a/n: Please be considerate to other readers and DO NOT INCLUDE SPOILERS IN YOUR REVIEWS.


Chapter 27: Inevitable Endings

Potterverse

There was a low hum of silence, none of them quite certain what to say until it was Theo who'd cleared his throat, blinking himself out of a trance and looking up from the unmoving body of his father.

"Thanks, I think," he managed, glancing up at James.

"Eh, I thought you were probably still young enough to successfully learn killing is wrong," James said, and then hastily added, "Do as I say, not as I do. Am I clear?"

"Noted," Theo said, turning to Narcissa. "Though I suppose it's worth asking what exactly we're supposed to do now, isn't it?"

"You could let me go, for one," Narcissa sniffed. "I have a son to locate," she added, glaring pointedly at Draco, "in case that escaped your attention."

"I told you, he's fine," Draco reminded her, rolling his eyes. "You could have raised less of a villain, you know."

"Tell your mother she could have raised less of a helpless idiot," she informed him.

"Oh, she already knows," Theo said. He was avoiding looking at his father, Draco knew, but even so, he already looked as though a weight he'd been carrying around for a lifetime had been lifted. "In any case, we should probably get people back to their respective universes. Particularly you," Theo said to James, "seeing as you will probably be a murder suspect somewhat shortly."

"Hm, true. I wonder what Lily's going to say," James mused, glancing down at Nott and permitting a final glance of repulsion before turning towards the floo.

"Knowing her? 'Congratulations,' I expect," Hermione murmured.

She, Draco noted, was hovering at his side, not quite coming or going, and the moment they passed through to the Black house he pulled her aside, hanging back while the others (including Theo, who gave Draco something of a 'good luck' grimace) ventured ahead, looking for the other Narcissa.

"Hey," Draco said quietly, "so, listen—"

"I'm going back," Hermione cut in before he could continue, and Draco stopped, frowning slightly. "I mean, I'm not stupid," she told him, her gaze cutting away for a moment. "I know what you want, and I've always know I'm… a stand-in. And even if I weren't," she added hastily, pausing him when he opened his mouth, "because believe me, I have no particular interest in hearing you're choosing me over, you know, me—even if I weren't that," she exhaled, "I still don't belong here. Paradoxes, you know." She shrugged. "They really are unnatural, if any of this was proof of anything. They're certainly not meant to last."

Her smile turned a little sad, lips softened by a rare form of vulnerability he hadn't known this version of her possessed.

"I figure it's okay to let you fend for yourself now, seeing as your knife throwing has improved so much in such a short time," she joked. "I hate to leave Harry, of course. Though he has Theo," she murmured, "who I think will take care of him just fine."

She reached up, brushing her thumb over his cheek.

"I hope I helped you," she said softly.

"You did," Draco promised her, without a trace of doubt. "Without you I'd be, I don't know." He shrugged. "Nothing, I suspect. I certainly wouldn't have killed a Dark Lord," he pointed out. "Wouldn't have been anything worth remarking."

"That's true," she loftily agreed, and when he made a face, she laughed, letting the sound of it settle gradually to a low sigh of resignation between them. "I will miss you, though," she told him, half-smiling. "I think perhaps I'll wonder from time to time what my life might have been like. You know," she said, shrugging, "in some parallel universe where you and I might have had something relatively simple. Something good, even."

It wasn't a difficult thing to imagine, even with how Draco had come to feel. He suspected he would consider himself forever changed for what this version of her had been to him, even if it had never been exactly right. The two of them would have always had an itch somewhere, he suspected; some concept of a hitch between universes that hadn't perfectly aligned.

Paradoxes, he recalled. They simply weren't meant to converge.

"Well, we should probably go find your mother to make sure everything went well," Hermione said, gesturing ahead, and Draco nodded his agreement. "Oh, but—" She chewed her lip slightly, holding him back. "Can I keep this wand, do you think?" she said, removing it from her pocket and looking down at it. "Do you think Theo will let me?"

Draco gave her half a smile, pulling her into his arms. "I think he will," he said, resting his chin gently atop her head.

In reality, though, he had quite another idea in mind.


Grindelverse

"I cannot believe," the other Draco snapped, "you actually left me here, tied up and watched over like some sort of—"

"Hostage?" Hermione guessed, and then, "I hate to tell you this, but you very much were, Draco."

"Well, I personally had a great time," said the other Harry from where he was languoring on the chair opposite Draco. He was presently tangled up with Theo, who was steadfastly refusing to part from his side. ("I saw you die and it was terrible," Theo had announced upon arrival, "and I'll never forgive you." "It wasn't even me," Harry had protested, which was, of course, followed by Theo's bark of, "STILL.")

"Ron here kept us highly entertained," the other Harry—Henry, Hermione supposed, if she really wanted to make a distinction—added, gesturing to where the two versions of Ron Weasley sat across the room.

"Well, if there's one thing I'm known for, it is my infallible sense of humor," said one Ron, which was the one Hermione had brought with her. I'm not letting you two go without me this time, he'd said to Harry, which Hermione had been pleased to see was the long-overdue bridging of a gap between them. The other Ron, who had newly enjoyed a taste of being in charge, seemed to have gained huge amounts of glee at knowing there was some version of him who'd accomplished very little and still miraculously ended up the envy of his siblings.

"I'm glad to see you both made it back," Ron added, and Hermione glanced at the Harry beside her, who was newly resurrected from the dead.

"Still can't believe it worked. Or that he even fell for it," Harry murmured, shaking his head. She was more pleased than she knew how to express that the familiar bolt of lightning was present once again, stark on his forehead once his hair had been permitted to return to its usual state of jet-black anarchy. "I was so sure he'd sort me out immediately."

"Well, he wanted to go home," Hermione said, shrugging. "I guess I can understand that."

"You don't want to stay, do you?" Theo asked her version of Harry, earning him an eye roll from the Harry he was sitting with. "I mean, we could do some really weird stuff," he said, glancing between them. "Just a thought."

"Oddly, I have my own version of you to get back to," Harry assured him, "though it's worth noting he's disconcertingly similar to you."

Theo's mouth quirked. "Does he do the tongue thing?"

"Er, I—" Harry's cheeks flushed. "I don't know."

"Well," the other Harry said, grinning. "If he can, you are certainly in for a treat, my friend."

"You two," Draco said irritably, "are disgusting."

"In case it escaped your attention, we had to physically prevent you from interfering with our uncharacteristically noble plans," Theo reminded him with a lazy sidelong glance, "so really, I'm not sure you have a leg to stand on here, Malfoy."

"Marvelous," Draco said drily, glancing at Hermione. "And I take it you're leaving too, then?"

"Yes," she said.

Draco's gaze slid over her face, then down to what she knew was the M on her wrist, skating back up to her mouth again.

"Not right away, I hope," he murmured, and Ron gave a loud, hacking cough in opposition as Harry jolted to cognizance, hurriedly rushing forward.

"Well, come on, come on," he said, taking hold of Ron's arm. "We should, um. Find Remus—"

"I think he's with Sirius," Theo said, and the other Harry turned to him with surprise. "Hm? Oh, just a guess. In my experience, there's a super thin line between love and hate." He shrugged. "Or at least between hate and hate-fucking."

"Well, then we should go find Lily," Harry attempted, and grimaced. "Unless she's also…?"

"No, I think she's just eating," Theo said.

"Oh, good," Harry exhaled, before attempting to drag Ron out of the room again. "Come on, let's go—"

"We dated her, really?" the other Ron asked spiritedly, giving Hermione a highly unsubtle once-over. "Seems so unlikely, doesn't it?"

"We really have to work on your self-esteem," Ron said with a shake of his head, wandering out of the room. Theo and Harry left at his heels, the two of them surely off to do something horrifyingly inappropriate, while Draco and Hermione were left alone in the room, eyeing each other pseudo-combatively.

"You fucked me over big time," Draco said.

"Kinda, yeah," Hermione agreed.

Slowly, humor tugged at his lips, his omnipresent smile returning.

"Good for you," he said, and she blinked.

"What?"

"Means you learned something," he said, shrugging, and patted the spot on the bed next to him, gesturing for her to join him. She moved to comply, a little warily, but as she settled herself against the headboard he threw an arm over her shoulders, leaning back. "You know, in the end, I think you're a little too morally constricting for me. I'd have liked to take over the world with you," he added with a sidelong glance she resolutely ignored, "but I suspect you're strangely uninterested."

"Nobody smart wants to rule the world," she said.

"Mm, never said I was smart," he told her. "Just said I was better, didn't I?"

"You're—" More certain, she thought. Certainly more vengeful. More protective. No, not more protective, she corrected herself, though more possessive, certainly. Slightly more difficult to deny, she lamented, wistfully aware how close he was to her, though she managed to shake it off.

"You're different," she determined. "Very different."

"You want the other version of me," he noted.

She'd learned enough from him to find it not worth lying. "Yes."

"Badly?"

She rolled her eyes. "Badly enough."

He passed her another sidelong smile, a little twist to his mouth she half wanted to slap while the other half fought the urge to taste it. "You don't know what you want, Hermione."

"I know what I can trust," she said, elbowing him sharply in the ribs, "and it certainly isn't you."

"You know, for someone who was exceedingly quick to turn on me, you take a lot of liberties with the concept of trust," Draco informed her. "Maybe you're not quite the good girl you think you are."

Considering she'd just successfully lied to a man who might have destroyed multiple universes if she'd been anything short of convincing, she figured he was probably right.

"Maybe not," she agreed, pulling away from him, but he held her back a moment, his fingers sliding down the inside of her arm to brush coolly against the scar on her wrist, contemplating it.

"Still think this doesn't mean anything?" he asked her, drawing his fingertips smoothly over the shape of the letter M.

Does it mean anything, she thought, that I traveled through worlds to find you, only to find my way back to him?

"It's just a scar, Draco," she said.

His mouth quirked again, only this time, rather than the usual degree of interest alighting in her chest at the sight of it, it made her miss the other version of him. It made her long for that little carved-out moon beside his eye, and a tug at her heart at the thought of him swept over her from head to foot, breaking like the rise of a new tide.

"There's things here," Draco reminded her. "Things you could have. Things you could do," he added, and then amended, "Things we could do."

She nodded. "I know."

"And you're giving them up," he said slowly, "for what, exactly?"

She considered it.

For her friends, of course.

For her life.

For the possibility of a future which, for once, belonged to her alone.

For fixing the mess she'd been born into.

For finding her way to the boy she'd spent so long hating, only to miss him when he was gone.

"For fun," she finally said, shrugging, and Draco Malfoy gave a low rumble of a laugh.

"You're different, you know," he said. "You're not who you were when you started."

She wanted to tell him she was prouder of that than anything, but figured he wouldn't understand.

"Yeah," she said instead, satisfied. "I know."


Potterverse

It was strange to see the real Tom Riddle lying on the floor, looking older in death than Draco had thought he would, but also intensely more human. This was no slant-eyed, noseless Voldemort; this was a man, even perhaps a handsome one, and it was difficult to reconcile this version of him with Draco's conception of monsters.

His mother was sitting quietly at a distance from Tom, contemplating him. She, like Draco, seemed as if she'd been struggling to comprehend what she was seeing; the other Narcissa had collapsed beside Tom, staring solemnly at his unmoving face, but Draco's actual mother—the real Narcissa, as far as he was concerned—was sitting silently in the corner at a distance, unmoving. Draco walked over to her, placing a hand on her shoulder, and she brushed her fingers lightly over his knuckles.

For a moment they simply steeped in silence, the others lingering at a safe distance.

"He said something to me before he died," she said quietly.

Draco, who hadn't expected her to say anything, wasn't entirely sure at first he hadn't imagined it. "What?" he asked her, startled, but by then the others had crowded around and his mother turned away, suddenly unable to look at the body on the ground.

Theo was fidgeting in Draco's periphery, distracting him for a moment from his mother's odd behavior. "Just come back soon, would you?" Theo muttered to Draco, lingering uncomfortably off to the side. "I'll stay here with Narcissa."

"Are you sure?" Draco asked him, frowning, and Theo nodded.

"I don't need to set foot in the universe he died in," he said simply. "You know, if he—"

If Hermione had been wrong, Draco knew. If by some terrible flaw in their enormous gamble Harry had died, horcrux and all.

"Yeah," Draco cut in quickly. "Yeah, okay," he exhaled, suddenly eager now to have everything done with, and helpfully, his mother held out the Elder Wand and the resurrection stone for him. "Will this even work?" he asked her, taking both objects from her hands. "I mean, nobody technically won the wand from him—"

"I think Harry did, if we're following the rules of ownership," the other Hermione said, materializing at his side with a frown, "but surely the Hallows would work now, wouldn't they?"

"Try it," James suggested, offering him the invisibility cloak, and Draco frowned.

"Why me?" he said, and Theo shrugged.

"If not you, then who?" he asked.

Draco, who had a pretty good idea of who, gathered up the three Hallows in his hands, holding them out for Hermione. "Feel up for learning apparition before you go?" he asked her, and she looked a bit stunned for a moment.

"Is it hard?" she asked.

"Not for you," he assured her, and in response, a bit of pride tugged at her lips.

"Thank you," she said, slowly accepting the items from him, and though part of him still wondered (yet again) whether a collection of arbitrary items that didn't seem to do at all what they were supposed to could actually result in anything particularly interesting, he'd seen enough 'unlikely' by then to try and find out.

"So," Hermione said, glancing up at him, "what exactly do I do?"

"Think about where you're going," he said. "Focus on it, on being where you want to go, and then—" He shrugged. "Wave a wand, cast a spell. You know," he added wryly, "magic."

Her mouth twitched slightly. "Oh, is that all?"

"Well, you have it, don't you?" he asked her knowingly, and after a long glance around the room—saying goodbye, he suspected, to the universe that had proved her right—she nodded, her fingers tightening around the Elder Wand.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, I definitely do."


Grindelverse

Hermione and Draco had just joined the others in James Potter's living room when the air around them seemed to warp slightly, four people materializing into vacant space.

Harry leapt to his feet. "Nott?"

"Just us," said their universe's Draco, releasing his hold on the other version of herself, whom Hermione was momentarily startled to discover holding all three of their universe's Deathly Hallows.

"Oh," Harry said, faltering slightly, and to Hermione's surprise, Draco didn't laugh, nor did he spare any mockery for Harry. He didn't seem to miss the opportunity, either, to acknowledge that Harry was alive—something that had always been uncertain. A willing recklessness, for once, made from Hermione's faith her magical theories would ultimately win out.

"He's waiting for you," Draco said, resting a hand on Harry's shoulder, and a little flush of warmth crept over the bones of Harry's cheeks.

"Right, of course," Harry said, clearing his throat. "So, um—"

"How'd you get that?" said the person Hermione was again beginning to think of as not-Draco, gesturing to the Elder Wand in her not-self's hand. "Oh, hi Mother," he added, as the other Narcissa rolled her eyes.

"I need a drink," she said, wandering away, and James chuckled as she went.

"I wish I'd known sooner she was, you know, marginally evil," he remarked idly, falling into one of his chairs. "Would have really increased my enjoyment of those terrible Malfoy dinner parties."

"Why?" demanded Lily, and James promptly rocketed forward in his seat, startled to find her there.

"Uh," he said.

"Is it because you only like women who are capable of committing crimes?" she accused him, and he grimaced.

"Lils, I hardly think—"

"No, no, answer the question," Remus agreed, folding his arms lazily over his chest. "Specifically the 'woman' part, because I think we can all agree the criminal aspect is a very low bar, given the room."

"I wasn't," James began, and scowled. "Listen, I was just—"

"What is it with you and James anyway?" Sirius demanded from Remus. Harry, Hermione was amused to see, was observing these interactions with intense fascination, looking on with a mix of disbelief and jubilance. "You're not honestly telling me this is your taste, are you?"

"That," James protested, "is extremely offensive—"

"So you do want Remus, then?" Lily asked him, rigid with annoyance. "Or is it Narcissa you're going after now?"

"What?" barked James, as Remus turned to Sirius.

"What is it you're suggesting?" Remus asked, and Sirius scoffed.

"Isn't it obvious?" Sirius and Lily said in unison.

"You clearly like her," Lily accused, "which is so like you, James Potter—"

"In what possible way is that 'like me'?" James demanded.

"I'm right here," Sirius told Remus.

"I see that," Remus agreed, half-laughing, and Lily rounded on James.

"You wanted me because I was trouble," she told him, bristling. "And now that I'm not the most trouble in the room, you're off and onto someone else—"

"Have you lost your entire mind?" James barked, launching to his feet.

"I'm very handsome," Sirius told Remus.

"You know, if you have to say it, it really undermines it," Remus replied.

"Shut up," Lily and Sirius said at once.

"Excuse me?" said James and Remus.

"I hate you," Lily informed James.

"Yes, I know," he replied irritably. "WHICH IS RIDICULOUS," he added, "seeing as I've loved you for TWO DECADES, and unfortunately, my feelings, UNLIKE YOU, DON'T APPEAR TO BE VANISHING ANYTIME SOON."

"WHY WOULD I LEAVE NOW?" Lily demanded. "MY SON IS FINALLY SAFE!"

"HE'S MY SON, TOO," retorted James.

Sirius, who'd been glowering at Remus, glanced briefly at James. "He's also my son, in case anyone cares."

"I don't," Remus said.

"GOD DAMN IT," Sirius shouted at him.

"I'd love to make this worse," Theo said slowly, "but I'm genuinely not sure how."

"Hush," advised his Harry, doing them all a favor and kissing him silent.

"Listen," Remus said, turning back to Sirius, "it's very simple. If you want me—"

"Then just tell me!" Lily and Remus said in bristled unison.

"Haven't you been listening?" James and Sirius said at once.

"It would be much easier to hate you, considering how terrible you are," Sirius said to Remus.

"—but I obviously have no choice in the matter!" James growled, his hand darting out for Lily's as he tugged her into his chest, one arm snaking inescapably around her waist. "You're the absolute worst person I've ever met—"

"And for whatever reason, I'm clearly going to want you," Sirius snapped at Remus, "whether I want to or not!"

Hermione watched Harry's face warm with delight as his not-father bent to kiss his not-mother, her expression of total distaste melting rapidly to blissful, long-awaited contentment as Remus' lips curled to a wolfish grin, his gaze alighting on Sirius' with something of a blatant promise.

"Hey," Draco said, startling Hermione with his sudden appearance at her elbow. "Where'd the other us go?"

She blinked, looking around to find they were, indeed, missing. After sparing a moment for panicked concern, she tugged Draco discreetly toward the corridor, seeking out the sound of their unmistakably similar voices.

"—different this time," her own voice was saying in hushed tones of warning. "You don't get to control me, Malfoy, do you understand?"

"Threatening me is hardly going to help," came the other Draco's voice, its owner obviously bristling with opposition. "What exactly are you trying to accomplish?"

"I need someone on my side, Malfoy," she said. "I want someone I can trust. Someone loyal to me, and only me. And if that isn't you," she said quietly, the sound of a stifled gasp from the other Draco that Hermione suspected could have come equally from a knife to his throat or a wand to his head, "then we're going to have to come to some sort of less pleasing agreement, as I really don't think you're going to like my offer."

For a moment, all Draco and Hermione heard was muffled breathing, the two of them exchanging surprised glances from out of sight.

"Were you always like this?" the other Draco said gruffly.

"Probably," the other Hermione replied. "I just don't need you anymore."

"You still have a lot to learn."

"True. But without Grindelwald, I don't actually need you for that, do I?"

Another pause.

A few exchanges of breaths.

"I think," Draco's voice said, the sound of it now intimately low, "we can probably come to some kind of agreement, Granger."

At that—what was inevitably either an escalation or a détente, neither of which Hermione felt necessary to become privy to—she nudged Draco backwards, leading him away and pausing before they re-entered the living room to toy with something she hadn't quite decided on her tongue.

"So," she said. "Um. Now that Tom Riddle's gone—oh wait, he is gone, right?" she interrupted herself, recalling she'd merely assumed it, and Draco nodded quickly.

"Yes, definitely," he assured her, and then, with his usual smirk, "Do go on."

"Right," she exhaled. "So, anyway. Um, now that we're sort of, you know. Done, I guess, for now—"

"For now," he agreed, nodding.

"—I was just, um. I was thinking that," she attempted, and faltered again, looking up at him. "Well, I just." She cleared her throat. "You and me," she ventured, but ultimately trailed off, catching the look on his face and suspecting nothing she could have said would quite manage to match it.

"Granger," Draco said, his grey gaze falling solemnly on hers as he reached out, his fingers curling around the M on her wrist. "I came a long way to find you."

A universe away, true; but somehow, she was pretty sure that wasn't what he meant.

His hands slid up the lines of her arms, rising patiently to curl around her face; his thumbs brushed contemplatively over the bones of her cheeks and then dropped, carefully, to her lips, tracing over them with the practiced solemnity of having memorized them, accustomed now to their shape. Hermione, meanwhile, leaned into his touch, feeling the pieces of herself—and all the versions of herself she was, had ever been, or ever would be—align for the singular delicacy of the moment, resting in the implausible hinge between inevitability and choice she wouldn't have believed existed if she hadn't seen it for herself.

She drew up on her toes as he leaned his chin down, and there—where fate and change could be suitably met—she touched her lips to his and promised, with her newly undeniable gift of certainty, that they would find themselves here again; that it would be like this, each time; each world; each universe.

"Let me take you home," Draco told her softly, and she felt a rush of it all at once; that they were a paradox, just as she'd always thought.

A contradiction and an impossibility, just as they'd always been.

"We have a world to save," she agreed, letting his fingers wind with hers.