Chapter 20: Identity Thefts
Potterverse
They took a half-conscious Narcissa to a small muggle inn just outside Stornoway, which was the closest they could get on brooms before Draco became certain he was going to drown his mother by way of accidentally releasing her into open ocean. Harry, who was at least slightly more careful with other human lives than he was with his own, warily agreed, and Theo and Hermione ventured into the tavern to procure a room while he and Draco waited.
"Who do you think she meant?" Draco asked, not very calmly, and for the seventieth time.
"I still don't know, Malfoy," was Harry's painfully unhelpful reply.
Luckily, Grindelwald resolutely excluding muggles and muggleborns meant that particular version of Hermione's world had developed much like their own. She managed to successfully steal someone's identity (not without help, Draco assumed; Theo was an artful forger, always handy with duplication spells) and was able to use a small plastic card to secure a room. The subsequent process of getting Narcissa up the stairs wasn't the easiest thing, but at least they had the cloak, making it slightly less terrible for them to be smuggling a somewhat controversially-clothed woman up the stairs. By the time they were safely cloistered in the room, she was finally beginning to wake.
"Mother," Draco said, perching at the side of one of the two narrow beds. "Can you hear me?"
She opened one eye.
"No," was her initial judgment of the situation.
"Beautiful," Theo said, applauding her from the other bed. Harry and Hermione were, not surprisingly, not particularly willing to come much closer than the threshold. "I've always admired your command over the subtleties of language."
"Oh, good," Narcissa remarked, shutting her eyes again. "Theo's here."
"Mother," Draco pressed, trying not to sound dire. "Are you alright?"
"No, Draco, sweetheart, I'm not." She didn't move much, though she did angle her head towards him, cracking one eye again. "I told you to put me back."
"Oh good, so no amnesia," Hermione said weakly, and slowly, Narcissa sat up at the sound of her voice, frowning at her.
"You're the muggleborn girl," she said, wisely not employing any less-pleasing monikers, and Hermione hesitated.
"Well, actually—"
"Yes, she is," Draco cut in firmly, not wanting to get into it. "And be nice, Mother."
Narcissa arched a brow, silently reminding him that her preference for situations of public admonishment—and truly, a small tavern room with three teenagers who weren't her son was probably immensely public in her eyes—was somewhere between 'never' and 'when I'm good and dead.'
"What's going on?" she asked instead.
"Well," Harry said, "we've killed Voldemort."
"Yes," Narcissa said. "Astoundingly, I'd managed to puzzle that part out."
"Did you know the Dark Lord couldn't die, Mother?" Draco couldn't resist asking, the question slipping out without much forethought or preamble. She slid him a disapproving look, which he thought was rather silly considering everyone else in the room obviously also knew about it, and proceeded to give him a weary, impassive shake of her head.
"I know more than you think, darling. And he isn't dead," she said, turning back to Harry. "You haven't killed him. You've just stalled him temporarily, and when he does come back—"
"He can't, though," Hermione argued, cutting her off, to which Draco could not prevent a furtive wince. Narcissa wouldn't particularly love being interrupted by anyone, much less any version of Hermione Granger. Not that it mattered, of course, what his mother thought of his… Well, anyway, he reminded himself with an internal shake, it didn't matter.
"He can't just return on his own," Hermione was saying. "Someone would have to bring him back."
"You think there aren't plenty of people who would?" Narcissa asked her sharply. "I don't expect you to understand, given what you are," she determined, fixing Hermione with something that was both disapproval and bitter weaponry, "but believe me, the Dark Lord will not stay dead for long. If he's even dead now."
"He's definitely dead, Mother," Draco said uncomfortably, unsure how to soothe her. Reassurance wasn't traditionally something they did for each other. He was pretty sure that was somewhere in the family crest. Right after Sanctimonia Vincet Semper, he was certain there was something about, 'and also, let's not debase ourselves by over-emoting.' "I killed him myself."
Narcissa hesitated, about to retort with something, then clearly changed her mind.
"You came to find me for a reason, I presume," she deduced correctly, eyeing Draco as she demurred tangentially to what they'd been up to. "What is it?"
"Oh, we popped by Gringotts," Theo supplied before Draco could speak. "We were informed you went into Bellatrix Lestrange's vault."
"Yes," Narcissa said, and did not elaborate. For several seconds, she said nothing, clearly believing herself to have said enough, and then she propped herself against the headboard, pausing to glance at their expectant faces. "What?"
"We, er. Wanted to know why you went," Harry said, to which Narcissa replied her most minute version of displeasure; a little lip twitch of disdain that said, Young man, you cannot imagine the lengths to which you have displeased me, which was something Draco had seen many times during his youth. "They told us you didn't take anything."
"No, I didn't," she confirmed, wincing a little as she adjusted her posture. "I was looking for something." She turned to Draco, disapproval practically welling up from her pores before continuing, "When it wasn't there, I decided the best way to keep you safe was for me to be in Azkaban, so I went."
"What were you looking for?" Hermione asked at the same time Harry said, "Keep him safe from what?"
Narcissa gave Draco a look that said she very much wished he had not accosted her with these flagrantly chatty ingrates. He gave a weak shrug in reply, and she sighed, turning to Hermione first.
"I was looking for a diadem," Narcissa said. "It… does something."
"What does it do?" Hermione asked curiously, but Narcissa had already turned to Harry, having lost interest in her.
"You know precisely what I'm keeping him safe from, Harry Potter," she informed him. "It's the same thing your parents died for. The same thing you've had to protect yourself from your entire life, in fact."
"His name is Voldemort, and he's dead," Harry said staunchly, and the side of Narcissa's jaw twitched.
"That's not his name," she corrected him uneasily, "and more importantly, you only killed his body. That's very easy. Though perhaps you're all too young to understand a man is much more than his limbs."
"So you do know about the horcruxes, then," Harry guessed, and when she gave no indication either way, a loud, cheery laugh from Theo interrupted the silence that had fallen over the room, prompting them to turn towards him.
"Hm? Oh, sorry," he said, still chuckling to himself. "I just love being right."
Narcissa blinked something the equivalent of an eye roll and turned back to Draco. "You're not safe," she told him flatly. "You'd better disappear. All of you," she grudgingly corrected herself, sparing a sweeping glance around the room. "He'll want you dead, of course," she said to Harry, before shifting to Hermione. "And you." She paused before glancing at Theo. "And as for you—"
"Yes," Theo said. "I agree. He may not yet, but he'll want me dead once he gets to know me. It's a common impulse."
Draco expected Narcissa to react with opposition, but not with palpable concern. "Your threats are different, but no less real," she said to Theo, with what Draco was surprised to hear was a hint of gentleness in her voice. "Do not let your father find you, Theodore."
To Draco's further surprise, no remark came from Theo's mouth. Instead his lips closed around something that was probably bitter disappointment, and across the room, Harry's brow furrowed, silently taking stock.
"Disappear," Draco said, clearing his throat and recapturing his mother's attention. "Why?"
"Because the Dark Lord has reason to want me to suffer," she said.
"But he lived in your house and didn't kill you," Harry observed, and against the duvet, Narcissa's knuckles tightened slightly.
"I didn't say he wanted me dead. I said he wanted me to suffer. He needs me," she added darkly. "I know things he needs me alive for, but that doesn't mean he'll hesitate to kill all of you. Draco, sweetheart, listen to me," she said, angling herself towards him with some difficulty, "this is not a war you can win. I thought if I simply lost my mind in Azkaban I could keep you safe; that he might not bother to get to you by going through me. But now, you're in danger once again."
"We have one of the horcruxes," Draco told her, swallowing, and again, Narcissa made no indication of recognition, though she didn't betray any surprise, either. "We… well, they," he corrected himself with a gesture to the others in the room, "want to bring him back to find out how many others there are."
Narcissa blinked once, a show of outrage. "No."
"Mother—"
"You can't bring him back," she said, color rising slightly in her cheeks.
"You said someone would," Harry pointed out. "If it's us, we can… I don't know. Subdue him. Can't we?"
"You're an idiot and a child," she told him succinctly, "and you have no idea what you're dealing with. Draco, listen to me, do not bring him back," she warned him, giving him the glance she typically saved for disciplinary measures. "I forbid you."
"Mother, I'm nearly eighteen," Draco sighed. "You can't forbid me—"
"Watch me," she snapped, which was so far off her normal spectrum of behavior he felt genuinely rattled by the sound. "Unless you've suddenly developed a pressing need to be killed, Draco, you will not do something so wildly stupid."
"I'm afraid you've misjudged the company he keeps now," Theo drawled, having resumed his injections of unwelcome commentary. "Haven't you heard, Narcissa? We all have death wishes here."
Narcissa shook her head. "This is beyond foolish, Draco. Impossibly beyond."
"Maybe you could tell us why?" Hermione said tentatively, stepping forward to suffer the full weight of Narcissa's glare snapping to hers. "I mean, obviously if you don't tell us, we're still going to find a way to do it. But if you just explain, then…"
She trailed off hopefully, and Narcissa's eyes narrowed. As with many things Hermione said, Draco could see it was a bit too logical a point to deny.
"I mean, psychologically speaking," Hermione was about to continue until Narcissa grimaced, holding up a hand to cut her off.
"You already know the man called Voldemort split his soul?" she prompted, and they nodded. "Then you should also know the body you killed does not belong to him. Not to who he was, or who he really is. Tom Riddle," she murmured as an afterthought, her mouth tightening around the name.
"How do you know that?" Hermione asked, frowning. "That it's not really his body, I mean."
"I'm afraid I'm at least partially responsible." Narcissa's jaw was tightly clenched. "There was a time when his magic wasn't quite so cruel. It was… fascinating. He was a uniquely talented man. Is," she corrected herself, and then glanced at Draco. "The body you killed wasn't him, Draco, not really. It was only some other form of him."
"Yes, it couldn't have been his original form, could it?" Harry realized, brow furrowing. "Of course. I saw him get his new body in the graveyard that day he was resurrected, but before that—"
"The body before then was also not him," Narcissa said flatly. "The day your parents died, Harry Potter, that wasn't Tom Riddle, either. It was, like this most recent one, merely a facsimile of him. A version."
Draco was having absolutely no success puzzling this out. Hermione, however, seemed to have hit upon something.
"The diadem," she realized loudly, and to Draco's surprise, Theo shifted with recognition. "You were looking for it to find the real Tom Riddle. Is that it?"
"Yes. And no." Narcissa glanced down. "I only know stories."
"Stories?" Draco echoed, frowning, and Narcissa nodded slowly.
"He always said it was his most valuable possession. He went to find it sometime in the forties, before I was even born." She glanced up, possibly willing Draco not to do the math. "He spent a great amount of time with my family before he really became what he was," she explained. "He needed the support from older wizarding families. My father was enamored with him."
"What exactly does the diadem do?" Hermione asked her.
"I'm not sure," Narcissa said. "But whatever it is, it's something he could come back for. Or come back from. I don't know." She shook her head. "After a while I stopped asking questions."
Her voice was eerily strange, and strangely young, too. It was as if she'd traversed time and space to resume the state she'd mysteriously occupied whenever Tom Riddle originally told her whatever he'd told her all those years ago.
"So why can't we bring him back?" Harry asked.
"Because," Narcissa said, "you will almost certainly fall prey to the version of him that returns. The way he returned in recent times, that was only a shadow of him. But his horcruxes, especially from the early years…" She swallowed. "Tom Riddle is an impossibly talented man, and not only with magic. It's very easy to believe what he tells you. It's also very difficult to know what is a lie, and what is not."
"Seems fairly straightforward," Hermione said, lifting her chin. "He's a bad guy. We keep him under proverbial lock and key, we don't listen to anything he says. Easy."
"Yes," Narcissa facetiously agreed, "of course, so easy. Never mind that none of us thought ourselves murderers until he convinced us that's precisely what we should be. Never mind that we were raised just as you were raised, Miss Granger, to believe in right and wrong. Perhaps you think we're monsters for what we've done to you, and to those like you, and perhaps you're right."
She paused, and in the lull of silence, Draco and Theo exchanged a wordless glance.
"I do not forget what was done to you in my house, and by my sister," Narcissa continued to Hermione after a moment, her voice hard and cold, with palpable edges. "But I assure you, monsters aren't born. They're made, and often, by Tom Riddle."
"So," Harry said, clearing his throat. "How do we kill him, then?"
"I don't know," Narcissa said. "I thought perhaps the diadem would help, but I couldn't find it."
"It was at Hogwarts," Draco said, and then winced. "We destroyed it. I did."
"Oh." Narcissa registered the information, then lifted her chin. "Fine. Hide, then. You killed him once," she said to Draco before turning to Harry, "and you've managed it far more, haven't you? Perhaps you can all simply spend your entire lives killing him over and over until you die and he outlives us all. Doesn't that sound fun?" Her voice was bitterly resentful, though Draco could see the meanness of it wasn't technically for them. "You'd better not try to get your father," she added to Draco. "Tom would play with him purely for sport. He's better off where he is."
Draco thought it best not to ask why.
Eventually, it was Harry who spoke first. "But maybe if we found all the horcruxes—"
"You think all he has are horcruxes?" Narcissa said, glaring at him. "You have no idea what you're dealing with."
"But we can't just give up—"
"Malfoy." The voice was a whisper and Draco started, finding a new body crouched down near his feet. "Malfoy, I need you, it's important."
Yes, hello. Me again.
"Granger?" he asked, and the voices in the room stopped except for hers.
"Malfoy," she said, glancing warily over her shoulder. "I think I've really fucked it this time."
Grindelverse
Hermione was crouching down in the office, whispering to the ring. "Where are you? Can you talk?"
"Yes. We're somewhere near Stornoway," Draco said, somewhat uncomfortably. "We just got my mother out of Azkaban." She watched the hologram of him shift towards her from where he was sitting, though like usual, she could only hear and see him. "What's happened? What's wrong?"
"Your… your mother. And Lily Potter. I mean, Evans. Harry's mum." Draco blinked with surprise, and Hermione glanced again over her shoulder, intently searching the silence in the room. "It's a really long story but Malfoy, I think they're both working with Tom Riddle. I don't think your other self is, but…" She exhaled sharply. "Malfoy, I just have the worst feeling, I don't know what's happening and I don't know what to do now—"
"Okay. Okay, hold on." His face looked drawn, and there were prominent shadows under his eyes. She wondered how long it had been since he'd slept. "Where are you?"
"Safe. For now. But Malfoy…" She swallowed hard. "Please, I need your help. I don't know who I can go to, and if Narcissa Malfoy and Lily Evans have reason to want me dead—"
"What do you want me to do?" he asked. The question was levied without any particular form of mockery; more of a genuine intent. He didn't know how to help, and in reality, Hermione wasn't entirely sure, either. She only knew that she was desperate, and that knowing such a thing was true was more than a little discomfiting. Tom's words rang in her ears: You aren't desperate yet, but I strongly suspect you will be.
She supposed she could simply ask Draco to take her back, take her home. He had the Deathly Hallows, particularly the wand, so surely there was a way he could do it. And what did it matter if Tom Riddle took over this universe? It wasn't hers. She had no obligation to it. She could slip away in the night as she pleased and never look back.
Only… she probably would, she reminded herself grudgingly. She'd almost certainly feel the weight of the guilt in her bones for the rest of her lifetime. But still, how could she continue on here alone when she didn't know what resources she had, or who she could trust?
It was stupid, but she had to try.
Idly, she hoped he wouldn't see precisely where her mind was going.
"I need you to come here," she said very quietly, and Draco's eyes widened.
"Granger, are you mad?" he asked her, his tone gravely serious. "I'm sitting here with my practically dead mother who claims Tom Riddle is going to kill all of us at any given moment, and you want me to just impossibly skip over to some other universe and—no," he said to someone else in the room, "do not let Theo explain this to her, Potter, you do it—"
"Malfoy, you owe me," Hermione hissed, resigning herself to something she'd have normally been much too proud for. "You left me here, remember? You trapped me here, in case you forgot."
He took that about as well as she'd expected. "Oh, very nice, Granger," he growled. "Extortion, that's how you catch bees—"
"You already have the Hallows," she reminded him quickly. "You could figure out a way to get here, and once you were here, we could take care of this easily. You have an unbeatable wand," she reminded him with a growl. "From what it sounds like, Lily's holding this universe's Elder Wand hostage." She raced through the conversation she'd overheard, hastily forming something conceivably actionable. "So if we had yours, we could use it to fool Tom Riddle long enough to get rid of him, and then—"
"You are mad," Draco deduced, looking painfully distressed. "That's not even a plan, Granger!"
"Yes, well, I'm sort of losing my faith in plans," she said grimly. "They don't seem to work as well as I'd like them to."
"Yes, but—hold on." Draco turned, obviously listening to someone else in the room. "What?"
Hermione sighed, clutching tightly to the ring as she waited before glancing over her shoulder once again. There wasn't even a safe place in this universe, much less a safe person. Normally she hated to think of herself as a person dependent on others, but as things were presently going, she could really use a friend.
She shivered slightly and leaned her head back, hoping there was at least one version of Draco Malfoy who wouldn't let her down.
Potterverse
"She needs you," Harry said flatly, "so you're going. End of story."
Draco, who didn't care to reveal to the resurrection stone's projection of Hermione what his end of the conversation was about before the decision had been made, gave him a purposefully muted look of rebellion.
"I don't care if she has a plan or not," Harry said, folding his arms over his chest. "If she just wants to talk about her feelings? You're going. If she wants to come for Tom Riddle with a firing squad? You're going. If she's running off to join the circus and reinventing herself completely and she's asked you to come along, you are going, do you understand me?" Harry was firmly resolute, unbending. "I let her down once and I will not be doing it again. I don't care what it is she wants or what we're dealing with here. We can handle this," he said, waving a hand at Narcissa. "But Hermione asked for your help, and Malfoy, believe me when I say this: You. Are. Going."
"It's not—" Draco gritted his teeth, smacking a hand into Theo's ribs for the writing implement and notepad beside the bed and then snatched at it, scribbling onto it: It's not that I don't want to help her, but I can't just LEAVE
Harry squinted over his shoulder at the writing, scowling. "Yes, you can," he said.
Draco shook his head, furiously writing. POTTER DO YOU NOT SEE MY DISTRESSED MOTHER OR ARE YOU HAVING SOME KIND OF STROKE OF IDIOCY
"Go," Narcissa advised quietly, placing a hand on his arm, and Draco froze, glancing up at her. "This is another universe you'd be going to?" she asked carefully, and Draco gave a hesitant nod. "Yes. Good, then go. What better way to hide? Go and stay there, even." She seemed to be serious, though he couldn't imagine why. "It's the one place he won't look for you, Draco. Folded somewhere between worlds."
He bent down to the notepad. But mother I can't just leave you and I can't leave theo he's still fucking cross with me and THESE TWO (scribbled out with some arrows) are total lunatics and I don't even know if I can go and what the honest to bloody fuck am I supposed to do
"Language," Narcissa said, as Theo let out a scoff.
"I'm not cross, Draco, I'm not a child," Theo remarked from where he was reading over Draco's shoulder, rolling his eyes. "If anything, this is your opportunity to undo several of your more recent wrongs, don't you think?"
Draco's gaze flicked to the spectral Hermione who was clutching something in the corner, waiting for his response. She looked…
He grimaced. She looked lonely. Uncertain. And mildly paranoid.
And fuck if those weren't things he could relate to supremely.
He turned to the other Hermione, who was standing across from him with a pained expression. You? he mouthed to her. Will you be okay?
She looked a bit troubled, but nodded. "You should go," she agreed, glancing down at her feet. "She needs you. But, um." She paused, and Draco wondered briefly if she were going to say something sentimental until she surprised them all with, "You should also take the cup with you."
"What?" they all asked, blurting it out at once. The Hermione in the corner looked up, frowning expectantly at Draco's outburst, and he gave her a little gesture to wait.
"Don't tell her," warned the more corporeal Hermione Granger in reference to her parallel self. "But listen, it's too dangerous to bring this Tom Riddle guy back in this universe, right? So do it there. Consider it an exchange," she suggested. "You help her, she'll help us. She's the one who wanted to ask him questions, wasn't she?" she reminded him, and Draco nodded slowly, realizing that was true. "So, fine. Great. Bring Tom Riddle back in my universe, then. It's your safest option."
Draco shifted his glance to Harry, waiting for him to weigh in, and he grimaced, but permitted a nod.
"She's right," Harry said slowly. "It would be better than bringing him back here, where people are still likely to rally behind Voldemort. Right?"
Harry glanced at Theo, who nodded. "Things are much less stable here," Theo agreed, looking surprisingly solemn. "The trouble with bringing him back here is exponential, but there? Not so much."
Draco blinked, turning to his mother, who was staring carefully into nothing.
"You could do it," she said, lips pressed thin. "I don't advise it. But I sense you're all going to do something much more stupid if it remains here, so I'm afraid I have to agree." She turned to him, fixing him with the astonishing blue gaze he'd known his entire lifetime and never quite understood. "Go there and take the cup with you."
Draco brought both hands to his face, rubbing his temples.
"Malfoy?" the spectral Hermione asked him tentatively. "Please."
It was madness. No, beyond madness. It was stupidity to the highest degree.
But still, Draco had known the moment Hermione Granger asked for his help he had no choice but to give it. After all, he had relied on her in his own moment of need, while she'd been none the wiser. He'd just hoped someone might have talked him out of it… but that clearly wasn't to be.
"Okay," he said to the absent Hermione, fixing his attention on her. "Okay. I'll use the Elder Wand and see what I can do. Wait there," he added, and she gave him a helplessly irritated look like what else am I supposed to do, which he ignored in favor of standing. "Um, hold on."
He glanced at his mother. "Any ideas how to travel between worlds?"
"I imagine it's rather like apparition," Narcissa said without inflection. At that, Draco abruptly recalled the panicked owl he'd sent her about how he was going to be the last to take his exam, when he'd been intensely fearing the possibility he would fail and be left behind. She'd merely told him there was no way he would fail, and perhaps because she was his mother, he'd simply gone ahead and believed her.
"Destination, determination, deliberation," she reminded him now, with a wry half-smile. "Fix your mind on the universe you're going and will yourself into it."
He nodded, swallowing a lifetime of nerves and reaching for the Elder Wand, clutching it tightly in his hand. "Well, alright. I guess… bye, then," he said to the others, unsure when he would see them again, and Hermione, who'd been apprehensively chewing her thumbnail, threw herself into him, wrapping her arms around his ribs and holding him tightly. He bent his head, brushing his lips against her forehead (he'd have liked to do more but he was, after all, in full view of his mother) before glancing up at Theo, who grudgingly also came over to pull them both into an embrace.
"Don't die," Theo advised stiffly.
"Er, yes, I agree," Harry said, and then blinked. "Oh, and, um—" He rummaged in the beaded bag, which he'd made a habit of shoving down his sock. "Here," he said, withdrawing the silvery invisibility cloak. "Take this, too. And this, obviously," he added, handling the cup for about a second before dropping it back in. "Actually, no, just take the whole bag—"
"What?" Draco asked, balking. "Don't be stupid. You might need that!"
Harry shook his head. "You take it." He held the bag and the bundled cloak out for Draco firmly. "Keep her safe," he warned, as Draco tentatively disentangled himself from Hermione and Theo to reach for the proffered items, gripping them in his free hand. "Tell her I'm sorry if I've let her down."
"Potter, you haven't," Draco began, but withered, shaking his head. "Well, fine. Just… let me do this, would you? No point wasting the effort if it isn't even going to work." He inhaled shakily, Hermione's eyes bright with restrained emotion, and gave Theo and his mother one more smile-resembling grimace before raising the Elder Wand, closing his eyes.
"Oh, er, wait," Draco said, cracking one to look at the hazily-present Hermione where she'd risen to her feet. "Where are you again?"
"James Potter's house," she said. "In the study."
"Right, James Potter's house," Draco agreed, shutting his eyes again.
"What?" asked Harry in half a whisper, and it occurred to Draco for a moment that perhaps that had been a particularly careless slip he should remedy, but then he heard Theo's footsteps traversing the room and thought otherwise, figuring the three of them collectively were in far more capable hands than he was about to be.
He inhaled, exhaled.
James Potter's house.
Inhale.
In Grindelwald's universe.
Exhale.
Where she is.
He pictured Hermione Granger's anxious face and concentrated on being there with her; on what it would be like to look at her, to place a hand on her shoulder and tell her it would be fine—which was not something he should promise, practically speaking, but would likely do anyway. It seemed a thing people did for each other from time to time.
He flicked the wand, inhaling again. There was something in the way for a moment, like a flat-planed barricade, but he cocked his head, feeling mentally for a latch, a crack, a handle. Determination, he thought, tightening his fingers around the Elder Wand. I am determined to get there, he thought, feeling at what must have been the edges of reality. He felt a bit of glass shattering, tinkling slightly like bells in the distance, and then nothing. A fire crackled somewhere near him as he waited, unsure what to expect, and then opened his eyes slowly, one lid at a time.
"You did it," Hermione breathed out, her fingers pressed to her lips, and he stared at her for a moment, not quite sure it was real.
"Did I?" he asked, doubtful, and she reached out, her fingers unfurling to touch his face.
"Yes," she said matter-of-factly, as if she couldn't really believe it either. She eyed him from a variety of angles, frowning with calculation. "Funny," she determined, resting her fingertips briefly on his cheekbone before stepping back, looking almost slightly irritated. "I really thought this sort of thing would be impossible. Makes you wonder if anything's actually impossible, doesn't it?"
"It certainly does," came a voice to Draco's left, and abruptly, he and Hermione froze.
"Well, shit," said Draco, gaze sliding to the door. He tightened his hands around the cloak, the Elder Wand, the beaded bag, hastily cataloguing his materials.
"Yes," replied his other self. "My sentiments exactly."
Grindelverse
Hermione had obviously been the one to tell Draco to come, but still, even she had only moderately believed it was possible. It was such a jarring materialization—from a hazy, half-present image of him riddled with magical warps to him now, physically in front of her, looking precisely as thin and tired and ragged as she'd suspected from speaking to him with the stone—that perhaps her reflexes were a bit slower than they should have been when realizing both Draco Malfoys were now in Harry Potter's study with her.
"My mother told me you'd run off," the other Draco remarked to her neutrally, leaning against the doorframe with his fingers curled loosely around his wand. "Didn't take much to sort out you must have gone here, considering it was either this or Tom Riddle—though this is a surprise," he noted, gesturing to where she stood with her universe's version of Draco Malfoy. "What are you up to, Hermione?"
She blinked, reaching for her wand, and was surprised to find Draco (her Draco, or was he Harry's Draco?—god, she thought, this was going to be confusing) had thrown something over the two of them, leaving the other Draco to scowl slightly.
"Revelio," he said, aiming his wand, and the moment the spell failed to land, Hermione registered it was Harry's invisibility cloak her universe's Malfoy had thrown over her.
"Where'd you get this?" she hissed at him.
He replied with a shrug that poked into her back as he eased her backwards, moving them towards the door. "Potter gave it to me," he said in a low voice. "Any ideas here? Or should we just die?"
She wanted to elbow him into silence but figured that was unwise.
"So, you've brought your version of the cloak, then," the other Draco was monologuing to the empty room. "I imagine you must have also used your Elder Wand? Well, excellent. I'm rather in need of one, and truth be told, I don't particularly need to see you to find you." He blindly shot a stunning spell through the air, which only barely missed the arm belonging to the Draco beside her as Hermione yanked him out of the way. "I'm not your enemy, Hermione. Don't make me one."
"Your mother's working with Tom Riddle," she told him, and he pivoted sharply, following her voice. "Something's wrong, Draco. Something's much worse than you think it is."
"Yes, it is, isn't it," he agreed, slinging another spell as she ducked, tugging the cloaked Draco Malfoy down with her. "I've never been betrayed quite so flagrantly before, and yet here we are, aren't we?"
"I'm not betraying you," she growled impatiently, though the moment she said it, she sighed, realizing she likely had no other options but to proceed along those lines. "Not yet, anyway," she amended, and then flung a stunning spell in his direction.
He collapsed with a thud and fell to the ground, stiff.
"Well, rats," Hermione growled, removing the cloak and wandering over to the now-stunned version of Draco, eyeing his placidly unconscious face as it lolled against the carpet. "This is messier than I'd have liked."
"Surely it must have occurred to you that me coming here would be at least mildly unwelcome," the conscious Draco remarked unhelpfully, slipping the cloak from his shoulders and pausing beside her. "Did you really have no semblance of a plan?"
She considered him. Considered the him on the floor. Then considered him again.
"I didn't," she admitted, "but now I do."
She aimed her wand. "Incarcerous," she said, and as ropes bound themselves around the wrists and ankles of one Draco Malfoy, the other was left to stare at her with wide-eyed disbelief, balking as she turned to him. "What?" she asked, sighing. "Can't just let him go, obviously. I mean, you heard." She waved a hand. "He doesn't handle rejection well."
"Weren't you in a relationship with him?" Draco demanded, and she shrugged.
"It's complicated," she said, nudging floor-Draco's foot.
"Well, what are we supposed to do now?" upright-Draco said, throwing his hands up before resting them irritably on his hips. "And here I thought you were the sane one, Granger, but Jesus H. Salazar Fuck, clearly nobody's immune to the Potter School of Mayhem and Mania—"
"Well, you're Draco Malfoy, aren't you?" she asked him, and he turned his attention back to her stiffly, expression carefully blank as she spoke. "This universe really only needs one, so…"
She trailed off pointedly, gesturing to the one on the floor, and the one on his feet stared at her, looking equally pale.
"You can't be serious," he said, voice a touch hoarse, and she grimaced.
"Unfortunately," she replied tightly, "I'm afraid I rather am."
a/n: Did you guys know I have a vlog series now because my hands get tired from typing but I still want to answer the questions I get about writing and fanfic and life? It's called Olivie Blake is Not Writing and week 3 just went up on youtube. Just throwing that out there. Also, this chapter is for kyonomiko, who is such a magnificent dose of consistency in a world of utter chaos.
