Thank you so much for all the love & support throughout the last year. I just wanted to make a quick note (that has appeared on all WIP updates, so everyone has the chance to read it) about how I've organized the updates. Aside from Love Like Blood (which I'd finished & completed posting before moving onto the other updates so the story is complete & out of the way), the updates have been posted in the order of furthest back date of 'last update' to most recent.


Chapter Thirty-Four

Hermione let her face drop into her hands as she groaned. Their situation just kept getting better and better, didn't it?

"I'm sorry," Thorfinn's voice cut through her half-moment of displeased reverie.

She waved dismissively and let out a sigh. "It's not your fault. We just have to …." Exhaling an exasperated breath through her nostrils, she nodded to no one at all as she took the locket from his waiting fingers. "We just have to figure out where he might've gone and … capture him. Oh, maybe recapture? I'm not entirely sure how that works since he wasn't really a—"

"My heart, this is not the time for sidetracking over semantics," he reminded in a forced airy tone.

"You're right, of course, I'm—" Her words fell right off. Had he just called her his heart?

Clearing her throat, Hermione pushed herself to stay on topic. She could always find a way to thank him for his sweetness later.

"I'm sorry," she continued. "But you know Dolohov the best out of everyone here. Where would he go?"

"If I knew for certain, we'd have had a much easier time tracking him down earlier." Thorfinn shrugged. "But I will say if he, well, 'woke up' here without the foggiest idea of how he got here, he'd probably try to retrace his steps. Go back to the last place he would've remembered being."

Lucius shook his head. "Dolohov knows this house, why would he just run off instead of seeking me out?"

"Well …." Draco reasoned as he joined them, the last to enter the room on account helping Helena along. "It was a cursed necklace—technically speaking—that was supposed to have been destroyed, and he woke up wearing it in the house of someone he probably thinks of as a blood-traitor." He shot his father an apologetic look. "Last he remembers of our family is us crossing battlelines even before the Dark Lord fell. Dolohov might've assumed we're working with the Ministry now—just as one would expect of traitors—and somehow slipped the necklace on him, that whatever hex he imagines is on it incapacitated him, and then we kidnapped him."

"Draco's right. Dolohov probably thinks you're waiting for aurors to cart him off to Azkaban," Hermione tacked on, uttering another weary sigh.

Narcissa's delicate features pinched in a wince. "Well, to be fair, turning him over to the Ministry is the plan … eventually."

"Everyone, focus!" Minerva snapped, frowning at the room half full of former Dark wizards. To their credit, William and Dahlia Granger stood off to the side, clearly cognizant that they hadn't the faintest notion how truly bad this all was even if they were far more versed in the matters of the Wizarding world than anyone had been led to believe previously.

Every occupant of the room turned to give the headmistress their undivided attention.

"Do we have any idea where Dolohov last recalls being himself?"

Hermione nodded. "I think that would have to be the same place Father took possession of him in the first place—that basement where he was staying. It's in an abandoned building in Hogsmeade."

"All right. Since we can't have two Draco Malfoys running around, you, the real Draco, and Lucius will go look for him there—"

"You're barking if you think I'm not going with her," Thorfinn said, his voice dripping acid as he met the elder witch's gaze unflinchingly.

"No, Thorfinn, please!" Hermione turned to face him, closing the distance to catch his hands in hers.

Were it any other wizard, Hermione would not feel such cautions warranted, but this was Antonin Dolohov they were dealing with. He was powerful and been more than dangerous in his own right before War's End … before he'd lost everything and had nothing more to lose but his freedom.

Hermione'd known single combat against him would've proven a challenge for any witch or wizard in this room before now. She didn't dare imagine how much more lethal he might be right now, paranoid and hunted and prepared.

And she could sense that they all shared her realizations about their quarry.

"Professor McGonagall is right! I need you here. Helena is still vulnerable right now, so is my basilisk, and my parents can't defend themselves against magic." In her worry, it didn't even register on her that she'd still easily, thoughtlessly, referred to the Grangers simply as her parents. "If Dolohov decides to double-back and a fight breaks out, any one of them could be in danger. I need to know they'll be safe. I trust you, and I trust Minerva and Narcissa, to keep them that way. But we also have to operate in a way that's not going to draw any further attention to this … mess."

"Because Hermione Granger hanging about with Malfoys doesn't already warrant undue attention as it is," Draco just about chirped unhappily, sighing.

"Everyone already thinks we were together, maybe they'll think we're considering not ending things, contrary to gossip, and conclude your father is trying to talk us out of … 'continuing our foolish dalliance,'" Hermione said, wrapping the locket's chain around her wrist and securing it in place before she delicately extracted little Salazar from her neck to wind him along the back of Helena's, instead.

Lucius frowned. "I'm uncertain if I'm disturbed or flattered that that sounds precisely like me."

"Enough chatter!" The command came not from Minerva this time but from Narcissa, her cultured voice carrying easily through the room. "Go, now. They'll be fine with us," she said, making the concession intentionally—so Hermione would understand her unconscious stalling due to her worries had been recognized.

Nodding, Hermione pulled Helena to her in a gentle hug.

As she pulled back, Helena's hand closed around her arm, her grip shockingly firm for her current frail state. Meeting her sister's gaze with an urgent expression, she said, "Come back safe, you little brat! And if you find our father, you bring him back with you."

"I promise."

Slipping from Helena's grasp, Hermione was unsurprised to spin right into Thorfinn as she turned around. His arms went around her fast, the way he pulled up her on her toes for a crushing, breath-stealing kiss just as fast before he let her go again making her head spin a moment. "Go."

With another nod, Hermione rounded so that her path would take her past Dahlia and William, not immune to the way they'd anxiously reached toward her in wait. Aware she'd taken far too much time already, she grasped one of each of their hands in hers, sharing a quick but meaningful look with them both, and finally stepped from the room on the heels of the Malfoy patriarch.

"Everyone needs us to go and yet people keep stopping you, unbelievable," Draco could be heard commenting as they disappeared down the corridor.


By the time the three came out of Apparition in Hogsmeade, it was getting dark out. Somehow the diminishing daylight made Hermione only feel more unsettled about their endeavor.

"It was this way," Draco said, catching his father's gaze and nodding down a sideroad the elder wizard would've likely overlooked otherwise, and started off.

Lucius fell into step half a pace behind Draco and Hermione followed after. Her fingers held her wand in a grip so fierce the color had drained from her knuckles.

The Malfoys seemed focused on the path ahead of them, but she could not help glancing about. Everywhere her gaze touched as they moved, narrow alleyways between houses and shopfronts, shadowed nooks stretching longer still with the last dying rays of the sun.

Everywhere and anywhere she imagined Dolohov could be hiding, could be lurking. Could be waiting for them to walk past him unaware and then launch that curse of his at them. She swallowed hard and shook her head, trying to reason with herself. Even if he only got one of them, and the other two were quick enough to engage and subdue him before he could do further damage, that would still mean one of them was dead.

She became aware of the other two drawing to a halt ahead of her.

Snapping her head around, she met their gazes in turn. They were nearly there. "What?" she asked in an impatient whisper.

"Miss Granger," Lucius said, his voice low as hers, tone carefully controlled, "I understand your personal history with Dolohov may be causing you to experience something as unfamiliar to you as rational fear, but you must focus."

Ignoring the fact that Lucius bloody Malfoy had just admitted to believing the young witch had previously been fearless—though she supposed she understood how it could seem that way to the outside observer—she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. "I am focused, Mr. Malfoy. I'm afraid, yes of course, but I'm also focused on the fact that he might not be down there waiting for us, or gathering what little he has to his name before making good his escape. He might well be out here somewhere, fully expecting someone to come after him."

Draco blinked a few times in rapid succession before holding up his free hand, his wand hand gripped as tight around his weapon as either of theirs. "Fully expecting someone," he echoed with a shake of his head. "He doesn't know about Granger! He'd have no reason to think she was at the manor with us."

"That's brilliant, Draco," Lucius said with a nod, oblivious to the mildly startled look that flickered across his son's features at the praise—this was apparently a day for Lucius Malfoy to be unexpectedly handing out compliments. He glanced about himself before continuing, "If Dolohov were out here, we'd just handed him the perfect opportunity to pick off at least one of us and then Disapparate—I imagine he's far too angry with the situation to not want to kill or at least horrifically maim one of us on his way out. He's not out here.

"Miss Granger, Draco and I will enter the same way you lot did the first time, you go around and find another way in—"

"If there is another way in," she interrupted, casting a dubious eye on the property. Surely the cul de sac was exactly as desolate as she remembered, but Hermione didn't imagine, oh say, breaking a window to gain entry wouldn't create noise enough to alert Dolohov to her intrusion—or possibly draw some random, curious party from the village proper.

Both Draco and Lucius arched a brow at her, comical in how strong their family resemblance was in that moment. "There's always another way in," they assured her in the same breath.

Of course, she thought, nodding in reply. They were Dark wizards, they likely always planned a spare exit strategy. Come to think of it, that was sound planning for anyone, but that hardly meant everyone thought that way.

She only hoped that if she managed to intrude on Dolohov's attempt to use said spare exit once he realized he wasn't alone, that she could catch him unawares and not the other way 'round.

Already she was struggling not to let the memory of how painful surviving his curse had been. She didn't think that was a miracle she could pull off a second time.

Moving quietly, she started rounding the building while Draco and Lucius approached by the ill-advised, yet completely intentional, front door.


He gave his head a shake, the pain and cloudiness having barely receded since he'd escaped Malfoy Manor. Blinking tiredly, he tried again to clear it away—what the bloody hell had they hit him with? What sort of vile enchantment had been on that damned locket, anyway?

No matter, he didn't have time for pondering. They'd be on his trail any moment, more than likely.

Uttering a sound like a growl beneath his breath, Antonin Dolohov focused as well as he could on packing up what few belongings he had. He cursed that he'd have been out of here already had it not been for whatever was wrong with his head.

How had they found him? How long had he been their prisoner?

His spine stiffened and his skin crawled as he wondered in spite of himself—in spite of his awareness that he had to move fast—he couldn't help a flash of fear-tinged concern over why they hadn't already turned him in.

Oh, yes! A big prize he'd be for that filthy blood-traitor family!

His head swam and he swayed in place a moment. Giving himself a sobering shake, Dolohov forced his body into motion, moving toward the nook where he'd hidden his things.

… And then paused, the fine on the back of his neck standing on end.

There'd been a noise from the floor above his head. Drawing his wand, he listened. Instead of being calmed by the lack of any subsequent sounds, he found himself suspicious of the silence that followed.

No, no, it felt far too deliberate.

Crossing the floor, Dolohov concealed himself amongst the shadows beneath the staircase.

And waited.