Chapter 23: Gut Feelings

Grindelverse

Magic had a tendency to feel more like instinct than anything else. This was how Hermione had always considered it, likening the concept of it during her early years of untrained (and unintentional) use to incorporeal sensations; 'gut feelings' or déjà vu rather than the purposeful flex of a muscle. It was bothersome to her, a girl who relied on what she could see and touch and commit to practical use, that from time to time, magic slipping out of her bones was as insubstantial as an uneasy feeling.

It felt then, as she felt now, like little more than the bubbling of something coming; something unusual, perhaps even something wrong, tapping its way up her spine and resolving with an unpleasant shudder across the back of her neck.

"Shit," for example, was what Hermione whisper-sighed once Narcissa disappeared, sparing a glance at Draco. "She knows," she clarified to him under her breath, hoping Lily hadn't noticed. She wasn't sure yet if it would be more of a hindrance or a benefit for Lily to be aware the Malfoy heir she was using as a bargaining tool wasn't actually the one who could compel Narcissa to act. Was it better to be presumed useful, or useless? Hermione worried mightily what Lily Evans did with things—or people—who no longer served her purpose.

Draco's return glance seemed to want to shout I KNOW SHE KNOWS, but mostly he looked relieved, as if he'd been hoping she'd catch it. Either way, Hermione figured there was no time to waste thinking about Narcissa at that precise moment. After all, she and Draco had at least three problems they hadn't had this morning, and two of them were still sitting in this room.

"Well," Lily said, Remus flickering back into view with a grimace. "That was less fruitful than I'd hoped. She'll be finding a way to come for me soon, I expect."

"I suppose I could try to track her and find out where she goes next," Remus remarked, sniffing idly at the air. "Though I'd be surprised if it was anywhere other than directly to Tom."

Lily shook her head. "I don't think so. I think she'll be doing something on her own."

Privately, Hermione thought Lily was probably right. Tom seemed to make a point of using people with a certain degree of pliability and desperation, but Hermione wasn't entirely certain this version of Narcissa had ever been desperate in her life. She certainly wasn't now.

"Worth a look, I suppose." Remus glanced between Draco's tied-up form and Hermione. "Will you be alright here, then?"

"Oh, you mean am I frightened of the two disarmed teenagers?" Lily asked disinterestedly. "Well, you won't believe this, Remus, but I did somehow manage to survive without you for, oh, the entirety of my life before you arrived—so yes, I think I'm fine."

"No need to be a dick," Remus sniffed, disapparating and leaving Hermione to continue the difficult task of both looking for and avoiding looking at any possible items for escape, of which the sparse room contained almost none. She couldn't get to the beaded bag before Lily could stop her, and she certainly couldn't free Draco in less than that time. There were no other weapons in the room, either, which meant a wandless escape was unlikely. That, and she had no idea where they were presently being kept.

"What is this?" Hermione asked, gesturing around the room and hoping her voice merely sounded casually half-interested. "Can't imagine you'd take us to your house, would you?"

Lily flicked her a disinterested glance. "Nice try," she said, and did not elaborate.

"Do you plan to keep us indefinitely?" Hermione pressed. "Surely you can't think sitting here and waiting for Narcissa to choose whether to act for you or against you is a particularly good idea."

"I have her son," Lily pointed out with a jab of her chin towards Draco. "If I have to let her tire herself out before she inevitably fails and settles for the obvious, so be it. I, for one, am perfectly comfortable here," she said, leaning back in her chair with a wary half-shrug to prove it.

Hermione sighed. Unhelpful. In returning to her less-than-productive mental exercise of searching for some way out, she glanced at Draco, wondering if they could somehow get instantly more adept at nonverbal communication. Narcissa would obviously try to look for her actual son, Hermione thought, and seeing as there was no telling whether the others would successfully manage to keep her from him, that meant the two of them (three, if Hermione was worried about Lily, which she wasn't necessarily not) were likely to face some unsavory consequences rather soon. Unfortunately, Draco didn't look as if he had any other ideas.

"You know, Harry's looking for you," Hermione said to Lily, wondering if perhaps discussing her obvious weakness might do something to provoke a subsequent lapse of judgment. If she and Draco could just get away, Hermione thought, that would be one thing to check off their growing list of unfortunate circumstances, and Lily could surely fend for herself. "If you let us go, then—"

"You're not going anywhere," Lily cut in, sounding bored. "I can't have you and your tiresome moral crusades killing Tom before all the pieces are in play."

"It's not like I want Harry to die," Hermione insisted, bristling. "I wouldn't let it happen either, Lily, but if you let me go, then—"

"No," Lily said flatly. "Better to have you here, under my watch. And anyway—"

"Lily?" came perhaps the one voice Hermione had not been expecting to hear, Lily's expression promptly going tight with annoyance as footsteps echoed up a semi-distant set of stairs. Lily gave Hermione a warning glance, flashing her wand pointedly in Hermione's direction, and they waited as the shadows of expensive leather shoes appeared at the base of the door.

"Lily." A pause, a test of the doorway, and a sigh. "If you're in here, I swear—"

Lily flicked her wand over her shoulder with a roll of her eyes, using a spell to block entry to the door that Hermione didn't recognize as any typical lock or ward she learned at Hogwarts. Must have been some skullduggery of Tom's, Hermione assumed, only it was quickly dispelled with the pressure and crash of a blasting charm, followed by the sound of a loud, almost incoherent yell.

"LILY EVANS, I TAUGHT YOU THAT KEEP-AWAY SPELL—"

James Potter broke off, the words appearing to fall helplessly from his mouth as he took stock of the various people in the room, the door falling shut behind him.

"Lily," James growled, infuriated, "you cannot go around kidnapping children—"

"They're not children, James," Lily said, directing her wand from her conveniently seated height to somewhere around his groin as he scowled at her with disapproval, eyes narrowed. "They're the same age we were when we met. Older, even."

"That's not the point," James snapped, shaking his head with obvious dismay. "Lily, this is our son's best friend!" he said with a wave of his hand towards Draco. "Have you lost your entire mind?"

"James, you really have no business here," Lily sighed, and to that, he rounded on her with fury, looking positively astounded she'd had the audacity to suggest it.

"You took them to the one place you should have known I'd try to look for you," he accused her. His wand rested uneasily at his side and in answer, Lily whipped hers into his face, angling it at his forehead with a distinct look of warning. "This was our place, Lily," James said, jaw set with a look Hermione recognized as Harry's chief expression of agitation; the one he used when he was both frustrated and in emotional distress. "This was where we used to meet, and I—" He broke off. "I still come here, you know, every Halloween. Just… to be near you. Near us," James forced out. "What we used to be."

For once, Lily seemed to momentarily falter, blinking with surprise at James' admission until he grimaced, agitated all over again.

"Is that really so surprising? I never stopped missing you," James said through gritted teeth, "you MONSTROUS SIREN—"

"James," Lily sighed, her moment of sympathy by then well and fully discarded, "you were wasting your time on me then, and you're certainly wasting it now." She rose to her feet, her wand still aimed firmly at his head. "Harry's best friend or not, Draco Malfoy is the only son of the woman whose help I need, and I'm not letting go of my leverage."

"Wh- Narcissa, really?" James demanded, looking intensely doubtful. "Do you know how many times I've nearly died of boredom while being held hostage at that woman's house? She's a society witch through and through, and I really don't think she's involved in some sort of—of—" He faltered, choosing an odd moment to abruptly recall Hermione's presence in the room. "Okay, and seriously," he ventured impatiently in her direction, "who are you?"

"No one," Hermione assured him, trying to simultaneously calculate how long James would need to keep Lily distracted for her to get to her beaded bag. "I'm really just trying to help Harry, so if I could just, you know. Be on my way, then—"

"No," Lily said grumpily. "You're not going anywhere. And you need to leave," she added, jabbing her wand back in James' direction. "You're just making a mess of things, Potter, like always."

"What?" James barked. "You do realize I had a perfectly fine life before you ever entered it, don't you? A perfectly normal life with nothing remarkable about it whatsoever aside from my stupid money and my stupid name—and then you gave me a son, Lily!" he burst out in a surprising twist, startling both Lily and Hermione and perhaps even a still-restrained Draco with the admission. "You gave me a clever, funny, fantastic little dickhead who constantly talks back that I didn't even get the privilege of raising, and—"

He broke off, swallowing his frustration.

"And you," he informed Lily venomously, "you let me believe you were dead for years, and all this time, all of it, I've spent a fucking lifetime being robbed of the things I love most—so excuse me," he snarled at her, "if I don't really have it in me to leave you right now!"

He was panting, red-faced, and Lily, by contrast, was pale and stunned. "James," she said, momentarily uncertain, but it seemed after an admission of that magnitude, he'd made at least one decision.

"You can't do this," James ruled at a mutter, turning to Draco. Lily, who hadn't lowered her wand, made a small throat-clearing sound of warning, pairing it with a testing jab, but James merely glanced at her.

"Are you going to kill me, Lily?" he asked bluntly. "Would it really be that easy?"

Hermione thought of the last time she'd seen Lily threaten someone, which had ended with an Avada that took barely a second of time and even less hesitation to cast. Hermione figured it was, as a general rule, that easy for Lily Evans—only perhaps in this case, James Potter was something… else. Perhaps something no one else in her life had ever been.

He wasn't just a boy to me, Lily had once told her.

It was certainly a gamble on James' part, but Hermione had a feeling it was going to pay off.

Lily's lips were pressed thin with warning, but James shook his head, resigned. "This is our son's best friend," he pressed her, gesturing to Draco. "You missed it, Lily. You missed them growing up together, but I didn't. Sure, he's a little arsehole just like ours, but I can't let you do this."

"I need him," Lily warned, fingers still tight around her wand, but James merely took it like an unsuccessful blow, letting it glance inconsequentially off his cheek.

"I taught them to fly, you know," James informed her, and Hermione watched Lily's mouth soften just a little as she registered that information. "Sirius only flies long enough to get his hair all windswept, you know that. Lucius certainly wasn't going to do it, and fucking Theodore Nott wouldn't spend one second with his kid without cursing the shit out of him, so I taught all of them. This one, he's a total menace," James said with a fondly irritated glance at Draco. "Knocked Theo off his broom the first time he ever flew and would've done the same to Harry, only our kid? He's fucking magic," James said with obvious pride, and Hermione watched Lily blink back what might have been tears at the words, probably recounting the empty archives of everything she'd missed about Harry's youth. "Your son, Lily, he's a natural. He's like you, quick, instinctive, reckless and so, so brave. He took to it so fast, and I thought my god, Lily would be so proud, he's just like her."

James swallowed hard. "I saw so many little pieces of you in him, Lils," he said quietly, "and I couldn't tell him any of it, and I couldn't tell you, either. I couldn't tell anyone."

"James," Lily said again, softer now, and he shook his head.

"This kid would die for our kid," he said, gesturing to Draco again, who by then looked oddly somber. Hermione wondered if James' portrait of a life with a better father figure and truer friends might have struck a fairly significant chord in quite another universe's Draco Malfoy. "I can't let you tie him up like this—like he's nothing. I just can't."

James lifted his wand, giving Lily fair warning of his intent, and she said nothing.

Then James turned to Draco, wordlessly removing the restraints, and Lily didn't move. Certainly didn't curse him. Draco took a breath, slowly unwinding his jaw, and eased what must have been pain around his wrists, glancing up at James.

"Thanks," he said quietly, which Hermione suspected was about something more than simply having his restraints cut.

In return, James nodded gruffly. "But don't fuck with me, Malfoy, because I haven't the time," he warned sharply, and Draco grimaced in reply as James turned back to Lily. "Now, what's all this about?" he demanded from her. "Because if you're doing this for Harry, then let me help you, please. He's my son," he reminded her, looking pained. "Harry's my son, and he wasn't just taken from you. They took him from me, too, so if you think this is worth doing for him, then I'll do the same. Just…" He trailed off, looking helpless. "Just let me be his father, please, Lily. For once."

He'd won her over. Hermione could see that, even if Lily couldn't.

Eventually, though, even Lily conceded to nod, glancing momentarily at Hermione before resigning herself to admitting the truth. "It's Tom Riddle," she said, shaking her head. "I made a deal with him a long time ago. I thought I was saving Harry's life, but—"

She trailed off and James nodded, grasping the point. "What else?" He glanced at Hermione, still eyeing her with suspicion. "What's this about?"

Despite being arguably the more complicated issue, Lily answered that question without much fuss. "There's another universe, James," Lily told him. "One that's parallel to this one. I've been there myself, I know it's real." She jutted her chin out to Hermione. "She's from the other one."

"What?" James asked, blinking. "Another universe? But that's—that's impossible."

Lily shook her head. "It isn't, actually."

"But—" James frowned to himself, struggling to make that make sense. Based on his general demeanor, though, Hermione guessed this wasn't the first time a magicless, pickpocketing thief called Lily Evans had told him something he hadn't believed until that moment.

He wrestled with his suspension of disbelief for a brief period of silence, but then, to Hermione's dismay, he turned back to Draco, eyes narrowed.

"Wait a minute."

He looked in the same spot Theo had once referenced a scar, where of course there was nothing. In fact, there was a mark on this Draco's face Hermione hadn't bothered paying attention to before, thinking it would have faded by now; it was a crescent moon shaped curve around the bottom of his eye socket that must have occurred during the horcrux resurrection, blending into the shadows beneath his wary grey eyes to settle violently into the landscape of his skin.

While the other Draco had worn his scar so it blended into a curated facade of concealment, this Draco's latest distinguishing figure looked ghastly and out of place, his too-long hair and too-resigned posture combining for an overall impression of being generally unkempt. There were some, like Harry, Hermione thought, for whom looking careless seemed a natural state. On Draco, there was a slight air of gradual deterioration, something irrepressibly requiring comfort, and Hermione made the strange, distinctly baseless estimation that the tip of her index finger would curve perfectly into the scar. She grimaced slightly at her unhelpful train of thought, waiting for James' inevitable conclusion, and after a brief inspection he turned slowly back to Lily, confirming Hermione's precise fears.

"Tie him back up again," James said flatly. "You've got the wrong Draco Malfoy, Lils."

Lily's jaw tightened, fingers wrapped threateningly around her wand again, but Draco hurried to address her before she could move, leaping deftly from his chair to where Hermione sat on the cot. "Wait," he attempted, hands out, professing innocence. "It's not what you think—"

"Oh, really? Because what I think is that Narcissa knows bloody well this isn't her son, and neither of you had any plans to mention it," Lily snapped with a glance between Draco and Hermione, hazarding a guess that was, to Hermione's dismay, highly accurate. "How did you even get here? No, never mind," she answered herself as Draco's mouth flew open and promptly shut, James' expression beside her now equally plagued with untrusting disinterest. "It doesn't matter. If you're not him, you're useless to me."

"Not true," Draco assured her quickly. "We can still help you. Sure, maybe you don't have the leverage you thought you did," he conceded, and Hermione, who wasn't totally sure what his plan was, frowned with confusion while he obviously attempted to coax the other two into listening, "but we have resources, too. I got here, didn't I? Which means I can go back. My mother," he suggested, which appeared to have occurred to him out of the blue, "she might know something—"

"What?" Lily asked, and appeared to kick herself internally. "Of course. Of course," she repeated to herself, shaking her head. "There's another Narcissa Malfoy, we could just ask her—"

"But she might not know anything," Hermione said with a frown. "We could always just go get the other Draco, if that's really what you want," she added, thinking that was at least another way out, but Draco's hand pointedly (and furtively) shot out, gripping her arm to get her to stop talking.

"You won't get any answers staying here," Draco warned Lily, who set her jaw, obviously already half-convinced. "That, and this version of my mother's probably going to come for you. But we can take you there, get you out of her way, and if you can find answers while we're there, then—"

"I'm coming with you," James said, and Lily rounded on him.

"James, for the last time—"

"No. Don't argue, I'm coming." This time, Hermione noted, his voice was stubborn without being juvenile. This, his presence—and his service to her—was simply a matter of stating facts. "That's final, Lily. We're doing this for Harry, which means I'm coming, and that's that."

"Hang on," Hermione hissed to Draco, tugging his shoulder back. "Malfoy, are you serious? We can't leave now, there's too many unanswered questi-"

"She said they're there," he muttered, leaning in to speak in her ear as James and Lily continued their argument about whether or not his presence was welcome on what he seemed to be unhelpfully referring to as her 'militant vendetta.' "Whoever else Tom Riddle made a deal with," Draco clarified, "my moth- Narcissa said we wouldn't find them here. And if they're not here—"

"They're there," Hermione finished for him with an inward groan, understanding now what he'd meant. "But still, Malfoy, we can't go back there now. We don't have time right now for some sort of wild chase through universes!"

"Are you joking? We obviously can't stay here, and besides, we have to warn them," Draco said, and Hermione stiffened as she realized he was right. "Potter, Theo… her. We have to tell them, they have to know." He paused, and Hermione registered with a dull thud the 'her' he'd meant had been the other version of herself. "If someone is working for Tom Riddle over there, they have to know now, Granger, before they get themselves into more trouble. My mother was right," he added under his breath, shaking his head. "She probably does know something he wants, and whatever it is—"

"It's her." It crept into her like a tendril of fear, bubbling under her skin. "Draco, it must be her."

"What?" He blinked at her. "Who?"

Hermione was breathless. "Her, me, it must be. Right?" she asked, turning urgently towards him. "And if it is, we can't let her find out what we know, so—"

"It's not her," Draco said flatly, shaking his head. "No way. You just don't like her," he said, which was an accusation that struck Hermione far more upsettingly than she was expecting.

"That's—" She swallowed a little burst of temper. "That's ridiculous. Malfoy, think," she half-pleaded with him, "of course it has to be her. Who else snuck their way into our universe recently?"

"You're jumping to conclusions," he said, looking impatient now. "First of all, you don't know that it happened recently. Maybe it didn't—you saw how long Tom's plans have been in motion," he reminded her, which was true, though not entirely persuasive, in her view. "He could have easily planted someone there ages ago—and besides, you don't know her, okay?" he added brusquely. "You don't know her, but I do, and it isn't her. She didn't even know who Tom Riddle was."

"She could have been lying!" Hermione told him, exasperated. "She's certainly lied plenty before, hasn't she?"

"Yes, but she wasn't lying about this." He was stone-faced and certain. "She might have told a lot of lies to get where she is now, but she hasn't lied to me since, Granger. I'm fucking sure of it."

"You're taking her side," Hermione realized, stung, and he slid his grey gaze to hers. With or without the addition of the crescent-shaped scar, his eyes were different from his counterpart's. There was no incongruous humor here, no unbending arrogance. Only exhaustion, tiredness and ache, and where Hermione had often wondered where the other Draco Malfoy had stood only to find no clarity in meeting his eye, this was unambiguous.

"There aren't sides," Draco said. "For once—for fucking once," he spat, and Lily and James paused their argument, catching the tension in his voice, "this isn't about my side or yours. This isn't a war, not this time, and I'm just—I'm not doing this again." He shook his head. "If you don't want to trust her yet, fine. But I'm not doing this a second time—not to her, not to you."

Hermione swallowed uncomfortably. "Malfoy—"

"We have to warn Potter," he reminded her, successfully finding their common ground. "The one thing that seems to always be true is people wanting him dead in every universe, and much as I can hardly blame them, he probably deserves to know. He thinks he's safe," Draco told Hermione firmly. "People make mistakes when they think they can't be touched. I'm proof of that, aren't I?"

"I—" She blinked. "Yes. Yes, okay, fine." She cleared her throat; their previous argument would have to settle for an impasse. "Okay, we'll… we'll find a way to reach him, then. Your mother probably does know something, anyway," she added, sparing a convincing (hopefully) glance at Lily. "If we can find them, we can warn them quickly and come back to sort out this mess. Is the Elder Wand somewhere safe?" she asked Lily, who rolled her eyes.

"Yes," she said, unsurprisingly opting not to explain herself any further, and Hermione nodded.

"Okay," she said. "Well, then—"

"I'm coming," James informed them loudly.

"Yes," Lily sighed irritably, sliding a glare at him, "they know."

It appeared that compromises were being made on all sides, though there were still arguments to be made, in Hermione's mind. She might have attempted reasoning to Draco that it was a mistake to bring two dead people along. She might have pointed out to him that paradoxes, like their own, were clearly not meant to converge. She could have hit upon several different pressure points and considered every single one, but given the look of certainty on Draco's face, it didn't seem worth it.

She wasn't sure what was bothering her, not entirely. She could pinpoint the moment the feeling had struck, but couldn't quite identify the cause. After all, why did it feel so terrible that Draco was giving her—only not her, but still, her—the benefit of the doubt? Wasn't that what she'd once hoped he'd do for her, and for so many years? And wasn't that girl he was worried about still the person—herself, but still not—who'd once convinced him to come to her rescue, not so long ago?

Hermione rubbed a thumb slowly over the carved M on her wrist, shaking her head. She'd expected to feel dread, but instead she only felt a strange sense of yearning that was unrelated to the sequence of events; as if she were being pulled, twisted and contorted, in a direction she hadn't been prepared to go.

"Let's go," she told Draco, and he nodded, turning to Lily.

"We'll need the beaded bag," he told her, and she frowned, obviously not quite ready to trust them.

"Why?" she asked. "What does it do?"

Draco seemed familiar with calls for good faith. He beckoned for James to put a hand on his shoulder, then for Hermione to do the same, and then held a hand out for Lily.

"It's our turn to tell you a secret," he told her, and glanced at Hermione, the ghost of a darkened laugh playing fleetingly across his lips.


Potterverse

Draco couldn't remember a time he hadn't known he was a wizard. For him, magic was as omnipresent as gravity, and he'd sought it out even before he had any proof what it actually was. In childhood, everything was magic. Fire, that was magic. Rain, that had to be magic, too. Flowers grew, the earth moved, food was cooked and pain, even the bad ones, eventually went away.

He bruised himself once when he was very young, knocking carelessly into something. He pressed two fingers to it every day, and eventually, it began to fade. "Look, Mother," he'd said, proudly showing Narcissa the now-yellowing skin, "I fixed it."

Look, Mother. Magic.

She'd smiled, not bothering to correct him. "Yes," she said, "you did," and if he hadn't already known perfectly well he was special, he might have believed it then.

Later he would come to learn there was something mundane about magic, and about being magic. At times, magic would feel less like something he could do and more like something that trapped him. That day, magic felt a little like a crutch, or perhaps a cane. He leaned on it, repeating a sequence that felt like the early stages of muscle memory, to land the four of them back where he'd last seen the others, just outside the tavern they'd taken Narcissa only a matter of days ago.

Hermione had seemed the slightest bit doubtful while it was happening, digging her fingers into Draco's arm with pressure he suspected she hadn't noticed she was applying. Still, the process of transference felt the same, if not even easier the second time through. Whatever passage he'd broken through to pass from world to world, it hadn't yet been repaired.

Their feet landed softly on the ground and James looked around, scrutinizing the view.

"Looks the same," he ruled flatly.

Lily rolled her eyes. "What did you expect, different colors?"

"I hadn't ruled it out," he said defensively, which Draco ignored in favor of turning to Hermione.

"I'll check for Potter inside," he said, specifically referencing Harry alone, and she nodded. "You wait out here."

He wasn't sure what to think of their little micro-argument. He supposed it was natural for her to suspect her other version of wrongdoing; after all, his other self wasn't exactly reliable. Or trustworthy. Or even moderately tolerable. Still, Draco felt he'd come to know the other universe's Hermione Granger, and he doubted she'd made any sorts of deals outside of the one contracted with his other self. Why bother with multiple self-interested wizards when one was probably more than sufficient? Besides, she probably would have punched Tom Riddle in the face for trying to bully her into something. That, or she might have simply stabbed him.

The thought made Draco smile as he made his way up the stairs. He was relieved to be heading back for something familiar—almost pleased with the idea of seeing Harry, in fact—until he knocked on the door of their room, finding himself face to face instead with a cheery, definitely muggle Scot.

"Canna' help ye?" the man asked, and Draco shook his head, backing away with a crushing blow of dismay as the man shrugged, returning to the shirt he'd been ironing by hand.

They must have kept moving, Draco realized as he turned around. Not that surprising, he supposed, though the inevitable follow-up question was troubling.

If they'd left, where exactly were they now?

"They're gone," he told Hermione in a low voice, beckoning her away from Lily and James. "I'm not sure where to find them."

"Anywhere they might have gone?" she asked hopefully, and Draco shook his head.

"Not my house, certainly not Theo's. Where would Potter go?"

She considered it. "I have a guess, but I'm not sure," she said, and Draco abruptly recalled what Harry had said about the house at Grimmauld Place. "There was Sirius' house—"

"Sirius?" James asked, catching the name from afar and brightening. "Is there a version of him here?"

"Ah, um." Hermione fidgeted, sparing a vacant smile. "Well, there… was," she said slowly, and James, who must have caught the implications, stiffened with dismay. "Anyway, I suppose we could try going there," she said to Draco, withering slightly at her less than satisfactory handling of the situation. "It wasn't safe while there were Death Eaters around, but I suppose it might be now."

"Potter did safely contact Kreacher," Draco permitted, and Hermione nodded thoughtfully.

"Maybe they went there, then," she said, and turned to Lily. "I need to apparate us in," she said, and Lily's eyes narrowed, registering the implication that Hermione needed her wand, which would make her something a little more armed than a proper hostage likely should have been. "Really, I do. I'd have Malfoy do it if he could," Hermione assured her, "but he can't. I think it still has to be someone in the Order."

"The what?" James asked.

"Uhhhhhh," Hermione said distractedly, and Draco stifled a laugh.

"You'll just have to trust us," Draco said. "We don't really have much to lose by taking off at this point. Neither of us is particularly safe in this world," he pointed out, "and really, you two aren't either."

"Why not?" James asked, frowning. "What are we like in this world?"

Hermione's voice in answer was abnormally high. "It's really best you don't ask," she told James, as Lily sighed, shaking her head and removing Hermione's wand from somewhere that was either magical concealment or extremely impressive tailoring.

"Fine," Lily said, holding it just out of reach, "but just so you know, I will find you and kill you if you betray me in any way."

"Oh, sure, noted," Hermione agreed weakly, forcing a laugh, and Lily handed the wand over, placing an expectant hand on Hermione's arm in the same motion. "So, um. Ready?"

Draco rested a hand on her shoulder with a nod, feeling the usual compression of apparition before they landed in the living room of an old and drafty house.

"Harry?" Hermione called, immediately setting off in search of him as James and Lily frowned around at the room, skeptically eyeing the antiquated furniture and the fraying tapestries on the walls. The house was morbidly terrifying, precisely as Narcissa had always said it was, and on top of that, it had a distinct lack of care. "Are you here?"

There was nothing but a flattened and almost eerie silence in answer. Draco, an only child and a pureblood at that, was accustomed to vacant, quiet houses. His parents were quiet people, preferring books and solitude to any sort of play. This, however, was a different kind of quiet, and it wasn't until Draco caught a ring of condensation on one of the wooden tables that he realized the particular brand of silence he was hearing was better classified as danger.

"Granger, get back here, now," he barked, and she ran back into the room just as a wand pressed itself to his forehead.

"Hermione," came a surprised voice that was both oddly familiar and entirely unexpected, "did you want me to—"

The voice trailed off and Draco frowned, trying unsuccessfully to turn over his shoulder and confirm his suspicions about who might have just appeared in the same moment that James heaved a massively dramatic groan.

"Not you again," James said, glowering at whoever had revealed themselves. "Honestly, are you ever not a total inconvenience? It's as if you live to torment me—"

"Oh dear," Hermione breathed softly, giving Draco a slightly panicked glance. "Oh, Professor Lupin," she offered hesitantly, "I, um. I'm going to need you to put the wand down, please, and—"

"James," croaked Remus Lupin, whom Draco might have quite forgotten existed in this universe if he hadn't seen the leather-clad, tattooed version of him just hours before. "James, and—and Lily, is this… are you…"

James glanced questioningly at Lily beside him, who tilted her head, frowning. "We're friends here, I think," she explained to James, looking as if she was straining to remember. "I've seen him before, only he wasn't quite so… old."

"Could you kindly release me, please?" Draco asked, twisting to look at Remus over his shoulder. "No offense, but I imagine I'm sort of the least of your problems."

"What do you mean we're friends?" James asked Lily, and then, bright with curiosity, "Wait, is Sirius also my friend here?"

"Oh, yes, definitely," Lily told him with a nod. "Sounds like he's dead, though."

"Right," James recalled, wilting. "That's no good."

Draco slid out of Remus' grasp, which by that time was hardly at all restricting. Their former Defense Against the Dark Arts professor looked even more haggard than usual, the lines of his face carved starkly white as he stared, haunted, at two people who'd been dead and gone for nearly eighteen years.

"Sirius," Remus echoed. "Is he—" He glanced at Hermione, pained. "Is this a dream?"

"No, Professor," she said softly to him. "I'm afraid it's… a bit more complicated than that."

"Oh sure, just 'a bit' more," Draco muttered to nobody in particular, and Remus blinked, dragging himself out of whatever pondering he might have been unsuccessfully wading through.

"What's going on?" he asked Hermione, more suspicious this time. "Is this—did someone—is this polyjuice, or—"

"I'm looking for Harry," Hermione cut in quickly. "Have you seen him, Professor?"

"No, he's been missing for weeks," Remus mumbled to himself. "Haven't seen him since Hogwarts, and—are you really here?" he demanded sharply from James. "Prongs, is that really you?"

James opened his mouth, then closed it. "I mean, I feel like… I should say no?" he guessed, glancing again at Lily, who shrugged. "But also the answer is very much yes. So wait, is Sirius really dead?" he asked, and Remus flinched so viscerally Draco could feel the echo of it from where he was standing. "Oh, sorry," James said, looking flustered. "I didn't, um—did you know him, or—?"

"Did I…" Remus' voice died out, becoming small and thin. "Are you really asking me if I knew Sirius Black?"

"Okay, I think it's about time we interfere," Draco announced, stepping between Remus and James and giving Hermione a look he hoped was successfully final. "Listen, don't talk to each other any more," he informed James and Remus, glancing between them. "Okay? I recognize you probably have no interest in listening to me, but—"

"I need to find Narcissa Malfoy," Lily announced to a startled Remus. "Do you know her?"

"Oh, Jesus fuck, okay—just don't go anywhere," Draco said to them with a growl, taking Hermione's arm and guiding her into the next room to angle them in sight from the doorway, still keeping an eye on the most incredibly awkward reunion he'd ever had the displeasure to witness. "Okay, I did not think this through," he muttered, shaking his head. "Potter is not going to take this well, but anyway—look, how are we going to find them?"

"I don't know," Hermione said, frowning to herself at Remus' increasingly catatonic look of shock. "You're the one who lost them, Malfoy," she added, sparing a disapproving glance at him. "Didn't you make some sort of plan to find them when you came back?"

He bristled. "You know, it's almost like this isn't the first time one of us happened to not make plans," he informed her briskly, and she glared at him, scowling. "The point is, we have to find them before these two," he grumbled, directing a gesture at Lily and James (who appeared to be quizzing Remus about the harrowing details of his various tragedies) before offering a return scowl at Hermione, "ruin everything, which is also going to be incredibly difficult if you're not prepared to tell…" He hesitated, both unsure what to diplomatically call the other Hermione Granger and immensely frustrated he even had to try, "You know—"

"How do you know you can trust her?" Hermione demanded, and Draco blinked, caught off guard by the sharpness in her tone. "Seriously, Malfoy, tell me how."

"She's—" The word fell out of his mouth. "Honest."

"Seriously?" Hermione hissed, unimpressed. "You, really. You, of all people, are going to tell me that she's honest, so you just believe her? Not even their version of Harry trusted her," she said with a flung-out gesture to James and Lily, "but suddenly you do—"

"I told you," Draco sighed, exasperated, "she'd never heard of Tom, she knew nothing about Dumbledore, she'd barely even seen magic. I really think she was just caught up in all of this and—"

"Don't be an idiot," Hermione snapped, glaring at him. "I know you're not this naive, Malfoy."

An outrageous claim, particularly from her. He could feel irritation coiling up in his muscles and pounding its way through his veins.

"Oh, so we're going to fight now, is that it?" Draco demanded from her, folding his arms over his chest. "We were getting on perfectly well but now, sure, let's fight, we don't have anything else going on, why not—"

"I'm just saying," Hermione gritted out, "you don't have any proof, and—"

"I had no proof your blood was any less than mine and I still believed that shit for years," Draco hurled at her, "so if anything, this should really count as some sort of drastic improvement—"

"Stop it," Hermione said. "Stop, stop this immediately, you can't just learn your lesson and decide now that you're all morally righteous you can just decide she's trustworthy and that's that—"

"Oh, of course not, I can't change at all, whereas you," he said stiffly, "are apparently perfectly allowed to come back vengeful and paranoid, I take it—"

"The other you wouldn't trust her," Hermione cut in flatly, sparking a new burst of temper he hardly knew what to do with.

"That's because the other me is an arsehole with a fucking agenda," Draco snapped. "He was going to use her, and probably use you, too—"

"He wasn't going to use me," Hermione insisted staunchly. "I wasn't going to let him."

"Well, isn't that just wonderful for you, Granger," Draco said, only mildly aware that a step in reverse might have been a wiser choice than the one he took forward, bringing them within inches of each other. "I'm very glad your relationship with the other me was beneficial to your development but it's almost like right now, I simply do not care—"

"Stop trying to intimidate me," she warned him, lifting her chin to heighten the effect of her warning glare. "It's not going to work."

"I'm not threatening you," he retorted. "Maybe you're used to some other version of me," he added snidely, "but I'm not him, Granger. I'm something else entirely."

"And I'm not her," Hermione snapped, which Draco had already known perfectly well and registered again with a pointed glance, wondering with an inward laugh how one could have ever been mistaken for the other. He knew the shape of Hermione Granger's mouth by then and this one, upon forcefully close inspection, was markedly different. The little bow of her lips was the same, the angle of it precisely as he'd seen and touched before, but there was something else, too. Something quintessentially belonging to this version of her. It was a little hint of something he might have mistakenly called defiance at first glance, but upon closer inspection was nearer to insecurity, more a question than an answer. It was determined, but with a little curve at the end; I'm right, but also, aren't I?

"Stop it," she said, and he looked up with a jolt, yanked back to the argument. "Stop," she said again, half a whisper that time, and he swallowed.

"Stop what?"

"Stop looking at… at me. Like that."

He held his breath. "Why?"

"Because." She was breathing hard, caught somewhere between anger and fear and glaring at him, as if he stood between her and escape. "Just—because. Just don't."

Don't say it, don't say it, don't say it—

"Because he looks at you like that?" Draco asked her.

Damn it.

Her brown eyes rose to his.

"Because he doesn't," she said, her voice half a whisper, and whatever snare she was caught in, he had the sudden sensation she wasn't alone.

They stood there for a count of three. Five. Seven.

"This isn't going to work," she said eventually, and he nodded.

Of course it wouldn't.

"We need to find Potter and Theo and get out of here," he said, and she nodded.

Yes, they very much did.

An inch forward, he realized, and he'd be touching her. A few degrees of change to the angle of his head and he could—if he wanted, which he didn't; which he positively couldn't—find out if that little questioning curve of her lips tasted new or familiar, which he was surprised to find he had a sudden craving to know. Hadn't he kissed her just recently? But… no, it's different, his mind told him, it's different now. That was business. This was… well, it wasn't, but if it were, then it would be an experiment. The testing of a hypothesis. Putting a theory to work.

Thankfully a pop of apparition saved them, echoing through the room.

"Lupin, I just wanted to check if you want- oh."

Hermione and Draco leapt guiltily apart to find Ron Weasley standing there, confusion mingling with surprise to furrow deeply into his brow.

"Oh," he said again, a little resigned this time as he translated the distance between them, and Hermione swallowed hard.

"Ron," she said, looking extremely flushed and highly guilty. "I didn't expect to see you here."

"No, obviously not," he agreed, voice dry and humorless, and then caught sight of the next room, frowning with surprise. "Is that…" He trailed off. "Is that… Harry's mum and dad? No, can't be, stupid question," he answered himself at a mumble, rightfully disbelieving, and Draco, suddenly recalling that it both was and most certainly was not, was dragged forcefully back to the concerns of the present.

"We need to find Potter," Draco said. "Have you seen him?"

"No," Ron said, the expression on his face mutating from displeasure to heightening concern. "I thought he was with you two."

"Well, fuck," Draco determined succinctly, pivoting away to return to the more (less?) volatile problem of James and Lily, but Hermione had merely tilted her head in thought, turning intently to Ron.

"Could you find him?" she asked slowly, and Draco paused mid-stride, suddenly remembering what Ron had said to Harry before he left: I found you before. I can do it again. "I know you don't owe me any favors, Ron, but—"

"Yeah. No, I mean—of course." Ron cleared his throat, and Draco turned slowly, meeting his eye with something that was and wasn't the apology he probably deserved. "Yeah, I'll help you," Ron said, and Hermione let out a sigh of relief.

"Good," she exhaled, "because right about now, we could really use some help."


a/n: For everyone who trusted me. You guys are the best.