- London, 23rd of July 1995 -
What had started as a lovely summer day with promises of swimming and ice cream, had quickly turned into a nightmare.
"It's alright, love," Draco whispered as he held Polarys to his chest, her tiny fists holding onto his shirt tightly as the last of the cold swirled around them. Bloody dementors. What had they been doing in London? And why had they been here so soon? He remembered that Potter had been tried in front of the Wizengamot for the use of underage magic in the last timeline. But that had been towards the end of Summer… Was the war already proceeding at a different pace than it was last time?
The youngest Black's auburn curls tickled her cousin's face when she looked up at him, tears in her eyes. "Mummy said the bad man came back. But she told us he couldn't hurt us. Did the bad man send the monsters after us, Dray? Was he trying to hurt us after all?" Polarys whispered.
"We're not sure, sweetheart," Mione answered, saving him from having to answer a question as loaded as that one, as she pulled her hand through the toddler's hair. "But you will be alright. Mummy, Daddy, Susan, and the three of us will always protect you."
Polarys bit her lip, trying not to cry. The little girl nodded, but Draco could still feel the strength of her tiny hands as she clung to him for dear life. She'd clearly been shaken. For Merlin's sake. Would her generation also be fucked by snake face and his followers? Just like his own, and the one before his, had been?
"Your brother sleeps like a log doesn't he?" Draco chuckled, trying to cheer the little girl up. "Did he learn that from Harry you think?" He reached out his finger and tapped her nose in a teasing manner, trying to get the little girl to smile.
Hermione saw the struggle on his face and transfigured a nearby branch into a cane. Draco accepted it gratefully and shifted Polarys to his left arm, using his right to keep standing up straight.
He'd been straining himself when they had to run from the Dementors. Both of his friends had claimed that it would do him good to go swimming and to ease his muscles. It had been pure bliss when the water had indeed loosened all the tension in his body. But needing to sprint home and using nearly all of his magic to summon a patronus made him feel like a wreck. What in Merlin's name was going on with him? Surely he couldn't still be feeling the curse… Could he?
"Are you alright?" Mione whispered into his ear as they watched Harry talk to one of the muggle healers. Doctors, Hermione called them.
Draco sighed. Was he? Whatever his father's curse had done to him, not even magic itself seemed to be able to fix it. He'd broken an arm before, and it had healed within three days. But this had been different. It had been nearly a month since Voldemort's return, and Draco still tired easily. His magical core hadn't settled yet, probably also because he'd lost the part that was Hermione's.
Before he could answer her honestly, the tires of a car screeched beside them.
"Duddikins!" Petunia Dursley yelled as she ran in the direction of Harry and the ambulance which now had Dudley Dursley and some muggle girl inside.
Harryæs uncle followed soon after and immediately started yelling at his nephew and how his freakishness had landed his son in the hospital.
"You sure that Lily's sister isn't half-harpy?" Draco mused as Hermione frowned at the muggles. A doctor stepped in between their best friend and Mr. Dursley and started explaining to him that the young man in front of them had saved his son's life. That seemed to shut the big oaf of a man up immediately, making him splutter angrily instead.
"Madam Black will be here soon," a gruff voice popped up from behind them. "What did you tell the muggles?"
As Hermione opened her mouth to answer Alastor Moody, Polarys cried out happily for his companion. "Dora!" She reached her tiny hands out to the pink-haired auror. "Did you see? It was snowing tonight!"
Being her usual bubbly self, Tonks took the toddler from Draco and lifted her high in the air, making her giggle. "Snow in the middle of July? What a magical night indeed! Did you have fun at the swimming pool today, dear?"
"The muggles think it was a robbery gone wrong," Draco told Moody as his cousin distracted Polarys. "We were just leaving the nearest park when we noticed the cold settle in. It didn't take us long to put two and two together. When we took this shortcut to Grimmauld, we saw two dementors hovering over Dudley and the girl."
The auror's magical eye twisted in its socket, analysing the muggles in the ambulance. "Mhm. Multiple cuts and bruises. Seems like they fell when they ran from the Dementors. I wonder if they knew what they were running from…"
"A feeling of pure terror?" Hermione suggested, patting Castor lightly on the back to soothe him as he was waking up and sucking on his thumb. "This one slept through the whole ordeal, however."
Alastor laughed loudly at her remark. "Perhaps not an auror like his father then."
The shimmer of a notice-me-not charm settled around them, and two distinct pops later Sirius and Amelia Black were holding their children in their arms, checking over Draco and Hermione as well to make sure they were alright.
"Of all the muggles the dementors could have chased through London…" Sirius said as Harry started walking towards them after the ambulance had driven off. His aunt and uncle were in the middle of a shouting match down the street, and no one seemed to bother with the couple.
"Are you alright, son?" Lord Black asked as Harry entered their protective bubble.
"I'm alright," he shrugged. "Me and Draco were able to cast a corporeal patronus, so we drove the dementors out quickly with Hermione empowering both of them with her magic. What I'm wondering, however, is what two dementors are doing in the middle of London?"
"That's what I'm going to figure out, lad," Moody said as he clapped Harry on the shoulder. "You did well. Ever considered being an auror, have you?"
The raven-haired boy blushed at the praise. "I haven't thought that far ahead."
"Let's head home," Amelia announced, bouncing Polarys up and down slowly in her arms. "Owl your parents, you two. You will have to stay with us for the night. I need to get all of your eyewitness accounts before I head to the Ministry tomorrow. And can someone please tell me what those two idiots are still on about?"
All of them turned their heads as Petunia Dursley slapped her husband square across the face in a fit of rage. "I will not hear you speak about Lily's son like that, especially not after he saved Duddikin's life!" she yelled at him before she stomped off towards the car angrily. Her eyes seemed to linger on the notice-me-not bubble for a second, making the magicals wonder if she could see the shimmer in the sky, unlike most muggles. "Thank you," she whispered in their direction, before she slammed the passenger door of the car, waiting for her husband to drive them to the hospital.
- The Hogwarts Express, 1st of September 1995 -
"Mione, calm down."
Draco squeezed her hand as she stood on one of the seats, putting her head out of the train compartment's window in an attempt to try and locate Harry who was running late.
"Why is it that only he had to attend a hearing considering the Dementor attack in July? You don't think they actually kicked him out of school, do you?" she murmured as Draco finally had enough of her antics and pulled her down by the back of her sweater.
"Because Umbridge wants to get in the Minister's, or even the Dark Lord's, good graces," he whispered in her ear, her curls tickling his face. Or maybe even Fudge's pants. Ew. That was a thought he wished hadn't popped up in his mind.
Hermione's eyes widened at that bit of information but before she could react, a voice called to them from the doorway.
"Oi! No lovey-dovey whispering sweet nothings into each others' ears first thing in the morning!"
Blushing, Hermione jumped up and nearly tackled Harry. "I was looking all over for you!" she exclaimed.
"Already starting with your prefect duties, are you?" he chuckled as he hugged her back.
"Don't get me started," Draco sighed as he stretched out his legs and put his feet on the seat opposite him. "She's been nagging me for the past three weeks about rounds, potential secret passageways the map doesn't show, and-"
"Mione! You didn't! You can't let any of the other prefects know about the secret passageways my dad and his friends found. How else will the Hogwarts students sneak off to steal a kiss?" Harry pouted.
Hermione swung her hair over her shoulder and huffed, crossing her arms. "Of course, I won't share the passageways with anyone else. I will only be doing rounds with Draco anyway, so-"
"So you wanted to get to know the perfect snogging spots in Hogwarts while you're doing your rounds? Blimey, Mione, I don't know if McGonagall is going to like her top student using her prefect status to maul the boy she likes in the hallways," Harry teased her.
Draco laughed when Hermione elbowed Harry in the ribs sharply. "This is exactly why you didn't make prefect," she said. "Your teenage hormones are taking over already!"
"What? And Draco isn't a healthy teenage boy?" Harry asked.
Hermione momentarily stiffened at the remark but managed to cool her expression. "He's more mature than you are," she stated, unable to lie to her best friend, needing to come up with a truthful answer to his teasing. She ended the conversation by sitting down and taking a book from her backpack, cuddling into Draco's side.
"He's just teasing you," Draco assured her mentally.
She snorted loudly, making Harry raise an eyebrow at her.
"Oh, so you two can still talk to each other?" he asked. "Finally completely healed then, are you?"
Draco nearly winced. True, his body had healed, but his magic… Something still felt off. Even though it was still as easy for him to enter Hermione's mind, she had way more difficulty being welcomed into his. It was almost as if she bounced off of his mental shields unless he was looking into her eyes and straining himself to let her in. What the bloody hell had that curse done to him? Or had it been the breaking of the bond? No. He and his wife had been able to communicate before they were married. But then why could he still… Ugh.
"It's… Complicated," Draco answered Harry. "Speaking about complicated, how did the hearing yesterday go? You didn't answer me or Mione when we wrote to you in the diary. We were getting worried."
Harry then started talking about the hearing, where Sirius luckily did not have to admit to having the trace removed from his godson's wand a few years earlier. Apparently, since Harry was officially Lord Slytherin, the trace should have been removed years ago, seeing as he was emancipated. Amelia had to adjust her features to not seem too overeager to remove it herself since she of course knew her idiot of a husband had managed to get rid of the tracking magic long ago. No one would ever know that there had been no trace to remove.
"That Umbridge woman though, she's something else," Harry eventually sighed. "It was as if she was attempting to catch me on anything illegal, almost as if…"
"As if she was out for you specifically," Hermione murmured, looking at Draco questioningly. He already knew that they would need to talk more about the undersecretary and her plans to send dementors after Harry.
Luna opened the door to the compartment then, tugging Blaise along with her. "Have any of you read the Quibbler this morning?" she asked them in greeting. When none of them responded she waved her wand, making three copies of the newspaper appear out of thin air, all of them falling into the silver trio's lap.
Harry only had to take one look at the front page to know what she was on about.
"Educational Decree 23…" Hermione murmured. "A High Inquisitor? What is that supposed to mean? Is she going to bring the inquisition to Hogwarts?" she chuckled.
When Draco didn't laugh at her small joke, but instead read the article carefully, she tensed up.
"I guess Umbitch is back?" the blond wizard asked Luna, confusing the others in the compartment.
"Oh yes," Luna nodded fervently. "Even you will be on her list of adversaries. Just don't wander the halls alone on the 30th of September."
"Lovely," Draco drawled. "Remind me again in four weeks, will you, Luna?"
"Got too much on your mind do you?" she winked at him, her eyes lingering on Hermione tucked into his side. Not allowing either one of the blushing Slytherins to answer her, she instead turned to Harry. "Congratulations, by the way. I know that you will find good use for the heirloom you received from the Goblins this morning." Her eyes twinkled with secrets, as usual.
This surprised Draco. He'd advised Harry, Sirius, and Amelia to research the area around the graveyard. The ritual that Voldemort had used to return had required the bones of snake face's father after all. If the Dark Lord had hidden his Horcruxes in the places he considered home, such as Hogwarts and close to the orphanage he'd grown up in, then perhaps the graveyard would lead to more clues. He hadn't actually thought it would work though. "So you followed up on it?" Draco asked. "Did they find another-"
Before Draco could question him more, or Harry could elaborate, the rest of their friends came in and everyone started talking about their summers. "Later," Harry mouthed to both of his friends after he greeted Ginny with a kiss on the cheek.
Draco was so grateful to see the smile on Daphne's face as she tugged her boyfriend, Head Boy Cedric Diggory, with her into the compartment. Merlin. He'd done it. He'd actually saved someone. The Hufflepuff didn't have to die after all.
That same night, the silver trio snuck off to the Room of Requirement. They were way too tall now to all hide under Harry's invisibility cloak, so Draco disillusioned himself while Hermione and Harry crawled along the corridors. They only needed to stop twice to dodge Filch. The rest of the castle seemed to be asleep already.
Harry took the cloak off of them as soon as Draco closed the door to the Room behind him.
"Bloody hell. That woman is honestly the offspring of a banshee and a toad!" Harry exclaimed, remembering Umbridge's horrid speech during dinner.
Hermione tried to stifle her laugh. "Even though I have to agree with you, I'm sure that's not what you were about to tell us on the train before we got interrupted. It's my first day as prefect and you already managed to have me break the rules by letting me run around the castle after curfew," she admonished him lightly.
Harry rubbed the back of his head. "I wanted to talk to you two about what I did this morning…"
"You went to Gringotts this morning? Since Luna said you received something from the Goblins?" Hermione inquired.
The Boy Who Lived nodded and pulled a small ring, set with a black stone out of his pocket.
"While you were in France with your grandparents, Draco, Sirius, Aunt Amelia and I discussed potential locations for other Horcruxes. Draco suggested there might be some clue hidden close to the graveyard where Voldemort was resurrected. Amelia figured out during summer where exactly it was located. Little Hangleton. It also housed the last unknown Gaunt estate. The one we thought was unplottable," he murmured.
Oh. Not a Horcrux then perhaps. Maybe he truly had only received a family heirloom, Draco mused.
"Is that a Gaunt heirloom then?" Hermione wondered as Harry offered her the ring to study.
"Yeah. The Goblins said I could also use the Gaunt title now, even if Voldemort is back, but… It's not just an heirloom. It was a Horcrux, Mione," he answered.
Draco blinked. So his gut instinct had been correct? This meant… "A Horcrux? Merlin, Harry! If he truly has made seven, then that means there's only-"
"Only me, and possibly the snake, left. I know," he stated. "Maybe this whole thing will come to a close sooner than expected."
"We'll be with you, mate," Draco assured him as he clapped him on the back. "Until the very end."
"I know," Harry smiled, as he took the ring back from Hermione. He still seemed nervous, however, and started fidgeting, flipping the ring over in his hands to keep himself busy. "I just can't help to think that if I fail… If I can't defeat Voldemort, then Mum and Dad died for nothing…"
"We would always sacrifice our lives for yours, dear. It would never be for nothing," a feminine voice spoke from behind them.
Hermione turned around and gasped, holding her hand in front of her mouth. Draco stumbled backwards and grasped Hermione's other hand, pulling her next to him as he wanted to protect her from the unknown entity.
Harry looked close to tears as all three of them stared in shock at the image of the red-haired woman who'd just spoken. "Mum?" he finally choked out, looking at the ghostlike form of Lily Potter.
"Yes, love?" she smiled fondly at her son.
"But that's impossible you-" Harry stuttered. "The Room doesn't have magic like this. If it had, you would have-"
"It's not the room," Hermione pointed to the ring in his hand. "Merlin's beard, Harry! That's… The resurrection stone!"
"The what?" he asked, utterly confused. "You mean? From that bedtime story Polarys always wants to read? The Tale of the Three Brothers? A deathly hallow?"
"I see now why you are called the smartest witch of your age," James Potter suddenly chuckled behind his wife, both ghosts looking at the trio. "Is it so hard to believe that the deathly hallows were real, son? As the last Peverell, you've been holding onto another of their heirlooms for quite a long time."
"The cloak?" Draco wondered. No. That couldn't be. The hallows were real?
"Correct!" James said as he raised his finger. "10 points to Slytherin." The elder Potter made a face then. "Bloody hell, never thought I would say that."
Lily laughed at her husband. "If only Sirius could see you now."
"Sirius… Remus… Would you. Would you like to meet them?" Harry whispered, looking at his parents.
Only half a minute later, prongs shot through the hallways, delivering a patronus message to Professor Lupin who was already tucked in bed. Fifteen minutes later, both he and Sirius barged through the doors dressed in their pyjamas, staring in disbelief at their two dead best friends.
"Padfoot. Moo- Well, you're not really Moony anymore now are you? Too tame to be a wolf," James greeted his friends, chuckling.
"You better be happy you're already dead, or I would have proven you wrong about me being tame, Prongs," Remus threatened jokingly, tears in his eyes.
"Let's give them some space," Hermione whispered to Draco as they took in the Marauders, reunited once more. The veil between life and death had been pierced, if only for a moment, by the boy they all considered their son.
Draco took Hermione's hand and gave her a little bit of his magic to help her disillusion herself. After the bond had been broken, the more advanced spells in Hermione's arsenal had become more volatile, being either underwhelming or completely overpowered. The blond regretted that her magic felt so off now that they were separated. He had no clue that her growing up with both of their magic combined would make it so she would need to learn to control her magic again if they ever broke the bond. Hermione hadn't blamed him, however. After all, no one had gone back in time and adjusted bonding magic like that before. There was no way Draco could have known.
"Wait," Hermione whispered before they rounded the corner to the dungeons. She took him by the hand and led him to an empty classroom nearby, waving her wand for any sign of life. When she found no one there, she locked the room and put a silencing bubble around them.
"Mione, if you wanted to do some snogging, there's no need to do it in an empty classroom," Draco smirked as he let the disillusionment spell fall away.
"Even if your offer sounds interesting, you still haven't asked me on a proper date yet, Lord Malfoy. And here you expect to go snogging the last heiress to the Dagworth-Granger House?" She sighed, and kissed him on the cheek, making both of them flush.
Draco laughed and hugged her close to him, hiding his face in her hair, breathing in the scent of grapefruit and apples. "Alright. I promise to take you on a date by the end of the month. Now, if it wasn't for snogging," he teased her, "then why did you pull me in here?"
"The walls have ears in the common room," she whispered into his chest. "We both know there are children of Voldemort's followers living among us now. And what I wanted to discuss with you, should not fall on their ears."
She tilted her head and looked into his eyes, pleading for him to let her in.
"It's concerning the prophecy," she mentally said.
"What about it?" he asked as he nuzzled his nose closer to hers, never breaking eye contact and happy to finally spend some time alone with her.
"Do you remember what it said, Draco? 'He will have power the Dark Lord knows not.' Harry just summoned a ghostly apparition of his parents. His father even confirmed that he has the cloak from the stories. If the Tale of the Three Brothers is real, and the hallows are real, then Harry-"
"Harry could be the master of death," Draco blinked at her in amazement. "All he would need is the wand. But that hasn't been seen for decades, Mione."
"A wand as powerful as that can't just get lost, now can it? I'll do some research," she assured him.
"Of course you will. " He chuckled and tucked a loose curl behind her ear. "Now, let's go to bed. We need that brain of yours to be rested if you want to take on the task of finding the elder wand."
Leaning in for a goodnight kiss, Hermione put her finger on his lips and smirked teasingly. "A date, Draco."
"A date," he agreed as he kissed her forehead instead.