missing from Tom Riddle's life; Harry had said as much, and it had taken Dumbledore decades to collect everything he'd learned, even after he'd had his early suspicions.

If the diadem wasn't a horcrux, Hermione thought with dismay, then maybe she didn't actually know much at all about Tom Riddle. And if she didn't know him—if parallels weren't so parallel after all—did that mean he was better in this universe, or worse?

"Why did you help Lily?" Hermione asked, clearing her throat, and Tom shrugged.

"Because she needed somewhere to go where she wouldn't be found," he said, "and I needed an employee who could keep out of sight. Mutually beneficial."

"And when she wanted to leave—"

"She didn't like the work," Tom supplied neutrally. If he clung to any resentment about it, it didn't show, and Hermione frowned, not entirely sure what she'd been expecting. "The clients in this business are, understandably, unsavory at times. She asked to move on, and I had no opposition."

"She and Remus," Hermione said, thinking. "Do they know each other?"

"No," Tom replied. "I kept Lily's secret. She asked for safety, and I kept her safe."

In Hermione's view, none of this made sense. Tom wasn't a do-the-right-thing sort of person, as far as she knew. "But why?"

"Because it benefited me," he replied easily, "which is also why I haven't pressed you for your name, or for information about where you've come from. Which isn't here," he ruled flatly. "It's very obviously not here."

She opened her mouth; closed it.

"I'll never be stupid enough to trust you," Hermione told him.

"Actually, I'm willing to bet you will be," Tom said. "Desperate people often are."

"Who says I'm desperate?" she demanded.

"You aren't yet," he permitted, "but I strongly suspect you will be."

She stared at him.

"I want to leave," she said.

"Then go," he told her, gesturing to his fireplace. "I didn't keep Lily, and I won't keep you, either. You're always free to leave. You're free to do whatever you wish. So long as our interests remain aligned, you will always have a friend in me. A rather useful one, at that," he added with a thin smile, "if you'll pardon my indulgence in my own proficiency."

"And when our interests aren't aligned?" Hermione asked him.

"You're a clever girl, Lady Lies," he said, impassive. "You tell me what happens."

He held out his hand for the diadem, and she hesitated, but eventually offered it back to him.

"Wit beyond measure," he murmured to himself, shaking his head before meeting her eye. "People put so much stock in intelligence, don't they? But sometimes it's such a dreadful slog being smarter than everyone else."

What if, whispered a quiet voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like Draco, you just killed him right now?

A blunt instrument. A wand. The fucking teacup. Even a small shard of it would—

She froze, blinking, and shoved the image of him bleeding out on his floor firmly aside.

Tom smiled, and Hermione said nothing, pushing past him to head for the Floo. She took a handful of emerald powder, the ring still clutched her hand, and passed through to James Potter's house, taking the now-familiar path to Harry's study.

She barged into the room, not saying a word to any of the three boys before slamming the ring down on the desk.

"Here," she said, and Harry leapt to his feet, unable to contain his curiosity as Draco shifted reflexively to her side. "I hope you know you're going to have to kill him."

"Mm," Harry replied, eyeing the ring. "This is the stone? You're sure?"

"I don't know," Hermione said tartly, and turned to Draco. "I can't be here right now. Are you coming?"

"We should talk about how we're going to get to Grindelwald," Harry informed them, not looking up from the ring.

"Well, we can talk tomorrow," Hermione said. "Right now, I'm going."

She pivoted and left, and Draco quickly chased after her, a little breathless as he jogged in her wake.

"Hold on, what about the horcr-"

"It isn't a horcrux," she said dully. "I was wrong."

About that, she thought, and possibly about everything.

About herself, too, which was a realization that only seemed to get worse and worse.

"Well, just because the diadem isn't one doesn't mean he doesn't have others," Draco said. "Or that he just hasn't made one yet—"

"Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't," Hermione snapped, rounding on him, "but either way—"

"Hermione." Draco took her arm and disapparated them, depositing them in his bedroom once again as she lurched through space and stumbled into his chest, letting his arms come around her. "What did he do?"

"He—" Nothing. He did nothing, and that was the worst part. He hadn't touched her, hadn't even risen to his feet, and yet here she was, spinning with doubt. "I don't know."

She did know Tom Riddle was dangerous. She knew that whatever he was, he wasn't good. Horcruxes or not (and Draco was right; just because she'd been wrong about one horcrux didn't mean she was wrong about all of them), he was a problem. And anyway, what was worse—a man with his soul split in seven parts who couldn't die, or a man with an uncanny understanding of his own leverage?

"We have to use him," Hermione said miserably, burying her face in Draco's shirt. "We have to use him, we have to learn his secrets, and we have to kill him. We have to kill him before he kills us."

Draco nodded, resting his chin on top of her head.

"We will," he told her. "I promise. I promised you already, and I mean it again now. You can trust me, Hermione."

"Can I?" Hermione asked, pulling back to look at him. "Honestly, Draco. Can I?"

The words you're not desperate now, but you will be clanged around in her head, and for a moment, Draco's brow flickered with unease, sensing her troubled thoughts. He shifted a hand down, taking her wrist, and brushed his thumb over the M there again for the briefest, quietest moment before turning his attention back to her gaze.

"You said yourself the man is a psychopath," Draco reminded her, tilting her chin up. "Don't let him get in your head, Hermione."

She exhaled slowly, letting her eyes float shut.

"Then get me out of my head," she murmured. "Please."

For a moment, he paused, fingers steady beneath her chin. She waited, heart pounding, and gradually, he slid his hand around to her cheek, pulling her closer.

"Hermione Granger," he murmured to her, his breath skating softly over her lips, "do you have any idea the sins I'd commit for you?"

She shivered, and then his lips brushed hers. He pulled away, dancing out of reach, and as she felt herself lean towards him, she sensed the motion of his smile broadening over her lips, her eyes fluttering open to find his gaze locked on hers.

"I thought about killing him," she confessed, swallowing hard. "Just for a second."

"Mm," Draco murmured, hand slipping down to caress her throat. "And how did it feel?"

"It felt—" She paused, her breath quickening beneath his touch as his fingers slid down her neck, down to the line of her clavicle, and then traced the shape of her neckline, soft and smooth and slow. "It felt… satisfying," she whispered. His hands slid around to the back of her dress, tugging carefully at her zipper. "And I felt—"

"What?" he asked, lips brushing across hers again as he delicately peeled her dress from her shoulders. "What did you feel?" he repeated, and beneath his anchoring grip on her hips, she could feel her skin pebbling with anticipation. She felt her quickening pulse align itself with his, that too-quick leap of something, that sense of just-another-minute, just-one-minute-more dancing on the breath between them as his hands wandered, digging into the curves of her waist.

What did you feel?

"Powerful," she said, and then, as Draco shifted to deepen the kiss, she shoved him back on the bed, taking a moment to look down at where he'd landed before he propped himself up on his elbows, dazed. "We're going to ruin him," she said to the expanse of his skin, reaching to slowly undo the buttons of his shirt. "You and me," she added, certainty filling the gaps in her spine as she looked up, resting her chin on his chest. "We're going to ruin him."

Draco slid his fingers through her hair, eyeing the look on her face.

"So. Are you out of your head, then?" he asked expectantly, lips twisting up in anticipation, and she considered it a moment before leaning forward, touching her lips once—light as air—just above the zipper of his trousers.

"Almost," she said, and he smiled his faultless smile, pulling her with him onto the bed.


Potterverse

"So, there's this shack," Harry had said, which was something of an underwhelming opening. "It's where Dumbledore initially found the ring. It's Marvolo Gaunt's shack," he clarified, "to be specific."

"Well, much as I love a good shack—and I do," Theo assured Harry lazily, "do we really think that's necessary? If the stone is in the ring, I doubt it was just casually left behind when the ring was taken."

"Right," Harry said, pacing the chamber, "but still, it's, you know. More of a technique for how to move forward."

"True," Hermione permitted. "When you lose something, it's always best to go back to the scene of the crime."

"Yes," Harry confirmed, snapping his fingers and pointing at her. "Yes. Hermione's got it."

"Right, quick reminder, though," Draco cut in. "You didn't lose it. And secondly, how are we supposed to find this hallowed shack?"

"I'm sure there's municipal records," Hermione said. "The address has to have been on record, right? I mean, Harry did say a Ministry worker came, so—"

"Yes, well, apparently an additional reminder is required," Draco pointed out, "which is that the Ministry has been run by the Dark Lord's puppet for the last year, and considering that said Dark Lord has been violently deposed, there's something of a chance the Ministry's filing system may not presently be up to par."

"What if," Theo suggested, "we just pretend this is a shack." He gestured around the chamber. "It's morbid and disgusting, and there's a dead snake. Isn't that close enough?"

Harry made a gruff noise of incoherence.

"I'm thinking that's a no," Theo translated for Draco, "though I only speak conversational Chosen One, so there may be idiomatic complexities involved."

"Well, hold on," Hermione sighed, rising to her feet. "Let's think about this logically. There's only so many places the stone could be, right? Go through it again," she suggested, and hastily added, "and, um—pretend I don't know anything. Like you're telling us for the first time," she clarified optimistically, as Theo flashed Draco a laughing glance of acknowledgment.

Harry sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Dumbledore got the ring," he said.

"Right," Hermione agreed. "Dumbledore. Who loves you."

"Yes," Draco and Theo grunted in unison.

"Something like that," Harry said, still pacing. "So, he got the ring. He destroyed it. But," Harry said, and paused, frowning. "He must have tried to use it."

"Which is objectively stupid," Hermione pointed out, "considering everything we know about horcruxes. That they were protected, I mean," she added, glancing at Draco, who nodded discreetly. "By spells and curses designed to kill him. So he must have known it was a Hallow, right? That's the only compelling reason to do something so—" She made a face. "Blatantly idiotic."

"I—" Harry frowned. "I guess it was a little bit stupid, yes."

"Ah, good, confirmation from our resident expert in stupidity," Draco muttered under his breath, and Hermione shot him a warning glance. "Look," Draco sighed, rising to his feet, "if Dumbledore ever had the stone, he wouldn't have just left it behind. He would have given it to someone, right? Kept it somewhere safe."

"I—" Harry blinked. "Oh, Jesus fuck. The snitch, I—"

He let out a loud, startling growl, and Theo tilted his head.

"I'm going to estimate that one is rage," Theo guessed, "though again, I'm hardly fluent—"

"The snitch," Harry said again, reaching for Hermione's beaded bag and aiming his wand into it. "I've been so distracted I forgot about it entirely, but of course, I'm such an idiot—"

"Linguistically, this is all just nonsense," Theo informed Draco, who gave him a silencing shove.

"Would you simply shush—"

"Here," Harry said, and yanked out what was quite literally a golden snitch, the wings slightly bent. "Okay, right, so the stone must be in here, Dumbledore left it for me, only it says…"

He breathed on it, and Draco recalled with a groan that it was the snitch Harry had nearly swallowed. A complete and utter travesty as far as he was concerned, though whether Harry Potter was any conceivably skilled Seeker was (unfortunately) not currently at issue.

"…I open at the close," Harry read, showing it to them. "Which—" He paused. "Okay. I still haven't figured that part out."

"Oof, harsh realities," Theo said, standing up to lean over Harry's shoulder. "Any guesses?"

"I open at the close," Hermione murmured to herself, wandering in a small circle. "Well, it's mostly a riddle, isn't it? It might as well say I begin at the end, right? In terms of syntactical comparatives, that is—"

"Oh," Theo said. "So, death, then."

Harry's entire frame went rigid.

"That would be my guess, but why would Dumbledore want Harry to die?" Hermione asked Theo. "That's ridiculous. He's a teacher. Asking someone to die seems a bit too lofty a request, doesn't it?"

"I'm merely a translator," Theo reminded her. "I'm not here to pick apart the questionable motives of cryptically bearded pedagogues."

"Still, it doesn't make sense—"

As Theo and Hermione continued to discuss the merits of Dumbledore's sanity, Draco watched Harry's hand close around the snitch and frowned, eyeing the blank expression on his face.

"Uh," he said. "Potter, are you—"

"Neither can live while the other survives," Harry said hoarsely.

"Sorry," Theo said. "Come again?"

"So much for a translator," Hermione muttered to him, but Draco stepped closer to Harry.

"Who said that?" he asked.

"Trelawney," Harry said, rubbing his eyes briefly beneath his glasses. "It's what the prophecy contained in the Department of Mysteries. 'Neither can live while the other survives.'"

He glanced up at Draco, who was now recalling his father's imprisonment as a result of retrieving said prophecy. More specifically, Draco was imagining the deadened look on Lucius' face when he had asked what it said, and the fact, Draco recalled, that Lucius had obviously risked his life for something he hadn't even had the privilege of understanding.

"I'm supposed to die," Harry said, spelling it out for them, and for a moment, there was silence.

"No," Theo and Hermione eventually declared in unison.

Hermione spoke first. "No, he couldn't have set you up to die," she argued, storming up to Harry. "That can't be possible! That's—I don't know," she said frantically. "It's unethical, surely! There must be rules against it—"

"Well, I can't speak to Dumbledore's character, largely in that I don't want to," Theo mused, "so mine was more of a generically oppositional outburst."

"No, but it makes sense," Harry said, looking vaguely stunned. "I wondered why he wanted me to destroy all the horcruxes first, but of course. Because he can't die until I've died. Which means—" He shut his eyes. "I don't want to think about what that means."

Gradually, he looked up at Draco, pained.

"But," Harry exhaled, "whether it means something or not, I suppose you'll have to kill me."

Absurdly, Draco glanced over his shoulder, certain Harry had meant someone else.

"Me?" he demanded. "And why do I get the honor of your murder, exactly?"

"It's not murder," Harry exhaled, exasperated, as if Draco was the one being dramatic. "It's—I don't know. Sacrifice. Or something. But obviously Hermione shouldn't have to do it," he clarified with a glance at her wide-eyed look of horror, "and Nott's almost definitely going to give some sort of horrible speech beforehand—"

"Your grasp on my personality is surprisingly proficient," Theo lamented. "Note to self, be more mysterious."

"—so it'll have to be you, Malfoy," Harry finished. "And then, I don't know, maybe if I'm about to die the snitch'll open, and you guys can have all the Hallows and finish off Voldemort once and for all."

He'd said the entire string of nonsense in a rapid, breathless exhalation, and for a moment, all Draco could do was stare blankly at him.

"So, you're just… cool with dying," Draco echoed. "Is that what you're saying, Potter?"

"Well, no," Harry said. "I mean, it's not great. I'd prefer another option. But considering I've basically never had an option about anything for my entire life—"

"Because you were the tool of a selfish old man!" Hermione blurted out, and Harry blinked, glancing at her with confusion.

"Hermione—"

"Listen, Harry, forget what you thought you knew about Dumbledore," she pleaded, walking brusquely to him and taking hold of his shoulders. "Yes, I'm sure he loved you, and yes, he was brilliant, yes to all those things, but—you weren't a person to him," she said sadly, and though Draco thought it perhaps a bit dangerous (knowing, as he did, that their version of Hermione worshipped at the church of Albus Dumbledore), he couldn't help conceding she was probably right about this. "All the things you've told us, all the information he kept from you—he must have known this all along, which is why he never explained what you would have to do—"

"Hermione," Harry said uneasily, "I don't think—"

"What if we try something," Theo determined, snatching Harry's hand up to loft the snitch between his fingers up for general scrutiny. "It's a very complex bit of magic, but I think it's worth experimenting, don't you?"

"What?" Harry asked. "Using the Elder Wand, you mean?"

"Nope," Theo said, propping the snitch in front of Harry's face. "Lying."

"What?" Harry said again, balking. "But—surely that's—that can't possibly—"

"In my experience, a lie well told is a magic all its own," Theo said, glancing up at Draco with a hint of something that wasn't entirely guileless. "Isn't it?"

Draco grimaced. "I wouldn't use those exact terms," he said. "But yeah, fine."

Harry glanced at Hermione, who shrugged. She still seemed a bit infuriated over Dumbledore, but was, at least, quite focused on the task at hand. "If it doesn't work," she said in a huff, "and he was an actual monster who required your death to be imminent in order to be helpful to you—"

"I think she's saying go for it," Draco cut in, flashing her a warning glare as she sniffed her displeasure, folding her arms gruffly over her chest. "Just try it. It can't hurt, right?"

Which was the last thing he said until approximately two minutes before this moment, at which point Harry had brought the snitch to his lips, informed it he was going to die, and then watched as a small black stone fell into the palm of his hand, the four of them gathering close around it and staring down in disbelief.


a/n: I will meet you back here Monday, I promise! Some people had questions about my other work (i.e. Alpha, which I write with Little Chmura), so a quick reminder that you can find everything on olivieblake dot com. Dedicated to thewildeqoute—no regrets!