Good afternoon readers. It has been a very busy, busy week! We are caught up to most of my pre-written material, so welcome to my actual writing pace when I have work and family concerns. I also had a bit of a lull just due to being tired, and writing is pretty impossible when I'm jagged around the edges. Fortunately it's a three day weekend, so here's hoping for more progress this weekend! I will try to finish review replies via PM now. Enjoy!

May 2, 1998

"Today marks a decisive turning point in our war to save the wizarding world, my friends."

Lord Voldemort glided slowly in front of the packed hall of his Death Eaters, Snatchers, and assorted power hungry groupies who were committed to the cause. "Today, we will deal a death blow to those who would seek to stop this marvelous reclaiming of the true nature of our world."

He paused, allowing the shouts and exclamations of excitement to ripple through the crowd, especially among the more bloodthirsty. It was to these that he addressed his next remarks.

"Today I require this of you: Do not use violence senselessly. We are agreed in the knowledge that Muggles are a threat, and that we must institute more rigorous measures to ensure our world is protected. As such, there is to be no unnecessary shedding of magical blood today," he paused, assessing them. As this was not sitting well, his expression changed to that of the pragmatic politician. "It is the result of decades of misguided education that we are in this sorry state today, with those of magical, superior blood believing Muggles are harmless! Even those we deem to be blood traitors may be redeemable under the new reeducation measures we shall take. Every drop of magical blood is precious, no matter its source. We will refine it, and use it toward our goal of achieving a stronger wizarding world."

This elicited another cheer and murmur of agreement, and Voldemort held up his hand. "I fully expect you all to battle fiercely, and to defend yourselves well. Remember this: complete victory is found not in the death mask of your enemies, but rather in their willing acknowledgement that your views are superior, that your society is better, and that your way is the ONLY way. When you hear such things from your enemy's lips, then you have truly conquered them. And that is what we seek—to conquer. The sweet fruits of conquest await us. For magic! For purity! For our world!"

The roar of approval carried them off, and Lord Voldemort drew forth the Elder wand from the sleeve of his robe. It was time to win.

"Ron."

"Harry."

The two friends were again side by side, and for a minute that was enough for both of them. Harry looked at the bleak moor around them. "Where is this place, anyway?"

"I dunno," said Ron. "Some property that belonged to my great aunt Muriel at some time or another."

Harry pulled a color changing pinwheel out of his pocket and re-enlarged it, then placed it on Fred's grave. It spun wildly in the wind, making animal noises. The corner of Ron's mouth turned up.

"He always liked those."

"Yeah, I remember. 'Favorite of the little tykes', he said."

Ron looked as tired as Harry felt. He hadn't had much opportunity to talk to Ron in the aftermath of the battle, as Ron and Percy had taken Fred's body off for burial. From what Arthur had said during his brief visit to the Lupins' the other day, George was a bit lost and was leaning heavily on Ron. Harry could have gone with the Weasleys, but the Lupins had taken Draco on and Harry meant it when he said he wanted to keep an eye on him.

"Still no news of Hermione?" Ron asked. His voice was low and tight with strain, and Harry frowned.

"No."

Ron turned away from Harry, his shoulders tense, his fists clenched. "I should have run after her. If it weren't for damn Rowle, I would have done!"

"Ron, we were all doing our best," Harry said tightly. "She's tough, Hermione. I'm sure she's alive."

Ron turned back to him at that. "You didn't see her, mate. I was there. It was weird, that spell. Something glowing blue, and then she was just gone! Then she was there, across the hall, only in different clothes and looking completely confused. I swear, when she took off it was as if the warlock with the hairy heart was chasing after her! I couldn't get to her…" he trailed off, and Harry could see how the idea pained him.

"I'm afraid I don't get that reference," Harry said in an attempt to lighten the mood slightly. "However, if there is one witch I trust to make it, it's Hermione."

Ron refused to be drawn so easily, and his expression darkened. "If You Know Who has her, he's going to keep her alive. She's too good a chip to use against you."

"I'd rather not think about that," Harry said, hopelessness swirling through him briefly. "If she was captured, eventually that news will leak out. And then Malfoy is going to earn his bread and butter—because if he has her, she's at Malfoy Manor."

"Explain what you mean by that."

Hermione tucked her feet beneath her and pulled the cup of tea to her lips as she waited for him to answer, her gaze quietly fixed on the Dark Lord, her husband, who sat across from her on the couch by the fireplace. A curious quiescence had crept up between them over the past week, as if filtering up through parched ground and alleviating the effects of a prolonged drought that had wrenched their foundations. Hermione wouldn't quite describe it as an armistice, and she was quite certain that he wouldn't describe it in those terms, but they had, it seemed, agreed to get along, for now.

"Your memories disturb you because you did not live them over the natural progression of time. Therefore they feel foreign to you. This is why you are dreaming them—it is a way for your mind to accept them as reality after the fact."

He was sipping from that goblet again, but Hermione was fairly certain it was not wine or some other standard libation. He never ate with her, and she had refrained from asking what he did when he was not with her. Frankly, she would rather not know until her mind was more settled. It was as if her mind was still slightly off-balance in a manner similar to the way you felt after a fun park ride that tossed you to and fro for just that minute too long. The only time she felt like herself was when they practiced casting, the focus and adrenaline required somehow allowing her mind to ignore the incongruities it was processing. He was only permitting her to use his wand, and only in the dueling room. The rest of the time she remained wandless and alone—a deliberate practice on his part, without doubt.

"So if you were the caster of the spell, then you lived them—but how do you recall the other timeline then? Do they feel as foreign to you as these new memories do to me?"

He finished the last of his drink and the cup floated to the table, his hand held out to hers. This was part of their unspoken little agreement. Hermione met his gaze as her tea cup floated over to sit next to his goblet on the table. Her fingers touched his palm, his own sliding up to her wrist before he flipped her hand over, his thumb rubbing small circles in the center of her palm. He then began to speak and Hermione had to force herself to ignore the pleasant sensations of that small caress, their magics flowing more easily over and into each other each time.

"I see them as two divergent paths when I think about particular events. They are rather like little bubbles where I did things slightly differently, but eventually they merge again. It has been rather enlightening."

"So you did most things the same," Hermione observed, and his thumb halted for a microsecond before smoothly continuing its arc.

"There were some things I repeated unintentionally, I assure you," he said dryly. "Despite my best efforts, some mistakes are apparently unavoidable."

"Such as attempting to kill Harry," Hermione said boldly, and his thumb did cease its motions at that. She darted a look at him from the slub in her robe fabric that had been serving as her distraction, knowing that she was venturing into dangerous territory.

"In point of fact, I blame you for that little unpleasant deviation into near ghostdom, my mate."

This did pique Hermione's interest, despite the fact that his hold on her hand tightened and she could feel the swirl of his magic as if he were preparing to curse her. Nagini's head popped up from her place drowsing on the hearth at the hiss of Parseltongue, but hearing no more she sank back down as Voldemort continued, "After your fetching devotion to Herecles Potter, I assumed you knew he was the forebear of the Boy Who Lived. When that prophecy came to light after you became my mate, I used Arithmancy to predict the best strategy for neutralizing the threat. When the numbers failed to make sense, I relied on the prophecy and my own judgement entirely—which, again, led to my temporary demise."

He had pulled her closer as he spoke, so that she was now almost in his lap, her hand propping her body away from his while his eyes held hers, demanding his quid pro quo.

"Harry didn't know who his grandparents were. His relatives didn't speak of it." Her heart was beating faster, but she was growing used to his mannerisms, the abruptness that sometimes characterized his responses in a way that had been largely absent when he was a teenager.

"His Muggle relatives," Voldemort said coldly. "Still, you really did not know, did you? Herecles Potter was Harry's great uncle, not his grandfather."

"No one ever told him about the Potters. It isn't as if a copy of the wizarding peerage is handed out on entry to Hogwarts," Hermione retorted. "You know as well as I do that students coming from the Muggle world are treated poorly—as if their lack of knowledge of the wizarding world is in any way their fault!"

"And didn't that bother you? The lack of information about the wizarding world and how it works before you were suddenly thrust into it, without the foggiest notion of what a mudblood was or why you were suddenly inferior to more than half of your peers?" His expression was calculating again, as if he were measuring her.

"Of course it bothered me," Hermione said. "But your vision of wizarding culture is hardly better! You would see Muggleborns killed, tortured, enslaved."

He pulled her fully onto his lap, banked fires glowing in his eyes, calm but always thinking, always up to something. "You give yourself far too little credit for influencing me, Hermione. I look forward to your many apologies for insolence when you have to eat your words."

"I'm not going to believe you if you tell me that you've suddenly grown warm and fuzzy toward Muggleborns and abandoned your visions of magical purity."

He laughed at that, and Hermione tried halfheartedly to ignore the intimacy of the moment. He had arranged her in his arms, but her legs were swept to the side, a more docile arrangement than he could have done.

"I would think less of you if you did." He tugged on her hair, then she felt it rearrange itself into a simple plait.

"Why did you do that?" she asked, but he ignored her, his fingers trailing down her neck from the base of her ear.

"Tell me about the memories you dreamt last night." She had not woken him, so they must have been pleasant.

Hermione sighed and looked up at the plasterwork on the ceiling. "They were more memories of my childhood. It is odd, as they were such vanilla memories…things like reading the newspaper aloud to my parents for the first time, or listening to my parents talk about their day at the dinner table. I don't understand why they are new."

"Sometimes the pieces you receive will not make sense until you receive more. At least you know they are different in some manner."

"Don't you want to know the details? Watch me struggle to pick them apart and find the differences?" This is what he had seemed to enjoy every other night.

"No. The details do not matter to me," he said indifferently, his fingers idly playing with one of the curls that had escaped the plait.

"This matters to you," Hermione said, deliberately placing her hand in the center of his chest, his robes parting easily for her, his magic answering hers. "You want this from me. I don't know why yet, but I do know you want this."

He leaned forward, slowly enough that she could have moved if she wished to. She didn't. His lips brushed hers softly, once, twice, then settled in, caressing with light movements and sharp breaks that pulled her in for more, until her hand was at the back of his head and she was the one trying to coax him into giving her more, her lips sucking, pleadingly, on his lower lip. Their joined auras had taken on a light, sensual twist, playing together in a way that was warm and turgescent.

It was all broken when he tugged sharply on her hair, breaking the kiss and separating their magics forcibly. It hurt, but Hermione knew it wasn't simply cruel from the expression that crept into his eyes, rendering their color brighter.

"Imagine having that, and then doing without it for five decades."

He was holding her head level with his own, his body still apparently relaxed, but the look he gave her said so much more. There was always more between the pair of them. He set her aside and left the room.

"Mr. Longbottom."

There was no response to the initial salvo, but he did not expect any at this stage. The stages were always predictable, the variance only in how long each stage lasted.

"Do show some semblance of manners when I'm speaking to you, boy." His wand flicked once and the boy was lifted up, his body contorting into a grotesque approximation of a bow that was made more difficult by the broken bones and contusions that littered his body. Still, he clenched his teeth and refused to emit any noises of pain. Voldemort walked around him, Neville's one good eye tracking him with obvious hatred.

"Tell me Lucius, who has been paying the most attention to our guest?" He knew perfectly well, could tell from the marks on him: bruises from MacNair, internal bleeding from Dolohov, cuts from Bellatrix. Each Death Eater had their preferences, and he knew them as well as the back of his own hand. It was all part of the game, to let the young Longbottom know how very inconsequential he was to him. It was why he had ignored the boy until now.

"Antonin and Walden, my lord, and Bella has taken a particular interest in him. His parents, you know."

Voldemort laughed, a dry chuckle. "Oh yes, I know, Lucius."

He didn't mention Lucius' own visits. Lucius' specialty was the mind games, making people doubt their convictions, their long held opinions. It was why he was willing to forgive Lucius a great deal—it was a very insidious and deadly skill that few possessed.

"You may leave us now, Lucius. I wanted to reacquaint myself with some of the persistent character traits of the Longbottoms. This boy's grandfather was such a good acquaintance of mine in school." He watched the boy carefully as he spoke—there it was, that spark.

"Of course, my lord," Lucius said smoothly, then bowed before exiting the dungeon.

Still the boy said nothing, merely glowed with rage. Voldemort found it amusing. "Did your grandmother not mention that to you, boy? Augusta Donaghy as she was then. I hadn't seen hide nor hair of her for more than three decades until the battle at Hogwarts…what was that, a few weeks ago now? Oh, but you wouldn't know, would you, Mr. Longbottom? So easy to lose track of time here, with only the debatable pleasures of my Death Eaters for companionship."

"Don't you dare talk about my gran," he said, his voice hoarse and broken.

"Or you'll do what, exactly?" The wand flashed again and this time its action got a response. A shrill cry of pain fell from the boy's lips as the fracture in his tibia set itself painfully.

"Healing me just to break me again? Aren't you more inventive than that?"

Voldemort did admire the Gryffindors' penchant for bravery even if he lamented its foolishness. "I am sure you can't think that I would be so facile as to kill you so easily, Mr. Longbottom. No, I expect you will deal with our many and varied depradations for so long, you will beg for me to end your suffering."

"I'll only beg to be at your execution," Neville spat, and Voldemort cocked his head as his wand sashayed with a lazy grace, red spirals sinking into the boy's skin and pulling forth the first cry of true torment from his throat.

"I see you begin to appreciate the difference between curses inflicted by minions as opposed to the master." Voldemort's tone was hard now, all business. "Perhaps some other time I will share with you how I first cut my teeth with this curse on your grandfather. For now, let's see how you feel about the comfort of your rebelliousness tomorrow. Do try to save some of your voice. I have so enjoyed this little chat."

"Severus, please, have a seat."

Severus sat on the leather chair in Lucius' study, then accepted a glass of port. He didn't particularly care for firewhisky, but he had noted that Lucius' consumption of it was usually directly linked to his current standing with the Dark Lord. Today he was serving himself cognac. That was interesting in light of Draco's continued absent state.

"So, tell me Lucius, how are you getting on with Longbottom?" Severus was mindful of his looming appointment with the Dark Lord, but he was curious as to what Lucius would divulge prior to that meeting.

"He is as stubborn as his parents, much to Bella's delight. We have been forbidden from cruciating him." Lucius sniffed as he took a sip of his cognac, the flavors warming his mouth pleasantly before spilling down his throat. "Personally I find that to be a sign of how deeply displeased our lord is with the boy, though I haven't a clue as to the cause."

"The Dark Lord's reasoning remains, as always, his own." He sipped his own port, then decided to finish the glass, knocking it back. This, he knew, would ruffle Lucius, but he wanted to get at the other matter niggling at him before he was due to appear before the Dark Lord. "And what of the mudblood bride, Miss Granger? Have you seen her?"

Lucius' expression turned wary. "Narcissa saw her with the Dark Lord. He took her to the dueling room."

Severus sat back in his chair. "That is…intriguing. She did say something to me in the forest—she thought she had seen me killed in the battle."

"Indeed. You must tell me if you learn anything further of how they came to be bonded," Lucius said.

Severus' lips twisted into a smirk. "What, no luck with the Ministry records?"

"You are well aware the Dark Lord would not leave something so obvious," Lucius hissed.

Severus stood and regarded his friend. "Perhaps that should tell you to consider if you really want to continue prodding about it, Lucius. I do believe he made his position quite clear to all of us."

"I traffic in information, Severus. You know that I cannot let such a thing rest."

"Very well…but you cannot say I didn't warn you." Severus swept from the study. It was never wise to keep the Dark Lord waiting.

"Severus, I require a potion."

Mentally Severus shrugged. This was nothing new—the Dark Lord took a variety of potions, all required in some manner due to the many different forms of magic he had imposed on himself. The Horcruxes which the boy had destroyed must have had some impact on the man, for man he still was despite his attempts to rise above such petty constraints.

"The Souteni potion."

Severus' breath did hiss inward at that. "My lord…" he began, but Voldemort shut him up with a wave of his hand.

"Do not start, Severus. I am well aware of the difficulties that potion presents. Nonetheless, I want you to begin your research. Bring what you find to me in a week. Then we will compare notes."

Severus could have groaned. If the Dark Lord had already been researching the matter, he would have to put in an extraordinary effort to match what he would have already compiled.

"Of course, my lord."

He assumed that their meeting was over, and bowed to exit. As he was about to reach for the doorknob, Voldemort's cold voice stopped him.

"One more thing, Severus. About the Order…"

Damn.