Notes: Another big chapter here, guys, in two ways. Both pivotal and (for this fic) long.

Finally, thank you so much for all the comments, new favs, and new follows. Those of you who are especially enjoying the political intrigue part of this will like what's coming in this chapter and the next one.

Chapter Eighteen: Mastery and Puppetmastery

"This conversation needs to be private," Tom said, standing up as she approached.

"Agreed," Hermione said.

They left the Great Hall side by side, not touching, but that tiny detail did not prevent the early-riser student body from starting up the storm of gossip. Tom and Hermione disdainfully ignored it as they swept to the Room of Requirement.

"I really wish we could create Portkeys to this place," Tom grumbled as he sat down.

The normalcy of humor made Hermione laugh—and then she felt a pang for what had been.

Tom looked up at her and spread his newspaper on the table between the armchairs. "Well. You saw it too."

"'Despite the fall of his stronghold, Grindelwald swears that he will continue to direct the remains of his movement from the security of his family estate,'" Hermione read aloud. She gazed at him. "You still mean to do it?"

"Of course." He stretched back in the armchair. "Did you read the front page? They're behaving exactly as I expected. Weasley is such a hypocrite, pretending that he cares nothing about wizarding family, but he's more than happy to try to use it for political advantage—and he isn't even good at it. And he's cravenly promoting that stupid bill of his, trying to use that to vault into a position he's utterly unqualified for. Meanwhile Black looks like a hysterical fool and conspiracy theorist, and his cousin looks like the bumbling incompetent he was, and war news gets pushed to page two. It's delicious." He grinned.

"Never mind that Black is correct," Hermione said coldly.

"Nobody knows that except the two people who are in this room," Tom said with a shrug. "And I know you're not against me, not even on that topic."

Hermione rolled her eyes at his arrogance. "Do you know that, or are you just assuming?"

"I know. You admitted you couldn't destroy it. Besides, why else would you have come up to me when you have been—well, 'uncivil' is putting it mildly, I'd say. And why would I still be here, instead of en route to Azkaban, after you were closeted with Dumbledore for so long yesterday—unless you didn't tell him?"

Hermione glared at him. "Yes, I know that you watch me on that list of yours. I went to tell him about the time Grindelwald abducted me."

Tom looked at her expectantly. "And?"

She looked down. "You were correct. He used me as bait. He admitted it."

"Is that why you decided against letting him have the Elder Wand and chose me instead?" His tone was nervous.

"Not exactly," she said, wondering why he seemed anxious. "I'd already accepted that it was probably the case. What made up my mind for me was something else entirely." She hesitated; Tom would not like hearing about the memory, but she did need to say something. "He doesn't trust anyone who actively desires power or regards magic as special—or, apparently, is exceptionally talented and aware of it. Except for himself."

"Me, in other words," Tom said darkly. "He said things about me."

Hermione nodded.

Tom burst into a smirk. "And that is what turned you against him, the fact that he doesn't like me. That… begins to make up for your attitude that one night."

She scowled, not particularly wanting to be reminded of "that one night" or anything relating to it. "I have made a pragmatic decision that you should defeat Grindelwald and gain influence from it because your views seem the most realistic of the current options… and because if you don't satisfy your desire for power productively, I know what you'll do. That's all there is to it."

"Keep telling yourself that, Hermione," he said, still wearing that smirk.

She glared.

"Now, with that said… I have a reason for wanting this talk to be private."

"Are you finally going to tell me something important?"

He gave her a serious look. "I intended to tell you everything that night, before you rejected me… but yes. I'm going to tell you something very important."

Hermione folded her hands in her lap and gazed at him.

He took a deep breath. "The day after Grindelwald abducted you, I… initiated communication with him. I was gone for most of the day, if you recall. That's what I was doing."

Hermione's eyes grew wide. Her mouth opened. "You…." she whispered. "All this time… you have been his informant? You deceitful snake—" Her lips twisted, and she made to stand up.

"Hermione, please hear me out," he ground out. "You said you'd listen."

"You had better have a damn good reason," she snarled. "Seems that your murder of Pollux Black was more to protect yourself from the truth than anything else."

Tom glared angrily at her. "That prick had no actual evidence, for one, and it was to protect you from him as well, you should recall. And are you going to let me talk, or will I have to use a Silencio again?" His fingers twitched on his wand, as if he wanted to anyway.

"Don't you even think about it." She glared back. "All right. Explain yourself. And make it good, Riddle. I was tortured over this."

"I have been passing him information about the families of my Knights," he said. "Is that really so awful? You know what they think. You know that they would torture you for fun if they knew your ancestry. That's who I informed on. Are you going to defend them?"

"This is still a war, and you have been an agent for the enemy."

"The enemy?" Tom said incredulously. "You said yourself that my views—which aren't that different from his, as you must know—were realistic and pragmatic."

She fell silent. That was exactly what she had decided the day before. "Exactly what type of information did you pass?" she asked suspiciously. "What did you cause to happen?"

"There was one big thing. Lestrange… I think it was the day you and I went to the Three Broomsticks and one of Grindelwald's owls arrived. He used code, of course."

"I remember that," Hermione said. She decided not to tell Tom that she had spied on him and noticed the name "Lestrange" on his return parchment.

"Well, I had just heard the idiot boasting about some people his father knows in France who were going to have Beauxbatons ban 'Mudbloods.' He just couldn't help himself, and I got the names out of him and passed it on. They were… removed soon."

"By 'removed,' I assume you mean assassinated," she said coldly.

"Is that such a terrible thing?" Tom said. "You're Muggle-born. I did a good deed." He smirked. "Unusual, isn't it? You should be proud of me."

Hermione frowned at him. "Is that it? You reported on the British pureblood fanatics. Anything else?"

Tom stared levelly at her. "For one, I told Grindelwald that you were a time-traveler. No, I did not give him any details, just that it was an accident. I even lied about how far in the future you had come from. That, incidentally, is why he never contacted you again. Didn't you ever wonder about that?"

Hermione had to admit that she had not. So much else had happened. "So… you did it to protect me?" she said.

"In part," he hedged.

"What was the other part? You didn't even like me then. Why did you really do it?"

"Initially, it was to find out his weaknesses," Tom said. "I had an idea briefly of taking over his movement, because yes, I do agree with a lot of what he has to say. That did not last long. It coincided, by the way, with the time that you showed your memories to me. Of what I—was. Would have become. That… changed my plans somewhat. I decided that revolutionary violence wasn't a good idea, and no more was ending the Statute of Secrecy."

"And this 'association' is how you learned that he has the Elder Wand."

"Obviously."

"And decided that you wanted it."

"Of course I wanted it." He twisted the ring on his finger. "He… we made a deal. I didn't know what this ring was. I actually intended to turn it into a Horcrux before I decided to stop with one and use my most important diary for it."

Hermione's heart thudded for a moment at that admission, already unspoken but now openly acknowledged, but she would not let him see. "I suppose it's safe to assume that he doesn't know the first thing about that," she spat.

"I damn well hope not, or there goes my element of surprise." Tom scowled for a moment. "I want you to keep it," he said. "It is safest in this room. I could secure it in my dormitory, of course, but this room is protected much better." He gazed at her.

Hermione closed her eyes. "All right, Tom," she said in defeated tones. "I'll keep it."

Tom released his breath in a whoosh. "Anyway, he told me what the ring was, and we made a deal. 'When' he won," he continued with a scoff, "I would turn it over to him in exchange for the assurance that I would be what he wanted Dumbledore to be once, his most trusted associate and partner in ruling. I agreed, knowing very well that he would not win. So I'm going to take the wand. Seems fair, wouldn't you agree?" He smirked again.

Hermione's hands were trembling. "Tom, you lied to me about this for a long time."

He looked guilty for a moment, but it passed, to be replaced with a mask of pride. "Frankly, Hermione, I wasn't sure how much I could trust you then. Not you exactly, but your mind. You could Occlumens me, but you still seemed to be deciding on your loyalties, and I was sure Dumbledore knew more about your abduction from Hogsmeade than he had any right to. If he questioned you…." He trailed off.

Hermione remembered the time that Dumbledore had forced Legilimency on her. Yes, that could have gone very badly if she had been harboring any more incriminating secrets than those she did.

"I regret being dishonest with you," he said in a clipped tone.

For a moment a horrible memory filled Hermione's mind, the memory of a white-faced snake-man telling Severus Snape, "I regret it." But no—this was actually sincere, and he did regret something more than the loss of what he believed was a useful tool. It was just very hard for him to offer an apology.

"I… think I understand," she finally said. "I can't say I'm happy, but I understand. This war is much less black and white than I thought for a long time."

He looked relieved. "We're all right, then?"

"No, Tom, we're not 'all right.' If I am going to ally with you"—she frowned at the patronizing smirk that formed on his face at the word—"then you have to promise me that you won't lie about big things like this again."

Tom stood up and shoved his hands in his pockets. He turned aside so he wasn't looking at her as he spoke. "I don't understand why you would have to ask that," he said abruptly. "I mean, seriously, Hermione, I just told you something that by itself could get me put into Azkaban. I've used Unforgivable Curses in front of you. I made a bloody Horcrux in front of you. I really don't see why you think I would still 'lie about big things.' It should be bleeding obvious I trust you, shouldn't it?"

"If it is, why is it so hard for you to say you won't hide important things from me? I really don't understand this, Tom. It can't be because any such promise would be a lie. You have no difficulty lying to anyone."

"So if I'm a liar, would you believe me if I did say it?" he said cuttingly. Hermione fell silent, and he continued. "In fact, it's because words don't mean all that much to me that I think my actions speak louder. That said… you're different. You're the exception. My words to you should mean something, you're right… so fine, I won't hide important things from you again."

Hermione sighed and closed her eyes briefly. If she were entirely honest with herself, she really was not happy about this revelation. Tom had fed information about his classmates' families to Grindelwald, and while the French Lestrange associates were likely the most important fact he ever passed, there had apparently still been just enough detail that the Black associates knew there had to be a leak. And she was the most obvious possibility. Tom had attempted to protect her from the rumor, intimidating the Slytherin boys and demanding that she stay away from them, but his own espionage did keep the rumor afloat.

Or did it? She wondered if the pureblood extremists were so prejudiced that they would have continued to believe she was a spy even if there had been no indication that espionage was occurring.

There was no way to know, she realized. And she had made her decision. At least Tom had done it for purposes of his own—to learn about Grindelwald's weaknesses and to protect her from him—rather than because he actually intended to overthrow the Ministry.

She turned to him. "I suppose you will be able to get into the family manor."

He nodded. He was sorting through his pack, bent over. He surfaced holding his dark blue leatherbound diary. His Horcrux, her mind helpfully reminded her, as if she needed it.

He held it out to her. "You read the Dark Arts book, so you know about…." He trailed off. "Hermione, I swear to you, it won't try to possess you. Anyone else, probably, but not you. It knows you. It's part of me, and I made it after I…."

He was staring at her with wide, pleading eyes. Innocent eyes, Hermione thought, then almost laughed out loud at the irony of that thought in this specific situation.

"It had better not," she said, gingerly accepting the book. As soon as it touched her hand, the sensation of powerful, familiar magic filled her body.

She carried it over to her nightstand and placed it in the drawer. Before she closed the drawer, she ran her thumb over the surface for a moment, feeling the pleasant sensation of the soft leather. The aura she perceived from the magic changed slightly; it felt somehow intimate… like a friend, she thought. She had no idea what she thought of that, and they had business to take care of anyway, so she pushed it out of her mind. She shut the drawer and put a very powerful locking spell on it.

Hermione reached for her cloak and wand. Tom stared at her in surprise as she did.

"What are you doing?"

She turned around to look at him. "I thought you wanted to do it today."

"I do," he said. "I just don't think you should be there. You aren't protected."

Hermione stared hard at him. "I'm going, Tom, 'protected' or not. Has it not occurred to you that there will be questions raised about how you, as a single student, could defeat him? Also, I'm supposed to be related to Dumbledore. It would be better if I came."

Tom considered for a moment. "All right, but stay out of it as best you can, and if he starts targeting you instead of me, I want you to get away. Don't do anything Gryffindor. You don't need to try to save me."

Grindelwald's family manor was a gargoyle-covered Baroque monstrosity in the Rhine valley. Hermione clutched her cloak and pulled her hood over her head as she drew close to it. Waves upon waves of magic rippled off the mansion. It was as intense as the magical shielding of Hogwarts.

"Have you ever seen it?" she whispered to Tom.

He shook his hooded head. "I've actually only seen him once, when I first offered my services, and that was when he was at Nurmengard."

They approached the mansion, stepping across a cobblestone pathway that led to the entrance doors. The front lawn was flanked by a few gnarled trees, but Hermione felt dreadfully exposed. She felt an irrational sense of relief when they were at the front entrance, although she knew that danger lurked inside.

Tom drew his wand and waved it over the doors. He frowned, examining the protective spells, then held open his left palm with a grimace.

"Tom, really?" Hermione exclaimed as he opened a surface cut on his hand.

"I don't know if it'll let me in or if it's matched to his own blood, but it should still alert him." Tom pressed his bloody palm to the gargoyle doorknob.

Hermione gasped as a wall of flames appeared behind them, not edging forward to engulf them, but blocking them from leaving the entrance. Tom drew his hand back, healed the cut, and smiled grimly. Within a minute, someone was coming to the door. It opened to reveal a hooded guard.

"The Leader must know you. Otherwise these flames would have engulfed you as you stood here," the guard said in an undertone.

"He does," Tom confirmed. "We wish to see him."

He gave their names, and at once, they were shown to a long, dark banquet hall with a high vaulted ceiling. They stood next to each other, avoiding the empty table that filled two-thirds of the room.

"Stay out of it," Tom repeated to Hermione in a whisper. "There are wards here preventing people from Apparating in, but you can still Disapparate if you have to. He wouldn't want to cut off that avenue of escape for himself."

Hermione shivered and clutched her wand.

Within a few minutes, a deep clang sounded as the tall doors to the banquet hall opened. A single wizard strode through, closing the doors behind him with a flick of his wand—the Elder Wand. Hermione's heart clenched as she looked again upon the face of Gellert Grindelwald.

"Why are you here?" Grindelwald demanded, staring at Tom with alarm. "You should not have come. It is too late. The war is lost, and you must know that. The information you gave me was very useful, and I am grateful for the good that was done with it, but you risk your own prospects by trying to help me now." He gazed at Hermione. "And you brought her. Why?"

"I wanted to come," Hermione spoke up. "It wasn't his fault."

Tom was clutching his wand and staring at Grindelwald.

"Well?" Grindelwald said.

"I know the war is lost," Tom said in a low voice. "That is why I'm here." In a flash, he turned his wand on Grindelwald. "Expulso!"

The spell was so powerful that it created a shockwave in the air, a crackle of thunder, as it careened toward Grindelwald. He reacted instantly, darting to the side and blocking the worst effects of it. He countered with a Stupefy.

Tom scoffed, easily countering it. "What do you take me for, a child? Do I have to show that I deserve the Elder Wand?"

Grindelwald's stormy face suddenly cleared. As he paused, Tom sent the same Dark bruising curse at Grindelwald that he had used on Hermione that day. Grindelwald scowled and blocked it, replying with a Petrificus Totalus.

Hermione watched from the sidelines as the two Dark wizards battled each other. Grindelwald did not aim at her once, which relieved her but also puzzled her. She was a target, and it would have distracted Tom from protecting himself if he had to protect her too—or thought he did. Tom was not throwing Cruciatus or Avada Kedavra, a fact that made her happy, but she could not help but notice that he was still using much more aggressive spells against Grindelwald than Grindelwald was using on him.

Tom was noticing it too. "You know, Hermione has given me a better duel than this," he taunted, firing a lightning spell at Grindelwald that cracked the stone in front of him.

Grindelwald did not reply, but instead hurled a Reductor Curse at Tom, which he barely put up a shield in time to block. Tom scowled. "Is that the best you have?" he snarled. He waved his wand in a complicated pattern, and the stone floor broke apart, forming a crater that surrounded Grindelwald. Walls of crumbled stone extended to the height of his shoulders.

Tom smirked and cast a spell at Grindelwald's head. A stream of heavy chains encircled his body. Hermione could tell they extended down, though the crater walls blocked her view. Tom blasted the crater away, sending Grindelwald stumbling backward against the far wall with a clink of metal against stone.

"Well done," Grindelwald murmured under his breath. His face did not betray anger. A faint smile appeared at the corners of his mouth.

Hermione suddenly understood. And so, in that moment, did Tom.

His eyebrows quirked for a fraction of a second, but they quickly shifted back in place. Wordlessly Tom cast the spell, and the Elder Wand flew from Grindelwald's hand into his own. He turned it over in his palm almost reverently, a faint but profoundly satisfied smile appearing on his face.

"You wanted me to have it," he said to Grindelwald, his voice no longer hostile. He placed his yew wand in his pocket.

Grindelwald looked relieved that the wand was out of his hands, which struck Hermione as very odd. "I did—originally," he said. "I knew I had to put up a fight, though, since mastery cannot be passed except by a demonstration of superior force or cunning."

"But you didn't want to hurt me," Tom said. He smiled at the ancient wand again. "Did you decide that just now, or… before?"

"I knew a year ago that my movement was failing. That was my purpose for seeking out a protégé. None of my top officials were suitable. They were lieutenants, not visionaries. I knew that if I didn't find someone, the most likely outcome was that Albus Dumbledore would finally duel me." He peered at Hermione. "Is that what would otherwise have happened?"

Hermione was startled, but she suddenly remembered that Tom had told Grindelwald that she had traveled from the future. She nodded. "You would have issued an ultimatum that you would not surrender unless he did."

"I thought so. I intended to let him have it if it came to that."

"Then why—" Hermione began to ask.

"That outcome, while not ideal, was… acceptable to me. More acceptable than the wand falling into the hands of anonymous Ministry officials somewhere and being lost again. Albus was a friend once. But I preferred to bestow it on a successor who would put it to use, rather than merely holding it for the rest of his life because he was afraid to truly lead."

"You do know Dumbledore," Hermione muttered cynically. "And you know Tom as well, for that matter. He's definitely ambitious."

Tom smirked proudly, holding the wand, almost petting it.

Grindelwald blinked. It was almost as if his brain was clearing of a long-term mental fog. "I see now that my mistake was fomenting violent revolution rather than changing things through the civil political process. Perhaps I had no other options with my… academic background. Britain is not so unstable, though, and your country has a stronger tradition of peaceful politics than mine. Reform could work if both of your factions are discredited—and you are reasonable."

Hermione frowned. "I don't want to discredit everyone else," she mumbled. "There should be political opposition. It's healthy."

Tom turned to Hermione. "There will be political opposition. They aren't going away, either set of them. We'll just offer a third option."

"Just a minute," Hermione said firmly. She fingered her own wand. "I want to know exactly what we are talking about here. What policies, I mean. Because I do not support abolishing Seclusion. Muggles can be dangerous and they have very deadly weapons now, and we are vastly outnumbered."

Tom sighed heavily. "I don't intend to push for that. You think I don't know how dangerous Muggles can be? Still, the Statute of Secrecy was signed in the seventeenth century. It is long past time for it to be modified. We need to be watching Muggle advances very closely and co-opting them with magic as soon as we can."

"And what about Muggle-borns?" Hermione said sharply.

"What about them?" Tom countered.

Grindelwald spoke up. "My research division found proof that all Muggle-born witches and wizards must have wizard ancestry. I have this evidence in my office in the mansion here. Since the non-magical descendants of wizards are Squibs, at least one parent of a Muggle-born must technically be a Squib, though usually not a first-generation one."

Tom nodded. "I will make sure that your people's research is known, not destroyed. I'm sure Dumbledore did that too," he said as a contemptuous aside to Hermione. "He wouldn't want to emphasize ancestry as a rationale for accepting Muggle-borns, after all."

Hermione sighed. He had a point, as he unfortunately often did. It was all very idealistic to argue that no one should care where a person's magic came from and that one shouldn't focus too much on one's ancestors. But ideals sometimes clashed with the reality of human nature, and she knew what would eventually happen if this empirical explanation of—of herself—did not become common knowledge among wizards.

"The families can be granted Squib status. Some family members are Muggles," he said with a sneer, "but we wouldn't always be able to determine that." He turned to Hermione. "Does that satisfy you?"

"It'll do," she muttered. She wished that Tom didn't hate Muggles so much, because it was obvious that he was coming up with a rationalization to avoid giving wizarding-world privileges to anyone he had to consider a Muggle. Still, at least he didn't hate Muggle-borns this time, and he would grant that their families had some right to be part of the wizarding world.

"Of course," Tom considered, almost talking to himself, "some of them are hostile to magic. They'll have to be taken care of. Magical children belong with us."

"Taken care of?" Hermione said sharply.

"With mind spells, darling," he drawled. "Either modify their views, or modify their memories so that they think their child is dead and place the child with a wizarding family. And… investigate their magic-friendliness right when a baby is born, I think. We know who they are. Hogwarts has that list."

Hermione shuddered. This sounded extremely invasive of people's privacy to her… but what was the right answer? Muggle-borns would continue to come into the world, and it had to be dealt with in some way. If they were kept out of the wizarding world, their magic would still exist, though it would be untrained—putting Secrecy at grave risk. The wizarding government would have to constantly monitor and clean up after them. If they were brought in, their families had to be considered. Some families would be friendly and some would not. Hermione had never met a Muggle-born in her time whose family disapproved of magic. She was reasonably sure that those children did not come to Hogwarts. That was wrong… but it seemed that Tom's solution—Grindelwald's solution—was the only alternative if they kept Seclusion.

"You don't like that," Tom said to Hermione.

She snapped her head up and faced him. "I can't say I do, but I don't know what the answer is," she admitted. "I don't like the status quo either."

"It's just examining their fitness to be parents to a magical child," Tom said persuasively. "You know what Weasley is doing. That's the current alternative to Isolationism… and it won't work. You know it won't work. There has to be a new faction."

Hermione sighed in resignation.

Tom turned to Grindelwald. "You said something. 'Originally' you wanted me to have this wand. What do you mean?"

Grindelwald gazed at Tom with concern. "I meant for you to have the wand, and it is still a better option than letting Albus have it, but I wish very much now that Miss Green had accepted my offer. That wand is dangerous to you."

Tom sneered. "Dangerous to me, but not to her, apparently," he repeated. "That sounds like something Dumbledore would say."

Grindelwald continued, ignoring Tom's cheap shot. "You have to be careful of that wand."

"I know. I can't let anyone get it."

"That is not what I mean, and you know it," Grindelwald snapped. "It is almost alive. There are some who believe it was created by Antioch Peverell, but I wonder if the Peverell brothers really did make a bargain with Death, considering how that wand behaves. It is no ordinary wand. It is certainly unbeatable, but… not in the way you think. Not in the way I thought."

"How—" Tom began.

"It doesn't make you unbeatable in a duel. It masters you. That wand amplifies the parts of you that would make you easier prey for Death, and the effect increases the more you use it. It's subtle, though. I didn't feel it until it was very advanced."

That's why Dumbledore allowed things to spiral out of control in my timeline, Hermione thought suddenly. He was already afraid of power over others after the debacle with his family and Grindelwald. Then he got the wand, and if Grindelwald told him this, he feared its power even more. It exploited that. It may have even played a trick by making him momentarily forget that the Resurrection Stone would be cursed.

Tom turned the wand over in his hands again. "I am sure I can control this wand, and I don't see why it would be more dangerous to me than to her."

Grindelwald did not answer for a while. Tom smirked, assured that he had won the argument.

"It is more dangerous to you because you want it to empower yourself," Grindelwald finally said. "So did I. So did most of its previous possessors, all the way back to Antioch Peverell. If Death did create it for him, then he created it to subvert that specific desire above all else. And if Peverell himself created it, he used Dark magic, which has been known to turn on people who believe themselves fully in control of it."

Tom rolled his eyes. "Noted. Thank you." He pointed the wand at Grindelwald. "I'm sorry about this, but I'm sure you understand why I have to do it."

Hermione's heart sank as she realized what Tom intended. "Tom, no—"

"Stop," Grindelwald said, panic filling his features. "It's truly not necessary."

Tom kept the Elder Wand directed at Grindelwald. Hermione thought she noticed a flash of red in his pupils. "I'm going to send a message to my country's Ministry of your capture," he said. "They're going to arrive here, and if you are alive, you'll be questioned at great length. That could be… problematic for me."

"I have no intention of outing you as a spy!" Grindelwald exclaimed. "Why would I do that? It wouldn't buy my own freedom, and none of my goals would be realized if I did. You are my legacy."

"If they gave you Veritaserum, you wouldn't have a choice. I'm truly sorry," Tom repeated.

"No," Hermione said, stepping forward. "There is another way."

Tom paused and lowered his wand a notch. "What?"

"The Fidelius Charm," she said. "If there is any written evidence, destroy it first—"

"There isn't," Grindelwald said. "I burned the parchments he sent me."

"Well, good. Then we can cast the Fidelius Charm with the Secret being that Tom gathered information for you. I'll be the Keeper. That way, you couldn't tell anyone."

Tom lowered the Elder Wand. Something like relief spread over his features. "That… would work," he acknowledged. "Good thinking."

"I hope you realize what it means that I am willing to do this for you," Hermione said severely.

Tom smirked. "Oh, I definitely do."

Somewhat later, Hermione passed by the bound guard at the estate to let Slughorn, Dippet, Dumbledore, a small team of Aurors, and the British Minister for Magic in. Tom stood by the chained figure of Grindelwald in the banquet hall, possessively holding the Elder Wand as a trophy and looking insufferably proud of himself.

Slughorn was also proud of his two favorite students. The Minister was merely excited. Dumbledore, Hermione noted, had a look of utter shame on his face.

Tom strode over to the luminaries and addressed the Minister, immediately giving a rather modified narrative of breaking down magical wards with Hermione and then dueling Grindelwald. Hermione stood apart, closer to Grindelwald, not wanting to hear Tom rattle off the lies.

What have I done? she asked herself. What did I just do? I have changed history. I have given him what he needs to launch a bid for legitimate power. I really, really hope this was the right thing to do.

"You know what you have to do if he can't handle it," Grindelwald said suddenly, his voice too low for anyone else to overhear.

Hermione swallowed.

End Notes: This was a big plot twist, but I still have several surprises left! I did not want to make this one too obvious, and I hope that it wasn't. There were minor oddities in Tom's conversation on the subject, though, plus the Lestrange-Beauxbatons thing.

JKR herself said Muggle-borns all have wizard ancestry somewhere in the family tree. Ergo, there is at least one unbroken line of Squibs starting with the wizard ancestor's offspring and culminating with a seemingly Muggle parent.

The insidious One Ring-like behavior of the Elder Wand is an extrapolation of mine, given that no one who has possessed it ended up undefeated. "Unbeatable" clearly means something else, and I'd like to believe it means something more than "can't be used against its master by someone else."