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Chapter Text

[Part One, 1996]

A mermaid slips through the night dark waters of the lake beyond the towering gilt window of the Slytherin common room and Draco watches its path with envious grey eyes. Crabbe and Goyle are still digging at him for his increased study patterns and Draco grips his quill so hard that he knows without looking his knuckles have gone white. The words to explain rise in his throat but he swallows his tongue. They don’t understand. They’re dumb as two planks of wood, but Draco is decidedly not. It’s bad enough that a muggle born is showing him up in every class, but now Potter has begun? Luckily it is only potions, but the idiot is showing himself as startlingly competent. Prodigal, according to his father.

“Fucking leave,” Draco bites at the pair.

It cuts off Goyle’s jab mid strike, silencing the fool. Crabbe sneers and pushes to his feet.

“Don’t forget, Draco, you’re the same as us,” he says. Goyle pushes his seat back harshly and storms off, Crabbe sauntering on his heels. 

Oh, doesn’t Draco know it. His arm burns; on it, the still-fresh Dark Mark. It itches vaporously, hidden even to his own eyes behind a glamour and yet he wants to peel the skin down to the bloody flesh and bone.

He was all bravado to Blaise on the train. I’m not coming back. Because Draco is determined to get out from beneath Voldemort’s thumb, and if he cannot, well, he won’t be able to return to Hogwarts after what he’ll have to do. How could he? Walking these halls won’t be like coming home anymore once he’s committed murder within their stone walls.

His gaze dips to the potions textbooks and rolls of parchment covered with his hatefully elegant scrawl and his lip curls harshly. It’s embarrassing, staying so late in the common room in an attempt to outdo the Chosen One at potions. But when his father heard… what had been his refuge had become his cage. Prodigal. His father is rotting in Azkaban and yet the word haunted Draco more than it should have. Bad enough that a mudblood could beat a Malfoy. He could not be displaced to third by Potter.

Draco knows it is a distraction; he studies until he is dizzy and dreams in ancient runes and arithmancy rather than face the other task his father reminds him of every letter. He has begun to dread the owls swooping into the Great Hall at breakfast.

But until he figures a way out, the silence of the common room past midnight and the endless potion recipes curbs the anxiety that crawls up his throat.

He sighs, and scratches out more notes. Graduated cylinder for 40 fl.oz. of essence of wormwood… Valerian root, cut and placed in a beaker with water… ten clockwise stirs…

Waters drips.

Draco blinks weary eyes up at the room. Candle lit and still hauntingly green from the lake, no one lingers in the shadows. And yet: water. Breathing: harsh and wet and raw. Draco reaches for his wand. It clatters against the wood as he grips it.

“Who’s there?” He calls. If this is some third year pulling a prank, or Crabbe and Goyle come to get him back for telling them to fuck off, they’re going to regret ever deciding to cross Draco.

But it’s not his friends. Or some other Slytherin.

At least, not one alive.

“Oh fuck—“ Draco scrambles backwards, spilling ink in a dark pool across his work as a drowned boy with dripping black hair and rageful eyes appears a spectre before him. A white shirt clings translucent to pale flesh torn and bloody, and as his chest heaves with breaths he cannot take, the dim light catches on a locket alive in the v of his collar. It is spectral grey like the rest of him, but almost yellow.

“Harry Potter,” the ghost rasps. “Where is he?”

“Wrong common room,” Draco says. “He’s a Gryffindor.”

The dead boy almost sneers. “Of course he is.” Then he’s gone.

Draco lowers his wand, unsure when exactly he raised it, or what he expected to do against the spectre. His heart thumps almost painfully in the aftermath. Who was— Draco shakes his head to clear the thought. It doesn’t matter. Let some mysterious ghost go after Potter; he has bigger problems.

Heady with adrenaline, Draco plants his hands against the table and hangs his head. His notes are ruined. He’ll have to redo them tomorrow—

“He looks exactly like James.”

Draco flinches. The boy is back, looking shell-shocked and still dripping phantom water to the marble floor.

“Who?” Draco asks.

“James. His father. He looks just like him.”

“Good for him.”

Unfocused grey eyes slide to him. Draco is frozen in place by the strange gaze. Who is this boy?

“Why is Harry Potter a horcrux?” He asks.

“A what?”

“A horcrux. One of Voldemort’s.”

Time slows. Draco is not familiar with the term, but the Dark Lord’s name on the tongue of a ghost just after the Chosen One’s is enough to fully capture his interest.

“What is a horcrux?”

The spectre tilts his head. “Why can you see me but he cannot? Who are you?”

“Draco Malfoy. Who are you?”

“Regulus Arcturus Black.”

Well, shit.

He must see something on Draco’s face, because Regulus’s eyes, not spectral but true grey eyes, like his mother’s, like his own, narrow. “What year is it?”

“1996.”

“You’re Narcissa’s son, aren’t you?”

“That’s why I can see you,” Draco realises.

Regulus’s eyes cut to Draco’s left arm, right where his dark mark is hidden. “Perhaps.”

The tension between the two Death Eaters draws taut. Dark followers, both, but are they on the same side?

“I want him dead.”

“Potter?”

Regulus shakes his head.

Draco’s heart stutters. Hope swells dreadfully in his chest and the words rise, slowly, choking him like lake water, then all at once they spill from his lips. “So do I.”

Regulus Arcturus Black smiles.                                        

Chapter Text

Draco Malfoy stalks through Hogwarts stone halls in search of Harry Potter and Regulus follows on his heels. He is still disoriented, switching from rage to memory to the present in seconds. When he had seen Harry in the cave, he had thought James had come for him. He clawed his way free of the lake and spluttered, water in his lungs, and the relief made his unreal limbs weak. But then he had seen Lily’s eyes on the boy’s face and known: this was not James and Regulus was dead. How much time had passed, there was no way of knowing, just that James and Lily had borne a son who had found his way to the cave and woken Regulus from the slumber of death when he opened the door. He had been forced to watch as Harry, called such by Dumbledore, fed the old wizard the water that had been his own undoing, all in hopeless search for the locket that lay around his neck. Only, the locket had never been at Regulus’s throat, so why it’s spectral double hangs heavy against his chest in death, he doesn’t know. Kreacher had been ordered to take it away and destroy it. He hopes the house elf managed it.

It had been hard to watch, that familiar face and that familiar awful pain, but he kept his gaze to Harry and tried to ignore the echo of his last pleas from Dumbledore’s mouth. Stop, please. Kill me. Just kill me. That was when he noticed the lightning scar across his forehead. Magic reverberated. The boy and the necklace, two of the same blood-curdling darkness, and Regulus had known then that somehow, James’s son was a second of Voldemort’s horcruxes.

When the inferni had arrived, the memories of their claws had debilitated Regulus until those purifying flames had settled and Harry Potter was gone. 

Hogwarts. Through the haze, he could think that much. Of course, Regulus had landed himself in the Slytherin common room when it should have been obvious Harry would follow in his parents’ footsteps. The rage and pain and desire for revenge had overtaken him. James’s son, of all people.

He’d been struck dumb seeing Harry’s face in sleep, all traces of Lily gone, leaving only the face he knew from the astronomy tower. James, he’d said. Whispered. Shouted. Harry did not wake.

Regulus drags himself to the present moment and the cousin he follows.

Malfoy is agitated, scowling. People avoid him, and do not see Regulus at all as they pass through his spectral form, sending shivers down his spine and theirs.

“Potter!” Malfoy calls. Harry turns with a raised eyebrow. A girl with wild brown curls and a boy with a ginger mop stand by his side, looking equally unimpressed. No friends of Malfoy’s then. Unsurprising. “I need to speak to you,” he grits out the words.

“About?” Harry asks.

“Not here.”

“Here is fine.”

“Sirius’s ghost brother wants me to tell you that you’re a horcrux.”

Regulus cuts a sideways glance at Malfoy. What a poor way of saying it. The feeling only grows when Harry’s expression turns stormy.

“What the hell is a horcrux.”

It hadn’t taken long for Malfoy to understand Regulus’s explanation of soul fragments shattered from the source upon the murder of another, hidden in objects to turn Voldemort immortal, but when Malfoy says it, Harry laughs harshly and without humour.

“Bullshit. Shove off, Malfoy.”

Malfoy grinds his jaw. He shrugs and throws a glance to Regulus. “I tried.” That’s it? Rage spikes through Regulus, so shockingly overwhelming that it shatters his lucidity and for a second he is back in the cave, drinking the liquid and begging for death. It was this rage that got him through every mouthful. This rage kept him clinging to life even when claws tore his flesh and the lake replaced the air in his lungs.

The girl frowns. “Harry, I—”

“It’s not true, Hermione.” Harry glares at Malfoy. James — Harry — snaps Regulus out of it. He’s here, the shifting staircases and talking portraits of Hogwarts form the scenery of his present, not lightless water forcing itself down his throat, pressing against him, consuming him— he’s here. “He’s a Death Eater. We can’t trust a word out of his mouth.”

Malfoy flinches almost imperceptibly and spins on his heels. Regulus lurches into his way and he jerks to a stop. Malfoy can’t leave after such a pathetic attempt. Regulus won’t let him.

“Tell him. He knows it, anyway. Tell him you want to leave.”

Malfoy gives a small, curt shake of his head.

“Tell him!”

Malfoy walks right through him. Regulus wants to scream.

Chapter Text

Malfoy’s words make an uncomfortable sort of sense to Hermione.

“Harry, I think we should consider Malfoy might be telling the truth.” Malfoy’s form retreats down the hall and she watches it go for a moment before turning back to Harry and Ron.

“No chance.” Harry shakes his head and resumes the walk to breakfast. Hermione sighs. Even since they saw Malfoy in Borgin and Berks, the Deatheater talk has been non-stop. Honestly, the obsession is worrying.

Horcrux. Where has she heard that word before? Or, read, more likely.

“I’m going to the library,” she says.

Ron gives her a smile. “We’ll save you a plate.”

She waves it off. “I have a snack in my bag. I’ll meet you in class.”

Her thoughts race over the problem as she weaves around her fellow students to the library doors. It doesn’t make sense Malfoy would set them on a false trail, not when they barely interact with him beyond Harry’s incessant observation these days. Nor does it make sense to bring up Sirius’s brother when he died long before Harry was born. And she’s sure she’s read of that dark magic somewhere.

The library is quiet this early in the morning and she smiles at Madam Pince sorting through returns at the front desk. 

“Hello. Can I nip into the restricted section? I want to add some extra detail to the Draught of Living Death report we’re doing for Slughorn in potions,” Hermione asks, riffling through her satchel for an old note that could pass for now.

The librarian chuckles. “Ah yes, I heard that you finally have some competition in Mr Potter!”

Hermione grits her teeth and nods with a tight lipped smile. She flicks through the old notes she keeps in here just in case. “Sorry. Slughorn gave me a note but it’s not quite where I left it. I’ve got an extension charm on my bag.” She finally finds one that Slughorn gave her last month for… something. Was it when they were learning about Amortentia? Luckily, the note doesn’t say what it was for. Hermione hands it over with only a pinch of guilt and resignation. Harry and Ron have rubbed off on her so much over the years that she’s ready to break the rules with only Malfoy’s word for cause! She almost reprimands herself, but lets it go because if Malfoy is telling the truth then she needs to do this.

Madman Pince adjusts her glasses and inspects the parchment with an inscrutable frown. “Yes, fine. Go on now.” The librarian hands it back with the ancient metal key and Hermione grips it tight as her feet follow the familiar path. Competition. She scoffs. The only real competition she has is in Malfoy; Harry just has that infernal book that flouts the instructions.

The thud of the lock is loud in the early morning quiet. No one is in the restricted section and the light filters over the top of the stacks of chained books, lighting up dust motes in the air. She makes a B-line for the aisles on the Dark Arts, of which there are quite a few (most of them, honestly), as she mentally goes over the books here that she’s read. Dark Witches and Wizards of the Ancient Times. She had been researching Salazar Slytherin and Basiliks when she came across the book, wondering if there was a connection there to the strange magic of Tom Riddle’s diary that had almost brought Voldemort back. Goosebumps raise on her arms as she pulls the aging tome off the shelf. She rests it gently on a desk, the lamp light softly beginning to glow, and flicks through the stained and thinning paper. It wasn’t in the entry on Slytherin… no, she’d heard the name first in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and it had stuck because it had described the creation of the first Basilisk. Her mind works, flipping through memories as she flips through pages. Herpo the Foul. That’s the one!

Herpo was born a Parselmouth in Ancient Greece and dedicated his life to the exploration of the Dark Arts, earning his infamy and nomenclature of “Herpo the Foul”.

He created many curses…

…experimentation led him to create the Basilisk…

…the affect of murder on the soul…

Herpo was the first known wizard to successfully forge a Horcrux through Dark Magic by committing murder with the intention of splitting his soul and sealing the fragment within an object, thus binding it to the earthly plane and achieving immortality despite the eventual destruction of his mortal flesh.

There. Horcrux. Is this what Malfoy is saying Voldemort has done? Split his soul to secure his existence beyond his body? It makes a horrid sort of sense. In first year he was attached to Professor Quirrel; second year it was his 16-year-old self returning through a diary. Hermione gasps. A piece of his soul. Moaning Myrtle dying by the Basilisk which was controlled by Tom Riddle, a Parseltongue. He could have done it, then: create what this book describes as a horcrux. But Harry, one himself? What use would Voldemort have to do that? The prophecy said Harry was the key to defeating him, so he had gone to Godrik’s Hollow to kill Harry.

Unless it was an accident — something Lily did with her magic when Voldemort killed her that caused the death spell to go awry and fragment his soul. It would explain how Harry had survived with only a scar like lightning that Hermione has suspected is dark magic for years. She’ll look into that later.

Hermione reads the rest of the entry but there’s nothing more on horcruxes, so she returns it to the shelf and searches the stacks for more information. Book after book yields nothing. Not even a mention of the word. She pulls off Magick Moste Evile, its chain rattling ominously in the dim silence. There’s a heavy weight to the large book; one beyond simply the tomes size. Dark magic suffuses it and Hermione shivers as she touches the questionable leather of the cover. It should turn her stomach, the contents of this book, but her curiosity burns away the nausea and she looses herself in the intricate magic. Horrifying curses, vile hexes, and spells so dark they make her shudder.

Of the Horcrux, wickedest of magical inventions, we shall not speak nor give direction—

Hermione lets out an audible, deeply irritated groan and slams the book shut. The book lets out a ghostly wail. Her heart jumps into her throat and it annoys her even more.

“Oh, shut up.”

She shoves the book back onto the shelf and then the bell echoes through the library, signalling five minutes until the start of class.

She frowns and hurries out, chewing the food in her bag distantly as everything she learnt — little though it is — runs through her mind. She’s on to something. Or, she supposes, Malfoy wasn’t lying through his teeth when he came to them, in which case, he was trying to help. That thought sustains her though her first class in the moments where things lull. Why would Malfoy want to help them? What else does he know about horcruxes? This could be the key to ending the threat against her best friend.

Harry won’t listen to her, she knows that much.

So she has to go to the source. She has to speak to Draco.

Chapter Text

In death, Regulus isn’t sure his mind works properly. He sees Harry and remembers James and thinks himself alive again with his whole future ahead of him. Then he looks into Lily’s eyes and sees the water in the cave and returns like a tide to the present in which he is dead. Where are James and Lily now? Harry does not speak of them; has only one picture on display and they are a handful of years older than when he knew them and dancing in an autumn wind. It twists Regulus’s unreal gut to see James as a man. Equally as strange is seeing his cousin in the structure of Malfoy’s face and the Black eyes that they both share. Regulus died in that cave and has awoken to a world where the differences are only subtle. Unknowns written like a palimpsest over his memories.

It is the last class of the day and Harry’s friend, Hermione, keeps glancing at Malfoy. The boy pretends not to notice, though his shoulders draw further in and his scowl deepens as the lesson progresses. That could also be because Harry seems to be in a swaggering, sharp kind of mood that Regulus is all too familiar with. It’s loud and insufferable and makes Reg’s heart ache for the past.

“Try talking to them again,” Regulus says to Malfoy. He doesn’t respond, of course. “The girl looks amenable to the idea. Convince her and she’ll convince Potter.” Malfoy’s jaw works. “She seems like a bright witch. Smarter than him, anyway. She’s looking at you again. Is there a history between you two? Or is it between you and Potter?” Malfoy jerks forward and scribbles quick words on his parchment.

She’s a muggleborn and he’s the Chosen One. There is no history with either of them.

“I hardly meant it as though you were snogging one of— Chosen One? What do you mean?”

Malfoy risks a glance up to where Regulus leans over his shoulder. He looks as though he wants to ask you don’t know?

“What?” Regulus demands. “Tell me!”

Malfoy casts his gaze around the room, at Professor McGonagall lecturing on the transfiguration spell Crinus Muto to change the colour of one’s hair, at Harry and the ginger boy whispering to each other, at Hermione, who locks stares with him. They stay like that for one breath, then two, before Malfoy breaks it and begins writing.

There was a prophecy that foretold Harry being able to defeat Voldemort. Voldemort went to kill him as a baby, but Harry survived it and it ruined him. No one else has ever survived the killing curse. They said it was his mother’s last spell, a protection that Voldemort could not penetrate. Since then he has been touted ‘the Chosen One’.

“His mother’s… last spell?” The world dims until all there is is the scratching of Malfoy’s quill against the paper.

Voldemort killed Potter’s parents that night.

James is dead. Lily too.

Regulus is silent for so long that Malfoy looks up at him again. Regulus stares at the words and Malfoy stares at him.

“Voldemort,” Regulus chokes out. “What happened to him? Did he ever wage his war?”

He begun but he almost died that night too. He was in hiding until Barty Crouch Jr kidnapped Potter and some spell was done to bring him back. I don’t know how it happened but my father was called.

Barty. He had been Regulus’s friend. He’s not surprised, he supposes, that Barty would have fallen so far. The Ravenclaw’s intelligence was borne from something else lacking in him. Still, it hurts Reg to know that even his death did not make Barty think twice about following Voldemort.

“So he’s back.”

Malfoy nods shallowly.

“Then it is even more important you talk to Harry. He is the second horcrux. If we get the piece of Voldemort’s soul out of Harry, then he will be mortal once more.”

Second?

“I found the first. But it killed me. Kreacher took it.”

Where is it now?

“Hopefully destroyed.”

Malfoy says nothing, just relaxes back into his chair and returns to taking notes on the class.

James and Lily are dead. Regulus can’t quite swallow the rancid idea. Who raised Harry then? He vaguely recalls a sister, but what about Sirius? Remus?

The class ends and Malfoy slides his work into a bag and then the bushy-haired girl is before him. Malfoy blinks.

“We should talk,” she says.

Malfoy glances around almost frantically. Harry has gone and they get a few curious glances, but mostly no one pays them any mind. Hermione rolls her eyes and grabs his arm, pulling him to the side as everyone else filters from the room. When it is just the three of them, she speaks again.

“I read up on horcruxes.”

“What did you find?” Malfoy asks.

She scowls. “Nothing of substance. But I’m willing to hear you out. I want to meet Sirius’s brother.”

“Well, he’s standing right next to us, but you can’t see him.”

Hermione glances around, eyes skittering over Regulus. It unnerves him, someone knowing him to be there but unable to witness his presence. “There are spells for that.”

“You really are an insufferable know-it-all.”

“It’s as simple as reading, actually. I found the spell at lunch.”

“Alright then. Is here good enough for you?”

“Quite.” 

Hermione pulls a book from her bag and drops it to a table. A tasseled bookmark sticks from it’s pages and she knots her hair with her wand as she stands in the middle of the room.

“Aren’t you going to need that?” Malfoy drawls.

She gives him a withering look. “You’re going to cast the spell, because you can see him, so you can make me see him too. If you would please ask him to stand opposite me, about three metres away.”

Regulus beings to move, facing the headstrong witch.

“He can hear you, you know.”

Hermione gestures for Malfoy to open the book. He does so, and his gaze becomes intent as he reads over the spell.

“Simple enough charm,” he murmurs, almost to himself.

“Think you can manage it?” Hermione asks innocently.

Regulus laughs. “Can you?” He mimics.

Malfoy doesn’t respond, just beings the cast.

“Spectrallis facibilem!” He calls and moves his wand in a half circle from Hermione to Regulus, where he twists and Reg feels the magic shiver over his ghostly form, then cuts the wand back to the girl. Hermione blinks. Her gaze focuses on Regulus and he knows she can see him now.

“Oh, hello,” she says.

“I’m Regulus,” he replies.

“Regulus! I’m Hermione. It’s a pleasure to, uh, meet you.” She winces. Regulus’s jaw tightens but he just smiles and nods.

“Now do you believe me?” Malfoy asks.

She ignores him.

“You told him Harry is a horcrux?” Regulus nods. “How do you know?”

“I discovered Voldemort’s secret back— when I was alive. I died retrieving one. When I saw Harry, I felt the same magic in his scar.”

Hermione’s eyes widen. “His scar…” She whispers.

“Do you see why he needs to know?”

“Yes. That changes everything. The coming war…” She trails off again.

“War?” Malfoy bites. “What do you know of war?”

“Voldemort is back. It is only logical that he will restart his efforts. It’s just a matter of how long it will be before it all begins again in earnest.”

Malfoy opens his mouth with an irritated, arrogant expression, but it falls from him with a sigh and he shuts it before speaking again. “It has already begun.”

Hermione’s shoulders droop. “I suspected as such.”

“But with this, we can stop it. You need to tell Harry what he is.”

“I have. He won’t believe it because it came from Draco.”

Malfoy rolls his eyes.

“Then cast the same spell on him and I’ll tell him myself.”

Hermione glances down at Regulus’s arm. At his Dark Mark. She worries at her bottom lip. “I’m not sure he’ll believe you either. Even if you are Sirius’s brother.”

Regulus doesn’t need her to elaborate. Thanks to Malfoy’s explanation, he is aware of the source of Harry’s mistrust. It’s warranted. Sirius cast him out too and would hardly listen to him now after all these years and his best friend’s murder. He wishes to see his brother then and explain it all to him. I tried, Sirius! Everything I did was to try and follow you after refusing that last day at home. Everything. For you and James, I tried. I’m sorry it didn’t work. And… I’m sorry I didn’t leave that day with you. I wasn’t soft anymore. But I tried to learn to be that again, too.

Hermione takes a fortifying breath, drawing herself up taller. “But it’s worth trying again.”

For the first moment since waking in that dark cave, the sea forever in his lungs, a little bit of his ever-present rage fades, and he feels something else.

Hope.

Regulus failed in his task twenty years ago, but perhaps with the insufferable pureblood and the tenacious muggleborn, he might succeed. They’re not the pair he wishes they were. But they’re here, and they have a chance.

He can finish what he started.

Chapter Text

Draco drags his feet as Granger leads him and Regulus through Hogwarts’s halls. They stop at the painting of the fat lady and Draco almost recoils when Hermione whispers the password and the frame swings open.

“I’m not going in there,” he states.

“Oh, please. We can cast Muffliato and no one will hear us,” Granger says.

Draco scoffs. It would take more than that to get him in there. “Unless you have an invisibility cloak up your sleeve, no chance, Granger.”

Her eyes flicker. “Really? You won’t even be seen in the Gryffindor common room?”

He shakes his head. It’s not that he won’t be — he can’t be. His father, prison-bound though he is, would inevitably hear of it and then Draco wouldn’t hear the end of it. His loyalty would be brought into question. The only way Draco will achieve his plans of cutting himself loose of his father’s foolish, fearful devotion, is by being beyond doubt. Beyond reproach. And he’s getting too close to the latter. Taking too much time in his task. If Draco were to go into the Gryffindor common room it would have to be in the advancement of some convoluted plan to kill Dumbledore — one he doesn’t have. He thinks then of his most viable, sabotagable, ideas: an old necklace hidden beneath his bed, a bottle of mead in Slughorn’s office… neither warrant a trip here. 

Granger glances at Regulus, who is leaning against the wall and shrugs.

“You know we’re trying to get Harry on our side, right? It might be an idea to—”

But Draco has turned on his heels and begins to walk down the hall.

“Bring him to the astronomy tower,” Regulus says. Granger makes an exasperated sound and Draco is sure she would argue with Regulus too if the ghost wasn’t now walking beside him.

“Fine!” She mutters something under her breath and then the painting is slamming shut and the fat lady is tittering about adolescent drama.

Draco looks to the spectral boy at his side. “Why do you walk, when most ghosts float?”

Regulus raises his eyebrows, then shrugs. “I hadn’t thought of it. I guess it feels more normal. Why do you wish to defy the Dark Lord?”

Draco laughs harshly. “Why did you?”

Regulus is silent and Draco slides his hands into his trousers as they walk. God, he has to talk to Potter. More than that, he has to debase himself and try to convince Potter that dark magic lives in that stupid lightning scar and Draco actually wants to help. That thought alone has him questioning if he’d rather kill the old bastard. It would be less humiliating. Draco’s not sure why he’s bothering, only he doesn’t want to kill Dumbledore (it’s not that he cares about Dumbledore, he just doesn’t want to kill anyone, especially not because a different bastard is making him do it). He clings to that cold, detached annoyance to distract him from the way anxiety curls like a tangled, taut fishing line hooked in his gut.

When they reach the steps to the astronomy tower, Regulus stops and answers Draco’s question. “I wanted what my brother had.”

Draco dregs up what little he knows about Potter’s dead godfather. It’s not much, but the man’s first thought in freedom after rotting in Azkaban for twelve years was to find the rat that had gotten Harry’s parents killed. He wonders what friendship like that might be like. Faces in silver and green flicker through his mind, but he never did let himself get too close to those friends.

Regulus walks up the stairs and Draco follows. It’s not yet late enough for the sun to have set and it burns on the horizon, casting the lake aflame. Draco walks to the edge and leans his hands against the icy railing but Regulus hangs back. The ghost has a strange, forlorn expression on his face.

It’s not long before Granger finds them and Draco returns his hand to his pockets as he faces the emerging golden trio.

“What the hell, Hermione? You’re on his side now?” Weasley says. Potter simply scowls as though the look alone would be enough to pitch Draco off the tower. Draco clenches his hands into fists and attempts to control his breath.

“He’s telling the truth,” Granger says. “I can see Regulus. I read about horcruxes. We need to hear them out and take this seriously.”

“You think I have part of Voldemort’s soul in me?” Potter is incredulous and he talks to Granger, not Draco.

“It would explain a lot! How you survived the killing curse. Why you’re a Parslemouth. The… the dreams.”

Potter doesn’t even seem to consider his best friend’s words. There is only rage and mistrust on his face and it elicits a nauseating churning in Draco’s stomach. It’s like first year all over again when Draco saw Potter’s scar and reached out a hand in the hope that Harry would reach back and he would not be alone in his dark legacy. Not that he had known his legacy was shrouded in the dark smoke of a skull roaring in the sky on his first day at Hogwarts — he had just seen the boy who knew greatness and wanted to be his friend. But just like then, Potter throws it back in his face. Draco had known he would be a Slytherin. It wasn’t long before he also knew his only friends would be Slytherins and the children of Death Eaters because they were the only friends he had ever known in the cold manor he had to call home and it turned out Draco didn’t know how to make friends properly, so he’d messed it up and hadn’t tried again. He’d let the animosity grow between Potter and him because Voldemort was gone and Draco was hurt and desperately wanted to be proud of who he was. To believe his father’s lies. But Harry was right then and he’s right now.

“He’s a Death Eater! How many times do I have to say he can’t be trusted!”

Draco thought he’d gotten over the hurt of Harry’s rejection but he feels like an open wound and Harry is pilling on salt with each word of his damningly true vitriol. He had hidden it beneath arrogance and prejudice and everything he had been taught to be and all it had done was fester until Voldemort had burned his skin with the Dark Mark and Draco had been forced to acknowledge it. He was a maggot ridden, infected thing poisoning his own blood with every sneer and hateful action.

Draco’s heart races. He should say something, he knows he should. Granger is arguing his point and Regulus is watching helplessly, his face a painful twist of anguish. Draco could be the one to convince Potter. But opening his mouth would mean carving the heart from his chest and offering it up on a silver platter for the Chosen One. Potter would simply look at it with disgust when he sees it bleed black blood from the side Draco was forced to choose and doesn’t know how to un-choose. It would be like getting on his knees and begging for absolution. He can’t do it. The words won’t come. Harry owes him nothing, after all.

So Draco’s mouth stays shut, pressed into a violent line, and watches as Granger fails and Potter storms away.

Chapter Text

Harry storms down the steps, Ron following, and Hermione whirls on Malfoy.

“What was that? You didn’t say a single word!”

Malfoy’s expression is dark, wild, and he breathes heavily.

“I said from the beginning talking to Potter was useless,” he spits.

“Well you could have tried.” She turns to Regulus for back-up but he stares into the middle distance. She sighs, frustrated. “What do we do now?”

“We’re on our own.”

Malfoy turns away.

Hermione shakes her head. “We should go to Dumbledore. He’s our best op—”

“No,” Regulus and Malfoy say simultaneously. It stuns her.

“Why not?”

“Because I am a Death Eater and Dumbledore will— he’ll—”

“He won’t hurt you,” Hermione whispers. The confession doesn’t come as a surprise, not after Harry has gone on and on and on about the possibility, so much that she had imagined it endlessly. Malfoy on his knees, head hanging down and the dark ink so harsh against his pale skin. A ritual in cloaks and candlelight. A smirk of evil pleasure twisting his lips. It had kept her awake more nights than she cared to admit, the fall into darkness of the boy with an acid tongue and moon-pale hair. It’s not that she couldn’t see him choosing Voldemort’s side. It’s that no child deserves to be lead in such a direction. What does surprise Hermione is the fear on his face now. Why fear Dumbledore?

“He might,” Regulus bites. Unease swirls through her. She had never known the ancient wizard to be anything other than kindly and unfailingly helpful, though Harry’s strange meetings with him has begun to worry her. He’s had such a hard life up until this point, why must Dumbledore put so much of the fight against Voldemort on his shoulders? Unless… he knows Harry’s a horcrux already. Hermione’s mind whirls. She looks at Regulus’s clothes, eternally wet and clinging to his lithe, bloodied form, his still-dripping hair, and pieces slot together like solving a particularly hard arithmancy formula. Dumbledore had called Harry away and her friend had refused to say why, but his clothes were wet and he had looked shaken when he returned. She had only noticed because she knew Harry knew a drying spell, so even though he had only looked a little more distanced than usual, he wasn’t just agonising over his crush on Ginny. And the next day, Draco had suddenly appeared, Regulus at his side, talking of mysterious dark magic. 

Wherever they had gone must have been where Regulus went to get the first horcrux… where Regulus had died. 

And Dumbledore knew enough to take Harry with him.

Most ghosts haunt a specific location. But what if Regulus only haunted the place of his death because he didn’t know where the first horcrux went (she must ask him about this, she realises, with a shudder concerning her oversight — perhaps the diary would have gone to his family, and that is how Lucius got it, through Narcissa? She’s at least certain that’s the other horcrux) and when he saw Harry, he was able to haunt him too?

Storing those thoughts for later, she returns to the original point. Malfoy’s fear.

Would Dumbledore hurt Draco?

He has put Harry in danger.

No, she’s sure he wouldn’t, but she doesn’t push the issue. Hermione can talk to Dumbledore herself. Maybe. Likely. Once they’ve done their best figuring this out and she has enough to go on and can accurately judge Malfoy and his status as Death Eater and Regulus’s information and the whole horcrux nightmare. Better to stay by their side and then go to Dumbledore with a full report rather than a few morsels of information and potentially loose their tentative trust.

“I guess we are on our own, then,” she says. 

The three of them stand in silence for a moment. Malfoy glares holes in the stones at his feet. Regulus wanders over to the railing and touches it absently, eyes showing him lost in some faraway place.

“The Black family library has an extensive collection of books on Dark Magic. If there’s information to be found on horcruxes, it would be there.”

“Grimmauld Place?”

Regulus finally looks at her and cocks his head. “You know it?”

Her face drains then. How much does Regulus know about Sirius? She’s not sure when the boy died, but he looks no older than her, and Sirius died only last year. But Grimmauld Place is an Order safe house now. She doesn’t entirely disagree with Harry that Malfoy can’t be trusted and she doesn’t want to discover which side he’ll fall on by risking the souls fighting this war. Her friends and mentors. “Uh, yes. I went to stay— that is, Harry, Ron and I visited Sirius—” God, what is she saying?

“Is Sirius living there? If Harry won’t listen, Sirius might. He knows the library as well as I do. He’ll help.”

Malfoy turns back then. He casts a look over his shoulder, first at Regulus, then at Hermione. She meets it, and lingers.

Regulus notices.

“What?” He asks.

“Regulus… I’m so sorry but Sirius is dead,” Hermione says softly.

Emotions cascade hauntingly over Regulus’s face, falling and crashing and swirling, until there is nothing there at all. “When?”

“Last year.”

He opens his mouth, then shuts it resolutely.

“I’m sorry,” Hermione says again.

“My parents are dead too, aren’t they? Sirius wouldn’t have gone home if they were still there.”

Hermione nods.

Regulus looks to Malfoy. “You’re one of the last living Blacks, then.”

Unease flops Hermione’s stomach again, tenfold. “Sirius was Harry’s godfather. He left Grimmauld Place to him, not Malfoy, so I don’t think we should take him there—”

Hurt flickers across Malfoy’s face, quickly smothered by something haughty and affronted. “It might belong to Potter now, but it is still my ancestral home, and at least I want to help.”

Hermione opens her mouth again. God, she’s messing this up. But Regulus gets there first.

“The library will only open to those with Black blood. It won’t open to Harry but it might to Draco.”

Hermione sighs. She can’t really fight against that since Regulus is right and there’s nothing in the library here to help them. Please say no one from the Order is there right now, she thinks.

“Alright. We’ll have to wait until Saturday to apparate from Hogsmead. The floo network is too tightly watched here and at least then we’ll both have excuses to be gone for as many hours as we need.”

Malfoy opens his mouth to say something else, but he winces and seems to think better of it because he snaps it shut.

“What?” Hermione asks.

“Nothing. Saturday is fine. I’ll meet you behind the Hog’s Head.” And with that, Malfoy strides past her and disappears down the stairs. She looks after him with a frown.

“Is he… okay?” Hermione asks, so quietly her voice is barely above a breath. She looks to Regulus. His eyes flicker.

“He was forced to become a Death Eater just like I was. So, no, I would say he is not okay.”

Chapter Text

“You have another way out of Hogwarts, don’t you?” Regulus asks. Draco grits his teeth and ignores the question, going back to his potions notes — the ones that he ruined the night before. “Is it a secret passageway? My brother and his friends were incessant about finding them all. They were building a map and…” Regulus trails off and Draco silently thanks Merlin, not that he’s ever been the religious sort. Now he can do some work in peace. It was hard enough having to deal with Crabbe and Goyle and the others at dinner, fobbing them off once they reached the common room, then waiting for the general chatter of students to dissipate until he found silence. Short lived silence. “What I was saying is—” Draco groans “—we could get to Hogsmead through the One-Eyed Witch passage tonight. Do you know it?”

“I know it.”

“Don’t want Hermione to find it?”

“Granger knows it.”

“How do you know that?”

“I saw them going through it once. They’re not as subtle as they think.”

“And you didn’t rat on them?”

“It hasn’t gone well in the past,” Draco grumbles. Although, to give himself credit, last year he did manage to (eventually) find Dumbledore’s Army in the Room of Requirement with the others in Umbridge’s Inquisitorial Squad. He almost cringes at the thought. Not only was his father not impressed by the eventually, Draco hates that he took so long to come to his senses.

He hates that he found the Room.

“So, it’s not your way out.”

Draco clenches his quill tighter. He doesn’t want to think of this right now. He’s simultaneously panicking about not managing to fix the vanishing cabinet hidden in the room’s depths and dreading the moment he does. So he pushes it from his thoughts and focuses on the scratch of his quill against the parchment. Valerian root, cut and placed in a beaker…

Regulus huffs a laugh. Draco reminds himself that this is his way out and finding how to banish the ghost boy would not help him even if it would bring him the peace and quiet he seeks. Thankfully, the spectre falls into silence and Draco falls into his potions work until he’s near delirious and then, when Draco drags his exhausted body to bed, Regulus floats away through the dark green walls.

***

Draco tries to avoid the Room, he really does. But it is only Thursday and October and he hasn’t even been to work on the vanishing cabinet since mid-September. Meaning, his father has been… prodding him to find an alternative means, thus Draco finds himself standing before the bare wall after classes end. The letter he received this morning at breakfast burns in his pocket. The first few lines had made nausea roll through him and Regulus had tried to read over his shoulder so he just stuffed it into his trouser pocket and focused on regulating his breathing. Crabbe had laughed, darkly, at Draco’s reaction. Draco hadn’t said anything to him or Goyle about his task but they likely knew anyway. Or suspected something close enough. Theo had looked at the paper for a long minute but Pansy had continued chattering to him and he’d turned away. Does Theo know as well? (At this point, who doesn’t?)

Draco had slept badly after last night, far too aware of the necklace beneath his bed, and then to receive another letter? His nerves are fried.

He’s already cursed the necklace. He did it after the last letter he received. It had been Draco’s plan to go to Hogsmead this weekend and Imperio someone to take it almost to Dumbledore, but accidentally open it themselves before they could. He planned to say he didn’t use something as powerful as an Unforgivable and with the public display the other student would make rising into the air with a near-silent scream it would have gotten his father off his back for a while. Draco supposes he could push this farce to next weekend. He wishes he could go back to potions or ancient runes of even divination (not that he’s taking such a crass subject, but he would rather that than murdering his headmaster).

But instead he stares and stares at the pale bricks of the sixth floor hallway, wondering if he has the patience to wait for Saturday or if he should get Granger to help him fix the damn cabinet so they could leave tonight.

The idea that the two of them could fix such a complex magical object before their appointment on Saturday is perhaps over-confident. One could even say delusional. But at least then he wouldn’t have to come up with a reason as to why he was gone all day. Especially when someone was bound to notice Granger’s absence too. The idea of one of the fools at this school putting two and two together that he was with her fills him with enough dread that he really, seriously, contemplates telling her of the vanishing cabinet. Though that would be a really, seriously, dumb thing to do.

If his father found out… if Voldemort found out…

Draco’s forearm itches.

It was the day he got the Dark Mark that he could no longer hide behind his denial of how much shit he was in. When Voldemort put his wand to Draco’s flesh and the ink seeped into his skin with an awful crawling, burrowing sensation, it hit him like a gut punch or an ice plunge that he didn’t want this. It wasn’t an honour. It was a manacle chaining him to a small evil he didn’t want to be anymore and a larger evil he didn’t want to become. He can’t do anything about the former, but he can the latter. Maybe. He thinks of Granger waiting for him in the cold on Saturday. Hopefully.

“What’s in there?” Regulus asks.

Draco slowly drags his eyes to his spectral shadow, ever-lingering at his side. “Part of my task.”

“Ah.” Memories fill the other boy’s face. 

“You too?”

He nods.

“I don’t know if I can do it,” Draco whispers. It’s one of his two greatest fears. Like the other side of a coin, Draco is terrified that he will.

“I didn’t think I could, either.”

The sorrow in his voice makes Draco ask, “was it bad?”

“I think they were testing my loyalty after my brother rebelled. I’m not sure it was even Voldemort’s idea; my parents didn’t want me following Sirius.” Regulus offers Draco a sombre half-smile. “But it’s what convinced me to try just that. I didn’t have the conviction to look for a weakness before then and afterwards I found Voldemort’s secret.”

“You died for it. It got you nowhere and didn’t stop the war.”

Regulus shrugs, but Draco sees his gaze shutter. “Perhaps it will stop this one.”

How does Draco explain it? The fear he lives with now? He sees it at night: Voldemort spelling him again but this time the wand isn’t against his flesh and all he sees is green before he dies. That would be a blessing. So fast his brain doesn’t register the pain of dying. Worse would be the Cruciatus curse, perhaps his mother’s torture and death first, or an endless litany of dark hexes Voldemort knows and has no qualms about using on innocents, never mind a traitor. He also sees green bursting from his own wand and Dumbledore falling to the ground, the great wizard turned into nothing more than a empty corpse at Draco’s hand. Or the ripple that would go through the school on whispers and gasps and how Draco’s heart would lurch when the news hit and the question of when would settle into certainty after Dumbledore drank the poisoned mead and died choking on white foam. He’s had the poison recipe in his mind for weeks. He saw the bottle in Slughorn’s office just days before Regulus showed up, the tag reading Dumbledore leashed around its throat.

“What if I do it?” Draco asks. What if I kill Dumbledore?

“Then you will be even more like me.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“Then find a way not too.”

But not dying, for Draco, means murdering someone else.

Chapter Text

The morning sun shines softly through the arched windows and from the balcony of the common room, Hermione spies Harry and Ron on a couch, the latter napping despite only having just woken up and the former reading that infernal potions book. Her steps are light as she circles down the spiral staircase and spills into the room. She clutches the strap of her satchel tighter.

“Morning,” she says.

Harry glances up and smiles. “Morning.”

“I’m heading into Hogsmead, want to join?”

Harry nods and nudges Ron awake.

“Muuuuum. It’s a Saturday,” Ron mumbles, still half in the dreamworld, rolling over on the couch.

Harry rolls his eyes. “It’s not your mum, mate. We’re going into Hogsmead so get up.”

Ron blinks bleary eyes at Harry, then Hermione, and she sees wakefulness dawn slowly in his eyes. “Oh, alright.”

The two boys disappear, bickering, up to their dorm and Hermione tries not to show her nerves through her fidgeting.

They’re not long, thankfully. Harry bounds down the stairs, Ron on his heals, yawning, one of his mum’s knitted hats on.

“Can we at least have breakfast first?” Ron grumbles.

“Why don’t we get some at The Three Broomsticks?” Hermione says. “I’ll buy.”

“Yeah, alright.”

The walk is cold, pinking their cheeks and clouding their breaths, and an early snow crunches thick underfoot, but the movement warms them slowly until their shoulders un-hunch and the icy wind almost feels nice.

The homey pub is comfortably populated with students and townsfolk and quiet chatter. Hermione shivers as they leave the cold outdoors for the fire-crackling cosy rooms. They order three butterbeers, an English breakfast with kippers on toast for Ron, pancakes for Harry, and scones with cream and jam for Hermione. She realises that isn’t breakfast food, but in her nerves, she wants the comfort.

They eat and talk and Hermione eyes her surroundings. She gets a second butterbeer, then a third when their plates are cleared away. What is taking so long? It’s not that early. Only… what was the time when they left? 8 a.m.? She almost flinches when the door opens and Slughorn and Flitwick come in.

“Harry, my boy!” Slughorn calls.

“Hello sir, wonderful to see you!” Harry responds, rising to his feet and extending a hand with rather a large smile on his face.

“And you, and you.” Slughorn takes Harry’s hand and they shake enthusiastically. Is Harry alright? Hermione knows he’s become Slughorn’s potions protégé, but since when did Harry return his fervour?

“So what brings you here?”

Hermione glances at Ron, who shrugs.

“Oh, The Three Broomsticks and I go way back, further than I care to admit. I can remember when it was one broomstick,” Slughorn says. Harry laughs and Hermione gives a polite, half-hearted chuckle. “Listen, my boy, in the old days I used to throw together the occasional supper party, with a select student or two. Would you be game?”

“I’d consider it an honour, sir.”

Slughorn glances to Hermione. “You’d be welcome too, Granger.”

She almost chokes on her sip of butterbeer. “I’d be delighted, sir.”

“Splendid. Look for my owl!” A huge, happy grin lights Slughorn’s face. “Good to see you, ah, Weasley.” With a final wink to Harry, their potions professor leaves.

“What you playing at?” Ron asks as Harry sits. He gives them both a satisfied smile.

“Dumbledore’s asked me to get to know him.”

“Get to know him?”

“I don’t know. I— I think it’s important though.” A shadow passes over his face, one that makes Hermione think of dripping water and spectral blood and Harry’s words settle uneasily through her. For a moment her nerves are forgotten. Dumbledore taking Harry to the location of the other horcrux, and now this? What is their headmaster doing? What does he know?

She thinks for a moment about the diary and the inky hole Harry tore though it with the Basilisk fang. Why would Dumbledore go to where Voldemort hid it when he already had it? To see how it was hidden — how it got to Ginny’s cauldron in Diagon Alley?

A thought hits Hermione like a harsh winter wind and cold rushes through her even faster. Regulus never said it was a diary.

Merlin’s beard. Is there more? Is that why Dumbledore took Harry to the place Regulus died?

“Hello, Ron!” The voice jolts through Hermione like a nasty jinx. Her stomach swoops and she closes her eyes for a moment before downing the rest of her third butterbeer. Though expected, she still hates it when Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil enter the pub in a flurry of snow and cold wind and come over to their table. 

She sits through exactly four excruciating minutes of Lavender flirting with Ron before she turns to Harry.

“I’m going to go study by the lake.”

“But it’s freezing,” he says.

“I know three different warming charms. I’ll be fine.”

Harry frowns, glances at Ron and Lavender, then back at Hermione, eyes going wide with dawning understanding. She hadn’t wanted him to find out about her crush on the third point of their triangle like this, but, well, she knows about Ginny. And she hadn’t been able to think of a single other to get away from them both. “Want me to come with you?” He looks like he’d rather sit in the snow than this and for a moment she feels bad about the whole thing. She’d overheard Lavender and Parvati talking about coming for breakfast yesterday and knew when she sought to escape Harry would catch on. He wouldn’t think it weird and would play it off to Ron, who would be wrapped up in a girl flirting with him anyway. But Harry wouldn’t listen to her and Malfoy, so he brought this upon himself. God, Hermione hates it. Hates that she laid out this opportunity for the other girl — who talks about Ron far too much in their shared dormitory for Hermione not to know how she feels. It’s been ages that Lavender has had a thing for Ron. Hermione holds tight to the hope that Lavender won’t find the courage to act on her feelings before Hermione does.

“No, it’s alright,” she says.

He sighs. “Okay. See you later.”

Hermione makes a quick exit and the cold air calms her nausea. She expels thoughts of Ron snogging Lavender. Then the gut churning want for him to be kissing her instead. She has more important things to think about.

Hermione winds through the empty side streets of Hogsmeade until she reaches the back of the Hogshead and a very irritated looking Malfoy with a very pink nose.

“You took your sweet time,” he says by way of greeting. There’s a sharp bite to his tone and a sneer on his face.

“You never gave me a time,” she retorts. She had hoped to be here far earlier, and feels bolstered that at least Malfoy would agree that 8 a.m. to leave for breakfast in Hogsmeade was appropriate and not nearly two hours later (and so would also criticise Lavender for doing just that). His sneer only grows harsher.

He looks down at her clothes with a frank distaste. “You look so… mugglish.”

“That’s not a word.” She crosses her arms over her brown coat and buries her chin in her red scarf.

“And yet it’s the perfect descriptor.”

“All that money and all you can come up with is mugglish. Even with a muggle education I have many choice words I could use for you.” Pretentious, pompous, self-important, conceited, biggety, supercilious—

“You’re a witch, Granger. You could at least dress like one.”

She looks at his expensive black wool robes. She’ll stick to her mugglish clothes, thank you. “So it’s ‘witch’ now? What happened to mudblood?”

“I was trying to be polite.”

“Then leave my choice of attire out of the conversation,” she snaps. He rolls his eyes. “Where’s Regulus?”

Malfoy jerks his head away from town. Against a backdrop of snow covered trees and powder white ground, he looks more ghostly than ever, and Hermione’s breath catches at the sight. The silvery lines of his drowned form blend with the flurries, revealing him only in mournful shimmers of cold light. She should call to him but his name freezes on her tongue. He seems to sense her attention anyway and when he turns around the locket at his throat seems alive, catching gold in the sun.

Hermione suddenly remembers her thoughts about horcruxes. Is that the one Regulus sought? Did Dumbledore and Harry find it that night?

Regulus drifts over the field, his steps leaving no trace in the snow.

“I’ll meet you there,” he says, and vanishes.

”How do you know how to apperate?” Malfoy asks.

”I’d thought you’d glossed over that one rather quickly.”

A slight grimace passes over his face. “Didn’t want to inflate that already big head of yours any more.”

She huffs. “I taught myself last year.”

”How, with the wards?”

”I practiced in the shrieking shack.”

”So you also know the whole ‘students can’t do magic outside of Hogwarts’ doesn’t exactly apply to term time?”

Hermione sends a sideways glance at him and nods. “The ministry officials should have arrived earlier in the battle last summer if they’d been tracking our magic usage then, but they came right at the end.”

Silently, Malfoy holds out his glove-guarded hand. Hermione glances at his cold grey eyes for a long moment before taking it and apparating them to Grimmauld Place.

Time and space twists through her and for one glorious moment she’s no one and nowhere, then she feels Draco’s hand tighten on hers and she focuses on the London townhouse. When the world reassembles outside of her, they stand before it.

Malfoy drops her hand instantly, practically tearing the buttery soft leather from hers, and she’s thankful for it as she pulls out her wand. She waves it at the row of buildings and 12 Grimmauld Place reveals itself in scraping, crumbling stone. 

Please let this be the right decision.

Regulus’s face is carefully blank as the odd trio enter the still house. Hermione enters last and casts a wordless Homenun Revelio that bounces back to her in an empty echo. No one is here. Her shoulders relax slightly.

“This way.” Regulus leads them deeper into the stillness to a large ornate door that had always been locked when she tried it. Sirius had told her of the library, though she’d never gotten the opportunity to explore it. The door is dark like the rest of the furnishings, with carved branches and star motifs and ravens. The words toujours pur crawl across a bronze plaque in elegant cursive. Hermione knows enough French from her primary school days to recognise the words.

Always pure.

“Do you remember the incantation?” Regulus asks. Hermione pulls her eyes away to see Regulus watching Malfoy. Malfoy nods, his lips in a tight line.

“Arcanum Atriorum,” Malfoy dictates and each syllable is irritatingly smooth and clear; aristocratic and perfectly pronounced. It sends a shiver down Hermione’s spine. Runes begin to glow amber on the door as Malfoy turns his wand in a subtle, gentle twist. Kenaz. Knowledge. Othala. Family. Thurisaz. Protection. As the last one lights, the glow of all three shifts, turning deeper, redder.

“Oh, no,” Hermione whispers.

A banshee scream wails. Hermione dives out of the way (years with Harry and his proclivity for trouble has given her fast reflexes), crashing to the ground. Chains fire from the floor, clamping Malfoy’s wrists and neck in manacles and jerking him to his knees. He yells. Pulls against the chains but they hold firm. His wrists are locked to the floor and he’s bound in place.

“What the fuck? I thought you said this would work!” Malfoy shouts.

Regulus winces. “At least it was just the chains. Had you no Black blood in your veins, it would have been worse.”

“Worse?!”

“You don’t want to know.”

Malfoy growls. “Granger, get me out of this!”

Hermione’s heart is thundering. The runes on the door have faded but the Black House motto glows in a faint silvery light. It doesn’t look like it’s going to fire off any curses or notice her muddied blood at all, so she gets to her feet.

“Finite incantatum,” she casts, and thankfully the manacles unlock and the chains slither back into the wood floorboards. “Why didn’t it work?”

Malfoy lurches up. Frenetic energy fills him and twists his face into a nasty leer, but he just clenches his wand tighter and glares at the door.

“He may be a Black by blood but he’s not loyal. I thought that’s all the spell would care about. ‘Always pure’ and all that, but my family did always have a thing for loyalty too. They’d be Hufflepuffs if they weren’t so cruel.”

“So it won’t open to me,” Malfoy says. “And the rest of the Black family are dead or disloyal or Bellatrix.”

Is his mother disloyal then? Did she want to leave like Sirius and Regulus?

“Yes.” Regulus looks despondent.

“We go to Dumbledore then,” Hermione says.

Malfoy is quiet but Regulus says another resounding ‘no’.

“Why not?” It’s beginning to irritate her, their distrust of the one wizard Voldemort fears. “I think he already knows, or at least suspects.”

“Then why bother telling him?” Malfoy scoffs darkly.

“Because he might not know about Harry!”

“He’s smart, Granger. He’ll figure it out.”

“We can’t do nothing!”

“There’s nothing more for us to do!”

She opens her mouth. She wants to scream and shout and yell in Malfoy’s face but even she is out of ideas.

“We can go to Dumbledore and tell him what we do know,” she says, deflating. She can’t just leave it here, like this, the road ending with an old locked door and her friend riddled with dark magic. There must be something she can do. She’ll find it if it’s the last thing she does and she’ll leave Malfoy and Regulus to rot if she has to. 

“You don’t understand, Granger. He won’t help me, he’ll use me.” Malfoy pushes past her and storms down the hallway.

Hermione splutters. “What?” She spins on her heels. “No he won’t!”

“He might,” Regulus murmurs.

She pauses and turns back to him. “What do you mean?”

It’s a long moment before he replies and it’s not an answer. “He just might.”

Chapter Text

The halls are the same. Memories overlap with the present. Sirius’s childishly happy smile as he chased a 6-year-old Regulus and his laugh when Reggie crashed into Kreature. The tears that streamed down his face when he realised Sirius was leaving for good this time and his brother’s pleading words: come with me. The look Sirius gave him from the open door, leather jacket on, bag slung over his shoulder with a backdrop of rain. Draco storms through the image, short pale blonde hair instead of long black tresses disappearing down the hallways and Hermione’s curls as she looks after the other boy. Then he sees the ever-condemning gaze of his mother as she looks upon him. Hears his father’s heavy footfalls. Feels fear, hurt, rage. Love. His mother’s gentle touch on his head when he did good, even if that good was telling on his own brother. The pride he felt when he opened the door to Barty and the boy’s eyes had gone wide with wonder. He’d always felt worth something with Barty.

Regulus barely hears Hermione when she says they’re going to go back to Hogwarts. He’s too lost to the past. To the endless hours, days, weeks, months, years, that flicker in strange relief through his mind and this place that he knows so well. It’s almost like he’s there, some of it feels so real. Sirius reassures him that their parents won’t mind the frogs he summoned and peers through the gap in the door to the sitting room. Flickering candle light casts a line on his brother’s face in the darkness. Siruis’s eyes are gleeful when their mother screams and they run to Regulus’s room. They pick up books and try to look casual. His mother bursts through the door, face twisted with rage. Reggie’s heart beats so loudly he’s sure his mother will be able to hear it but she doesn’t even look at him. She asks Sirius if he did it and Sirius just asks ‘Did what?,’ looking so innocent Regulus almost believes it. He remembers Sirius’s cries later that night.

The front door closes and Regulus snaps out of his memories with a sluggish sort of violence. Then and suddenly now, not quite understanding how he transitioned between the two.

Regulus is alone.

No Draco or Hermione. No Kreature. No Sirius. Not even the mumbling of his ancestors along the hallway wall. None of them said a word whilst the others were here, and even now they only glance at each other and go back to their painted positions. He wishes he could ask them what they’ve seen. What happened since his death. How his parents died. When Sirius came back and if he was happy.

Regulus hopes he was happy.

He shuts his eyes and wills himself away. He doesn’t want to be in these haunted halls anymore. Correction: he doesn’t want to be haunting these halls anymore. So he goes where there is life, and when Regulus opens his eyes again, he is in Hogwarts with students clamouring around him.

It’s a while until Draco returns and he ignores Regulus. Regulus doesn’t intrude; he knows the kind of mood the other boy is in. Instead, he wanders the halls and gets lost once again to his memories. Happier ones this time. Laughing at a joke Barty made as they rushed to charms. Hexing an older Gryffindor who tried to bully him — the sheer satisfaction of besting someone older than himself had been so strong that when Sirius told him off, Regulus hadn’t even cared. James to his side, smiling bright as the sun. Regulus blinks as the memory shifts to Harry, real and alive and in front of him. He looks weary, thin in a way James never was, with hollow cheeks, and he slouches where James would strut. So odd to see so much and yet so little of the boy he knew in this one.

He shakes the vision away and follows Harry to the great hall where he eats dinner beside Ron and a girl who monopolises the Weasley’s attention. Harry doesn’t seem to mind, he pulls out his potions textbook and reads. Hermione enters, flushed from the cold, and sits opposite Harry.

“Have you been studying by the lake this whole time?” Harry asks.

Time.

“Yes. I lost track of time. Twilight came so quickly, I barely noticed until I couldn’t read anymore. I had to walk back in the dark.”

Time. It flows oddly for Regulus now. He sees the present and then gets dragged away in the past of James and Sirius and Remus and Peter laughing across the hall and the emptiness that echos through him. Of the good food and the absence of fear in these stone walls.

Time.

What if they could go back?

Not Regulus of course, but Draco and Hermione?

They could find him when he was alive and get him to open the library for them. They could find the information they need and then come back to destroy the horcruxes in Harry and the locket, if Kreacher never managed the latter.

Regulus looks around and finds Draco, bored and picking at food besides the friends he doesn’t seem to like very much. Draco’s eyes flick up and he frowns when he sees Regulus watching him. Regulus cuts through tables and students, leaving a path of shivers and laughter, and Draco casts his gaze skyward.

“Travel back to my time.”

The boy’s eyes snap to his, confused.

“Time-travel. Back to when I was alive and get me to open the door. I’ll help you.”

He doesn’t look convinced.

“I read about time magic beyond Time-Turners once. It’s hard but possible. Get Hermione to help you and you’ll figure it out. Then you’ll get the information you need.”

Thoughts pass through Draco’s eyes. On and on they stare at each other and Regulus can see the other boy contemplating it. Regulus doesn’t speak, doesn’t say that it’s dangerous and insane, doesn’t think about what that would mean for his past — would he begin to remember them, or would they Obliviate him to preserve the timeline? — he just waits.

Draco nods, slight but settled.

Regulus’s chest begins to heave. If they go back, they’ll have to let him die, but if he dies, then so will James and Lily. Could he go to his death, knowing it would condemn them as well? He vanishes from the hall and casts himself somewhere else, anywhere else. The astronomy tower resolves around him. He half-collapses against the wall and draws in ragged, airless breathes. 

He would have to let James and Lily die and die himself. Otherwise he’ll never have been in this position to tell Draco and Hermione and they would never go back, knowing Harry will become a horcrux, and figure out how to destroy it. They must figure it out so that Harry doesn’t have to die too.

But the thought of letting James die renders his chest. Splits him in half. Sirius would hate him if he knew Regulus was even thinking of allowing his best friend to die. But Sirius wouldn’t think about the consequences of messing with time and Regulus knows better.

It has to happen.

If Regulus were alive, he thinks he would have been sick.

But he is not, so he slumps down the wall and wraps his arms around his knees and cries phantom tears.

Chapter Text

Hermione spills out of Slughorn’s quarters with the rest of the Slug Club after the dinner party and the gaggle of soft chatter shifts and bounces now off the emptiness of the cool dim halls. Mclaggen saunters over to her with an over-confident grin.

“Want me to walk you back, Granger?” His voice dips low on her name and she shudders uncomfortably.

“No need!” She grabs Ginny’s arm before the other girl, distracted and puffy-eyed and talking to Neville, passes her. “I needed to talk to Ginny about, ah, girl things.”

“What kind of girl things?” Mclaggen leans in closer.

Ginny looks confused for all of half a second before tucking Hermione’s arm around hers. “Oh, the usual. Snacks, cramps, the best spells to freeze a guys dick off when he’s coming on too hard…” she trails off and looks pointedly at Mclaggen.

He clears his throat. “Right, well, ah, carry on.” He walks quickly after the fading forms of their classmates.

Hermione deflates with a sigh now that the two girls are blessedly alone. “Thanks.”

Ginny smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Any time.”

“Is Harry still talking to Slughorn?”

Ginny nods. Hermione hesitates a second, looking back at Slughorn’s door. But she has to leave Harry to it. She tugs Ginny on and they fall into step.

“Are you alright?” Hermione asks tentatively.

“Dean was being an arse. He wasn’t happy about tonight. Not that he didn’t want me to come but he says I’m spending too much time on Quidditch and homework and not enough time with him. I told him to hang out with his friends if he’s lonely because I’m not cutting off mine just because he’s my boyfriend.”

Hermione listens as Ginny talks, almost glad for the distraction of mundane drama. Then she feels guilty about even thinking that. It’s not like she’s any better, mooning over Ron. What a thick-skulled idiot that boy is. She’s been utterly awful at hiding her crush and yet Ron still hasn’t clocked on. It’s baffling. But she supposes it’s just part of who he is and she likes him just so.

The portrait swings open with a snore to the empty common room and the crackling of logs in the fireplace.

It feels luxurious to have all this space to themselves. Ginny heads through the stair’s archway but pauses when Hermione doesn’t follow. “You coming up?”

Hermione shakes her head. “I’m going to read down here for a while.” The common room is so rarely empty and upstairs Lavender awaits in their dorm. She’s probably still awake and chattering with Parvati. They’d have cast a silencing charm by now, but Hermione can still sense it. And she can’t bring herself to sit in that kind of silence tonight.

Ginny says goodnight and Hermione picks a book at random from the stack she keeps down here, then plops onto the couch before the fire and curls her feat beneath her. The book is on dark magic but it has nothing on horcruxes. Still, she reads it in case there’s anything that could help her. It’s all she knows to do. It’s been days since Grimmauld Place — days Hermione has spent buried in homework and endless texts on curses and cursed objects and their destruction because she can’t figure out an alternative way to help Harry without revealing Regulus and Draco to Dumbledore. She’s only seen Regulus in brief, haunting captures and Malfoy has been avoiding her. She almost wishes he had been at the dinner party tonight. For a moment she’d thought the empty chair might have been his, not Ginny’s. It would have given her an excuse to talk to him and ask him what their next step should be. Hermione itches without the direction, seeks the thrill of shared furtive research and the intrigue of dark magic she’s chasing alone. She wants desperately to destroy the piece of Voldemort’s soul burrowed in her best friend and hates that she doesn’t know how.

“Hermione.”

She starts, but it’s just Regulus.

“Where have you been?”

The spectre glances away. “Around.”

“Why are you here now?”

“I have an idea.” Hermione sits up straight, relief and excitement and only a small amount of annoyance that she hadn’t thought of something first electrifying her spine. “If you go back to the time I was alive, you can get my help to enter the library and find the information we need on horcruxes.”

“Time-travel?! You can’t be serious?” Regulus’s mouth twitches upwards for just a moment. What would that even take? There’s no Time-Turner powerful enough. But something in Time-Turner magic and perhaps complex apparition?

“Malfoy has already agreed to it. He’ll do it with or without you.”

She scoffs. As if. “Where is he? Is he still awake?” Regulus nods. “Go get him.”

Regulus evaporates. Hermione clutches her book, glaring into the flames, until he finally returns. “He’s outside.”

She launches from the couch and pushes open the portrait almost violently. Malfoy waits on the other side, hands stuffed into his pockets. He’s disheveled. It trips Hermione’s brain for a moment. Moon-pale strands of hair fall into his eyes, the collar of his shirt is unbuttoned, leaving the column of his throat exposed, and his green and silver tie hangs undone around his neck. She realises she’s staring and opens her mouth, but Malfoy is eyeing her too. Her cream silk dress and glittery fairisle knit cardigan to be specific.

She relaxes and crosses her arms. “Mugglish, I know.”

Malfoy’s gaze snaps to hers but then he rolls his eyes. “Slughorn’s dinner party, was it?” The scorn is thick in his sneer.

“I’d expected to see you there since your friend Blaise was. What did you do wrong to not get an invite? Your pride sounds wounded enough.”

“Slughorn doesn’t much like my family since my father got sent to Azkaban.”

“Oh.” The word slips out. She hadn’t thought of that. Her cheeks heat.

“What do you want, Granger? It’s late.”

That brings her back to the annoyance she opened the door with. “I’m not talking about it in a doorway.”

“Then leave the doorway.”

“The common room is empty. You said it yourself: it’s late. So you can damn well come inside where it’s warm. I don’t want to freeze in the corridor, thank you.”

Malfoy’s jaw works and his sneer grows. He doesn’t move for a long moment. Then steps echo from down the hall.

It hits her in a rush of panic. “Harry.” Hermione grabs Draco by the front of his shirt and bodily drags him inside. He protests loudly. “Shut it!” Thankfully, he does. She pushes him behind her and casts a disillusionment charm on him. It was too quick to hold up to any scrutiny so when she spins back to the open doorway, she has to make sure she’s covering him. She trips over a foot and almost topples to the side. Malfoy’s invisible hand grabs her waist to steady her.

“Hermione?” Harry calls across the threshold. They freeze. He walks in. “Why was the door open?”

“I was just about to come check on you,” she says quickly. Malfoy’s hand is still at her waist. His unsteady breath is hot on her neck.

“Thanks?” Harry chuckles. “I’m gonna head straight to bed, got Quidditch practice in the morning.”

“Oh, alright. Night, then.”

“Night.” He smiles at her and trots up the stairs. She doesn’t dare move until the sound of his door echos down to her.

Malfoy jerks away and she hears him muttering the counter-spell to remove the charm. His chest is heaving when he shimmers into focus. He runs a hand through his hair. “Fucking hell, Granger.”

“I thought it was quick thinking,” Regulus says. Hermione blinks at him. She’d almost forgotten about him entirely as he lingered be the sofa.

“I said I didn’t want to be here,” Malfoy growls.

“You said you didn’t want to be seen here, and you haven’t been.”

He goes to push past her. She side-steps into his path and stops him with a hand to his chest. Draco flinches back but doesn’t try to leave again.

“Regulus told me about his idea for us to travel back to his time.” She pulls her hand from him. “He said you’ve already agreed to it.”

“I agreed to it on Saturday. What’s taken you so long?”

“Saturday?” She turns to Regulus. “You only asked me tonight!”

“Tonight?” Malfoy asks. “What have you been doing all week?”

Regulus doesn’t answer. “Will you do it?”

“I didn’t know what was going on! If you were spying on Potter for some reason or why you hadn’t told Granger—” Regulus keeps his gaze trained on Hermione and she thinks for a moment on what her answer should be. But who is she kidding. She nods. “—I’ve had to push my father back twice now with excuses—” What excuses? She opens her mouth to interrupt but Regulus gets there first.

“You can’t tell me that I’m going to die. Or that James and Lily will die too.”

Oh. That’s why it took him so long.

The irritation drops from Malfoy’s face.

“Regulus…” Hermione starts.

“End of 1977. I died less than two years later. Tell me how I tried to free Kreature with a suit I hand sewed him. You’ll get to me before I took the Mark and have enough time to figure out how to save Harry. I won’t have as much of a clue as to what’s going on but you’d be better off avoiding me at the time of my crusade. Just… leave me too it.”

Regulus disappears.

Malfoy’s eyes are haunted when Hermione turns to him. He notices her stare and with a blink the emotion is gone. His haughty guard is firmly back in place.

“I’ll do it,” Hermione murmurs.

“Think we even can?”

She huffs a laugh. “The two best students at Hogwarts? Who else could?”

Malfoy laughs in return, a startled, high-pitched sound. “That arrogance could rival a pureblood’s. I didn’t know you had it in you, Granger.”

“It’s not arrogance. I know what I’m good at.”

He looks at her as if to say you’ve just made my point.

“That… did sound fairly arrogant.”

“Don’t stop on my account.” Malfoy sighs and scans the Gryffindor common room with a lazy curiosity.

“First you refrain from calling me mudblood, now you ignore the opportunity for ‘insufferable know-it-all’? What has gotten into you?”

He almost smiles then. “For once your incessant ability to know things is going to come in handy.”

“For once?” She flops back on the sofa. If he wanted to hear arrogance all she’d have to do is tell him how many times she’d saved Harry’s life.

Malfoy slides his hands into his pockets and for a moment they sit in silence with the weight of their task before them. Time-travel. Not just a day or a few hours but twenty years. To when Regulus and James and Lily are all alive and to do nothing about their deaths.

“I’ll get the key for the Restricted Section after dinner tomorrow. Meet me in there half an hour after I leave the great hall,” Hermione says.

Grey eye’s slide to her. “See you then, Granger.”

When Malfoy stalks from the room, she lets her head fall back against the couch cushions. Tiredness swoops for her. All the restless energy of the last few days settles into something calmer, hotter, sparking. Hermione smiles.

Finally she has direction.

Chapter Text

Draco trail’s Granger with his gaze as she leaves the Great Hall. She glances at him, once, so briefly it almost feels like she didn’t look at him at all, if it didn’t electrify his every nerve. Odd to be doing something covert with Granger of all people. But after almost a week of anxiously trying to find Regulus and waiting, wondering if his only lifeline to getting this infernal Mark off his skin was lost to a phantom wind, his blood sings with the thought. He read a little about ghosts but when the texts wrote of their inability to leave the past behind it had only increased his paranoia. He’d caught Regulus staring off into the distance many times in their short acquaintance. He feared the ghost lost. But he’d just been coming to terms with the full depth of his idea for Draco and Granger to travel back to his time.

Attempting to calm the racing in his veins, he turns back to his table.

“Theo, you need to eat something,” Pansy murmurs, so quietly from behind her spill of inky black hair that Draco only just manages to pick it up. She and Theo sit across from him. Blaise, to Draco’s left, laughs obliviously with Crabbe and Goyle.

“I have,” Theo bites back. A lie. His plate was bare to begin with and the contents have only been moved around. Guilt stabs through Draco. Theo’s father was also sent to Azkaban and now the boy lives alone at home. He’d bet a hundred galleons that Voldemort has been pressuring him too. If his thinning face and general dark demeanour is anything for Draco to go by, Theo doesn’t much want the honour either. His chestnut eyes are shadowed. Pansy’s pinched, cat-like face squishes even further and she leans in close to whisper something Draco can’t hear. Theo shoves away from the table and storms off.

With a glance to his side to make sure their other friends are occupied, Draco says, voice low. “Is he alright?”

Pansy’s sharp green eyes cut to him. She shrugs. “He’s not taking his interest well.”

So Draco was right. Pansy says it with a neutrality that has Draco narrowing his gaze. “I understand.”

Her face squishes up again. “Do you?”

He just nods and turns to Blaise to butt in with a half-stupid comment on their conversation, ignoring how her unreadable gaze lingers on him.

Draco spends thirty minutes exactly at the Slytherin table before practically racing to the library.

His heart thuds loudly as he strides down the stacks. Soft murmurs and bowed heads are tucked behind desks. Fires blaze in grates and add warm shadows to the dimly lit sconces, and the heat, though no more than normal to fight the chilling nights beyond the dark arched windows, clings to Draco’s skin. He reaches the door to the Restricted Section and casts a furtive glance around. No one sees him. He slips inside. The atmosphere turns eerie and Draco’s shoulders relax. Few students ever study between the chained tomes for the chill they elicit along ones neck, but that’s precisely why Draco loves it. It’s different to the cruel, elitist darkness of such magic at home; here, it feels kin to the way dark magic settles in his bones. Not evil or domineering, but unrestrained and explorative and powerful. He might not want to be a Death Eater, but he’s still a Malfoy. And a Black. Here, those things don’t feel so damning.

Granger has selected a wide, dark wood table towards the back corner next to a fireplace, and books are already spread across the surface. Regulus is leaning against the bookcase, talking of time magic. The firelight casts strangely over him. He looks almost alive with its shine.

“The key could be in the hour-reversal charm at a Time-Turner’s core. Altering the spell to be for years instead of hours would keep the same functionality and allow far more time to be travelled.”

Draco dumps his satchel on a chair and then chucks his robe over it, cracking his neck in the overbearing warmth. “The issue with that is Time-Turners aren’t designed the send anyone forward in time because they’re limited only to five hours.” He rolls up his sleeves and pulls off his tie. “I think that’s pathetic, of course, but I don’t want to turn back time twenty years and then have to wait those twenty years to get back to now.”

Granger gives him a disapproving look. “They’re limited to five hours because going beyond that threshold could be catastrophic.”

“We need to go beyond that threshold, Granger.”

“I’m aware, Malfoy.”

“One of the main issues with turning back time is relations with your previous selves. Since neither of you were alive in those times, that’s a non-issue.”

“We can still cause incontinuities though. We know people then. Sirius, Remus — from their perspective, they will eventually meet us again and wonder why they’re meeting younger versions of us twenty years later. Your father, Malfoy. He’d end up watching his son grow into someone he once knew.”

He almost shudders despite the warmth. “I’d rather avoid my father, if possible.”

“So transfigure yourselves.”

“Or Obliviate everyone we meet,” Draco says with a shrug.

Granger bites her lip. “I’ve used a Time-Turner before—”

“When have you used a Time-Turner?”

She glares at him. “In third year. To take more classes.”

Draco snorts a laugh. “Of course you did.”

“As I was saying. If we do manage to go back, we likely do Obliviate everyone, because Regulus doesn’t remember us.”

Regulus blinks and shadows pass over his face. “We don’t know enough about time to say for certain. I could begin to remember once you’re gone. But I did think that would be the likeliest course of events.”

“We wouldn’t have to transfigure ourselves then,” Draco mutters, smoothing back his hair.

Granger gives him a withering look. “Anyway, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We need to manage to create the spell first. And the limit is something we should consider. The theory states it’s to prevent harm to the traveller as well. It might be an idea to only go back in five hour stints.”

“That’s rather impractical.”

“It might be easier to work the spell if we use the original’s limit as a sort of timer. Filter more time into the reversal but not in the length of time spent in the past.”

“We may have to find a way to stabilise the flow of time in the past, otherwise pushing more time in would result in all that time passing in five hours. Meaning everything goes very, very fast for us,” Granger says.

“Instead of simply spending five hours in the past then returning to the present.” Draco sighs.

“I haven’t looked at the mechanics of the spell but as long as we alter it correctly that should be the outcome.” Granger begins to rifle through the books on the table. Draco scans the titles. “Regulus and I selected these as a starting point—”

“I’ve read them,” Draco says.

Granger fumbles a book. “What?”

“I’ve had almost a week. What did you think I’d do with that time?”

“I… don’t know.”

“For a while I considered an altered form of apparition to travel through time rather than space, since muggle science considers the two connected. It has the possibility to be far more accurate, although we have no way to correctly visualise 1977. Splinching whilst we learn to apparate through time isn’t appealing either.” Malfoy almost wishes he had a camera to capture the pure shock on Granger’s face. What, did she think him her rival by chance? Honestly. “I also think that a Time-Turner is the better option.”

She blinks, opened-mouthed at him. “You know muggle science?” When he just looks at her for a long moment, she shakes her head and recovers herself. “Right. We’ll have to find the right object to contain the time reversal spell—”

Hang on. She wants to make a Time-Turner? 

“Why not alter the charm on a pre-existing Time-Turner?” Regulus asks.

“They were all destroyed in a battle within the Ministry.”

Oh, Granger. Poor, muggle-born Granger. Draco tries not to smile.

“You have one, right?” Regulus asks him.

Granger’s eyes practically bulge after that. He should really put her out of her misery and explain, Draco supposes.

“The Ministry may think they have regulation on such things, but pure-blood families — or at least old and wealthy enough families, so basically only the sacred twenty-eight — have their own collections of magical artefacts. Almost all that I know have their own Time-Turner.”

Granger mutters an irritated ‘of course they do’ and Draco can’t help but smile at that.

“So we can use that, then, right?”

Draco winces. “No. Malfoy Manor is… watched. I can go home and get anything I want but it won’t go unnoticed and if I get a Time-Turner there will be questions I don’t have the answers too.”

Regulus sighs. “The Black collection is within the library.”

“So we will have to make one,” Granger says.

A thought occurs to Draco. Dangerous, but a calculated risk that perhaps leans in their favour. “Not necessarily.”

“Care to elaborate?”

He smirks. “I’ll get us a Time-Turner. Until then, let’s figure out how to alter the charm.”

They work for hours. It’s a novel experience, working with two minds equal to his own. Some of his friends are smart. Blaise can keep up in potions and Herbology. Pansy is lethal with charms and transfiguration, and Theo has had a lot of the same tutors as Draco, but he doesn’t have to explain himself with these two. When Draco’s mind begins to feel thin and fraying, and Granger hides her third yawn, they agree to call it a night.

“We’ll continue tomorrow evening,” Granger says to Regulus with a smile. They collect their things in the quiet death of the smouldering fire, silent with their thoughts and the muffled clatter of bags. Granger goes to leave. Draco casts a glance back to see Regulus, tattered clothes and bloody injuries, brow furrowed with the same determination he lit in Draco’s chest, wave a phantom hand and turn a page with the rustle of Granger’s conjured breeze.

Side by side, they walk cautiously from the library, but it’s past midnight and the halls are empty. Even the patrolling prefects have retreated to their dorms.

“The wind spell was a good call,” Draco says.

The corners of her mouth curve upward. “I could tell he was getting frustrated having to ask us to turn the pages and ghosts have some small influence over the elements. It was only a simple spell.”

“Still. I hadn’t thought to do it.”

She looks at him quizzically. They walk in silence all the way back to the Gryffindor common room.

“Goodnight, Granger.”

Again, that look. “Goodnight, Malfoy.”

For the first time in months, Draco goes to sleep easily and dreams of nothing at all.

Chapter Text

Two days later, Saturday, a letter drops onto the table before Draco at breakfast. He continues eating his porridge, for a moment just looking at the elegant curve of his name on the expensive parchment.

“What are you doing this weekend, Theo?” He asks casually. Pansy looks at him. He wishes she wasn’t here but catching Theo alone has proved impossible thus far and it’s only the three of them currently. Blaise is flirting with a girl at the Ravenclaw table and Crabbe and Goyle won’t have woken up yet.

Theo frowns. “Nothing.”

“Want to go somewhere? I’d offer my house, but—” Draco pockets the letter roughly “—I don’t want to be around my family right now. Could we go to yours?”

Draco thought of not being so direct, but he can’t imagine being at home now is much fun with Theo’s family dead or gone and that point is a specific Draco needs right now. Thankfully, this is something they’ve done before, so he’s being no more than insensitive.

“Uh, okay. Sure.” Theo smiles, small and weighed down. “Do you want to come too, Pans?”

Draco slides his gaze to the girl. Come through, Pansy. 

“Oh, I would, but I have plans with Astoria, actually.”

Draco relaxes. He’d known, and bet on this. Pansy loves going off with Astoria, who regularly goes home for events with her parents. It’s not something commonly allowed, but Astoria’s family is on the school board and given Theo’s recent circumstances, Dumbledore is likely to grant their request.

“You could bri—” Theo starts. He hadn’t bet on that.

“Leave the girls be, Nott, I was only asking you.” Draco cringes at himself. He should have listened to whatever the girls’ plans were. But better to sound like he’s fobbing them off rather than saying something soppy like ‘it would be nice to spend some time with just you’.

Pansy glares but Theo gives a breathy laugh. “Fine, fine. When do you want to go?”

“Now?”

Theo agrees and they finish eating and make their way to the headmaster’s office. Draco swallows his discomfort. Theo knocks. The gargoyle shifts and reveals the staircase. Theo goes first.

“Hello Headmaster,” he says, the words echoing back to Draco as his feet drag up the stairs. “Could Draco and I go to mine for the weekend, sir?”

Draco enters the office. Dumbledore’s eyes glide to him. He breathes consciously, calmly.

“You know the rules, Mr. Nott,” the old man rumbles. Draco’s hand twitches. Maybe it would be easier to just do it. God knows Draco has no love for the wizard. He’s never helped Draco. It would be so much easier. He could accept his heritage, step into the position laid out for him, claim power and his rightful place in the world above half-bloods and mudbloods and muggles and half-breeds— only, that’s his father’s voice. Voldemort’s. It whispers seductively, coaxing him to give in. You’re a Malfoy, Draco. Sanctimonia vincet semper. Purity will always conquer and are you not pure, not a conqueror? Are you not better than them all?

No. He’s not better than Granger.

She is the fallible hole in all their arguments with her sharp intelligence, vicious determination, and magic as skilled as any pureblood’s. Working with her these past few nights is only bolstering the point.

Dumbledore watches him, as though he can see all these thoughts go through Draco’s head, even as Theo makes some excuse as to why they should be allowed off grounds. Dumbledore suspects him, Draco knows it. But he needs the old wizard to be daft just this once and let him out so that Draco doesn’t have to kill him.

“Permission granted, Mr. Nott. Be home before bedtime tomorrow or you’ll both have detention for the week.”

“Thank you, sir,” Theo says. Dumbledore gives Draco one last look before they leave. Then they’re down the corridor and through the green flames of the floo and walking into Theo’s foyer.

Draco releases his breath in a steady, teeth-clenched hiss. He gives himself only one breath to regulate his heart before allowing his senses to fully take in his surroundings. The manor is cold; lifeless. Draco feels a stab of pity for Theo then. He’d been so wrapped up in his own darkness that he hadn’t spared a thought for Theo’s but he is faced with the reality of it now. The boy had to spend the summer alone with silence thick like dust on his skin and shadows around every corner. The house-elves have kept it clean and a sanitised sort of welcome at least. At their entrance, one such elf pops into being before them, and after a quick order from Theo, pops away to get his rooms warmed. His friend’s shoulder’s droop.

“I’m… sorry I haven’t been around,” Draco says.

Theo’s spine snaps upright. Draco can’t blame him for being guarded; he would be too. “What do you mean?”

“Voldemort’s been pressing his heel to my throat. I couldn’t see past it well enough to realise he’s been doing the same to you.”

Risky. This is risky. But he’s been watching Theo these past two days and he’s known the boy for years. He sees himself in the mirror of his friend’s face.

“Now that Dad’s… gone,” Theo starts. “He wants me to step up as head of the house of Nott. I’m fine with that, but…”

“Not with being a Death Eater?”

Theo’s gaze flicks to his.

Draco takes a breath and palms his wand. With a wordless flick of his wrist, the glamour disintegrates. He pushes back his jacket and t-shirt sleeves, revealing the vile Dark Mark. Theo’s eyes go wide with fear.

“I thought I wanted it,” Draco charges on. “I was wrong.”

The fear shifts. Still there, but no longer at Draco.

“I have no hope.”

Draco lets his sleeves fall back down to his wrists. “You have more hope than me. You haven’t taken it yet.”

Theo scoffs. “As if I could say no.”

He has to give him that one. “There is something else you could do…”

Theo looks up at him wearily. “What?”

“I need a Time-Turner.”

“You couldn’t go home and get your own?”

“Voldemort is there.”

“Shit. He’s there?”

“He’s there.”

Theo hesitates a moment, then begins leading Draco through the house. Their footsteps echo. Everything is as neat as a pin. It reminds Draco of all the things he hates about his own home and he wants to shudder. They stop before a stretch of empty wall, adorned only with the Nott family crest.

“What do you need a Time-Turner for? It won’t get rid of the Mark,” Theo asks.

“It’s not for that.”

Theo waits, but Draco doesn’t answer.

“Alright then.”

Theo casts a spell much like the one Draco tried in Grimmauld Place, only this time the spell works and a section of wall falls away with the rumble of bricks. Cases and stands litter the silvered room lit with a soft, pearlescent glow and magic, decedent and dark, brushes against Draco’s skin.

Theo strides in and collects the Time-Turner from a drawer with the liquid sliver of a sliding chain.  

It’s a beautiful piece of magical craft. A crystal sphere that tear-drops in a swirl of colour and metal encases an horizontal hourglass of golden sand. Around it shimmers tiny stars.

With a sigh, Theo extends it to Draco. “Just don’t get caught.”

He takes it. “I’ll die before I do.” And he means it. Death would be better than the slow, bone-crunching, serpentine hell Voldemort would have waiting for Draco after this.

Chapter Text

Hermione watches her best friend Saturday night. Harry sits across from her in the Gryffindor common room, eyes straying every few minutes to Ginny with a longing that cuts her to the bone and laughing with the boys of his dorm as they eat a new joke sweet from Honeyduke’s that has them babbling like they’ve inhaled helium. He’s filling out again after another summer that ate away at him. It’s not a bad thing, Hermione supposes, that he didn’t believe Malfoy; he’s happy. This would shatter that.

Her exit comes a few minutes later, when Lavender skips over and settles against the back of Ron’s seat. For a horrible, stretching moment she regrets ever pushing Lavender towards Ron. That one catalystic moment at the Three Broomsticks has snowballed painfully. She feels Ron slipping through her fingers like sand; the opportunity she hasn’t taken with him vanishing like smoke. But to not take the exit — to intervene in some way — would keep Regulus and Malfoy waiting.

Hermione rises from her armchair and slides around the back of the couch.

“Oi, where are you going?” Ron asks. Her stomach lurches.

“Library. I’ve got twelve inches to write for ancient runes,” she lies.

“You know, you’ve always been a swot, but you normally do your work here with us. Why are you always leaving for the library lately? Is— is there a boy?” He almost looks upset, at that last question, a fleeting flicker across his face that Hermione thinks is entirely unfair. Then he smirks as though the idea is outrageous. Still pretending like no one has ever showed interest in her then. Arse.

“Perhaps there is.”

Ginny laughs. “Is it Kevin?”

“Who?” Ron’s voice pitches high.

“Kevin Entwhistle, from Ravenclaw. He’s been sending her owls and they’ve studied together a few times.”

Hermione’s face heats. Their relationship is strictly friendly, they exchange notes, on arithmancy and astronomy mostly because the boy is particularly good at both, but she keeps her mouth shut.

“Oh, he’s dreamy,” Parvati sighs. “That accent gets me every time.”

“What accent?” Ron asks, his irritated frown deepening.

“He’s Irish,” Hermione says. “Anyway, I must be going.”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” Ginny calls after her.

“That means kiss him, ‘Mione!” Lavender shouts and their laughter echos as she flees out the door.

She collects the key from the front desk in the library and even Madam Pince gives her a more mischievous smile than normal. God, has she noticed her and Malfoy’s secret meetings? They take it in turns to get the key and Hermione assumed it would look like they’re avoiding each other, but maybe the old librarian isn’t fooled. Though, surely if she knew and suspected anything… untoward happening, she’d stop them. Anything less would be seriously out of character.

Her face burns all the way to their claimed corner of the Restricted Section. Regulus leans over a table, reading intently, and flicks his hand so that her spelled wind shifts the leaf over.

“Hello, Regulus.”

He blinks and looks up. “Hello, Hermione.”

“Have you managed to figure out the hourglass expansion?” They would need the room for the extra sand when the spell is altered.

 He nods, and dives into everything he’s read the past day, walking her over to this book or that and flicking through the pages with a breeze that tickles her skin. Hermione checks the clock a while in. 20:46 and Malfoy is still not here. Regulus tells her of the aspects of the spell needed for the expansion and she nitpicks the faults until they have it nailed down. Her quill scratches over the parchment and Regulus reads over her shoulder.

“Is that all that was left?”

With a jolt, Hermione realises it is. “Yeah.” She glances down the darkened stacks towards the entrance. It’s 22:07 and they’re still alone. Malfoy hasn’t showed. “I guess all we need now is a Time-Turner.”

So they go through her notes for the rest of the spell. After days, they have it — in theory. (Honestly, it wasn’t all that hard; it turns out there’s a lot of magical thought experiments into the realm of time and, she suspects, a lot of it was actually followed through but not mentioned in publication due to the strict laws in place against such spells). She itches to test it, first the expansion, then the ward around the vessel so that when they peal back the protective enchantments, nothing accidentally explodes. The charm itself isn’t all that complex to alter, but it’s where the most can go wrong. They have to deal with the time sand very particularly. It will take her and Malfoy both. A third person to watch the wards would have been ideal but they only have Regulus and he cannot cast spells anymore. Still, his eyes on the magic at the Time-Turner’s core will hopefully stop them from messing it up. Then they’ll have to rebuilt the enchantments and add a few extra layers of protection spells to combat the increased instability they’re creating.

It’s risky, but Hermione’s confident it will work.

After their second go around, they fall silent.

23:39. Malfoy’s a no-show tonight then. It disappoints her more than she’s comfortable with. Her eyes droop with tiredness and the crackling warmth of the fire settles wonderfully into her bones. She feels herself drifting…

“How did Sirius die?”

Sirius. Regulus’s soft words jolt her from the edge of sleep.

She turns to him and he looks into the flickering flames. The library is silent around them.

“He… it was June this year. There was a prophecy made about Harry and Voldemort when he was just a child and it was stored in the Department of Mysteries. Voldemort worked his way into Harry’s mind and made him believe Sirius was being hurt so that Harry would find it. When he did, the Death Eater’s attacked. Mal— Draco’s dad was there. The Order of the Phoenix came to our aid and there was a fight. It’s what caused all the Time-Turners to break. But… it was mostly in the Death Chamber. Bellatrix knocked Sirius off balance with a spell and he fell through the veil.”

“Sirius…” Regulus’s face collapses, phantom tears slipping down his grey cheeks. He looks so childlike that Hermione releases she had forgotten Regulus was only her age in the drowned, torn violence of his death. Only a child and, like Harry, he had to fight Voldemort. “Bella didn’t like Sirius towards the end, but I never thought she would kill him.”

Of course. They were cousins. She’s Narcissa Malfoy’s sister.

Draco’s aunt.

“Bellatrix is Voldemort’s right hand, these days.”

“Draco.” Hermione jerks from her chair, spinning to him as he emerges from the darkness. His brow flickers inwards, almost confused, for just a moment, then it straightens out again and he wears his normal arrogance. He saunters towards her and Regulus, something dangling from his clenched fist. “You got it,” she breathes.

He smirks harshly. “One Time-Turner.” He raises his hand and swings it around his fingers.

Hermione launches forward — “Careful! — and latches onto it before he can break it. Her hands tangle in chain and magic and skin.

Malfoy’s face falls in shock. “Merlin’s beard, Granger. I wasn’t going to drop it!”

She pries open his hand, drawing his long fingers back from his palm and delicately extracting the enchanted object from his hold. He just stares at her, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. A blush rises to her cheeks but she ignores it, and ignores him, and turns back to the table. God, she’s hot all of a sudden.

“Where did you get it?” Regulus asks.

“Theodore Nott. He not much of a Voldy supporter, either,” Malfoy says.

“Voldy?” Hermione sends over her shoulder, askance.

Malfoy shrugs and takes in her notes. “Is the spell ready?”

“No thanks to you,” she mutters.

“Are you both alert enough to cast it tonight?”

Tonight? No testing? They should wait but… her blood thrums at the thought. “It’s late,” she settles on after one rollercoaster of a heart beat. A weak attempt to slow the train, but it is verging on midnight.

Malfoy rolls his eyes. “I didn’t take you for an early quitter, Granger.”

She glares daggers at him.

“It can wait one more night, Draco. If you’d come a few hours earlier, we might have had time.”

“I was getting the Time-Turner!”

“You should have used it to get here five hours ago.”

“Well, I can’t now.”

Hermione rifles though her bag as they bicker. She knows she packed it… ah, there it is. Wideye Potion. She uncorks the small oval glass bottle and downs half the contents. Lucidity floods her. All traces of tiredness are erased like the dusting of a cobwebbed corner.

“Want some?” She proffers it to Malfoy and he smiles. Actually smiles. It’s disconcerting. He takes it and chugs the rest.

“Who needs sleep anyway,” he says.

Regulus catches Malfoy up and Hermione casts the protective circle where they’re going to perform their utterly mad spells. She palms the object, and takes a moment to inspect the elegant details of the pendant. Hers had been Ministry-granted and nothing more than basic golden rings within which the hourglass could spin. Beautiful, but this. This is the work of a master, paid for with the kind of money a noble, pureblood house can afford. She places it carefully in the centre of her ward.

Malfoy takes up the opposing position in the circle and their gazes collide. They’re doing this. Right here, right now. It lights her on fire. Draco nods and she returns it before beginning the cast to expand the Time-Turner’s hourglass.

It takes hours. The first passes quickly, the second drags, and in the third the potion wanes. By the fourth, exhaustion takes hold and she almost fumbles the last part of the expansion. But the hourglass shudders and enlarges and then it’s done. Malfoy casts a stasis charm over the Time-Turner.

“You don’t happen to have anymore Wideye, do you?” he says. He looks as worn-thin as she feels, shirtsleeves rolled up and moon-pale hair messy.

“We need sleep,” she mumbles. Malfoy begins collecting his things but she conjures two cots and collapses into one. He huffs a laugh and then gets into the other.

“I’ll wake you if the stasis spell begins to degrade. Or someone is about to happen across your illegal Time-Turner alteration.”

Hermione opens her mouth to thank him, but she’s asleep before she can.

***

“Oi. Granger.”

“Huh?” She mumbles, rolls over, and pulls the blanket over her head to block out— “Draco?!”

“The one and only.”

“What are you—?” She wakes up enough then to see the chained books behind Malfoy and remember. Right. They slept here in their corner of the Restricted Section.

“He brought breakfast,” Regulus says over Malfoy’s shoulder.

“Oh, Merlin’s beard.” 

“Don’t like breakfast? I thought it was rather nice of him. Pince didn’t notice.”

Hermione realises the extent of her mistake and pulls the blanket over her face. She slept here. She hadn’t been thinking of anything other than the practicality of it but after, what — she checks a clock and sees it’s past 10 (it’s 10?!) — six hours of sleep to rest her magic-strained mind she can think well enough to remember how she left the others. Kevin. “They’re all going to be thinking I slept with him.” There’s no excuse to get her out of this one. They should just go to 1977 tonight and not come back for a long, long while.

“What?” Malfoy squeaks with great concern.

“Nothing,” she mutters and tosses the blanket off her. “Let’s get on with it.”

“Eat first,” Regulus orders, and at the smell of porridge and tea Hermione relents, crawling to the table and the steaming bowl. Their spell takes up half of the floor space of their corner. They pushed the table towards the end of the stack to make room for it, and with the cots pressings against the bookcases on either side, the space is getting crowded. “Draco set both a repellant and a shield charm at the entrance so no one will wonder in here.”

Hermione glances at Malfoy over her bowl. He fiddles with the cuff of a long-sleeved black top, disinterested and uncaring as usual, and perfectly put together after their late night. His pale hair is damp and hanging over his face. She shudders to think what her own looks like. Feeling her gaze upon him, his eyes flick to hers.

“We are doing something highly illegal,” he says, rolling his eyes.

“I’ve had a repellant charm here the moment we left the books for Regulus.”

“I didn’t senes anything.”

“Well of course you wouldn’t, I needed you to be able to get through it.” She starts to pat down her hair and Malfoy watches the movement lazily.

He huffs.

“I don’t think anyone comes back here anyway. The shelves don’t look like they’ve been dusted since my time.”

Hermione had been forced to Scourgify most of the space when they first arrived.

“It’s hard to believe no one wants to read An Analysis of Loyalist Armour. The outfits of the goblin rebellions is a fascinating subject,” Malfoy says.

“Or The Dictionary of Uncastable Spells,” Hermione says, smiling into her porridge.

“Personally, I think Entryway Curses on Unopenable Doors sounds downright riveting. Youth these days don’t know what they’re missing.”

“It really is a shame though, if you think about it. There’s no way we would have been able to even conceive of altering a Time-Turner to go back decades had the books not been here to learn from. The knowledge out there exists, it’s just about accessibility, and the more that is accessible, the more we’re able to do with it. I mean, if the books on horcruxes had just been here then we wouldn’t have to go to such extreme, illegal, lengths to find out how to destroy them—”

“Such Dark Magic isn’t available for a reason, Granger. Had those books just been lying around then witches and wizards like Voldemort would be in far more abundance,” Malfoy says, voice pitched low and hard.

“No, I know that, I just mean…” Hermione trails off as a thought occurs to her. “How did Voldemort learn to make horcruxes?”

“How are we supposed to know?”

But Regulus’s eyes light up with understanding. “You think there might have been a book here in the past, that explained it?”

She nods, her gaze straying to the chained tomes behind him. “There’s How to Hunt Selkies for their Coats after all. Just about everything here.”

Malfoy shakes his head. “That kind of dark magic grimoire won’t just be lying around in a school. The Malfoy’s have a library too. It’s perhaps not as focused on dark magic as the collection in Grimmauld Place, but there would be followers of Voldemort’s who would have such things. He himself is a Gaunt and descendant of Slytherin. It could have come from his own family.”

Hermione deflates. She supposes it would be too easy if the book was just sitting somewhere on these shelves and all they had to do was look a little harder. She stares into her porridge. Malfoy put blackcurrant jam in it. Is that how he eats it? It’s nice.

Shaking away her thoughts, she shovels down the sweet, comforting rest of it. The mug of tea warms her hand and she takes it with her to her side of the spell circle where she moves to sit cross-legged.

“Right. I’m ready.”

Malfoy sits opposite her once again, and waves away the stasis charm. A small ripple of magic skitters over her skin. She grips her wand tighter.

“Don’t forget to flip the hourglass over as you go through the alteration. And Hermione, cast diagnostics on it after each change to make sure it’s assimilating right.” Regulus settles to her left, kneeling only an inch away from the circle’s border and locks his attention on the floating Time-Turner.

Hermione nods. “Are you ready?” She asks Malfoy.

He smirks. “Of course I am.”

And with that, he begins the deconstruction. The glass melts into droplets that drift into parallel orbits, like the satellites of some stellar object, and the stars it contained flare outwards. They shine within Hermione’s circle, tiny glimmering points that take her breath away.

Malfoy charges ahead with ferocious single-mindedness. He does not look at the stars or the orbiting spheres of glass. He segments the spell, separating it’s physical components and stretching it’s magical composition until the charm is a collection of parts laid bare before them. The metal top and teardrop bottom hover above and below the horizontal, expanded hourglass. Within it, the sand shimmers and shifts, released from gravity so that their time flows in all directions. Hermione casts her first diagnostic charm and the words wrapping around her wand tell her its stable. Malfoy gives it only a split-second glance before storming into the next section of the spell. He does not stutter or stumble over a word. They flow from him like they themselves are magic. Sharp. Elegant in pronunciation and execution, layered with power and… beautiful. He flips the hourglass and presses on. Then again. And again.

She casts a diagnostic charm after each turn but she knows what it will tell her every time. The hazardously complex and precariously volatile time magic is stable under Malfoy’s ministrations. The alteration spell is working. He’s doing it.

“This is it, Granger. Make the timer work so we’re not fucked in 1977.” Malfoy says. Without missing a beat, he picks the spell back up and Hermione’s voice joins his as she mimics the original charm to create the timer addition. Five hours of normal time, then all that sand Malfoy is funnelling in gets released and they speed back to the present. It settles into place like a photo double; a second, semi-corporeal hourglass superimposed upon the space the pre-enlarged hourglass existed in. A shadow of the original.

Malfoy flips it and her addition doesn’t so much as flicker. She casts a diagnostic. Stable. Regulus grins.

Then he jerks towards the Time-Turner’s core. “Hold it, Draco!”

Malfoy grits his teeth in a savage, opened lipped snarl. The stars shudder and unform, bright flashes and clouds of dust surrounding them. The glass spheres orbit faster. She feels the pressure then, of the spell against her circle. It’s destabilising.

“Hermione cast the runes!”

She doesn’t hesitate. They’d hoped to cast the runes right at the end, as they assumed the ones already in place wouldn’t be strong enough to hold the expansion, since casting it this early will risk the charm alteration failing entirely. But hesitating now could cause the whole thing to explode in their faces, fairly literally. There’s a reason this kind of magic is illegal.

Mannaz to bind the spell together.

The magic strains against the separation of its components and Malfoy increases the speed of his alteration. Words fly like daggers from his mouth. The orbits of the glass decreases, no longer being spun out faster and faster.

Ehwaz to strengthen those bonds. Stabilise, she begs the magic.

Stars flares as they are born from the dust clouds collapsing once again. Magic presses against the bounds of her circle. Strands seep out and shadows roll around them in echos of the past. Malfoy glancing at her in sleep and running his hands through his hair before pushing off the cot and leaving. Regulus blinks as the spectre of his spectral body flicks endlessly through pages, even eerier than the translucent grey of his present form. More, further back. Faces she doesn’t know pulling at books and rattling chains.

Thurisaz as a barrier to contain the spell. Once. Twice. Three times she casts it. The shadows fade.

Malfoy’s voice is near a shout now. His focus is severe, expression lined with steely determination. His chest heaves with spilled words and no time for breath, but he’s so close. Sand, gold and silver and glittering, pours into the hourglass. Then it flips.

“There!” Regulus shouts.

Hermione leaps into action. The last word of the spell leaves Malfoy’s lips and he sags back as Hermione disintegrates the Time-Turner’s segmentation. The stars are sucked in with explosive violence. The glass orbitals melt and trap the magic within the original sphere. With a snap, the metal teardrop encases it and the enchantment is complete.

A perfect, altered Time-Turner hovers calmly in midair between Regulus, Malfoy, and Hermione.

“Granger!” Malfoy yells her name just as the Time-Turner drops. She jerks across the boundary of her circle and catches it. Her heart thunders. She laughs; a breathy, relieved sound. Then laughs again.

Regulus joins in. Then Malfoy and it almost shocks the laughter right out of her. It’s not the haughty, mean laugh she’s heard dozens of times. It’s… joyful. 

“We did it,” she says. He meets her gaze and there isn’t a speck of their normal animosity there. It makes her grin stretch wider, and in turn, so does his.

“That was fantastic,” Regulus breathes. He stares at the object in her hands and his own flicker towards it as though he could reach out and hold it too.

“That really was.”

Malfoy’s grin shifts closer to his normal smirk, but even he can’t contain the ecstasy of this moment behind his indifferent exterior. “For a muggleborn with a muggle education.”

She throws a book at him and he dodges it with an indignant yelp, but she can tell he means it as no more than a joke. Weird. Malfoy joking with her.

“For a purblood with sawdust in his head.”

“I think you’ll find its galleons.”

“I suppose only ridiculously expensive tutoring could fill that head at all.”

He laughs again, that different laugh. “A—”

“Oh, get a room, the pair of you,” Regulus interjects with a particularly unimpressed look.

Now Malfoy’s grin really does turn into a smirk. He nods his head to the cots. “We have one.”

Hermione throws another book at him, face heating horridly. It reminds her of how much time has passed and what all her friends must be thinking and her stomach grumbles. They ought to leave now and catch the end of lunch in the Great Hall. Or is it closer to dinner by now?

“When should we try it?” She asks. The boys sober up. Regulus doesn’t say anything, just sits up straighter, and Malfoy eyes him.

“Tomorrow. After class,” Malfoy says.

Hermione looks to Regulus to gauge his opinion. Does he want them to go so soon, or is he hesitant? It would be wise for them to test it first, no matter how confident she is on their theory and execution. Still, Regulus doesn’t say anything.

“I’ll see you here tomorrow, then,” she says.

Chapter Text

Regulus watches as Draco slides the Time-Turner into his pocket, his heart and mind a mess of emotion. He had known the moment he saw the emerald potion within the basin that he would die in that cave by the sea. Kreature had told him what it was. The liquid passed over his lips and he thought, I’m already dead, so he welcomed the pain, the delirious replay of his horrible past, the insatiable thirst that had him welcoming the lake’s water into his lungs. He had prayed against that thought with every swallow. All Regulus had to do was drink the potion then the locket would be his and he could begin the downfall of Voldemort. But neither Regulus nor Kreature could fight off the inferni before he was dragged under.

As Draco departs and Regulus trails after, leaving Hermione to clear the evidence of their illicit activities, Reg remembers the feeling he died clinging too.

He had failed.

It was consuming like the burn of his lungs, sharp like the rush of water as he breathed, and the strange peace that came at the end… that was like the small kernel of hope in his heart that Kreature would succeed in his place and in his death, the first piece of Voldemort’s soul would die too.

That is the hope that fills him now. It is edged with the pain of that first taste.

Twenty years and the death of everyone he loves but they still have a chance. It feels almost pointless in the face of their absence from this world. But Regulus is dead too. The least he can do is use his lingering presence to kill the bastard at the core of all his regret. Maybe then he’ll find the peace to move on and find Sirius and James in whatever awaits him on the other side of this half-life.

Draco stalks the halls of Hogwarts and Regulus haunts his every step. Draco said something about the kitchen to get lunch, he remembers, and he watches with a dazed unfocus as Draco asks politely for a plate of the Sunday roast. His thoughts have clouded again with the rage he took to his watery grave and the warmth of the school that had been more home than the one he had lived in for seventeen years. He drifts through his memories and surfaces only when Hermione enters his periphery. She smiles but it’s not the unrestrained, life filled grin of before and glances behind him. Regulus looks over his shoulder. The great hall. When did he arrive here? 

“What is it?” He asks.

“Oh, nothing. It’s silly,” she says, a blush rising to her cheeks. Regulus waits for her to continue but she just chews a lip and glances at the doors again.

“You could go to the kitchens if you don’t want to go inside.”

She sighs. “The house elves don’t like me much after I tried to knit them their freedom.”

Regulus laughs.

“They’re slaves,” she bites.

“It’s just how it is.”

“Of course you would think that.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.” I’m not that kind of pureblood, he wants to say.

“How else did you mean it, then?”

He contemplates the righteous anger on the witch’s face. He admires it and suddenly feels like he wants to give her a worthy answer, something to make her think better of him. “I asked Kreature about it once. They would do the housework of wizards because to give their help is their nature and their clothes getting ragged is a sign that they are living by that simple creed. They would work until their witch or wizard has enough time to sew them new clothes. It is the reward that tells them they have helped enough and that the help was appreciated. Then they move on. Only, it’s not like that anymore. We began to take advantage of their help; keeping them in our households to retain their labour indefinitely. Slavery, as you said. But over time that changed as well. They would work for the same family for decades and, sometimes, receive other things for their aid, and they began to want to stay. It’s not like that for every house-elf of course. Many are abused. Kreature was. And yet even he did not want to leave. I think they learned to tolerate that abuse and call it love because they believed they were needed. It’s different here, though. The elves are treated well.”

Hermione hurumphs. Unimpressed and disbelieving and it hurts Regulus’s heart a little.

He remembers the conversation with Kreature well. He had tried to free the elf but he refused to take the small shirt and trousers Regulus had spent a week hand sewing for him. He had never known what his family had done for such loyalty. Only Regulus was ever kind to Kreature but how could that have been enough?

His mind flickers between that moment and Kreature wailing over Regulus’s pain. Kreature had recoiled from the potion when they arrived so there had been no question as to Regulus drinking it over him, especially when he knew Kreature would do anything he asked, even take Regulus’s violent, agony-ridden death from him. But Kreature hadn’t left him that day when he was only a child so he couldn’t turn his hateful self on the elf, not when Kreature was the only person Regulus knew how to be kind to. 

Hermione shoulders past him, annoyed rather than apprehensive now, and Regulus shudders from the whoosh of almost contact.

The clamour of the great hall greats him and Regulus drifts in after Hermione. It’s the end of lunch, most students have empty plates in front of them and instead chat with their friends.

Harry sits with a rowdy group at the Gryffindor table. A ginger haired girl whistles when she sees Hermione and the rest of them make a show of her return.

“Enjoying Mr. Entwhistle’s company last night, were you, Hermione?” Another red-haired boy says. One of two. They share twin smirks.

Hermione turns a fierce shade of red. “No,” she says.

“Oh, yeah?” Harry chimes in. “Then where were you all night?”

It clicks for Regulus. The comment Hermione made this morning, about sleeping with someone — Regulus assumed she meant Draco (who’s alarmed expression said he thought the same) but they had been keeping the whole affair secret. He laughs, a little delayed, and Hermione’s eyes flick up in a glare.

“Oh, if I were alive I might have told them the truth just to see their faces.” He can imagine the horror if they knew she’d been with Draco instead.

“I fell asleep! And then figured I’d continue working when I woke up.”

“Hey, Entwhistle!” The second twin calls. A Ravenclaw at the next table looks up.

“Yeah?” He answers, confused.

“Where were you last night?” The first twin asks.

“In the tower. Why?”

Regulus can’t help but laugh again. Merlin’s beard, he really would love to tell them.

“Not with Hermione?”

“Oh, stop it you two,” Hermione groans into her jumper-covered hands.

“No?” The Ravenclaw glances at Hermione, seems to pick up on what they’re saying, and smirks. “I’m gay boys, so whoever Hermione was with last night, it wasn’t me. Anytime either of you want a go though, let me know.” He winks.

The twins’ faces fall.

“Oh boo,” the ginger girl says. Regulus is starting to think they’re all related. “That’s one lost for our team. Who were you with?”

“No one,” Hermione says. Luckily her blush hasn’t faded, otherwise Regulus is sure it would have come back with a vengeance. He’d have told them all just to see that pretty blood rise to her cheeks again.

“So you really did just fall asleep?” Harry asks.

“Yes.”

“You’re mad,” Ron says.

Hermione ignores him and begins piling food onto her plate. She eats in silence.

Regulus remembers times like this; knows what it’s like to come back from an illicit meeting and pretend to everyone that nothing beyond normal had occurred, even when the blood was still running hot in his veins.

It eases the anger and ignites a fierce desire to be alive, if only so he could feel the heat of Hermione’s checks beneath his fingers. He knows what that kind of warmth feels like. The memory is a knife between his ribs, piercing his lungs to empty out the air he cannot breathe.

Regulus strides away and gladly looses himself in his memories.

He does not come out of them until a day has passed.

***

“It looks fine,” Hermione says, reading off the magical words floating over the Time-Turner. “What’s the next test?”

Draco nudges a book in her direction and slouches back in his chair. They’re in the library again and it’s been an hour of tests to ensure the Time-Turner works and they’re not about to be subjected to some horror. Regulus watches with a clenched jaw as Hermione reads over the page and casts the spell. The enchanted hourglass shivers and spins with a twinkling sound but nothing else. She sighs.

“Are we done?” Draco asks.

Hermione contemplates the object for a moment, then straightens. “Yes.”

Thank Merlin. Anticipation and apprehension war within Regulus, making him jittery and agitating the pit of anger that has been his constant companion since returning from his watery grave.

Draco stretches and slides close to Hermione. He glances at Regulus for an infinite moment before dragging the Time-Turner into his hand and wrapping the long chain around their necks.

“Five hours,” Hermione says.

Draco nods. “Five hours.”

He holds the Time-Turner on its side and the hourglass sits in double, waiting to be spun and for its sand to pour through. The hour counter is at the end of the teardrop and as he twists it, once, twice, almost five times, a notched spiral of light extends horizontally 19 years.

“Ready?” He asks.

“Ready,” Hermione echos.

No, wait. Regulus knows they have to go but suddenly the anger is gone and fear replaces it. If they do this, he’ll die all over again and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. To save James.

Draco presses the release. The spiral of light collapses into the hourglass and it spins.

Regulus last view, as Draco and Hermione vanish, is the dual hourglasses whirling at different speeds. One, large and real, turning with a violent pace, and the second a ghostly echo being left behind.

1977

Potter is an arse. Regulus thinks. He tears off his quidditch goggles and storms from the changing rooms into the path of a white-haired Slytherin with a fantastic sneer and a Gryffindor girl biting his head off from behind a mass of brown curls. He almost crashes right into the pair. They stop and blink twin expressions of shock at him.

“The fuck you looking at?”

Chapter Text

[Part Two, 1977]

Regulus Arcturus Black is falling through open sky and nothing has ever felt better. The wind cuts with gelid claws at the exposed flesh of his skin, tears its harsh fingers through his hair, drags him back by his robes, and yet it is not enough to slow the rush of the ground rising to meet him. The fall is exhilarating. He is weightless, unbounded by the shit that chains him day to day. Here, there is nothing but the dance of gravity and resistance as he dives towards a singular goal.

And just as his own fingers brush gold, James Potter, star chaser of the Gryffindor team, crashes into him.

He could kill him, in this moment. Shove Potter off the broom and use it to follow the snitch that he was touching.

“What are you doing, Black?” Potter yells over the rush of air streaming past them. Regulus swings onto the back of the broom and reaches one hand around Potter to grip the shaft and not fall again.

“Beating you, that’s what!” Regulus snarls back.

“You almost had a face full of ground!”

“I almost had the snitch. Anything to win, ey, Potter?” He grins and the Gryffindor throws a harsh look over his shoulder. But behind his goggles, his hazel eyes are alight with the euphoria that streams through Regulus’s blood and the other boy’s lips curl up in a reluctant slash of a smile.

Potter whips them to Regulus’s elegant black broom, hovering where he left it when he dove from its side to follow the golden snitch directly beneath him, and Regulus drops onto it.

“Be a little less quick with your heroics next time, yeah?” Regulus says.

“But then Slytherin would have won!” Potter calls back as he shoots towards the quaffle.

Infuriating, he is. Regulus gives himself all of three seconds to watch the heart-racingly fast arc of red across the sky. Then he turns his back on Potter and catches sight of Dawson, the Gryffindor seeker, slicing low across the pitch. Regulus dives, his broom a bullet beneath him. He meant what he said, anything to win. The path through the other players is almost as dangerous as his reckless fall, but it’s nothing to Regulus, and he swerves around teammates, spins around opponents, cackling when their robes brush and the Gryffindors flinch back from his antics. He can see the golden snitch evading Dawson’s capture and the quaffle in Potter’s arms, streaking towards the Slytherin goal. Shit. How did Potter get a hold of the quaffle so quickly? If Gryffindor score once more before Regulus gets the snitch, Slytherin will lose. His team has been awful this match, have been awful since training began in September — it’s like all their talent left with the last graduating class. Regulus has been chaser, keeper, and seeker in an attempt to stymie the Gryffindor’s painfully skilled gameplay. The snitch is in his sights but Potter is getting closer to the rings. A flick of Regulus’s eyes across the sky and the manoeuvre forms in his mind with sharp clarity.

Regulus grits his teeth and cuts a turn that his the blood dragging in his veins with the force of it, then he’s above Potter. The boy’s going to hate him for doing this twice in one match.

He falls. This time, he keeps one hand on his broom so his weight drags it down with him. He winks as he passes directly through Potter’s path. Hazel eyes widen. He only sees them for a fraction of a second. But it’s enough. The other boy misses the bludger coming for him. 

“Regulus!” Potter shouts his frustration and swerves at the last second, getting clipped on the shoulder and careening into Talkalot, the Slytherin captain and most viscous chaser (only one, really). She takes the quaffle from him. Regulus grins. He flips back onto his broom and keeps his downward course. There. Just as he expected. Dawson flies towards him, the snitch a mere metre in front.

“No!” She yells, but there’s nothing she can do to stop him now.

Regulus curls his hand around the snitch, wrenching it from the air, and against all odds, Slytherin wins the first match of the season.

***

“You reckless little shit,” Sirius pushes through the Slytherin team to Regulus at the centre. Regulus only laughs, a harsh, humourless sound. Sirius pushes in close and he lets him, sneering up the extra few inches into his brother’s face. “You could have died and James has a fractured arm!”

Regulus rolls his eyes. “Pomfrey will heal it with a single spell. Even I could. He’ll be fine.”

“Get lost, Black,” Talkalot spits, crossing her arms. The rest of the team circle them. “We won. Take your jealously elsewhere.” 

Sirius growls and grabs Regulus’s collar, shoving him backwards and away from the other Slytherins. Regulus sighs and allows it. Better to get it over with, though the temptation to let his team throw a few punches to Sirius’s stupid face has him stumbling a step.

“Fractured in seven different places. His shoulder is practically shattered. A single spell? No, Regulus. You really fucking hurt him.”

Regulus jerks out of Sirius’s grip and glares. “It’s quidditch. Shit happens. You laughed the last time a ball hit me.”

“It was the quaffle. You’ve never been hit by a bludger. And you knocked Marlene from her broom because of it, putting her in the infirmary with a messed up leg for two days whilst you just had a bruise.”

It’s true, Regulus has an uncanny ability to dodge bludgers.

“You still laughed!” Regulus cringes at the petulance in his voice. So what Sirius laughed? The bastard can shove it.

“You were fine. James isn’t.”

“Oh, get over it. He shouldn’t have stopped me getting the snitch if he didn’t want a fractured arm. Give him ten minutes and he’ll be strutting the halls, good as new. ”

For a moment, he thinks his brother will hit him, the snarl that rips from his lips is so intense. But the fight goes out of Sirius. His jaw works and his grey gaze is damning. Disappointed. It rankles Regulus with an uncomfortable, acidic feeling in his gut.

Sirius leaves without another word. Regulus stays there on the edge of the pitch as it empties of friends and foes. He waits just long enough, then slouches off to the changing rooms. He shoulders open the door. Empty, save for the rustle of a single person.

“I told you to go after the team, Sirius,” Potter says, tipping his head to see around the corner. “Oh. It’s you.”

Regulus leans against the red-draped lockers and eyes Potter’s form, the bandages wrapped around bare flesh. “How’s the arm?”

Potter huffs a laugh and turns to face him, arms crossed. “Fine, no thanks to you.”

“Seven different fractures. I did my job well.”

“Oh, so you intended to nearly rip my arm off?”

“Hazard of the game. I intended to catch the snitch and couldn’t have you coming to my rescue again.” That gets Regulus a small smirk.

“Pretty ruthless, Black.”

“You’d get bored if I was anything else.” Regulus pushes off the lockers and shoves into Potter’s space, a step too close. 

“On the pitch, perhaps.” Potter’s face twitches into a frown for a moment. “Not going to apologise for bludgering me?”

Regulus laughs. “For winning, you mean? Never.” 

Potter shakes his head and turns away, pulling a t-shirt on with a wince before sitting to undo his boots. “I need to get changed. This isn’t the Slytherin changing room, Black.”

“Oh, come on, don’t be a bore.”

“Be vicious on the pitch if you want. You’re right, it’s fun. But most people have the courtesy to apologise if their stunts get someone hurt.”

Regulus scoffs. “It’s not like I sent the bludger at you. You could have seen it. Don’t be so easily distracted next time.” 

Potter looks up at him with those wide hazel eyes and Regulus hates it. The softness there. The way they shut off and go cold.

“I won’t.”

They stare at each other for a long moment until the other boy goes back to unlacing his boots.

Potter is an arse. Regulus thinks. He tears off his quidditch goggles and storms from the changing rooms into the path of a white-haired Slytherin with a fantastic sneer and a Gryffindor girl biting his head off from behind a mass of brown curls. He almost crashes right into the pair. They stop and blink twin expressions of shock at him.

“The fuck you looking at?”

Chapter Text

Nineteen years flickers past with sickening speed. Time free flows around them, day then night then day in a display so fast the sky beyond the windows are a shuddering twilight pulsing with the same frequency of the hourglass’s impossible spinning. Draco is left reeling from the strange blur of magic and time that spun around and through him when the sun settles into a different afternoon.

“It looks the same,” Malfoy murmurs. For a moment, they’re both still.

“I suppose no one’s ever had much interest in Espionage Spells of The Great Wars,” Granger says. It breaks the aftereffects of the spell and Draco huffs a laugh. He pulls the chain over their heads and pockets the Time-Turner, hands shaking slightly with the adrenaline flooding his veins. Granger pulls out her wand and Draco catches the countdown glowing at its base. 4h 53m.

“I’m feeling oddly good about this.” The words slip from him, coming from Merlin-knows where. But it feels like finally, finally, he’s going to have his shot.

Granger quirks an eyebrow and looks at his lips. He knows he’s smiling. He probably looks like a lunatic. “Let’s make sure we’re in the right year before you go dancing off like it’s Christmas.”

No, it’s better than Christmas. “You know how to take the fun out of everything, Granger.”

“Well, we might not have—”

“Oh, shut up. We’ve done it. Come on.” Draco strides from their corner, not waiting for Granger. She grabs his arm before he can tear out of the restricted section and it takes more will than it should to pause and check their surroundings before sneaking out. He knows instantly that they’ve made it. Too many witches and wizards in outdated robes.

“We really did it,” Granger whispers. Her eyes are wide and she’s smiling.

Draco can’t help but return it. “Told you so.”

He immediately begins leading them to the Slytherin common room and Granger follows silently, gaze glued quizzically to the students they pass. In an empty corridor, she pulls out her wand and points it at him.

“Hey, what—” Draco doesn’t catch the spell she casts, but the cut of his robes shifts. Embroidered cuffs and a wide collar and corduroy. “Oi, what are you doing that for? I look a fool!”

She gives him a withering look. “You look like you’re from 1977.” She does the same to her own clothes and Draco cringes at the bright red and gold patterning, brown belt low on her hips, and overly-dramatic hood.

“Urgh. You could have chosen better.”

Blood rushes into Granger’s cheeks. “I don’t know what they wore! This seemed the most common.”

“You’ve seen all of ten people.”

“Exactly, four of them were wearing robes like these.”

Draco pulls out his own wand and alters his robes to something more palatable. Wool, he knows they still wore in the 70s. And his robes don’t have to be so relaxed. Though he supposes he has to keep some of the colourful embellishments; everyone seems to have them. He considers doing the same to Granger, just tone it down a notch, but he suspects she’d punch him again if he tried.

“You could at least make yourself a Slytherin so you can come into the common room with me.”

Her face twists in distaste. “No, thank you. Besides, if Regulus doesn’t help us, I can go to Sirius if I’m a Gryffindor.”

“You could just switch between the two.”

“Not if anyone notices me.”

“Fine, but a Slytherin and a Gryffindor together is already drawing looks.”

“Then you change.”

“We need one of to be a Slytherin at least, Granger.”

She huffs and frowns when she notices that Draco is right. People are eyeing the way they walk side by side. Nice to see the prejudice against his house still going strong. He expects her to change the colours of her robes, but she just raises her chin and walks… closer to him. He tries to ignore it.

They reach the dungeons and the snake reveals the door. Draco slides through. What has always been a comfort becomes a strange, oppressive pressure on his chest as he strolls deeper into the common room. What if someone notices he doesn’t belong here? This is where Voldemort was born and he is not hidden in the shadows of a boy hero here — in this time, he is nearing the height of his power, unburdened by failure. A minute ago his anonymity had felt freeing. Now it feels dangerous. He catches sight of another white-haired boy and the stranger frowns at him. Draco needs to be quick. But the younger Black brother is nowhere in sight and the other boy is still looking at him.

“You seen Regulus Black anywhere?” Draco asks him.

The boys pale eyebrows rise high. “It’s the Slytherin-Gryffindor match.”

Because that explains anything. “Right. Of course. Thanks.”

Draco turns and although he wants to sprint from the room he forces himself to walk casually, hand in his pockets.

Granger is lingering against the wall, looking about as casual as Draco feels. So, not at all.

She jerks to attention when she sees him. “Did you find him?”

Draco shakes his head. “He’s at a quidditch match.”

“We’ll have to wait for him to leave the stands, anything else will look weird.”

But it’s even worse than that. When they reach the pitch, they realise very quickly that Regulus isn’t spectating. He’s flying with fantastic recklessness through the sky to the Slytherins chanting his name. They find a spot of mixed students and settle in to wait.

“What’s the score?” Draco asks the Hufflepuff girl next to him.

“170 to 30,” she answers.

“To which team?!”

“Gryffindor of course!”

Merlin’s beard, they’re that bad?

Granger laughs. “You should see your face right now.”

“Well, it must be a record loss,” Draco says. They never did so bad in his time.

Two people catch his eye, one white-haired, the other black, getting up to leave from the visitor’s section, just next to where they sit. Oh, fuck.

Draco must gasp or tense or something, because Granger straightens in alarm. “What is it?”

But he calms the frantic racing of his heart. Even though the twenty-something versions of his mother and father walk just a handful of students away from him, they don’t see him. Wouldn’t recognise him even if they did.

“If I Avada him in the back right now, do you think anyone would notice?” He whispers, bitter and harsh.

“What?” Granger follows his gaze. “You can’t. You won’t even be born then!”

“Are you saying that’s a bad thing?”

They pass out of his view and he hunches deeper into his robes to hide from the chill wind that suddenly cuts him to the bone.

“Don’t be daft,” Granger splutters. “Do you really not want to have been born?”

He sighs. “Of course I want to be born, Granger.” But he’s going to ruin me. “What are they doing here, anyway?”

“Your mother is Sirius and Regulus’s cousin, isn’t she? Maybe she wanted to support them.”

“Not Sirius,” he murmurs. He’d never thought her and Regulus were that close, but then again the boy died long before Draco was born.

The crowd erupts and it has Draco flinching violently for his wand.

“Oh my god,” Granger breathes.

“What?” He almost growls the word.

“It’s not a record loss.”

He sees it then, Regulus with the golden snitch in hand. Registers the words. 150 point to Slytherin. Slytherin wins!

Huh.

They wait as the teams leave and Regulus is the last on the pitch. He lingers there for a fair while, still as a statue, before striding off. Draco and Granger follow him to the changing rooms.

Only, he enters the Gryffindor side.

Draco hesitates outside the door. They’re silent, neither one about to ask the obvious question, what do we do now?

“Well, go on in after him,” Granger says.

“He’s in the Gryffindor rooms. You go in!”

“He’ll be in the boys side! Changing!”

“He’s more likely not. Or, I suppose, not putting any clothes back on.”

“Malfoy, that is highly inappropriate—” Draco tunes out as Granger mutters a fierce telling off. How do Potter and Weasley not tell her off right back?

His lip curls. He’s about to do just that when the door is yanked open and a very angry Regulus stomps out. Draco blinks at him. He looks exactly the same and entirely different. The rage isn’t stale, crazed. His hair is sweat-dampened instead of drowned and his skin is vibrant with the blood of his irritation rather than the silvery trails ever-leaking from lacerations. And, well, he’s not see-through. This Regulus is startlingly alive.

“The fuck you looking at?”

He’s also rude.

“Regulus,” Granger breathes.

“Yeah? And you are?” When neither of them answer, he rolls his eyes. “Don’t tell me. You’re pissed that I snatched Gryffindor’s win with my frankly fantastic flying, or—” he eyes Draco’s Slytherin robes “—you’re fans? That one I’ll accept. I’ll even sign your tits if I you ask extra nicely.” He winks at Granger.

Draco wants to smile at the indignation on Granger’s face. “Oh, you little—”

“We’re neither,” Draco cuts in coldly, grabbing Granger’s arm because he has the distinct feeling she’s about to punch Regulus for that comment, and he knows how hard the girl punches.

“What do you want then? Potter will be out in a minute if he’s the one you’re waiting for.”

“You were in there with Potter?” He grins when Regulus’s face falls in shock, a light blush tainting his cheeks. “Interesting.”

Regulus snarls. “The bludger almost tore his arm off. Not that it was my fault, but it was sportsmanly to make sure he was alright.”

“Of course,” Draco says, calmly, restraining his smile. You wanted what your brother had, huh.

“We’re not here for James. We need to speak to you,” Granger says and politely removes Draco’s hand from her arm.

“You already are speaking to me,” Regulus drawls.

“Not… here.”

“Why not?”

“You might not want Potter hearing this,” Draco says, and to save time, he pulls up his sleeve to show the boy the Dark Mark branded on his forearm. Regulus’s eyes widen. Draco grabs him and shoves him into the Slytherin’s changing rooms.

“You’re…”

“Yep. We need your help.”

“Me? Did He send you?” Draco doesn’t like the way Regulus’s eyes light up. His ghost had told them they’d get to him before he took the Mark but Draco hadn’t considered that the boy would be wanting it. He glances to Granger, who seems to be thinking the same thing if her worried expression is anything to go by. This is going to be harder than they thought. Unless…

“He needs information in the Black library. We need you to let us in.”

Regulus frowns. “Why not go to my parents like he has before?”

“He’s being… watched,” Granger says, entirely unconvincingly. Draco sighs internally. Couldn’t she have just stayed quiet? Who’s the actual Death Eater here?

“Bullshit. Who are you really?” Regulus points to Draco’s arm. “Is that even real?”

“Is it even real?” Draco repeats. “Of course it’s real!”

Regulus just huffs a laugh. “Sure.”

Draco shoves him against the wall. “If you don’t believe me, then be my guest and try to get it off.”

“Malfoy—” Granger grabs his arm to pull him off.

“Malfoy?!” Regulus says.

“Well, you’ve gone and done it now,” Draco growls. “You’re shit at this, you know that, Granger.”

She has the courtesy to wince.

“Lucius doesn’t have a brother.”

“I’m not his brother. I’m his son.”

“What the actual fuck are you two on?”

Granger stuffs a hand into Draco’s pocket, startling him into letting Regulus go. The boy just stays where he is, face a mixture of disbelief, amusement, and worry. Draco swats at her arm but she pulls free the Time-Turner and holds it up for Regulus to see.

“You sent us back. You can’t… get into the Black library in our time. No one can. So we illegally altered a Time-Turner to find you now and get you to help us.”

“Riiight,” Regulus laughs, relaxing back into that wall and glancing down at the floor where he scuffs his shoe against the stone.

“You sewed Kreature a suit by hand and offered it to him, his freedom from service to the Black family along with it, but he refused. He stayed.”

Regulus’s head snaps up.

Chapter Text

The irritation was thick in his veins, leaking from his tongue as he asked the unfamiliar pair, the fuck you looking at?

It’s all but forgotten now as their words ring through his head. Our time. You sewed Kreature a suit by hand. He stayed. Regulus has never told anyone that before.

“Are you a legiliemns?” He asks the girl. Granger. His voice has gone low and dangerous, foreign even to his own ears. But if she’s read his mind, seen the one weakness of his heart, then she could have seen his thoughts of desertion, of betrayal, of Potter… They may only be thoughts, not anything he would back up with action or emotion, but even passing, flitting thoughts are enough to damn him. It’s everything he’s ever feared, those secrets getting out. Even in his worse nightmares he’s never encountered the feeling pouring through his veins right now.

“No,” she says.

He looks at the Time-Turner in her hand. It looks odd, he’ll give them that. A smaller, opalescent hourglass encased in one larger than he’s ever seen and filled with enough sand to send them back years, he supposes.

He can’t trust her word of course, or the boy’s, though he does have all the makings of a Malfoy and looks too similar to Lucius for Regulus’s liking. But how else to determine if she’s being honest? Regulus looks between the pair and sighs, putting on his best “I believe you” face, tentative and cautious, all the while thinking downright filthy things about the two in front of him. Truly vulgar salacious thoughts. But either their acting skills are impressive (possible), his imagination is lacking (doubtful), or they’re telling the truth (un-fucking-likely) because their expressions do not waver. Unlikely and yet… well, it’s just the type of brilliantly awful plan he’d come up with.

“Say I believe you. Why can’t anyone get into the Black library?” Regulus asks. Granger looks with guarded eyes to the blonde boy. Malfoy. Regulus wants to scoff at the thought.

Malfoy watches Regulus a moment longer before meeting Granger’s gaze, a silent conversation passing between the two.

“Don’t say some bullshit like ‘we can’t tell you because it might change things’ or whatever time-travellers in those science…ey movies say.”

“Someone tried to get into it who doesn’t have Black blood,” Granger says.

Regulus laughs. “That must have been fun to clean up.”

She looks aghast. “No. They tried to unwork the spell on the door and it’s been faulty since. It’s not letting anyone in and keeps triggering the trespasser curses.”

“They tried to unwork it? Well now I believe you even less.” The spells against doing that are even worse. It would take talent beyond anything Regulus has seen to manage it.

“Do you not think someone could be capable enough to attempt it?”

“More like not dumb enough to try.”

“You sure about that?” Malfoy asks and… okay, there are plenty of dumb enough people to try it but dumb enough to try and intelligent enough to succeed to the point of messing with the spell? That overlap is practically nonexistent. Surely.

This is just ridiculous.

“Okay, fine. Why are you coming to me?” God he hates the self-hate dripping off that word, but he can’t help it. Why him? Least-favourite son. Soft-hearted, scrawny, sensitive—

“Well, you sent us.” Malfoy mumbles, half-turning away and roughly dragging his shirt sleeve over the Dark Mark. Regulus watches the action; relaxes slightly with it out of sight. 

“And I somehow thought my seventeen-year-old self was the best bet? Not, say, my parents or cousins or, fuck, even Sirius?” He answers that last one himself: Sirius would have let them in simply for asking but that lack of loyalty might very well revoke his access.  

“Yes,” Granger says, a full sentence that brokers no arguments but explains nothing.

Regulus desperately wants to roll his eyes but he looks at Malfoy’s arm where the inked skin is hidden beneath his robes. “You’ve given me nothing and you’re lying about something. Likely a lot.”

Granger follows his gaze. “Well, Voldemort didn’t send us.”

A muscle in Malfoy’s jaw jumps. Regulus focuses on that rather than the relief seeping through his bones and the adrenaline ebbing away, leaving him slightly light headed. Be my guest and try to get it off. Malfoy doesn’t want it. It would be hard as Lucius’s son to say no, Regulus supposes. But really? The future?

“What do you want in the library? It must be dark if you don’t have information on it in the Malfoy collection.”

The boy shrugs one-shouldered. “It might be in there, but I can’t look.”

“What, has it been tampered with too?” Regulus says it with such sarcasm that Malfoy just looks at him. It’s a hard look, not a glare, just… hard.

So it’s something against Voldemort then. No wonder they can’t get in the Black library, or the Malfoy’s. That doesn’t particularly make Regulus want to help. Although, according to them, he already is and he can’t get into his own family collection.

“I… am fighting Voldemort?”

They share a look.

“It’s for James.” Malfoy says.

The words hit Regulus like a blow to the temple. Disorienting. Head-spinning. He can’t understand it. James?

“Potter?” Regulus splutters. “But he— why would I—” He pushes off the wall, past the strange pair because it doesn’t make sense and the intensity of his confusion, this heart-racing, blood-pounding feeling will be showing on his face and it’s instinct to hide it. He puts his back to them and shoves the emotion away roughly. His thoughts about Potter are new and alarming, just intrusive images and impulses he can’t seem to shake, definitely nothing that would lead him to a scheme like this. James is Sirius’s friend. They’re nothing more than Quidditch rivals and Regulus doesn’t want to be anything else. His thoughts race through questions and answers and more questions.

“Why do I care about Potter?”

Malfoy laughs. “Beats me, honestly.”

Regulus turns around. “Then what’s in it for you?”

“His son is our friend, it’s for him too. A curse.” Granger says.

“His… son.” So Regulus doesn’t— they’re not— Merlin’s beard he can’t even think it; it’s so ridiculous he cringes at even the suggestion of the thought. “He’s cursed? And for some reason I can’t get into the library?”

Granger’s mouth drops open immediately but Malfoy gets there first. “Yes.” He lays a hand on her arm and she rocks back on her feet, the energy of her indignant words deflating.

“And I want to help?” Regulus wouldn’t have told them that tidbit about Kreature otherwise.

“You’re the only one who can,” Granger says.

“You going to tell me why that’s the case?”

She just chews her bottom lip. Regulus looks to Malfoy but he’s stony and won’t budge.

Regulus shrugs. “I’ll think about it.”

“Think—”

Malfoy grabs her more forcefully this time and says with no small amount of exasperation. “We’ve got time, Granger.” 

She whirls on him. “Do we?”

He blinks. “It’s not going to do anything to him.”

“No, but you know things are changing. We might need every second we can get.”

He lets out a soft breath, voice softening with it. “We can give him a day.”

She sighs too. “Fine.”

“Great!” Regulus says and yanks his bag from his locker. Luckily, he arrived in his Quidditch gear so everything is all neatly packed away and he can haul arse out of here. “See you tomorrow then.” Mercifully, the strange pair let him go. 

A shiver runs down his spine in the cold emptiness of the hallway and his mind reels, already working over all they said.

Potter chooses that moment to also walk out of the changing rooms and Regulus has all of half a second to process this fact and his swooping stomach before the other boy looks up and sees him.

“Oh, Black. You’re still here.”

“Uh, yeah.” Regulus halts. His face feels warm. Merlin’s beard, is he blushing? It’s the fault of that Granger and supposed Malfoy, putting ideas in his head when they said James. It’s for James. But only partly, it’s his son, and yet Malfoy thought that was the thread to pull to convince Regulus.

James pauses too; half smiles, half frowns. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, fine.”

The smile goes full wattage. “Alright.” James chuckles and continues walking, though he does so backwards to keep talking. “Try and whip your team into shape in training, yeah? Today was almost too easy.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, golden boy. We won.”

“Just. Ravenclaw’s seeker is almost as good as you. With you being your whole team, you don’t stand a chance against them. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up at the bottom of the leaderboard this year!” He winks and Regulus forgets what his comeback was going to be, leaving his mouth hanging open. James laughs again and spins around, slinging his bag over his shoulder and walking away.

Regulus knows then what he’s going to do. He turns around and shoulders back through the door into the changing rooms. The pair halt mid conversation and look at him.

Regulus sighs. “I’ll help.”

Of course he will.

He lets the door fall shut and leaves.

Chapter Text

Hermione almost collapses when Regulus leaves, catching herself and sagging onto the hard wooden bench instead of the floor. I’ll do it. Thank god.

“Regulus made it sound like it would be easy to convince him to help us,” she says.

Malfoy runs his hand through his hair, messing up its carefully styled strands.

“It was an… oversight on our side not to have thought about our story,” he says. The way he stumbles over the word oversight draws a slightly manic giggle from Hermione.

“We were so focused on getting here, we didn’t think beyond it. That’s the muggle education and galleons for you. We’re only so smart, I suppose.” She sobers at that.

Malfoy glances over at her. “We did make a Time-Turner take us back nearly twenty years. That’s pretty fucking smart.”

She shrugs. “It’s only so helpful. We almost fumbled getting him to agree and he doesn’t trust us.”

“It’s still something to be proud of.”

Hermione shuts her eyes. It shook her more than she’s let anything shake her for years. It’s not that she didn’t know what to do next — she’s had plenty of experience adapting to rapidly altering situations thanks to Harry — but this was like studying for an exam and sitting down to see it’s all in a language she should know but… doesn’t. It’s people. No, not people, though her troubles of making friends in first year wasn’t, well, a first for her. It’s witches and wizards. Purebloods. A whole language she realised that first trip on the Hogwarts express that she didn’t know.

Hermione had overheard two girls her age talking about classes and, beyond excited, she’d briefly abandoned her search for Neville’s toad to jump into the conversation. She’d known already that she was starting at a disadvantage, that witches born from muggles was rare and most of her classmates would have grown up in the wizarding world, but she’d read as much as she could before stepping onto that train. Spent every available second learning spells and history and woke up more mornings than not with a book still open in her hands. She’d read so much that she figured what could go wrong?

It had been okay at first, the girls (who she later learnt were Astoria Greengrass and Pansy Parkinson) had been receptive to her Hampstead accent and ability to keep up with them on spells and magic — then she let slip that her parents were dentists.

Then they realised that she was muggleborn.

They weren’t even horrible about it. But it taught her all the same: her place in this world was not assured.

She’d meant what she said to Malfoy. Things are changing. More and more, that place is at risk. More and more, wizards are trying to deny it to her.

She has to find a way to stop Voldemort.

She will not let the best friend she has in her small allotment of space amongst wizarding kind be taken from her.

Malfoy sits next to her, leaning his forearms on his knees. “Trust is built. Look at us.”

She does, looking askance at the pale pureblood who, if he bothered to look at her at all, had mostly looked at her with derision. Spoken to her with malice. “You’re assuming I trust you.” You filthy little mudblood. He’d been her greatest threat for a while.

His eyes flicker, an emotion flitting through them so quickly that she can’t catch it, but then he smirks in challenge. “Don’t you?”

She can’t help the small smile that fights to find steady ground against the fear and harsh memories that casts her adrift. “Alright. I do.”

The smirk falls from his face. “When did it happen?”

“When did I begin to trust you?”

He nods.

“I’m not entirely sure. I guess I trusted you just enough from the beginning.”

He’s silent for a long moment. Still, other than the rise and fall of his breathing. “So Regulus trusts us just enough.”

Just enough.

It was stark honesty and dedication to a cause that only went against Voldemort that had her trusting Malfoy more and more. Is that what they should show to Regulus too? He seems to be on the border between the desire to join and the desperation to desert the Dark Lord.

“How did you know James was the pressure point?” Hermione asks Malfoy.

“Oh, he clearly has a thing for Potter.”

“Clearly is a strong word.”

“You might not see it, but I do.”

“Do you think James is what makes him change his allegiance then?”

“It’s not his brother.”

She hadn’t know they’d had a bad relationship; Sirius in her time hadn’t ever spoken of Regulus. “God. No wonder he asked us not to tell him they die.”

“He might have done everything to save them.”

“Maybe he should.”

Malfoy looks at her with a deep frown. “That would change things.”

Hermione knows that — doesn’t really know what she’s saying, just that Regulus needs to trust them entirely.

And she’d want to know.

“Maybe it’s always what made him change in the first place.”

Chapter Text

Granger trusts him.

The freely-offered, tentatively-won feeling flutters in his chest like a bird and Draco wants to cradle it in his hands and observe every unbelievable wing. One canary pearl-white and the other coal-black caged on the seventh floor. Another thing Draco has filed away for… later. Would they trust him to their uncertain fate? The hands of a Death Eater are not kind.

Draco’s arm itches and he wants to press his fingers into his tight chest and blurt out the words to Granger that would erase that just enough. He presses his lips into a line against the desire, wishing it were a steel wall rather than soft flesh. He can’t tell her.

There had been no question in Draco’s mind of whether he trusted Granger. She is so easy to read, all Gryffindor heroism and compassion and just enough rule-breaking tendencies to join him on this journey. Draco is the untrustworthy one. The Slytherin.

Granger shouldn’t trust him and yet this whole hare-brained scheme rides on it.

It would be so easy to spill the words on his tongue, they’re just there, lingering on the knife’s edge — would they draw blood or would the blade’s weight be removed entirely? Would they crush the trilling pearl canary or would the two continue to coexist, caged as they are?

He presses his lips together tighter. 

She walks by his side, through the halls of a Hogwarts near twenty years before their own, aiming for the familiar safety of the Restricted Section to while away their last empty hours, in an impenetrable silence of her own.

Draco doesn’t know now whether to feel invisible or exposed. No one bats an eye at them (well, no more than they do for the fact that they’re rival houses walking side by side) until he sees the white-haired Slytherin from the common room. He leans against a railing, eyes trailing their paths with such a blank neutrality and a face so disconcertingly beautiful that it is limned with danger. That is a feeling Draco knows how to discern.

Exposed, then. Invisibility was a naive hope.

Draco drags his gaze from the boy. “I think we ought to create a story around our presence here.”

“Why?” Granger asks.

“Some of Voldemorts most devout followers come from these halls in this time.”

She looks out around them. “For any story to be infallible, we’d have to stay here 24/7. We can’t do that.”

“Not without altering the Time-Turner again.”

“You want to do that?”

Merlin curse him, but he does. He wishes he could disappear into 1977 and leave the problem of his assassination to a distant future. 

Draco shakes his head. “Too much work. We might find something useful in our little corner of the library.”

The doors greet them and they slip silently inside. Draco pulls the book he had in mind from the dust-blanketed shelf. Espionage Spells of The Great Wars. Motes bloom in his wake and Granger waves them from her face.

“I know a few disillusionment spells but they would be irritating to keep up,” she says, taking the book and trailing a finger down the contents page.

“I’m thinking more along the lines of the Confundus Charm.”

“Hm. Like the Turn-Away Field I set up here.”

“But for us. So no one questions who we are or where we came from.”

She checks the timer on her wand. 2h 19m. “Let’s get reading.”

Draco dives into Espionage Spells of The Great Wars whilst Granger searches the shelves for similar tomes, but it turns out she needn’t bothered finding the three others — with 0h 34m left, Draco finds exactly what they’re looking for.

He flips the book around. Granger snatches it from his hands, eyes darting with shocking speed over the ink.

“We’ll have to cast it every time we come here. And we would have to de-cast it with Regulus. But it’s perfect,” she says.

“Looks easy too.”

She nods. “Really easy.”

There’s that arrogance. Draco smirks, and he wants to make some sort of dig about it but he finds he can’t. Too giddy with hope and the possibility of this impossible prospect pulling through, he supposes. Or maybe the anonymity he craves.

He has to shut his eyes for a moment with the sheer intensity of that want.

To be in another time, unknown and unknowable.

Free.

Chapter Text

1996

For five hours, Regulus is back in that cave, caught in strands of seaweed. Only now, he is not drifting in the stillness of the lake, lost in the waters of unawareness and not knowing he is dead. Now, he is in air he cannot feel, in a silence he can only break to his own ears, all too aware that the lacerations ever-dripping, ever-aching, hold him in a different kind of limbo. Not alive but unable to be truly claimed by Death. Where is He? Regulus did not have the power of the elder wand, could not come back with the resurrection stone, and yet he feels oddly like the cloak sits on his shoulders, laid there by broom-calloused hands he doesn’t want to think about. He’s not at all surprised that he managed to slip Death’s final grasp to linger a little longer; he always was a little fucking weasel, feeling far too much and far too willing to go to extremes. It’s a compulsion, this need. Rotted, refusing decomposition; a consuming anger. He always thought it burnt him but it was a watery grave that ended him in truth and it’s oddly fitting. Water, the ruler of emotion. It was bound to bubble up his throat and drown him one day.

Those hands.

For five hours, Regulus waits.

1977

Regulus turns over the interaction with the strange pair all the way back to the common room, decidedly avoiding thoughts of James Potter and why the fuck Malfoy mentioned him with such a smug smirk. He agreed to help them — too hastily, he’s realising now — but how is he actually going to do that? The tiredness post-game is not helping him corral his mind into obedience. It zips from fighting Voldemort (fighting Voldemort) to James against his chest to how one could alter a Time-Turner to deal with years instead of hours.

Regulus shoves it all roughly aside as the snake slithers along the wall and he opens the door to raucous cheers. The party is already in swing.

“There’s the weasel!” Barty Crouch Jr. yells and claps him on the shoulder with too-bright eyes, someone else’s Slytherin tie knotted through his messy dark hair. “I could kiss you!”

“Yeah, yeah, get off me, you sleaze,” Regulus says, quickly pushing Barty’s chest to create much needed distance. The Ravenclaw just skirts around him and grabs his waist to shove him towards their circle of friends in the crowd of hazy green light and upper-years. Someone has scrounged up a record player and some band Sirius probably loves plays loudly. Evan’s gaze is harsh on Regulus, with that odd look he sometimes gets, head tilted to the side, a drawing of the creatures in the lake behind him half forgotten on his lap. He says something as they approach, but Regulus doesn’t catch it.

“What?” Regulus calls. Evan leans in close, odd look gone. “Your cousin stayed for a while. Wanted to talk to you. Left a letter when you didn’t turn up.” That look again. His eyes go distant briefly, hidden beneath pale curls. “Where were you?”

Regulus’s stomach instantly drops. He berates himself for his flash of unwelcome anxiety; Evan is only half here for this conversation. He’s no risk. “Enjoying the peace and quiet,” Regulus murmurs.

“Oh please, you love the attention,” Dorcas Meadows says, stretched out on the opposite sofa and boldly wearing the red and gold face paint against her dark skin.

“Fuck off back to Gryffindor, Dorcas.”

She laughs. “And be with that sorry lot? After you literally snatched our win right out of Potter’s hands?”

“No house pride, Meadows?” Barty smirks, dropping upside down over the back of the sofa next to Evan. Regulus leans up against the side of an empty arm chair, desperately wanting to slink away to his dorm.

“Coming from you?”

“Ravenclaw is just a bunch of swots in one room. Slytherin after winning a match we’d all bet they were gonna — sorry Reg — lose is way more fun.”

Dorcas groans. “God, way more fun.”

“Leeches,” Regulus says, but grins.

Pandora swoops in with a wide smile, white hair halo-like from the wind up in the stands. “The was some nifty flying, Reg! I never bet against you.” She taps him on the forehead with a tarot card and narrowed eyes and tucks herself in next to Dorcas, sharing a different kind of odd look with her twin, Evan. It kills the thank you on his tongue. Did Narcissa say something to them? What did Narcissa want to say to him? Suddenly the urge to go to his dorm is different and really he doesn’t want to go at all. After the — interaction? Conversation? Regulus isn’t even sure what to call it in his own head — with Granger and Malfoy, Regulus doesn’t want to read his cousin’s update on the war. He knew where he stood on it, on what side and why, but now that footing is unstable, the ground beneath his feet crumbling. Regulus, the new heir to the most noble and ancient House of Black, against the man his parents have showed nothing but support for since his appearance seven years prior? He’d be a disgrace to his name, just as bad as Sirius. And yet the impulse to read Narcissa’s curt appraisal (truth that she gets from Lucius given her husband’s position) and compare it to the Daily Prophet is engrained after years of it and he can’t stifle the urge.

So Regulus rolls out his shoulders. “I’m going to get cleaned up. Excuse me,” he says.

“Don’t take too long, this party is for you!” Barty calls. The twins blink at him, but then Dorcas is pulling Pan to where Regulus’s teammates are dancing and Evan laughs as Barty falls in his attempt to follow and the music muffles as Regulus exits the common room to hunt down that letter.

 In his dorm — empty, thankfully — he chucks his bag onto his neatly made bed and pulls a silver letter opener in the shape of a bird from his bedside drawer to slide it beneath the Malfoy’s elegant stationary and reveal his cousins words.

Three half-blood were tortured and killed this week after He tried to recruit them and I think maybe a pureblood too. Lucius said he misspoke, so I can’t be certain. No one I know is missing, so they can’t have been anyone of note if it was true.

Regulus’s gorge rises. Instantly, he’s ashamed of it. Narcissa has been telling him of the war since she graduated years ago and he’s long since stopped feeling that weak sickness at the Death Eater’s actions, so why this, now? They’re not the first half-bloods Voldemort has killed… aren’t they? They’ve gone missing plenty, been hurt too, and Regulus's parents have talked of blood-traitors since before the war began. Surely he’s heard of one of them being killed before.

Only, Regulus can’t remember.

He carefully folds the letter back into its envelope, in denial of his slightly trembling hands and the saliva pooling in his mouth. Tortured and killed. That’s nothing new. He breathes in and out deeply. Nothing new. They probably deserved it. No, wait, he was recruiting them. Well, they— then…

Regulus slams his bedside drawer shut and stabs the letter opener into the wooden top.

Suddenly his mind is full of James. Merlin’s beard why are his thoughts so eager to turn to that arrogant prick? That Malfoy was spouting shit and Regulus vows to get more from the blond imposter tomorrow, but still, all he feels is the wind through his hair and the heat of Potter’s back and thighs on the broom. They’d never been so close before. Never touched. And Regulus’s hand, clinging to the wooden shaft when he could have brought it up to James’s chest, abdomen—

Regulus changes quickly, freshening up like he said he would, and joins his friends to snatch Barty’s firewhisky and take big, burning gulps, trading one sick flame for another.

Chapter Text

Time spins in dizzying magic that takes Hermione’s breath away as all the extra sand conjured into the Time-Turner gets released and they speed back to 1996. Even after five years of pouring herself into every crevice of magic possible, she’ll never get over the wonder that fills her. Arguably, watching nearly twenty years pass in a dusty, forgotten corner of a library isn’t actually all that exciting, but to feel it rush over her skin and through her veins, to see the endless sand glimmer and the doubled hourglass spin and the trapped stars shine… her blood sings. She almost laments the loss when Malfoy gently flicks the chain from around her neck and steps back.

Regulus jerks to silent attention. Familiar in his phantom state but Hermione can’t help but feel a little shocked after seeing him so alive mere hours ago.

“How did it go?”

Malfoy tilts his head to the side. “You don’t remember?”

Regulus shakes his head.

“So nothing has changed. That’s good.”

“You agreed to help us,” Hermione says. Regulus looks to her and nods his head a little distantly.

“The story about Kreature worked,” Malfoy says. Hermione cuts her gaze back to him but he just tucks away the Time-Turner and then transfigures his robes back to normal.

She opens her mouth but… she almost bungled things earlier. And what to say? That it was a near thing? Why isn’t Malfoy saying anything else? This Regulus is entirely on their side.

“Did you want to join the Death Eaters?” She asks.

Regulus’s expression darkens. “It was complicated. Not really, but also, yes. A lot of that time is murky to me now.”

Is that their fault, the casualty of Obliviate, or his half-death state? Hermione settles into a chair. Malfoy eyes her a moment and then leans against the stacks, hands curled around the shelf behind him.

“What changed your mind?”

Regulus curls into a crouch on the floor. “The war started slowly, in 1970. I never liked what the Death Eaters did but still I thought it was expected of me as heir when Sirius left.” He frowns, as though the memories are slipping like water through his fingers. “I thought joining would prove myself as worthy of being the Head of the House of Black. But Voldemort’s ideologies weren’t born from any kind of rightness. They were his fears and inadequacies and he couldn’t face them so he sought to force the wizarding world into his image.”

Malfoy blows out a long breath of air that Hermione can’t read.

“What was he so scared of?” Hermione ask.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Malfoy spits, bitter and almost cruel and it reminds her that their tentative trust is the only thing holding him back from being hateful. Hermione’s cheeks burn. “Death.”

She supposes that is obvious, but to go to such lengths as to split his soul to avoid it?

“There’s more to it than just that,” she bites right back.

“Not everyone needs to be understood, Granger.”

“I wasn’t—” silly of her to have forgotten his usual disposition. “Understanding him may be the key to defeating him, how about that?”

He clenches his jaw shut. As he should.

“He acted as though Death were beneath him. But I don’t know why.”

Are you afraid? Hermione chews her lip. Just one conversation with Regulus when he was alive was enough to put them in stark contrast to each other and she finds herself curious about the living boy and the ghost that looks so much sadder now. That might be Death’s influence and nothing more. She hopes so.

“Are any of your friends a threat?” Malfoy asks.

Regulus tilts his head and turns over the words. “Barty Crouch Jr., Evan,” he sighs. “Evan Rosier. They both became Death Eaters but neither should be a threat.”

“Are… you a threat?”

Regulus’s answering laugh is hollow. “No.” The two boys, Death Eater’s both, share a hard look. Something passes between them and Malfoy nods.

“Well. I’m starving. We’ve missed dinner by now, I recon, so, Granger, kitchens?”

She blinks at him, shocked by the return of his odd, jovial attitude and the suggestion. For all the looks they’d gotten together in 1977, no one had known them then. They’d cause as riot caught walking side by side in their own time.

“Together?” She asks.

Her same conclusion dawns on him with a shudder. “Right. Well, then, purebloods first.” He smirks.

“There’s the Death Eater in you,” she mutters.

He trips a step and looks at her with utter shock for a heartbeat, then chortles. “You cut to the bone, Granger.”

“Don’t be late tomorrow.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Malfoy sweeps out of the library.

“You’re going back tomorrow?” Regulus asks.

She nods. “You asked for a day before agreeing, at first. You didn’t exactly believe us.” She gives him a short version of events. “It seemed prudent to still go tomorrow.”

He laughs harshly, the sound skittering over her skin and raising goosebumps with its ethereal edge.

“So the cat’s out the bag on Potter, huh.”

“The feeling might not be quite the same, but I know what it’s like to love a Potter. You doing what you did for James is little different to me doing it for Harry.”

Regulus’s ghostly stare — those eyes that are still grey no matter the state of life he exists within in — meet hers with such a weight she feels breathless.

“Sorry. I should have talked it through with you so that didn’t happen, but you handled it well.”

“It was mostly Malfoy. I’m not… very good with people.”

“I wouldn’t have said that. I liked you immediately and far more than Draco.”

“That’s not a particularly high bar.”

He laughs. “Perhaps not, but the sentiment still stands. You’re nicer than most.”

A softer blush rises in her cheeks and Regulus’s smile turns equally so. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now go eat. I remember what it was like to miss dinner. It was horrible.”

Her stomach is grumbling something awful and she shouldn’t bump into Malfoy now, so she does as he says and rises from her seat.

At the end of their little corner of the Restricted Section, she glances back at the half-dead phantom boy. “If you ever get bored of the books or Malfoy or just… lonely, you’re welcome to find me. I, well I mostly just do homework, but I’d be happy with the company.”

“I’ll take you up on that.”

 She nods and leaves. The halls are quiet at this hour, but still a few people wander past her, and her stomach swoops as she asks for food from the house elves in the kitchens, but they give her a plate with only one or two grumbles of recognition (mostly, they’re very kind and smile at her from their stations). She hesitates as the door closes behind her. Where to eat it? She finds herself a little bench and sits, alone with her thoughts. It’s… nice. She understands why Malfoy does it sometimes.

Offering the plate back with thanks (and less grumbles when the elves see there’s no knitted items hidden anywhere), she finds her thoughts oddly settled. Only one lingers, slightly anxiety inducing but mostly comforting and brought on by what she last said to Regulus.

Homework.

Crookshanks sits at the top of the stairs towards Gryffindor tower, swishing his ginger tail in clear annoyance when Hermione climbs towards the portrait hole.

“Oh what?” She says. He hasn’t been particularly happy with her spending hours upon hours in the inaccessible Restricted Section and it seems the feeling’s only gotten worse with her brief disappearance to the past. She knows that he knows, but how on Earth he knows… it’s beyond her and all the reading she’s done into magical cats. (She eventually had to give up and determine that Crookshanks simply has a sixth sense for these things — even if she is still of the firm belief that anything close to divination is determinedly woolly).

Hopefully he doesn’t know that she’s been spending all that time with Draco Malfoy. The telling off she’d get for that. (Crookshanks has heard all of her vitriol on him, after all).

He yowls.

Hermione sighs and lifts him into her arms before saying “Diligrout,” and walking into the common room, all the while scratching him behind the ear until his yowls turn into discontented grumbles. 

The common room is quiet, emitting a low murmuration of sound from the scattering of people working or reading or otherwise smiling with friends. Harry sits on the floor before the fireplace, staring into the flames morosely, his back to the sofa and the half-blood prince’s potion book in his hands, as it always is these days. With all the time she’s been spending getting back to 1977, Hermione has been falling embarrassingly behind her best friend in Slughorn’s class. Still far beyond any else (bar Malfoy, she thinks with irritation), but that doesn’t mean she should let her standards slip. She’ll do potions tonight. Ron is sprawled on the sofa, the Quidditch section of the Daily Prophet on his chest, talking over to Seamus about said Quidditch.

Harry glances over when Crookshanks makes a particularly loud, contented meow, and smiles before his eyes catch behind her. On Ginny and Dean. He drags his gaze back to the flames, chest rising and falling a little more rapidly.

“I was wondering where you were,” he says as Hermione settles herself and Crookshanks next to Harry on the floor. “Almost looked on the map.”

She freezes, hand stilling on soft ginger fur. The map. Merlin’s beard, how could she forget about that? With Harry’s crusade against Draco? The hours they’ve spent together. The night. Christ.

Hermione glances at her friend and he looks at her. A little too knowingly.

“Harry—”

“Just tell me it’s not Malfoy.”

“You should really hear him out on the horcruxes, Harry. Talk to Dumbl—”

“It is Malfoy?”

Hermione’s face heats and Ron cuts off mid sentence as Harry’s voice gets a little too loud, pivoting towards them.

“If you want to nose into something I’m clearly keeping private, then do look at that map,” she bites.

“You’re not hanging out with Malfoy, are you, Hermione?” Ron asks, jaw inches from the floor.

She scoffs. Pointedly ignores the slithering of guilt winding through her. “Really. Malfoy.” 

Ron opens his mouth again, likely to tell her everything she already knows about Malfoy and half of it being wrong anyway, so she snatches Advanced Potion Making from Harry and begins reading.

Sectumsempera. ‘Always cut.’ What an awful sounding spell.

The notes are written in an elegant scrawl, though they’re messy. All over the pages with ink blots and runes and wand movements and many crossings out. It unsettles Hermione. In the six years she has been learning how to navigate the wizarding world, the idea that the textbook she should be able to follow religiously and produce perfect potions could be so wrong, and that Harry, under the guidance of a wizard who calls himself a prince and notes down a laceration spell likely strong enough to kill — as a student! — can outpace her so. Is it purposeful, so they cannot create potions such as the drought of living death? Or could it simply be… wrong, or at least inefficient, and the rules laid out to her are far less rigid than she believes? She slams the book shut and thrusts it towards Harry like it’s a nasty bug. It cannot be the latter.

And yet in the book’s absence, she itches for it, and she hates it.

“How is it going, this ‘getting to know Slughorn’?” She asks.

Harry frowns. “Well. Me doing good in his class is about as much as I need to do, really. But Dumbledore still hasn’t told me what it’s all about. After—” he swallows whatever words he was about to say. “It’s making me nervous.”

“It has to do with You Know Who,” she says it like a statement, not a question. Harry nods.

The guilt fades and Hermione knows what she must do.

“I’m going to get my potions work, then we can work on the Polyjuice inches together,” she says, apologising to a sleeping Crookshanks (who yowls once again) as she gets up.

“We’ll smash that one,” Ron says, grinning.

“What do you mean?” Seamus asks. Ron goes bright red and blusters out a lie. Hermione can’t help but smile.

She climbs the stairs and lingers for a heartbeat outside Harry and Ron’s dorm door. Only a heartbeat. Then she enters silently, finds the Marauders Map amongst the mess (she rolls her eyes at this), and considers it. It’s complex magic that she hasn’t spent any time attempting to unravel — to which she’s always admired Sirius and Remus for — so she can only guess at what countermeasures are in place against tampering. Altering it to change her location whenever she’s with Malfoy is out of the question, but an alert spell, when Harry is about to use it… simple, but hopefully enough.

She casts it quickly and escapes her friends’ dorm. Collecting her potions work, she heads back downstairs and tells herself over and over that she’s doing the right thing keeping all this hidden from Harry. He would get in their way; risk her not discovering how to destroy the Horcrux living inside him.

But as she settles back in front of the fire, calling Crookshanks over with one of the treats littering the bottom of her bag and laying out her work neatly before her, that doesn’t feel like the whole truth.

Chapter Text

Slytherin cheers for Regulus and his grin cuts his cheeks as he bows and stumbles. His teammates’ faces blur together, resentful, jealous, begrudgingly happy and it only makes Regulus’s smile harsher. He laughs at their poor show of camaraderie. Pathetic, the lot of them. A mermaid watches the adolescents through the towering glass, lit by their green tinted lights that hold that same lake-dark gleam even when the sun abandons the day. It’s a cold, reptilian light, fitting for the dungeon and waters beyond, but, really, could they not have chosen something else? Something warm instead of this morbid aesthetic — just in the lights. The green makes Regulus look sickly. The silver emphasises his light pallor. Like the mermaid beyond the glass: drowned at home.

Evan sits on the floor, watching it. The green doesn’t suit him either; not the best bits of him anyway. Regulus supposes, as he leaves his so supportive team behind, the unsettling side of the boy that dissects creatures and studies mermaids is suited to Slytherin. Pandora, Regulus is sure, only shares their house because Evan was sorted here first and she didn’t wish to be separated from her twin. Almost like Regulus, who wasn’t even a question when the hat landed on his head. Slytherin, like all his family before him (not all of them). She should have been in Ravenclaw with Barty. Would Regulus have been placed in another house had he not been a Black? Could he have been a Gryffindor like Sirius? Merlin’s beard, no. Regulus isn’t brave enough for that. Too soft.

He plops down next to Evan, leaning his back against the cool glass, feeling the condensation of the warm room against his top.

“I hear the water around you now,” Evan says, gaze distant and head tilted.

“What?” Regulus says.

“The water. Like you’re submerged and the tide is in your ears. It muffles everything else.”

“You’ve never told me what you heard around me before.” Regulus watches as Dorcas stops dancing and yells at Barty for something. Pandora is by their side, looking on the verge of tears.

“You used to be quiet. Now the water roars.”

But Regulus isn’t paying attention to Evan anymore. Barty and Dorcas are going off at each other and Regulus hears snatches over David Bowie on the record player.

—only care when it’s not muggles?

No magic — we’re better —

Half-bloods, Barty. Fucking witches and wizards! Care about that at least!

Who cares about any of it?

Pandora tries to intervene but Dorcas’s Gryffindor righteousness has been triggered and Barty’s been riding high for hours now.

Tortured to death. Regulus isn’t sure if Dorcas or someone else says it or if it’s just in his head but his stomach turns again. Their words press in on him like the lake’s depths at his back. He shuts his eyes and tries to breathe but the air is too hot.

Oh, fuck. The liquor is going to come back up.

Regulus stumbles out of the common room but doesn’t stop in the cool quiet of Hogwarts’s lowest levels. The weight of the rock above presses on him. He needs air.

The halls are empty and the firewhisky has his head spinning as he climbs stairs after stairs until he finally finds the freezing night air rushing over his face.

The Astronomy tower. Reaching high into the sky, with nothing but the stars above him. Regulus is free here. Far enough away from anyone else that he can let everything go—

“Didn’t expect to see you here, Black.”

Potter.

Potter.

“What are you doing here?” Regulus spins and finds the other boy leaning against the corner of the opposite railing. The rough wind blows his curls over his glasses. Regulus’s fingers twitch.

James puts his hands up in appeasement.

“Sorry.” The word falls off Regulus’s tongue and instantly he wishes to reel it back in.

James lets out a breathy laugh. “It’s alright.” He says it so softly, so easily.

Regulus scoffs and stumbles towards the railing. “You’re so fucking good.”

“Uh. Thank you?”

“Wasn’t a compliment.”

“No, God forbid.”

A laugh escapes him and he hates it. “Why should you change everything I was raised to believe? You’re as pureblooded as I am. You’re not a muggleborn or a halfblood. I’m not Sirius.”

James looks confused in Regulus’s haze of firewhiskey and he finds himself wanting to explain the tumult of his thoughts.

“It was us this time. Wizards. I thought I’d gotten over how it— it— the way I—” Regulus buries his hands in his hair and grips the strands so hard he feels it. “Seven years. We grew up hearing of the muggles and— and…  now this? But so what? Fools the lot of them. I just… I shouldn’t care.”

The stars shimmer, moving more than they should, but the other boy is still. Contemplative. Watching Regulus. Regulus watches right back. In the moonlight, James’s face is cast deep in shadows and Merlin’s beard they’re close. When did that happen? Regulus doesn’t move. Can barely think. His heart has begun a frantic race that makes the stars ripple. The wind, a blessed ice against the heat burning beneath his skin, is gentle against James, still weaving through those tousled strands of brown. James is wearing a knitted jumper, pulled over his hands. Is he cold? Which would be softer, his jumper, his hair, or those hands?

“You’re more like your brother than I thought,” James says.

Regulus flinches.

“I’m not Sirius.” Sirius couldn’t handle what it meant be the heir to the House of Black. Regulus might have episodes — moments — where he feels sick at necessary violence or can’t bring himself to be mean to Kreature, but Sirius left. Sirius is weak. Regulus isn’t. “And you, Potter, try so fucking hard to be good it’s embarrassing. I’m not someone you can change. I don’t need saving.”

“Regulus, I wasn’t—” He’d thought James would pull away. But instead James jerks forward the moment Regulus moves back, grabbing his wrist. The heat. The contact.

Regulus tears his arm free. “Don’t fucking touch me.” 

Why would James be the reason he abandons his family and every value they instilled in him? He’s no muggleborn that puts Regulus on some pathetic revelation that oh! Wizards and muggles aren’t that different after all! (No fucking shit). James is just— he’s just—

Regulus feels tears burn behind his eyes and leaves James alone in the night before the other boy can see how much Regulus wants to vomit at his own weakness.

Chapter Text

Draco prepares himself for returning to his own life after that fraught but freeing excursion to the past. He hands back his plate to the house elves and wanders slowly to the common room; the snake welcomes one of its own inside and for the first time, he wishes it wouldn’t. Draco is Slytherin through and through, he’s never denied or detested that fact, but he envies Granger and her return to a house that encourages a morally better nature. Brave rather than cunning. He fits so naturally here, leans so comfortably into his arrogance and ambition and family blood; going against that current is the hard act. But necessary, if he doesn’t want to become a murderer.

His friends are sat around the central sofas and Draco aims for them, casting those thoughts—

Someone shoves into Draco’s side. The world goes wonky for a moment before he rights himself and he spins with a snarl, ready to eviscerate whoever thought that smart.

Crabbe. Draco scoffs.

“And that was for…?” He asks.

“Telling us to fuck off, for one. But also Daddy’s been asking after you.”

Ice bleeds into his veins. “Come again?”

“Your dad, Draco,” Goyle says with a horrible smile. “He’s been talking to our parents, wondering where you’ve been wandering off to so much lately.”

“He should know exactly where I’ve been going.” Merlin’s beard, Draco hopes not, but he’d been disappearing often enough that his father should assume what his mysterious activities involve.

“Well apparently you haven’t been… forthcoming.”

“Had to think hard about that word, did you Goyle?” Draco laughs. “Do you even know what it means?”

Goyle shoves him and Draco whips his wand out and points it at the boy, all amusement gone. Do it. Give me a reason. The release would be just what Draco needs.

“It means you haven’t been talking to Daddy dear,” Crabbe says, cutting through the tension between Draco and Goyle. The boy steps back. Draco doesn’t holster his wand.

“Apparently I don’t need to. You two arse-kissers are capable of doing it for me.”

Crabbe’s hand goes to his wand.

“Hex Draco and I’ll curse you,” Theo says. He hasn’t moved from the couch, one arm stretched across the back and one leg crossed over the other, but his other hand is dangling close to his wand and they all know the speed of his draw.

Pansy sighs from next to him. “How about we don’t cause a scene where the whole house can witness it?”

“I don’t know, Pans,” Draco drawls. “They’re asking for it, in my opinion.”

“We cast Muffliato. No one can hear us.” So this was planned. His father is getting impatient which means he is too.

“Oh, just see you dual in the middle of the common room, then. You’re being children and it’s pathetic. Stop puffing your chests. The message has been received and I’m sure Draco didn’t need it, anyway,” Pansy says, her tone cutting. Draco smirks. It almost agitates Crabbe and Goyle into that promise of violence but they slump into seats next to the others. 

Urgh. Now he has to sit with them? Draco turns and walks right back out and the uncomfortable sensation twisting his insides and itching at that damn Mark has him wondering to the sixth floor, slipping silently into the Room of Requirement, and whiling away the hours of the evening on a project he doesn’t ever want to complete.

The message has been received.

Draco twists and turns all night, keenly aware of the cursed necklace beneath him as though the spell is leaking from the jewels and infecting him with it’s dark magic, but it’s just Crabbe and Goyle’s words fraying his edges and tumbling over and over in his mind until they’re incomprehensible and all that is left is fear. Numbers muddle his vision when he wakes — counting down around Granger’s wand. They don’t have the time for their foolhardy plot.

Draco needs to do something to buy them some.

In the pre-dawn darkness of his dorm, he’s careful not to wake anyone as he pulls the paper-wrapped box from the dusty recesses of under his bed and slides it into his bag.

Then, he goes about his day.

His opportunity comes between second and third period, when he spots Katie Bell alone and he knows no one has seen him since the end of class.

“Imperio,” Draco whispers the spell. It’s easy after that.

Katie, dazed and happy, holds the package and continues on her way.

Draco runs. Down the length of the corridor, a sense-person spell lighting up distant figures in his vision, until a group of three comes too close and he has to slow to a walk. It’s alright, whoever it is won’t know to link me to—

Potter, Granger, and Weasely walk around the corner.

Draco stiffens instantly. He knows what he should do here, what he has always done since the other boy denied his offer of friendship, what he would do any other moment, but it comes too slow. He glances to Granger for one panicked heartbeat and she frowns before he forces his gaze back to those stupid glasses and lightning scar.

He sneers. “Alright, Pott—”

Katie screams. Too early.

She must have come across someone she knew, someone to ask what it was in her hands and trigger the instruction to open it.

Oh, Draco is fucked now.

Harry reacts instantly, looking at Draco with immediate accusation, but the Gryffindor in him can’t help but run towards the sound rather than the perpetrator mere metres away. Irritation lines his expression and Draco almost laughs at that. He had the opportunity to catch Draco almost red handed and yet he runs off to be the hero. Fool. His stomach twists even as he thinks it. Weasley follows, not quite catching on to the source of the threat. Granger, though. She doesn’t hesitate to go with the boys, but she read that stupid panic on his face and before they turn the corner at the other end of the corridor, she casts her gaze back at him.

Confusion, accusation, and come with us all rolled into one. But she should know better than to hope Draco’s defiance wouldn’t have it’s limit in publicity, he’s in far too precarious a position for that (and, frankly, too well trained a pureblood son to run off with them). So that look shifts, the accusation hardening into condemnation as she sets her jaw and follows Harry’s lead. 

It’s not even a question as to which direction Draco heads in. He walks away, saving his own skin.

Katie will be fine. She has Potter coming to her rescue. Better than that, she has Hermione.

Draco goes to his next class, then the next. Whispers have edged every silence. Rumours flying on canary wings. Draco’s agitation has grown with every second of it. He’s the first out of his last class, leaving with Theo who sticks to his side like confused glue, and searches the halls for Granger on his path to the library. He can’t let Potter derail her from their plans.

Only, when he does find her, she’s decidedly not alone.

“Oh leave her alone,” Ginny Weasley says and Potter fixes his gaze on her. “What’s with all the boy talk, Ron? If she’s seeing someone, good for her. It’s not like it would be the first boy she’s kissed.” She grins at Granger. “Krum—”

“What?” Ron Weasley squeaks (Draco feels second-hand embarrassment at this). “You kissed Viktor Krum?!”

She did what? Draco’s step falters slightly, memories of the Yule Ball accosting him; the brief, horrifying thought of who’s that pretty thing on Krum’s arm? and Granger in the blue dress. She’d been crying on the steps outside the Great Hall at the end. Draco had watched her silently. She kissed Viktor Krum?

Draco casts the Confundus charm on Potter and the Weasley pair, and they pause in brief incomprehension. Granger squeaks as their conversation stops dead in its tracks and she wheels around.

“Malfoy? What on Earth do you think you’re doing?”

Draco grabs her and shoves them both into a nearby class— no, cupboard. Fuuuuck.

“Drac— oh hello, Potter.” Theo’s muffled voice comes through the door and thank Merlin that Granger snaps her mouth shut instantly. “Granger? Yeah, uh, she went that way.” Draco strains to hear what he hopes is retreating footsteps and murmurs of “Oh, you pissed her off now, Ron” from the Weasley girl. The door swings open and Draco pushes Granger behind him and— it’s Theo.

He pulls the door shut and realises as quickly as Draco did the unideal confines of the space. “Oh, this is cosy.”

“Nott?” Granger says.

“Yes, well, I was being sarcastic.”

“No, I didn’t mean—” she sighs in frustration and looks to Draco, who is honestly too busy trying to slow his heartbeat lest it beat right out of his chest. But he’s breathing too fast and the thump thump thump thump is sending so much oxygen to his brain that he thinks he might just pass out then and there. That wouldn’t be helpful. Granger is far too close to him and he’s not even aware enough to appreciate that (appreciate it? What the fuck?) and he might go face first into her boobs. “Theo?” Right, Granger was looking at him. Talking to him. Not in his memories in that blue dress. “What’s he doing here, Malfoy?” He senses that there’s layers to the way she says that. Likely, why the fuck didn’t you just wait until I came to the library being one of them. And this was supposed to be a secret so you-know-who doesn’t kill you for defying him, and then me, for learning his secret, and then Regulus again for, for… fuck if he knows. His heart isn’t slowing down and his fingers are going numb.

“Theo’s on our side,” he says plainly, stupidly, giving away what he’d only hinted to the other pureblood feeling the Dark Lord’s pressure, but Nott’s held out this long. Draco can rely on that, right?

This is too much.

He pulls the Time-Turner from his pocket and throws the chain around his and Granger’s neck. Granger protests. Theo expresses some shock. Draco uses all his remaining focus to sling them back nineteen years and leave a brand new liability behind.

Chapter Text

Quite suddenly, Hermione is in 1977 again. And she’s fuming. 

“You absolute idiot, Draco Malfoy. That was beyond stupid. To confound Harry, Ron, and Ginny? They’ll ask question. They already were! They think you cursed Katie to take that necklace to Dumbledore! And then to do it all in front of Nott? He’s part of your pack of junior Death Eaters, I know he is. Are you certain he can be trusted? Malfoy?” Malfoy isn’t listening to her. In the dim and uncomfortably close quarters of the cupboard he shoved them in, he breathes hard, eyes closed. “Oi, Malfoy. Malfoy.” She grabs his tie and yanks him down. His eyes fly open, harsh and shimmering, and all her anger is briefly forgotten at the panic of having pulled him inches from her face. Then it returns. She tightens her hold and drags him another inch down, boring equally hard into those sharp grey irises. “What. Was. That?”

“You kissed Viktor Krum?” Malfoy asks.

Hermione splutters and her face burns. “What has that got to do with anything?”

“You looked upset that night.”

What is he on about? The Yule Ball? Yes, she had been upset that night, crying in the corridor because Ron hadn’t asked her to it (properly) and then had the gall to ruin it because Viktor had. But she wasn’t aware Malfoy had noticed; he’d never bullied her about it.

“I have a mind to smack you right now, Malfoy. I will ask again: what was that?”

He smirks, but it’s as much a phantom of any of his real smiles as their Regulus is to the boy walking Hogwarts’s halls in this time. “Sorry, Granger. Didn’t feel like waiting.”

“Right. The truth now, please.”

His gaze shutters and he gently pries her hand from his tie with cold fingers.

“Was it you who cursed Katie?”

He flinches. “Potter say that?”

“Yes. Is he wrong?’

Malfoy draws in a deep breath. “Crabbe and Goyle… I think they might have seen something. They were asking why I’ve been sneaking off so much lately and said my father wanted to know. I’m worried they suspect me. Katie… she was my father’s message.”

“Saying what?”

“Behave,” he breathes.

Hermione doesn’t think that’s the whole story, Malfoy’s expression is too guarded, gaze too shadowed, but, well, he’s still here. The method wasn’t well thought out but it wasn’t terribly executed and she understands his desperation to continue their quest, at least.

So she silently transfigures their robes and pulls open the door (and makes a mental to-do to figure out a communication method for them).

“Wait, Granger, the spell—”

Sirius Black and James Potter raise four total eyebrows as Hermione and Malfoy come bundling out a very small cupboard.

“Well, shit,” Sirius laughs. “I can respect a girl with a taste for the bad.” He winks. “Slytherins are rotten fruit though, love. You don’t need to look beyond your house for some fun.”

Oh, God. Is Sirius flirting with her? Sirius? Harry’s godfather? Here?

He frowns and tilts his head. “I haven’t seen you before. You in the year below?”

“Oh, no, we weren’t—” she knows her whole face has turned beet-red because it feels like it’s on fire.

Malfoy bumps into her back and wraps a possessive hand around her waist and her breath and speech and thought stalls. “She doesn’t need your kind of fun, Black. She’s a little too mature for pranks so piss off.”

“Who are you?”

“None of your goddamn business.”

Sirius straightens.

“Woah,” James says. “Easy, boys. Sirius meant no harm.” He nudges Sirius and the look he gives his friend is so like Harry that it hurts.

“I know!” Hermione says quickly and elbows Malfoy in the gut so hard he grunts. “He’s just an arsehole. Not Sirius! I mean, ah, him.” She winces and taps Malfoy blindly, getting a little too close to below the belt. She swallows.

“Aaaaaaalright,” Sirius says, just looking confused now.

“Anyway, best be off!” She grabs a fistful of Malfoy’s robes and drags him after her.

“Who were they?” Sirius asks in a barely lowered murmur.

“I don’t know. Didn’t recognise either of them,” James answers.

“She’s way too hot for me not have noticed her before.”

She walks faster.

“You’re actually useless, Granger,” Malfoy whispers, leaning so close to her ear that she jumps away from him.

She gives him a scathing look. “Oh, because you handled that so much better.”

“There would have been nothing to handle if you’d waited before charging out and we’d cast the illusionment spell.”

She freezes. Malfoy huffs and then he’s dragging her.

“Oh, no,” she squeaks.

“Yes, oh, no. They’re not going to forget that impression for a while.”

“Well it was your fault for throwing us back here with zero warning in a minuscule cupboard.” She really had been so close to Malfoy as to be distracted. He’d smelt like… apples? And asking if she’d kissed Viktor! That was enough to throw her off a little.

Malfoy leads her deeper into the castle and it gives her a minute to process the preceding events. She’s still furious with him for accosting her like that. And James and Sirius — of all people — saw them. Merlin’s beard.

“Are you taking us to the Slytherin common room?” She asks, as he leads her down stairs after stairs into the dungeons.

“Where else are we to find a Slytherin?” Malfoy responds.

“We need to talk about these things. You cannot be whisking me away for five hours with the Time-Turner and then dragging me to the Slytherin common room without consulting me and—”

“Is it always you laying into him?” Regulus. Malfoy gives her a look that says see? We found him on the way to the Slytherin common room. I was right. It’s far too smug.

“Regulus,” she sighs.

“You’re late.” He picks at his nails, leaning against a statue of a sworded woman riding a kelpie.

“Huh?”

“You said you’d come tomorrow and that was yesterday.”

Hermione turns to Malfoy, who’s frowning. “Is it that sensitive?”

He shrugs. “We calculated it for years. Maybe it’s not exactly precise because it should only deal in hours.”

“That’s worrying.”

“We’re only a day late.”

“We’ll have to look at it when we’re back. I knew we should have tested it more rigorously. We can’t have it mess up and put different versions of ourselves together at the same time—”

“Uh,” Regulus says. “Hello? I’m still here?”

“Right. Sorry. It’s been a… day.”

Malfoy huffs a laugh. Regulus looks distinctly unimpressed and glances between them before sighing.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” he says and walks past them.

They following the living spectre as he strides back the way they came.

“What day is it?” Hermione asks. “And the date?”

“Monday 31st of October.”

“Huh. Halloween.” Malfoy raises an eyebrow at her and she hurries on. “So before it was Saturday 29th for you and Sunday 27th for us. Which is close — perhaps with leap years as close as we could get to nineteen years? I’ll look into that later to see whether we went a little too far back the first time and not quite enough this time. Though it’s been the same time of day… but maybe it’s sensitive to the unit of days but not to hours. So, a day or so off either time. Anyway, with the date we can make sure we get it spot on next time.”

“Is she always like this too?” Regulus asks snidely to Malfoy, who shrugs. Well, at least he didn’t sneer and side with Regulus. Hermione much prefers her ghostly version of the boy, though in the stained light of the bridge’s sea-coloured glass, Regulus appears a palimpsest of the two. They pass through the door and into the upper corner of the central hall. 

“You were the one complaining about us being late,” Malfoy says. “This is how we won’t be again.” Hermione glances at him askew. “Half the reason, anyway.”

Regulus scoffs. “Am I not allowed to complain when you come asking for my help and don’t even show up on time?”

“No. Since you sent us.”

“So you’ve said.”

Malfoy’s smirk is no phantom now. “Want to know the future that leads you to this?”

A gaggle of Slytherins pass them and their conversation falls into a tense silence, little more than a pause brimming with violence.

Regulus stops by the viaduct entrance, watches the others go, and then eyes up Malfoy with a dark expression. Hermione holds her breath, waiting for the Death Eater boys by her side to deliver on that undercurrent promise.

But the former says nothing, just shoulders through the grand door and steps into the cold autumn afternoon. Malfoy huffs a singular laugh and follows. Hermione pulls her robes tighter and does the same.

“Why outside,” she mutters, casting a warming charm over herself because these 70s robes are not of a fashion warm enough for the threshold of November.

“Yes,” Malfoy starts, refusing to look as chilly as Hermione but frowning at her wand in a way that makes her feel he’s equally as cold (but too prideful to ask — she’s content to let him suffer the wind). “Why outside?” The emphasis is so haughty, so him, that she laughs. He frowns indignantly at her now.

“I don’t want us to be overheard,” Regulus answers, leading them left to the edge of the stone, not across the viaduct bridge.

“A classroom couldn’t have done that?”

Hermione all but grins. “Cold, Malfoy?”

“Pfft. I’m fine. I don’t need a warming charm.”

“Do you even know one?” She slides up next to him. “Or did you go soft with all those galleons buying you charmed clothes for winter?”

“Me? Soft?”

“You don’t even know a warming charm.”

“I don’t need one.”

“Paying for that softness now. Being shown up by a muggleborn.”

Regulus frowns distastefully at her over his shoulder. “You’re muggleborn?”

Hermione blinks.

“Do you take issue with that?” Malfoy asks, his voice almost as cold as the wind whipping past them. She blinks again. At him.

“You take issue with that,” she says to Malfoy.

He rolls his eyes. “Catch up, Granger, that was last year.”

Hermione bristles. Last year and every year since she met the pureblood, arrogant, nasty arsehole. And those are the nicer words she’s called him to Crookshanks over all that time. Merlin’s beard, the desire to kick him in the shins right now is so strong she has to press her lips in a tight line and refocus on the other pureblood arsehole she’s being forced to spend her time with this evening.

“Know many muggleborns?” She asks.

“A few,” Regulus growls.

“Then you know we make just as good witches and wizards as you lot.”

He rolls his eyes.

“Or is it just Lily you take issue with?” He freezes and his gaze snaps to hers but she moseys on past him to a small half-walled circle that gives them a wonderful view down at lake on one side and up at the castle on the other, pretending like she doesn’t know exactly what she’s doing. “Harry always said James fancied her from the beginning. That must grate a little, seeing the pureblood you like chasing after someone like me.”

He grabs her arm. She spins around, raising her wand to his face, and says, “Watch it, Black.” In the mood she’s in, Hermione has no qualms about jinxing Regulus — even if she suspects he’s on his way to getting over his pureblood prejudices just like he’s getting over his desire to join Voldemort.

Regulus smiles, a full grin that lights his eyes up silver, and laughs. “I see why a Malfoy could take to you now.”

That got his seal of approval? Hermione understands him a little better now too, she thinks.

Malfoy looks on with eyebrows practically to his hairline, eyes dragging between the two of them. “Is this your preferred spot, Black? Or are you intending to lead us down the rocks?”

Regulus looks put out but sighs. “Here is where I intended.”

They all breathe for a moment, Hermione lost in the vision of Hogwarts lit by the beginning of a sunset, slowly reeling her thoughts back to the task ahead. “We haven’t had time to brainstorm ways you could help us get into—” she charges on ahead as she always does, with a soft glare towards Malfoy who rolls his eyes, but Regulus waves her off.

“I’ve got a plan.”

“Already?”

“Well I almost thought it pointless when you didn’t return, but yes, already.”

“What is it?” Malfoy asks.

“The house is warded against strangers, so if I were to simply bring you two home under an invisibility cloak, my parents would know. But my family has been invited to a… party this weekend and with Sirius neglecting his duties as heir… I think my parents would be downright thrilled if I asked to come along.” Regulus turns his gaze, dangerous and storm-cloud grey, slowly to Hermione. “And I’d be able to bring a date.”

Hermione shivers.

“What good would taking Granger to a party do?”

Regulus sighs. “It would get you both past the ward, and whilst she and I distract my parents, you could rummage around all you like in the library, doors thrown wide open just like you want.”

Hermione and Malfoy share a loaded look.

“Will it be safe?” Malfoy says, a touch quieter, a touch lower.

“You’re Narcissa’s son, right? Once you’re in, there won’t be anything the library will hold from you.”

“Will it be safe for her?”

Regulus glances between them before answering. “Yes. She’ll have me.”

“That’s little consolation.”

“I’ve been to these parties before.” Regulus talks directly to Hermione now. “Honestly, you won’t have to talk to anyone but my parents. I’ve never been a socialite. If we pretend to be totally absorbed with each other, I can talk enough for both of us.”

Her mouth goes dry. “Can you tell me who will be there? I’ll do some reading to prepare, in case.” Regulus nods. “We’ll need to a false name and backstory for me. Will they accept a halfblood? Or will we need to find me a distant branch of a pureblood family that they won’t question?”

“Likely better to go with halfblood, given your muggle upbringing—”

“I call her mugglish,” Malfoy adds.

Regulus glares, “—and proclivity to blush and stumble over anything not academic. Or biting. They’ll like the latter, but a pureblood would have a conviction you lack.”

Hermione’s conviction is perfectly fine, thank you. 

But maybe best to cast her as a half-blood.

Regulus turns to Malfoy. “Mugglish? The fuck kind of word is that?”

“I asked the same thing,” Hermione says.

“In so many words,” Malfoy murmurs.

“It’s better than mudblood, I’ll give you that.”

Regulus whistles. “How you got with him after that.”

“Got with?!” Malfoy squeaks just as Hermione says. “It’s business!”

Regulus snorts. “Sure.”

Hermione looks grossly at Malfoy to see her feelings mimicked in his look towards her and they both quickly glance away. She feels all of a sudden too warm for a warming charm. Got with. Ridiculous.

“You’ll help us, then,” Malfoy says.

“I said that, didn’t I?”

“And you mean it?”

“Wouldn’t have said it otherwise.” Regulus settles into a slouch on the bench. “Tell me about this curse then. And whatever the fuck it has to do with Voldemort.”

“Have you ever heard of a horcrux?”

“Nope.”

Malfoy looks to Hermione and sweeps his hand towards Regulus, giving her the floor. So they’re going all in, then.

Hermione tells Regulus what they know, leaving out only two facts: that the source of this information is himself, two and nineteen years from now, drowned and caught half-dead on the threshold of whatever comes next, and Lily and James’s death.

Now’s not quite the time to tell him that bit.

They spend almost all of their five hours there — talking through what they know, the details of the party (Hermione gets out a quill and parchment to take notes on this), and planning when next to meet — and as the sun sets, Hermione understands why Regulus took them here. An empty classroom would have suited (Malfoy especially, who bundled himself up more and more in his robes as evening drew in the chill) but they wouldn’t have gotten the view then. She’d never seen Halloween at Hogwarts from outside the castle before. She’d thought the extent of it was the pumpkin strewn ceiling and feast in the great hall.

Ghosts dance in a silent waltz over the main courtyard, lights flaring in and out of the windows, mingling with shadows that weave with glinting stars and cast the whole castle in… a veil. Hogwarts seems to flicker between worlds, bathed in magic and slipping into the unreal. Seeing Regulus watch the shimmer between corporeal and a phantom, silver-blue, burrows an unsettling, melancholy feeling in her bones. Here he is, alive.

They are to do nothing about his death.

Chapter Text

It hadn’t taken Regulus long to work out how to get the pair-from-the-future (he still scoffs at the thought) into his home and family library. Sunday morning arrived with a wicked hangover that had forced him to seek out Severus Snape for a cure and pay the elder boy’s usual fee of a galleon for it, but then he’d had the whole day. He’d waited. Wondered the stone halls echoing with disembodied laughter and autumn light. Sought them out, though they never came. Left alone with his thoughts, the plan had formed like the incoming tide — washed into his mind with a subtle, forceful inevitability. He’d sent an owl to Narcissa and lo and behold, he’d learnt at breakfast the next morning that there is to be one of his parties the following weekend at none other than Malfoy Manor.

His, as in Voldemort’s. Whether or not he’ll actually be in attendance given the ratcheting up of the war is a toss up between unlikely and improbable. But there is still a chance. It’ll be flooded with Death Eaters either way.

Risky. Yet Regulus grins at the thought of spinning a particular bushy-haired mudblood through their ranks whilst winning himself a spot in their order. He cringes. He can’t say mudblood in front of Granger. He doesn’t think of her that way anyway, not in principle; dirty blood is just dumb when pure blood these days basically means I fucked my cousin.

Now it is Tuesday, and Regulus is minding his own business, ignoring the strange way Evan is looking at him, not listening to the dizzying monologue coming from Pandora, and hoping to find Barty or Dorcas to temper the twins, when his brother locks eyes on him and charges forward.

“Again?” Regulus groans. “You bit my ear off three days ago. This is the most you’ve spoken to me in months.”

Lupin is behind Sirius, looking as exasperated as Regulus feels but with an edge of worry across those peculiar scars. Worry Regulus will finally hex Sirius, no doubt. He can’t help himself, he looks to see if James is there too, but his Quidditch rival is nowhere to be found. Odd, when they’re usually strutting the halls as an egotistical scarlet quartet. He ignores the lick of disappointment.

“Get lost, Rosiers,” Sirius says.

“Don’t talk to my mates like that,” Regulus bites. But he waves them off all the same. “Find Barty, would you? I’ll meet you in the common room.”

Evan looks liable to reach for his wand, but then he cringes at something only he hears and drags Pandora away.

“Lay a hand on him, Sirius, and I’ll read every misfortune coming your way!” She yells.

“Terrifying,” Sirius deadpans.

“He’ll be fine,” Lupin says.

“Doubtful.”

Lupin looks unimpressed but Sirius rolls his eyes.

“The fuck you want, then, again? I haven’t bludgeoned anyone this time, have I?” Regulus asks. A few too many people glance over at them. Shitting hell, does no one want to have these conversations in private? Just him?

“You’re going to one of his parties?”

Just him, clearly.

“I didn’t think owls flew that fast.”

Regulus finds a bench and casts Muffliato around them, since Sirius is so keen on everyone hearing them air their dirty laundry.

“Narcissa saw Andromeda yesterday. Andromeda sent me an owl.”

“They care that much?”

“That you’re applying to be a Death Eater? Yeah, shocking isn’t it, that your family should care.”

“You’re telling me you care? Really?” Regulus laughs harshly and entirely void of humour.

“Like I said. Shocking,” Sirius grits out.

“And totally believable.”

Sirius doesn’t respond, his jaw is clenched so tightly shut you couldn’t wrench it open even with magic.

“Merlin’s beard, I’m not applying to be a Death Eater. So there you go, you can leave now.”

It’s at that moment that Potter and Pettigrew come into sight down the corridor. Regulus’s heart lurches and he coughs to cover his the way it startles through his whole body. James frowns over at them and Lupin meets him halfway, muttering words Regulus can’t hear. Those eyes, hazel and burning, clap onto him and light him up.

“Reggie…” Sirius sighs.

“Siri,” Regulus hisses.

“Why are you going?”

“As if I would tell you.”

“You used to tell me everything.”

“Yeah, then you left.”

Sirius’s jaw grinds again.

“And you’ve been an arsehole since. So work on that and maybe I’ll tell you all my deep, dark secrets again. Until then, I’m going to have a grand night twirling around a particularly pretty Gryffindor.”

“What? A Gryffindor?”

Regulus smirks. “Not all bad witches and wizards come from Slytherin.”

James strides over, purposeful and imperious, and Regulus takes that as he cue to exit this conversation. He gets up with a heaving sigh.

“Well, I’ll be off.”

“We’re not done here, Regulus.”

“Oh please, this brotherly angst has been done a million times. Come back when you have something new to say. Or, I don’t know, keep biting my fucking ear off, whatever suits.” He nods at the rest of Sirius’s gang. “Lupin, Pettigrew, Potter. I’d say it’s been a pleasure but I’d be fucking lying. Not that that would be new, ey, Sirius?”

They don’t respond, or maybe Regulus just passes out of the silencing spell’s boundary, so he slinks off, pissed off, in the direction of the common room. Just like Sirius to stick his nose in where it doesn’t belong. Is it even that surprising, when they used to go to those parties together at 13, 14? Really, what did he think Regulus would do when he left?

Leave too?

Regulus doesn’t have friends like Potter.

Crouch senior is worse than Regulus’s parents by a mile, the Rosiers would hand him right back over, and he doesn’t think Dorcas likes him all that much, honestly. So where would that leave him? At the Potters’ too? Sure.

“Regulus!”

Oh, really? Think of a Potter and one’ll show up, these days.

“What do you want?” Even in his irritation, he has to violently stuff down memories of their conversation in the astronomy tower lest they make him blush.

“You’re not…” Potter grabs his arm and pulls him into an alcove that has that irritation vanishing and those memories bursting free like a damn to flood him as it shadows the boys face and sets them inches apart. “You’re not really going to a Death Eater party, are you?”

Regulus scoff. “That’s an exaggeration. It’s a dumb politicking party at Malfoy Manor.”

“You are, then.”

Regulus rolls his eyes and leans his shoulders against the wall behind him.

“I’m not going to be a Death Eater, Potter.”

“Why else go? Are you going to spy on them instead?”

Fuck, but he can’t help the slither of icy tension that kicks out his feigned nonchalance. “Hardly.”

James narrow his eyes. “It would be a fucking dangerous thing to do.”

Good thing he’s not spying, then.

“What’s life, without a bit of danger?” He says, low and with a sly smile.

“Lived, usually.”

“Boring, entirely.”

A hand flashes forward to curl around his forearm. “Don’t do it, Regulus.”

Regulus looks down at it with narrowed eyes and heart thumping and James drops the touch. “You care so much now?”

“Can’t have my best competition on the pitch being murdered.”

“Shitty argument. You’re literally never going to play me again.”

James scratches at the back of his neck and Regulus tracks the movement.

“Sirius is my best mate and he freaked out when he got the letter.”

“Another shitty argument.”

“Is it really so hard to believe that your brother cares whether or not you die?”

“I’m not going to die. Just like Sirius to be so fucking melodramatic.”

“Just like you to avoid a hard question.”

“What would you know about what I’m like?”

James’s gaze bores into him, flaying him behind those stupid round glasses.

“He assumes I’m the perfect mirror image of our parents and hasn’t given me an inch of grace since he left to live with you. He can shuck off our family so easily? Good for him. I can’t. That’s enough for him not to give a shit anymore.”

The words land like vital organs into the inches between them, exposed and bleeding and entirely not where they should be, but Regulus can’t swallow them back down now, so he’s forced to watch them soften James fucking Potter’s face with sympathy.

“He cares, Regulus. I care.”

“If only we could all have James Potters in our lives,” he spits, acid atop that horrific bloody mess.

“What are you planning for the party?”

“Why, in any reality, should I tell you?”

His hazel eyes shutter and he sighs. “You’re right. You don’t have any reason.” James looks him over one last time and Regulus barely breathes and then James leaves.

“Thank fuck for that,” he murmurs, but his chest is heaving and his heart is not feeling quite as it should.

Regulus doesn’t return to the common room after that. Instead, he goes to the owlery, relishing the solitude of its tall tower and fluttering of wings, and pulls out a quill and parchment. The wind sailing through the open stone numbs his fingers with the first hints of a frozen November and its piercing path flutters the paper beneath him as he begins to write. It’s a short letter to his mother asking to attend the party with a date. She’ll no doubt get Dumbledore’s reluctant dispensation for him. His hands shake slightly as he rolls up the letter and calls for King. A barn owl, slightly smaller than most, but beautiful with regally patterned brown wings and a pure white face. He glides down and lands beside Regulus. Instantly, Regulus feels calmer, and he allows himself a few moments in the gentle presence of his bird, just them and the wind and the fading daylight.

“He said he cares,” Regulus whispers. King hoots softly. Regulus ties the letter to his proffered leg and watches as the owl takes flight, swooping on the chill with stunning silence. “James cares.”

Chapter Text

Hermione practically flops onto her bed after hours of scribing all Regulus had to say on the Death Eaters who will likely be in attendance on Saturday and another late dinner upon returning. Crookshanks mews and curls up in a fluffy ball next to her. It’s not yet 10pm, so she could do some homework with her friends back down in the common room, God knows she should to avoid further suspicion. But her and Malfoy agreed to wait until Thursday to return to 1977 as he has quidditch practice and she can research well enough here, so with a sigh, she decides she’ll do it tomorrow. She’ll organise her notes instead, make revision cards and…

“Hermione?”

She jolts upwards at the sound of Regulus’s voice, coming to from a disorienting half-nap to a still-empty dorm room. Oh thank God, she mustn’t have been asleep long then.

“Sorry. I realise it’s probably inappropriate to be here, I just…” Regulus wrings his translucent hands. “I didn’t know where you both were.”

“It’s okay. You’re welcome in here. Boy’s normally aren’t, what with the disappearing steps, but clearly those don’t work… on…”

“Dead boys?”

“Sorry.”

He shrugs. “I am dead.”

Hermione taps the bed and he perches next to her, not making a dent in the crimson duvet, though Crookshanks tilts his head at him with a curious meow.

“Oh, hello.”

“Regulus Black, meet Crookshanks. Crookshanks, meet Regulus Black.”

A gentle smile curls Regulus’s thin lips, softening his whole angular face. He lifts a hesitant hand, fingers curled in, then he brushes them over Crookshanks orange fur.

“Strange.” He blinks down at the tabby who purrs deeply and rolls over, pawing at him — well, through him really.

“How much do you feel?” Hermione whispers.

“Not a lot.” He sighs and drops his hand, dragging his nails over his palm. “It feels like a dream.”

It hurts her a little, seeing him like this. She’s never been particularly tactile but seeing the raw, resigned pain so much worse than his eternal wounds, she longs to reach out and lace her fingers through his. To ease a little of that lost look and remind him that he’s not invisible, to her, at least. He has a place in this new time, in their world, even without magic or form. It snatches the breath from her chest. He has a place with her.

She chews her lip, wondering what next to say, wondering how she could say any of that to a boy stuck between life and death that cannot touch or be touched. “Draco took us back quite immediately after class. In a cupboard. I was so discombobulated that I ran right out. Guess who was there to witness it.”

A soft laugh bubbles out of him. “Oh God. Who?”

“James and Sirius.”

He winces.

“Sirius flirted with me.”

This brings out a full, hearty laugh. “Smart boy.”

“What?!”

He shrugs. “I’d’ve.”

“Oh, shush.” She flops onto her side, stroking Crookshanks, and Regulus relaxes into a lean on his palms, looking around at the Gryffindor drapings turned warm and comforting in low candle light. Gold glimmers in stars and Hermione watches Regulus take it all in. Regulus, the brightest star in the Leo constellation. Next to her in his eternal, phantom blue, he is that star at an uncrossable distance. Silver bright in the darkness, but alone. 

“I’m just waiting for Draco to get with the programme.”

“Draco?! You cannot be serious. He’s been our arch-nemesis since first year.”

“In my experience, that’s the best place to start.”

Hermione laughs and it eases her sadness. “I’m too tired to take this seriously.”

“Want me to leave?”

“No! No. It’s fine. It’s nice.”

He smiles. “It is.” But then that smile fades into a frown, and he picks at the waterlogged fabric of his trousers. “What am I like? Back… back then?”

“You don’t remember?”

His shrug dislodges a few droplets of water that shimmer out of existence before they can splatter across her covers. “I could be mean.”

But he hadn’t been mean to her. Churlish and ill-tempered, definitely, but he had smiled when she’d matched him, like he’d been testing them as worthy opponents.

“Forgive me, if you can, if I turn that on you. Or at least offer me a bit of grace. I didn’t know what a strength it is to be soft in a hard world,” he says before she can answer.

“Is it a strength? All I do is my best to stay here where I can do magic and yet I feel myself hardening under everything that’s thrown my way.”

“It is. Took me a long time to realise it.”

Hermione buries her hand in Crookshanks’s velvet fur and phantom fingers twitch. “Why were you mean?” She murmurs.

He is silent for a long minute, staring unfocused at the star-strung sky through the arched window by her bed. Then he sighs, and it’s the first time his chest has moved for that whole minute, and closes his eyes. “I thought it made me strong. I thought the meaner I was… the more I would be loved.”

So that’s why he had smiled when she reciprocated his attitude. He wasn’t testing her as an opponent but seeing if she was a worthy friend.

“You haven’t been mean to me.”

“If I am, feel free to knock me over the head. Or curse me.”

“Curse you?!” She laughs. “Wouldn’t that be a bit extreme? You are helping us.”

“That’s why I shouldn’t be mean to you. I’d have earned it.”

“I’m not going to curse you, Regulus. I like you too much for that.”

His pure grey eyes light up like silver with mirth. “Even past me? I was a little shit.”

Hermione juts up her chin. “Even past you.”

“I see why you’re not in Ravenclaw.” Sarcasm drips from the words and she knows he’s caught her in her lie. She laughs.

“Is the sorting hat ever wrong?”

He gives her a mildly disbelieving look. “Yeah?”

“Really? You think so?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t think so. I think it’s people’s choice if they’re put in an unsuited house.”

He hums a noncommittal response.

“I am a Gryffindor, through and through, though. I’m far too willing to jump into a fight.”

“You? Jump into a fight?”

“Don’t sound so surprised! You may have not seen me fight but you have seen me do a lot of illegal magic. And I have Harry Potter for a friend.”

“Touché. If you dual like you charm, I wouldn’t mind to see it.” He sends a soft, slanted grin her way and she shakes her head.

“You’re an odd one, Regulus Black.”

“You’re the one who likes me.”

It’s her turn to hum noncommittally. She does though — like him, that is — and it’s a weak balm against the somber fact that, as he has to let James and Lily die, Hermione has to let Regulus die.

It’s a horrible thing.

Eventually, the rest of Hermione’s dorm comes in, and Regulus covers his eyes as he leaps in silence from her bed, leaving no trace and yet there’s an ache in her chest. He peaks between his fingers at her, looking exaggeratedly horrified and she has to bite her lip to not laugh out loud. Lavender still looks at her funny so, a hair’s breadth from failing to stifle the giggles, she shoos Regulus Black out of her bedroom and smiles to herself until she falls asleep.

Chapter Text

Malfoy ignores Hermione (like usual) all through potions Wednesday afternoon, but a different Slytherin, one reedy and overly tall with dark hair and darker eyes set against pale skin, keeps glancing over, mumbling to Malfoy, and glancing over again.

Theodore Nott.

She knew this was an inevitability but she had still hoped he wouldn’t be obvious about it. He does it so much that Ron, red faced and seconds away from giving up all together with his (not awful) starter for a polyjuice potion, notices (Hermione isn’t entirely sure they should be learning how to brew polyjuice potion but she couldn’t entirely argue with Professor Slughorn’s reasoning of ‘it’s good knowledge to have, what polyjuice looks like, tastes like, and — ahem — signs to spot someone using it’).

“Why does Nott keep looking over at you?” He whispers, wafting away greenish fumes coming from his cauldron that shouldn’t be noxious just yet, but, are.

Hermione sends Malfoy a glare that he pointedly ignores.

“I don’t know,” she says, slightly too high. Regulus, who has been perched against her desk and offering far too funny straight-faced commentary on their class for the whole hour thus far, looks at her pityingly.

“We need to work on your lying.” 

Harry glances up from his illicit potions book and perfect potion. “You don’t know what?” Hermione has to refrain from glaring at him too.

“Why Nott is looking at her,” Ron says.

“He’s what?” Harry looks over and Nott quickly diverts his gaze. “Why’s he looking at you?”

“I don’t know,” she says, slightly too sharp, and Regulus shakes his head.

Merlin’s beard, is she blushing again? Her gaze is drawn like a magnet, not to Nott, but to Malfoy, who watches them with lowered lids, face propped on a fist as he lazily waves his wand over his cauldron. She tries to convey with her gaze a please deal with Nott and she’s almost certain his returning expression is I have tried. 

This is your making, Malfoy.

He casts his gaze skyward. She looks to Regulus but the phantom boy just shrugs. Helpful, these Death Eaters are.

“He was weird on Monday, just after you left. Did something happen?” Harry says.

“I said I don’t know!” Slightly too shrill. Even for her.

She keeps her mouth shut for the rest of the class, focusing on crushing her lacewing flies to the finest of pastes and adding it into her potion — which she makes just as good as Harry thanks to her previous experience and not the dubious notes of some old wizard — until Slughorn comes around with invitations for his Christmas party. He hands over the thick paper with shimmering green and gold ink to Harry and Hermione.

“Looking forward to seeing you there, my boy! And you, Granger. Plus ones are encouraged, so choose wisely!” Slughorn says with a wink and a throaty chuckle.

“Hm,” Regulus muses fondly, a small smile on his face. “He did this in my time too.”

Ron immediately pouts. Hermione sighs. Well, he may not be invited, but she has a plus one and given her general feelings on Ron lately this would be a good opportunity to maybe—

“Christmas party,” Ron scoffs. “I expect you’ll be inviting McLaggan, Hermione? He chats you up every time he gets the opportunity.”

“He thinks you’d take that oaf?”

 She looks down at the card and tucks it into her textbook. “McLaggan. Really, Ron. I was going to invite you.”

He blinks wide eyes and opens his mouth but nothing comes out. Her breath feels short all of a sudden and now she is blushing, so she leans over her cauldron and lets her wild hair fall in front of her face.

“M— me?” He says.

“Well, she’s hardly going to take McLaggan,” Harry mumbles, doing something not dissimilar to her and putting the finishing touches on his potion with renewed, overly-diverted interest.

Hermione sighs. “Yes, you.”

Merlin’s beard can this class not end so she can leave? Hermione adds two scoops of crushed lacewing to her potion and sets a low flickering fire beneath it.

“Invite Draco. That’ll show him.” 

It eases that now-familiar ache and she sends him a small smile.

“A Christmas party with Slughorn can’t be too bad, I suppose,” Ron says. He’s not looking at her, but instead stirring his potion, which doesn’t need to be stirred right now. 

Is that him saying yes?

The liquid heating in her cauldron begins to bubble too much and her heart lurches as she realises she almost went over the thirty second count for the final step of the starter. She snatches her wand and extinguishes the fire before waving it over the potion to set it. Her heart still thumps loudly. But she’s done and she immediately takes the opportunity to slide off her stool and busy herself with getting in checked by Slughorn. 

“Very good, Granger!” He drawls. “Full marks! You know where to put it.” The murmur of clinking and swishing mutes as she hurries into the storage room and the door drifts closed. In the dim stillness, the tense awkwardness seeps from her. Ron said yes, didn’t he? God, it sends flutters right through her. She props her cauldron on a high shelf in the corner, lest anyone knock it accidentally, and conjures a wooden sign with her name in curling script. It’s a little wonky so she tugs on a corner to straighten it.

“Granger,” Malfoy greets.

A jolt rocks through her so hard her hand jerks the sign off completely and it wafts to the floor. She spins to see him placing his own cauldron on a shelf behind her.

“Sorry,” he says, and waves his wand with a softly spoken reparo that whisks the wood back into place.

It’s so entirely un-Malfoy like that she can only stare at him.

He looks at her with a raised brow and walks out.

She knows with a logical understanding borne from the experiences of the last few weeks that Malfoy is no longer the nemesis of her earlier years at Hogwarts, but in off-guard moments like this it’s still hard to reconcile the… well, whatever he is now, with the cruel boy of sneers and derision tainting her past.

The door swings open and Harry enters, face twisted up with familiar disdain.

“Hermione? Are you okay? Malfoy wasn’t giving you trouble, was he?”

She glances at the conjured sign hanging perfectly straight off the lip of her cauldron and then back to her best friend.

“No,” she says softly. “He wasn’t, I mean. I’m fine.”

Harry puts his cauldron next to hers and asks if she’d conjure a sign for his too, so she does, and they go back out to Ron.

The butterflies trapped in her stomach give one last flutter as he glances up at her with a small smile coming through a gentle cloud of green smoke that deepens the red in his hair. His potion really shouldn’t be doing that yet, but she does like the way it makes him look.

Harry and Hermione spend the short remainder of the lesson helping fix Ron’s potion and it’s not long before Slughorn dismisses the class.

The boys go off to quidditch practice and Regulus silently drifts next to her. She’ll be glad for some peace. A chance to do her ancient runes homework in the common room. The cool-aired corridor cleanses the remaining tangle of feeling from the cloying potions room and she breathes in deep.

But then she’s accosted by a different pair of boys. Luck isn’t with her today it seems and she laments the lost evening of runes and the crackling fire. She’s not going to get it, is she?

“Granger, Granger. How are you today?” Nott sidles up beside her — almost a head taller, good gracious! — and Malfoy lingers behind with a scowl, ignoring Regulus as well as her.

“Perfectly fine, thank you, Nott.”

“Grand. There was a little something I was wondering about the other day.”

“Oh? I do have some good notes on our last potions lesson, if that’s what you’re asking after. It does make sense you’d come to me.”

Malfoy huffs.

“…no? Uh, not quite. More to do with the cupboard incident.”

“Well in that case, get Malfoy to fill you in.”

“See, I have asked him, but he’s thus far been unwilling to divulge why you went into a tiny cupboard and back in time.”

Her hands ball into fists. “I’d like to know the answer to that too.”

“You… don’t know?”

“There are some things I don’t know. Few, but, it happens.”

“Perhaps I may ask a different question then: what might have occurred, in the past, between you and Malfoy… in that tiny cupboard?”

Hermione stops her stride towards the library (she wasn’t quite sure where else to go with this particular pair of Slytherins (she could hardly take them back to Gryffindor common room)) and whips around to face Nott. “We weren’t in the cupboard that whole time! Really, Nott.”

“I did say Draco was particularly reticent.”

“So you assumed we were… what? Snogging? Shagging?”

“Wouldn’t be the only one,” Malfoy murmurs.

She points a finger at him. “Don’t you start.”

“If not either of those… what did it have to do with You Know Who?”

Now she really does want to punch Malfoy.

“You might want to take this conversation elsewhere,” Regulus nods pointedly to a few fourth years watching them.

Hermione notes them with growing disdain. “Since repeating myself seems to be the theme of the day, I’ll say it again. Get. Malfoy. To fill. You in.”

“No,” Malfoy says.

“Oh, you arse, Draco Malfoy.” She spins on her heels. “Fine. Fine. You want to know, Nott? Come with me.”

“Wait, Granger—”

“No. You clearly thought him trustworthy enough to send us back to 1977 in his face, so he’s clearly trustworthy enough to hear everything else!”

“1977?” Nott says, but it’s lost to her as Malfoy bodily shoves her into the nearest empty room and then his coldly fiery face is inches from hers and, really, what is with all this repetition? At least they’re not in a cupboard.

“Draco—!”

“You’re on dangerous footing, Granger,” he hisses, low and dripping in venom more potent than she’s ever tasted from him before. It sends a shiver through her.

“Am I? I’m keeping this secret for your sake, Malfoy.”

“I don’t need Potter alive to destroy the piece of Voldemort’s soul inside of him.”

She blinks and steps back and every bit of trust she’d put in him these last few weeks shrivels and freezes over. He wouldn’t… would he?

“His soul? In Potter?” Nott says.

Malfoy’s eyes are wide, so wide the whites are visible all around those grey irises and they flick left and right and left and right as he looks at her, his mouth open a breath.

She steps back further.

“I didn’t…” He says. “Fuck.” He runs his hands through his hair, sending the neatly styled white blond strands into utter disarray. “That is why I’m here in the first place.”

“What?” She breathes.

His hands drop and his eyes close. “I don’t want to be a murderer.”

“We’re talking murder now?” Nott says.

“Shut the fuck up, Nott.”

“I’m incredibly lost.”

Malfoy meets Hermione’s gaze, resolute, and holds it. “I want what you and Regulus want: the horcrux in Harry destroyed and Voldemort dead.”

“Shit.”

“Please shut up, Nott,” Hermione croaks.

He nods and bows out. Past Regulus with a haunted, distant expression, hovering with inhuman stillness. Nott brushes his side and he shudders as he comes close to life again, unblinking and staring at Malfoy.

Malfoy, who just threatened Harry’s life, then confessed his whole decision on defying the Dark Lord was to not become a murderer. Her entire history with the pale boy flashes through her, the word mudblood echoing through it all, but then she sees his eyes, in the here and now, holding her gaze so openly, so pleadingly. 

Hermione had decided to trust him and told him so nineteen years and three days ago. She’s worked with him on altering a Time-Turner in what would surely, at the least, land them expelled and their wands confiscated, and is that not her utmost worst fear? Knowing all she does, capable of all she is, and being cast back into the muggle world to be nothing more than a dentist. She may not be risking her life in their endeavour, but she’s risking everything that makes it worth living. She may not need free of a dark mark binding her to the darkest wizard of their age, but if they don’t succeed, then not only will this world she is trying so hard to be a part of crumble before her eyes, but one of the painfully few friends — the best friend — she has in this world, will be whittled away to a husk should Voldemort discover the claim he has upon the Chosen One.

Mudblood, mudblood, mudblood.

That trust, shrivelled and soured and cold.

Yet here Malfoy is, working with her and pleading with her and not with an inch of his usual condescension.

“So. I can still trust you?” She asks.

“You can trust me,” Malfoy says. “I swear it.”

“Hm.” It’s not a particularly convinced sound. “Can we trust Nott?”

Malfoy’s jaw works. “I think so.”

“You’d better be right.”

“I know.”

“I— I’ve been watching him,” Regulus murmurs and there’s a war behind his eyes that Hermione doesn’t understand. “He hasn’t repeated what he saw.”

Hermione pulls out her wand and Malfoy straightens, Nott letting out an uhh, and she shakes her head as she flicks it towards the door and the lock clicks.

“He may as well be of some use then. I’ve got a party to prepare for, Nott. A Death Eater one, back in 1977.”

“Right. I’m still lost,” Nott says, coming back to the centre of the room. “But I’m all yours, Granger.”

In her bag is the notes she’d made of all Regulus had to say and she hands them over to Nott, who reads them swiftly, incredulously, but Malfoy caves and gives short answers to inform Nott of the scant necessities (acting as though it wasn’t him that created this problem in the first place, but Hermione lets go of that irritation, it will get her nowhere).

“Well, Granger. You speak more than well enough and your posture rivals any purebloods. Honestly, some of the girls I know could learn a thing or two from you about—” he stumbles at Malfoy’s unimpressed look, “—but anywho, you’ll pass as a half-blood in any conversation and I’ve no doubt you already know all of this,” he waves the sheaf of parchment, “so the remaining points of order are, what, dancing and dress?”

“Can you dance?” Regulus asks.

“I danced with Viktor at the Yule Ball, which we had some lessons for. But it’s been two years.”

“I’ll admit I didn’t pay any attention to your dancing then,” Nott says.

“She was fine,” Malfoy says.

Regulus raises his eyebrows.

“Fine will hardly do. Draco and I can teach you. What about dress-robes?”

She hesitates. “I did get some new ones in Diagon Alley before school started but…”

“Just a dress, then?”

“Well, yes, that too. But might this be a fancier party than any of that? And in the 70s. My dress robes might be okay but my clothes are—”

“Mugglish?” Malfoy offers.

Hermione sighs. “Yes. Mugglish.”

“You’re adept at transfiguration though,”

“Not that adept. I can alter our school robes back a few decades with the right visual reference but I have no clue what a witch might wear to a party like this!”

“I can get you something from Narcissa if your dress robes aren’t appropriate. She’ll know I have a date since I’ll have had to ask my mother and if I were to explain you’re a half-blood, she’d probably take pity and give you something of hers to borrow.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Thanks? To what?” Nott asks.

“My date has offered to procure me appropriate clothing.”

“Huh?”

“Regulus Black is with us. He’s the one who will be escorting Granger,” Malfoy glowers. “And he’s right that my mother will help. She’ll send what you need to Grimmauld Place.”

Nott looks around, swallows, and says, “Alright. You’ll be in good hands with a Black, but wasn’t he quite the You Know Who supporter?”

“Right up until I wasn’t.”

“No,” Hermione says.

“Grand. We’ll leave the aesthetic side of things to a one Regulus Black and so it’s just a case of dancing then.”

Hermione’s glad she locked the door but she wouldn’t mind running out of it in this moment.

“Draco, you’re the better of the two of us.” Nott waves his wand and mutters a spell to move the desks to the side of the room.

“No, I’m not,” Malfoy replies instantly.

“Uh. Yes, you are.”

“You’re perfectly adequate.”

“Well yes, but she’ll need more than adequate. Why are you arguing this?”

“Why are you?”

“I’m not, you’re simply the more accomplished dancer.”

“Barely. By a troll’s fingernail. Not even. A lacewing fly’s lacy wing.”

“I’m beginning to think it’s less about skill and more about dancing with Granger.”

“I have no issue with dancing with Granger!”

“Of course not. So dance with her.”

“You dance with her.”

“Oh, Merlin’s beard!” Hermione cuts in. “Just dance with me, Draco!”

Malfoy blinks at her, and Nott blinks at her, and Regulus fails in suppressing a laugh that then comes entirely out of his nostrils.

Malfoy straights, adjusting his robes and dusting them off. 

“Fine.”

“Good.”

“Quite.”

Only, when they step into the space Nott cleared, her heart pounds and there’s a slight blush on Malfoy’s pale cheeks. She waits for him to do something. He doesn’t do anything.

Nott coughs.

Malfoy jerks forward and Hermione gasps because he’s grabbed her waist and her hand and they’re touching; Malfoy glides fingers up her ribs to rest at her back and draws up her arm to slide her palm into his and it just a hand, just skin, but in the six years of knowing Draco Malfoy, of glares and names and cupboards, their skin has never touched.

She’s not sure why that matters, it’s just a hand, only it freezes her solid.

“There’s no music,” she says.

“There isn’t,” Malfoy says.

“I’ll count you in,” Regulus says. Malfoy gives a curt nod. “One two three, one two three, one two three…”

And he leads her in a waltz. 

He steps in and she retreats. He steps back and she’s pulled inexorably towards him. He spins and she practically flies.

He moves with all the grace deserving of his rearing and yet there’s a stiffness to his step; a rigidity in his arms.

“Oh, relax, Draco.”

Malfoy grits his jaw and glares at the space over her shoulder.

“Is dancing with me that bad?” Hermione asks, quiet enough for only him to hear. With Viktor it had been unfamiliar and a little clumsy — he was far better on the quidditch pitch than the dance floor — but he flowed with the movement and was all gentle smiles on a harder face than Malfoy’s.

Dancing with Malfoy is a partnership of precision and ice.

When he doesn’t say a word, she’s forced to face the facts and acknowledge the most likely answer: yes.

It doesn’t stop him from gallantly leading her through the waltz until they’re gliding around the room on the same step, the same breath, two opposites in odd harmony.

“Smashing,” Nott exclaims. “That’s likely enough of that. Foxtrot next?”

Malfoy and Hermione fall apart.

“How many do I need to learn?” She asks, air near escaping her.

He shrugs. “I’ve no idea what they danced at these parties but you can’t go wrong with a waltz and a foxtrot. If you know those two, you can excuse yourself from any others.”

She turns to Regulus and gives a little wave into the middle distance in which he stares.

“Yes. Those two will be fine.”

“Okay. How does the foxtrot go?”

Malfoy gives her a long, unreadable look.

Nott flaps out the arms of his robes and puts a great deal of attention on them as he asks, “Want me to show her the steps?”

“No,” Malfoy answers. “I am the better dancer, after all.”

“Mmhm,” Nott assents.

“The foxtrot is on a four/four time signature, versus the three/four we’ve been dancing to, and is a combination of slow and fast steps. It’s not as… slow as a waltz.”

“He means it’s not as romantic.”

They begin walking her through the movements, Regulus counting them in, Malfoy taking her in his arms, and Nott pointing out wrong positioning here, explaining how it moves from long glides to shorter steps there.

“Bring that wonderful rigidity into your neck and look away from Draco. I know it’s hard with a handsome face such as his, but— yes! Just like that. Lean.”

The sun begins to droop and Hermione echos the sentiment.

“I’m made for books not dancing,” she wheezes out.

“You’re doing well,” Malfoy murmurs.

She groans and longs to drop her spine, just a little, but Malfoy’s knowing fingers tighten around her rib cage and her shoulders straighten again.

Following his lead, partnering his steps, having his hands on her for one hour, then two… it’s decidedly strange. Working with Malfoy was one thing. Necessary. Easy to focus on Harry and discovering the method of destroying horcruxes. But dancing with him? It’s aligning her breath to his until it’s as though they share a singular one, sent back and forth with the flow of silent music. She’s clumsy and yet he doesn’t bully or reprimand her, he simply murmurs the corrections and tugs her onwards. She supposes he can feel her exhaustion, and beyond that, her anxiety for entering the viper’s den and, being so at home amongst snakes as Malfoy is, he’s trying to… what? Lend her his ease? She’s descending into delirium. He threatened Harry not two hours ago! And yet… cautious though it has made her, those pleading eyes melted the frost his words wrought. Draco Malfoy, pleading. What a ridiculous notion. (But hadn’t he been?!)

“You’re frowning,” Malfoy whispers.

Heat floods her cheeks. “Oh, sorry, I was just a little lost in thought—”

“ONE two THREE four, ONE two THREE four, one two… three..”

They stumble a step (mostly Hermione’s fault) as Regulus misses his beat and his count fades out entirely.

“Regulus?” Hermione asks. The dance peters out on a final spin and Hermione pulls from Malfoy’s grip. Regulus is swaying, head twisting as he searches for something. “What is it?”

“I’m not… sure. A… call?” He drifts, an unsettling, ghostly movement. “I need to go… see…”

“Regulus!” Hermione tries to grab for him even though she knows she can’t hold him but a call? Ice skitters over her skin as her grasping fingers pass through his arm and panic rocks through her and he’s rushing away, through the wall and then— gone. “What… what was that about?”

She glances over at Malfoy but he looks bewildered.

“You don’t think he’s… gone, do you? I mean I know we could likely do all this without him now but, well… he isn’t, right?”

“His business isn’t finished because you learnt to dance.”

“So no.” The worry unbalances her, shocking in its intensity.

“So no.”

“Come on, Granger,” Nott says softly. “You’ve almost got this one too.”

It’s silly, he’s a ghost and really she barely knows the boy, but after their conversation in her dorm room, he’d solidified strongly as a friend. She desperately hates losing a friend.

She swallows the feeling down and returns to their makeshift dance floor with her lips pressed tight, but Hermione doesn’t feel much like dancing after that.

Chapter Text

A voice drifts on an unseen current. It weaves through his core, hooking ever so gently around his spine, and… tugs.

It calls to him.

Not with words or gesture or anything tangible. Like the shiver of goosebumps over your skin when something in your mind trips over the familiar and as you look into the darkness expecting demons or angels, it expands with the other. It’s a sensation beyond the corporeal. It’s not… alive.

Is it Death?

Regulus had panicked yesterday when his fraught memories had retreated and out of the haze he could not find Draco or Hermione; then he had wandered aimlessly, treading every inch of the castle as he waited for time to pour its sand through his faded body. Why had they just… left?

He found Draco first, ensconced in the Slytherin quidditch team and contemplative, though attempting to engage in the banter of his teammates. He couldn’t help but linger a little while on their practice. He’d loved Quidditch dearly. Loved competing against James with that last match where he snatched the win right out of the star chaser’s hands being the trophy amongst a collection of golden memories. But Draco couldn’t tell Regulus what happened, flying up in the sky on a dumb broomstick.

Ever familiar rage had bubbled up and fed his panic when he went in search of Hermione. Just being with her had calmed him. Seeing those Gryffindor trappings, wondering if the boys’ dorms looked the same and imagining the marauding done in James and Sirius’s room had calmed him further.

It wasn’t until dawn rose that he felt the call.

He’d tailed Theo Nott and counted Draco and Hermione’s dance and tried to ignore it.

Then night fell and it was no longer a suggestion but a lure.

Regulus floats from the classroom and lets the paranormal sixth sense guide his flight. Through walls and flesh and darkness until he finds others of his kind.

Ghosts.

He blinks. They’re— no, not—

Underwater.

Having answered the call, Regulus finds himself at the bottom of the Black Lake.

His lungs seize, no air to fill them. He’s back where he started, dragged down into the dark and heavy depths, flailing and kicking to rise, screaming until his chest empties and fills with choking, cold, salty water, the pressuring caving in his skull, the inferi clawing at him, parting skin and muscle and he tastes blood on the water drowning him too—

Only he’s not drowning. Nor is he being cut and torn or even touched. He cannot breathe, but, he doesn’t need to. Regulus is already dead.

And this is not that lake.

He blinks, casting the past back where it belongs and finding himself standing at the sandy bottom of the freshwater lake, crumbling pillars blanched a sickly white in the light of pale mercury-blue orbs strung between them. The pillars line a broken stone plateau aglow with the subtle, hazy fluorescence of half-life.

The ghosts form a crescent moon in front of Regulus, watching him.

The Bloody Baron steps forward.

“You’ve been ignoring us,” he says. The medieval robes drenched in charcoal blood, so dark in its silver that it retains the suggestion of a garish red, is a nauseating mirror to Regulus’s own bloody purgatory state. Two violent deaths simmering with regret. “Avoiding us.”

Regulus looks down. “I have.”

“Best to accept your fate, my boy, and move on,” Nearly-Headless Nick says.

“I have unfinished business to attend to.”

Nick chortles. “Of course! Don’t we all! I didn’t mean don’t do that. Haha, no! But you’re one us now, and it simply doesn’t stand you ignoring that fact! You’re still here; celebrate it!”

The Baron hisses and Nick waves his hands in quick, scolded apology.

“What he means is: we are a community, here at Hogwarts. And as a larger society. We don’t like being snubbed.”

“Snubbed?” Regulus says.

“You have ignored us!”

“I didn’t know you’d take offence!”

The Baron scoffs. The Grey Lady, arms held tight around her and a faraway look on her face, turns towards Regulus.

“We give time, to those who are new amongst us. To adjust. It isn’t easy for some,” she says. Her gaze cuts to the Baron, who scowls.

“It’s been weeks,” he mutters, somewhere between pleading and justifying.

“That isn’t so long for us.”

The Baron’s guilt visibly carves through him, turning the fearsome chained and bloody aristocrat into an ancient, weathered man as he curls inwards and his face falls.

“Ah, well, what’s the matter of all that!” Nick chimes back in, dissonantly lively in this desolate place. “It is Hallowe’en night! We summoned you because we absolutely could not let you miss it.”

The time when the veil is thinnest. He remembers seeing it from a different vantage point, a hazy vision… that last time… had he had company?

“What happens?”

“Why, we celebrate our continued existence. It is a wonderful thing — as I’m sure you’ll come to appreciate — our opportunity to linger close to life, to live a little more, for eternity! Tonight, we toast and dance to that fact!”

So that’s what it had been.

They begin at that place beneath the water. It sets a bad tone for Regulus; a sour, salty, choking taste in his mouth. But buried as they are down here in a watery grave, they claim the pressure reminds them of being alive. Regulus waves his arms through the liquid, walks a few steps (ignores the tutting of the others), and though it doesn’t feel like life, the greater resistance and weight than the air above is a… sort of facsimile of a living, breathing body. Barely.

“Why not sit in stone,” he mutters. It’s thicker.

“Bit impractical. We couldn’t see each other then!”

Regulus moves away from Nick.

The conversations happening around him carry to his ears not as a living voice does. Humans can’t speak underwater, he supposes, so ghosts couldn’t talk normally. It’s a similar sensation to their summons. Something just beyond life.

Once he can get past the strangeness of it’s sound, it all sounds weird in another way. The sentences have an elegance, the reactions come smoothly on cue, but it’s too rehearsed. Gazes zone out and yet no beats are missed. Someone drifts a little too far and yet they carry on as if following a script. They talk of their lives, of other ghosts, gossip as boring as any.

They try to talk to him, disjointed and moon-bright. Real. Crazed. He doesn’t tell them how he died or what his unfinished business is or what the Slytherin boy and Gryffindor girl are up to hanging around him.

Mostly, Regulus tries to remember he’s not drowning.

It’s a while later that his mind catches up and he thinks to ask. “Why can’t anyone see me?”

The Baron frowns. “We don’t know.”

“It happens sometimes,” the Grey Lady says, staying a good distance away but never too far, lingering around Regulus. “Not often, though. Those who are not seen are more… untethered.”

A shudder ripples through the crowd.

“Untethered?” He asks.

But no one answers him.

Untethered. Regulus thinks of the sea of his memories whisking him away and the rage that anchored him here. It was that fury, that burning desire to see Voldemort defeated that hooked the remainder of his soul to some semblance of life. His quest to destroy the horcruxes and save Harry is all he has left and it is the sole thing that grounds him, when the rage threatens to be too strong a fuel or his mind risks quenching the flame altogether.

What would happen to him, if their trio were to succeed?

It scares him, but… does it matter? He was willing to go to his death for this and he is still willing to sacrifice what little of that death still haunts the world. It is what he’s here for. It’s all that he’s worth, now.

The water presses in on him.

I’m not drowning. I’m not drowning.

God, but he wishes he could breath.

Eventually, the ghosts begin to rise.

“How—?” Regulus stutters.

“How?!” Nick repeats with a laugh. “Merlin’s beard, you’re a ghost, boy. Rise!”

That sensation. The ghostly sixth sense. With fear clinging like pondweed around his wrists, he leans into it. It washes over him in a cold that isn’t cold and a wave that is almost like magic.

He rises.

Regulus watches, following with unnerving ease, as the silvered group float out of the lake and laugh and spin until they reach the main courtyard.

Then, the dance begins.

It moves so smoothly and is so beautiful up close. Every silent step is executed to perfection, couples come close to collision and then weave effortlessly past each other, moving parallel in some pattern he cannot see. It’s chaos and order. Death meeting life.

Regulus is the only dissonant chord.

As the dance spins on, wilder and with an eerie, rigid frenzy, it is only around him that it falters. Dancers stumble. He moves away. There’s a gasp as a woman’s skirts tangle around her partner. He jerks back. Two dancers collide.

The silence is punctuated only by his ripples. They look at him in outrage and their previous welcome curdles and frosts as he is a new and unfamiliar and disturbing variable in the perfected, stagnant flow of their movements. They begin to look ossified even as they flicker in bewitching light. This is not a celebration of life. It is a book read so many times the ink fades and the glue crumbles but still the reader cannot move onto a new story, a memory mis-remembered so often that any truth is mangled in fantasy; an endless sleep at the bottom of a sea cave lake.

This is not death meeting life.

It is death glamoured and clinging, clawing, pretending to still be alive.

And it is all Regulus has left.

All that awaits him in an endless future, alone.

Regulus flees.

Chapter Text

Draco watches the slithering of grindylows amongst the distant swaths of pondweed in the dark lake. His friends chatter about their work and there’s a quill he’s twirling slowly in his hand, and yet he can still feel Granger’s fingers in his; the thinness of her shirt beneath his palm once she’d removed her cloak. 

Of course he hadn’t wanted to dance with her. She’s… Granger. But it hadn’t been so bad, he supposes. She was surprisingly good, if he’s honest.

His foot taps a steady one two three and in his mind he goes around and around with her gliding alongside him, moving beneath the subtle touch of his directions.

Merlin’s beard, he’s a 17 year old boy and instead of the usual solicitations of such a creatures thoughts, he thinking of dancing with Granger? Surely that’s something a — God, he doesn’t know — a 25 year old or something would do. Hm. More like an 80 year old. Dancing. Merlin’s beard.

Granger. Merlin’s beard.

His legs are restless, each tap tap tap sending him further into ridiculous, unfathomable, frankly demented fantasy.

“Would you stop that infernal tapping,” Pansy spits at him.

“Hm?”

She gives him a decidedly are you thick skulled? look and he rolls his eyes.

“My deepest apologies, Parkinson.”

Her face pinches in a scowl.

“Bit fidgety, are we, Draco?” Theo asks casually, his quill still scratching across parchment.

Draco refuses to rise to the bait. “A little.”

“Haven’t got enough exercise in today?’

He sniffs. “Haven’t moved around much at all, in fact.”

“No? Need a bit of a stretch? You’re practically dancing.”

“Now you mention it, a dance sounds lovely.”

“It’s a shame you don’t have a partner!”

“Alas, I’ll have to walk off this excess of energy instead.” Draco rises, neatens his shirt, and tugs on his cloak.

“Alone?” The smile in Theo’s tone is practically Cheshire.

“Naturally.”

“What a shame.”

“Terrible.”

Pansy frowns as he tucks his work away and lobs his bag at Theo with a put this away, would you?

“You’re going to be gone long?” She asks.

“Doubt it. But I’ll work in our dorm when I’m back. There’s too many younger years in here tonight.”

The halls are blessedly quiet when the snake hisses over the stone and the common room door vanishes with it. He’s tired in all actuality. The dancing took it out of him. But maybe a walk will settle his mind since his homework hasn’t beat its desire to wander.

It’s colder now, like the transition from October to November is taking with it any warmth autumn had left to offer, and he pulls his charmed cloak tighter around him. He really should learn a warming charm. He’d never thought of that shortcoming before because he’s always considered the weather before dressing, something his mother taught him. It elicits a different itch in him: to feel the cold like he had on Monday. It was an oddly novel experience. He’s been cold many times, he’s human after all, but with all the wool and charms galleons can buy, he’d couldn’t remember the last time it bit through his skin and seeped into his bones.

The viaduct entrance doors loom to his side and without overthinking, he pushes through them. It’s Halloween here tonight. Is the castle lit up in ghostly effect like it was in 1977?

“Oh, hello, Malfoy.”

Granger’s voice shudders through him. She’d been walking over the bridge and then was right there, in front of him.

“Hello, Granger.”

“I came to watch it again.”

“So did I.”

She chews on her bottom lip and silently leads the way to the walled circle to his left. They watch for a few moments as the ghosts take up the echo of their earlier dance in a distant silence and the castle shimmers beneath a phantom veil. Magic has surrounded him his whole life in all its wonders and horrors and Hogwarts hasn’t disappointed with it’s own cozy brand of the former, but this is a strange sight like no other. An odd truth; a flickering between life and death. The part of him that feels at home in the Restricted Section feels awed by the sight. The part of him that recoils from the ink branded onto his skin is on edge. Draco lingers on a similar precipice, caught between life and death. One being his, the other being Dumbledore’s, and the distinction of which is what dances above him.

“Have you seen Regulus?” Granger asks.

Draco turns his gaze to the other oddity: the girl by his side with all her endless brown curls. “No. You haven’t?”

She shakes her head.

“I’m sure you will, long before I do anyway. I recon the ghost prefers your company.”

“He does, but then there’s hardly a surprise there,” she says, that arrogance a little dim but he hides a smile at its presence nonetheless.

“I’m fine company, thank you.”

She buries her face in a Gryffindor scarf and leans with her forearms on the top of the wall.

“Aren’t I?!” He doesn’t say it seriously, Granger is hardly the first person to agree with that, but it has the desired affect. The corner of her mouth tilts up as her eyes reflect the castle’s magic.

“Have you tried being… nice?”

“Quite a bit recently, actually, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Oh, I’ve noticed.”

He bundles a little deeper into his cloak and notes that she watches the movement. “You don’t make it sound good. I can be nice.”

“I suppose.”

“Suppose? Suppose? I can be nice!”

“Then why does Regulus always hang out with me?”

He huffs. “Two peas in a pod you are. So mean.”

She whips her head to face him. “Coming from you!”

“I told you, I’m trying to be nice!”

Her eyebrows draw in and she squints. “Why is that?”

He does grow cold then. “What do you mean?”

She sighs and returns her gaze to the ghostly ball. “You know what I mean.”

“Not the foggiest.” The look she gives him is withering. “No, really.”

She sighs. “Why are you trying to be nice all of a sudden?”

“Other than the obvious reason of needing your help to get me out of this ridiculous club.” He waves around his left arm and then leans next to her.

“So it’s entirely circumstantial and I can expect you to revert to your usual behaviour once this is all done?”

“I recon so.”

“That’s a shame.”

What a shame. Theo’s words echo through him.

“Is it?”

“You’re not awful when you’re nice.”

“High praise indeed,” he drawls. “Not awful.”

“It’s high for you from me, trust me.”

He looks askance at her. “I’d hate to hear what you normally say about me.”

She giggles. “Yes, you would.”

Draco scratches a nail over the stone wall and lets the silence drift for a few heartbeats, nothing but their breath tainting the air. How can she laugh with him, after all the vitriol he’s spilled?

“It would be warranted,” he murmurs.

She links her gloved fingers. “Yes, it would. Crookshanks always agreed with me.”

“Come again?”

“Crookshanks. My cat.”

“I didn’t know you had a cat.”

“He doesn’t like you so I’m hardly surprised.”

“Are you telling me a cat purposefully leaves any room I’m in because of what you’ve said about me?”

“Possibly. Though he’s an excellent judge of character. He knew Ron’s rat wasn’t a rat at all and kept trying to eat him.”

For a moment, Draco is glad Regulus is nowhere to be found. “That was Pettigrew, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Would have been better had the beast gotten him then.” Would have saved them all the return of one Dark Lord and Draco his Dark Mark.

“Crookshanks isn’t a beast.”

“With a name like that?” Granger swots him on the arm and it shocks a laugh from him. “I meant it with the highest regard! I rather like cats.”

“You and Regulus both, it seems.”

“Oh, so he shows himself to Regulus?!”

“Yes, he rather likes Regulus.”

Draco scowls and huffs warm air into his wonderfully numb hands. “I can be nice,” he mutters. He knows he’s not… good like Granger. Bound to his father’s darkness and the inheritance of a blood purist family, Draco is everything a Slytherin ought to be. Cunning. Ambitious.

Evil.

Is it really so bad, to be a Slytherin? He doesn’t think so. And yet…  

“Cold, Malfoy?” Granger asks and he gives her a sidelong look. She’s pressing her lips tight together — against a grin, he suspects. Granger is a kind of free Draco has never known: free to be good and make something of herself in their world, rather than being given it on a bloodstained silver plater. But he sees how hard that freedom is and knows he has every opportunity to have it easy.

“Positively frosty,” he answers, the lie tumbling off his tongue with a delicious, nervous taste. He’s not cold at all. Well, his hands are, but he’s enjoying that.

“Would you like my warming charm?”

He doesn’t need it. Not even in the slightest, he tells himself. But Granger is smiling like she was two days ago. He can’t seem to help his next words.

“Go on then. Dazzle me.”

She tugs out her wand, a lovely earthy thing wound with vines of warm wood, and wordlessly casts over him. The heat her magic brings sends a shiver thought him. It doesn’t do much beyond that, but the ice in his hands melts away.

“I’m sorry for what I said earlier, about Harry,” Draco says.

Her wand disappears beneath her cloak and she turns away. “Why did you say it?”

Because he hates Harry for that initial rejection? For making him see in what light the wizarding world views the family he thought was so great? Because Potter is everything Draco can never be?

“I’m scared.”

The silence that greets him in haunting. “Of?”

“You need to ask?”

“Is it of what Voldemort might do if he learns of your rebellion?”

God, Granger, it goes so much deeper than that. “Yeah,” he croaks.

“Is it a worse fear than that of not fighting him at all?”

Of becoming a murderer? Draco would rather kill than be killed, he knows that much. So, yes. But… is it? Maybe he would rather die than sink so deeply into the darkness he knows is his blood that he couldn’t ever return. It would be a cage worse than the one he is in with the ink on his arm. Inches of solid steel rather than thin bars. Could he ever find whatever goodness might also lie in him if he truly, in heart and soul, became a Death Eater? He wants that, he realises. He wants to find some sort of goodness within him. He shuts his eyes and his fingers tighten on the icy stone.

“No.” It hardens his resolve. “I meant what I said: I don’t want to be murderer.”

Granger looks at him then, searching his face, and he doesn’t bother hiding anything behind a mask.

“You might have thought about that before you joined the Death Eaters.”

He huffs a laugh. “In my defence, their whole thing is about overcoming death, but,” Merlin’s beard, the look Granger is giving him, “they are a raving band of murderous arse-hats and I did know that before.”

Kneeling before Voldemort and proffering his arm is the single greatest shame of Draco’s life. The fact that he’d only realised his folly when his knees hit the ground.

He’s not ashamed of his arrogance or darkness or pure blood. It’s what he is.

But damn him if he isn’t like Regulus Black.

He wants more.

Granger gaze flits between his eyes as if trying to decipher him. Just ask, he thinks. Keep asking and I might just tell you it all.

Maybe if she asks, he might know himself.

But she looks away.

Is there any goodness in me?

Chapter Text

[Part Three, The Black Library Books]

Draco had thought about quitting the quidditch team this year. After all, what was the point of flying about on a broom trying to catch the snitch when you were tasked with murder? Instead, he’d stayed and made it to every practice, using all of his free time on studying as if he’d be getting his NEWTS next year. His father expects him to get good grades on top of Voldemort’s task, at least. So he had one excuse. And quidditch gave him another.

Why are you taking so long?

It’s the Slytherin-Gryffindor match, I’ve got to train.

The necklace bought him and Granger much-needed time even as it bought Draco his father’s wrath. It made his chest seize up even as the words came from the metal bars and wards of Azkaban. It’s just not as threatening without the dementors. The fact that his father can get letters out at all is a testament to Voldemort’s reach and his father’s money and power.

Draco crumples the letter and incinerates it with a spell, leaving the smouldering remains on his bedside table as he grabs his broomstick and kit and makes for the changing rooms.

The Slytherin captain, Urquhart, is already giving his pep talk when Draco arrives and Draco doesn’t bother listening to the other half of it as he sidles up next to Blaise and gets into his kit. He has his own game plan today. 

Right on cue, a piece of parchment slides overtly beneath the door. So overtly that it cuts Urquhart off. He harrumphs and snatches it from the floor.

“Malfoy? You’ve got a… note.”

Draco almost smiles then. Instead, he holds out his hand for the parchment, curious to see what Granger wrote on it.

‘Can you meet me before the match? I want to wish you good luck’ with a frankly ridiculous amount of kisses. He really has to restrain his laugh.

“I’ll be a minute, lads,” he says and he thinks Urquhart might protest, but he lets him go with a harassed sigh.

Draco enters the hallway outside expecting Granger to have left already and is pleasantly surprised to see her and her curly hair only barely bound into plaits. She wears an emerald green jumper that’s a size too large — nice touch — over a pair of checkered brown shorts and woolly tights. He lets himself look his fill since Granger is facing away from him, staring out a window like a mooning girl.

“Granger,” he drawls, low and soft and a little raspy.

She turns with raised eyebrows. The jumper has a H on it.

“Green looks good on you.”

She scoffs but pink tints her cheeks. “It’s Harry’s. Or, was. He’s grown out of this one and I love Mrs Weasely’s knitting — she manages to make wool not scratchy — so he gave it to me. I didn’t really mean to wear green today, considering, I was just feeling nervous and wanted something comforting.” Her fingers curl around the cuffs of her sleeves.

Draco has a fleeting feeling of wishing her nervous rambling was because of him, but his sympathy rises stronger.

“You’ll be okay. They have no reason to assume you’re anything but Regulus’s date and he’ll look after you. Go to my mother if he can’t. It might complicate things in this time as it’ll be harder to Obliviate her, but twenty years is enough time to forget your face. Your safety comes first.”

She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth and nods. Where’s the I can handle myself, doesn’t-need-help, know-it-all girl gone? He was beginning to grown fond of her.

“Better yet, fuck them all up if anything goes wrong. I know you can,” Draco says.

Brown eyes collide with his. “You do?”

“I do.”

She smiles, small and soft and it pools warmth into his chest. Is this what it is, to be good like her? He can’t say. He needs her not to mess up tonight as much as that strange urge to dispel her nerves. Where does the motivation truly come from?

It all circles back to his wants in the end.

“Now get lost before the others come out.”

Granger tries to look scolding, but she fails to wipe the smile off her lips. “You remember the plan?” Draco nods and she echoes it, patting a purple beaded bag at her waist. “I’ll be ready with your things if the game goes on too long. Fourth floor if all goes well. Hospital wing if not. I’ll be waiting for you.”

That warmth in his chest grows. Draco likes the idea of someone waiting for him after a match, to celebrate the win or comfort him in the loss; someone he could share the moment and the entirely of himself with, be the emotions good or bad. It sounds nice.

He mentally shakes himself. It’s Granger waiting for him, not a girlfriend, and for a very specific reason.

Still.

He doesn’t mind it being Granger.

“I’ll meet you there,” he says.

She nods and begins to walk away. “Oh. Um. Good luck. Try to make it quick?”

“Anything for you, Granger.”

Her wild plaits and green jumper disappear around the corner.

Minutes later, he’s kicking off the ground and soaring into the open air above the Quidditch pitch, his teammates leaving him in ripples of green and silver to mingle with spots of gold and red. Everyone takes there positions. Draco sits lightly on his broom, only one gloved hand wrapped around the shaft but adrenaline already pumping into his veins. Potter faces off against him half the pitch away. Too far away to really make out his expression, but Draco is a seeker. He knows the glare Potter wears well. Can practically feel it burn into him.

Hooch blows the whistle and the balls launch upward. Instantly, the Weasely girl gets the quaffle and she streaks off. The Slytherin chasers form a blockade against her and she tosses the quaffle to Demelza Robins, only for Crabbe to send a bludger her way, forcing her to dodge and miss the ball. Urquhart snatches it and half the players blur towards Gryffindor’s goal, engaging in another tousle.

Nothing for Draco to do yet. He scans the rest of the pitch for the snitch, a tiny golden drone buzzing somewhere against the backdrop of grass and flapping house stands, but he can’t spot it. Neither can Potter, it seems, because the Gryffindor’s attention shifts back to the other players as Slytherin comes out on top and Urquhart has the quaffle again and is gaining on Weasel and the goal.

“Shit.” Draco’s free hand, left hanging so casually by his side, twists to release his wand from his sleeve. He whips it alongside his broom, hoping the dark wood is indistinguishable from the black, and aims. He’s too far. It’s not going to work. He tries anyway, the Confundus charm rising to his tongue—

He’s too late.

Urquhart hurls the quaffle towards the left ring and Weasely—

Blocks it.

“Huh.” Wasn’t he supposed to be awful? Isn’t that what Granger said when they crafted their plan? Well… she hadn’t said he was awful, but she’d insinuated he was — under pressure, anyway.

This isn’t ‘awful’.

Draco watches as his teammates make numerous more attempts and Weasely doesn’t let a single one pass.

It’s going to be down to Draco and Potter, then.

The game drags on.

Slytherin makes no goals, Gryffindor only a few as Draco’s team are ruthless in their attack. Goyle bats a bludger into Dean Thomas so hard he has to be escorted off the pitch. But Pomfrey heals his injury and Thomas is back on his broom within the hour.

Still with no sight of the snitch.

Draco eyes the sun. It’s descending steadily towards the horizon. He’s forced to get involved with the play in case he needs to get himself injured and out of the game and he swerves around bludger, getting into Gryffindors’ paths, and tosses the captured quaffle to Blaise, who almost makes their first score. Well, he tried.

Potter is watching Draco steadily when he glances up to check on his whereabouts. Circling above, the smudge of red and gold robes and black hair isn’t even looking for the snitch.

Draco has been watching for it this whole time.

Urquhart nudges him with a hissed “get on it,” when Draco, still with eyes on Potter, gets in his way. He’ll take that a cue to go back to scouting the pitch from above for a few minutes. Hopefully that will get Potter off his back.

As he begins to rise, he spots it.

Flitting in front of the Gryffindor stands, Hermione visible in her green jumper and Gryffindor scarf just behind it, face scrunched in worry, is a tiny speck of gold. They make eye contact for just a second. She sees it too. 

But Potter hasn’t sighted it.

He tries to tell her what to do with his eyes, knowing they’ve gone wide with urgency. He has seconds before it’s noticed that he’s found the snitch! If he doesn’t move now…

“Potter you fool.” Too busy watching Draco — too busy endlessly distrusting him — to notice that their goals are entirely aligned. 

Today, Draco needs Gryffindor to win.

And quickly.

Draco flies.

Gryffindor hasn’t scored enough points, so if he catches the snitch, Slytherin will win and Draco will be held aloft in the common room for earning them it. Maybe he’ll still be able to use Granger’s note to excuse his absence. Maybe he’ll just crash into the stands right in front of her whilst trying to catch the snitch. Maybe he’ll catch it so his absence is questioned instead of hers.

All that thought in the first split second of his flight. 

Their eyes collide as he shoots towards Granger and without missing a beat, in only the next second, she yells. He doesn’t know what she says, the wind is too loud in his ears and she’s too far away, but she points.

Then all of Gryffindor are roaring the location of the golden snitch.

Draco doesn’t need to look to know that Potter is tearing towards it.

His Firebolt is faster, but Draco had a head start.

“Come on, Potter!”

Draco extends his hand.

It’s twenty metres away. Ten. Five.

Potter snatches it just as Draco’s fingers graze the fluttering gold.

Draco turns so sharply his blood is viscerally dragged backwards, his eyes blotting with darkness for a heartbeat, but then he’s slowing. He hasn’t collided with the stands. Or Potter.

Thank fuck.

When he gets back to the changing rooms, he checks the time immediately. They still have little over an hour before they need to meet, so he changes and follows his dour team back to the common room. He lingers with them for a while, lamenting how he almost caught the flighty little bugger, that Gryffindor stole their win with their cheering, etcetera, etcetera.

Then he smirks to Blaise, flashing the note, and disappears out the room.

He jogs up the stairs, veins alight, more excitement and giddy anticipation flooding him than any Quidditch match.

Granger is just where they planned and he grins.

Only for it to die when she turns and he sees her face.

Red and puffy, she tries to hide it, to turn back away, but he catches her chin gently and tilts her face up to meet his. Then pulls his hands away sharply.

“What is it?” He asks. A small smirk curves his lips. “I thought you’d be happy with Gryffindor’s win.”

“I knew I wouldn’t be,” she croaks.

That smile dies too. “What do you mean?”

She shakes her head.

“You’re about to go mingle with Death Eaters. Tell me what’s wrong.”

A fresh tear escapes and cascades down her cheek. He watches it.

“I asked you to let Gryffindor win because I knew it would give us both an excuse to leave. Ron—” She presses her eyes shut. “Lavender kissed him. She’s fancied him for ages now. Ron— he did so well and I knew she would do it the moment we all got back to the common room. I knew, and I didn’t even try and stop her.” Her words are quiet, hard, and when she’s done she silently turns and enters the room they chose to be their point of departure. He hears her call out a greeting to Regulus — returned bright and early All Hallows’ Day morning — who asks her the same questions he did and Draco lets the door fall shut between them so he doesn’t have to hear it again.

Granger fancies Weasely. Draco knew it distantly, it had never been a point of interest or concern, but now it roils within him.

When she’d asked that he left Gryffindor win — was adamant about it, really — he’d rolled his eyes and conceded only because it would be easier for him to leave if Slytherin lost. If she had a way of getting out when her best friends made up nearly half the team, then fine, that could be hers to worry about. She wouldn’t tell him what it was.

He never thought it would be this.

Hermione fancies Ron enough to be reduced to tears and yet she let another girl kiss him for the sake of their mission. For Harry.

His chest feels tight all of a sudden. That kind of loyalty, of sacrifice… it goes beyond just being a Gryffindor.

It goes far beyond his motivations for their quest.

He just doesn’t want to kill someone.

What is she willing to give up for them to win?

Draco pushes into the empty classroom and can’t help but see the bushy haired know-it-all in a different light. Silvered and ethereal in Regulus’s ghostly glow, she smiles softly at the dead boy and his murmured words of comfort. Something green and acidic whips through him. A wish that he could have said something to bring out that smile. But he sighs and a bit of tension ebbs from him. She’s smiling, at least. Better for their mission.

He doesn’t let himself feel the tiny, minuscule, really barely more than an atom in size, gladness that any relationship with Ron Weasely has been sabotaged.

That she’s here with him instead.

Draco stands a little straighter, seeing her dedication, her unfathomable goodness, and that giddy anticipation half-forgotten settles into something firmer.

“I don’t want to rush you, Granger,” he begins, glancing out at the dimming sun. “But we should go.”

She nods and transfigures her clothes. Her shorts become a pleated skirt, her jumper a more elegant and fitted turtleneck, all more suitable for their task but… Draco shakes his head. She dips her hand into her bag, coming out with the Time-Turner pooled in her palm.

Draco steps closer and dips his head to allow her to loop the chain around his neck. They’re finally doing this. He’s going to get into the Black family library. Tonight.

With luck, it will hold what they need to destroy Voldemort.

“Don’t be afraid of them, Hermione,” Regulus says.

She glances over, hesitating on the Time-Turner held between them.

“I rather think they ought to be afraid of her,” Draco says with a smirk.

Granger huffs a laugh, gaze passing between him and Regulus.

“When they let two softies like you into their ranks? Pfft. I’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Draco guffaws. “Precisely.”

Regulus is silent.

“I’ll see you when you’re back.”

“We’ll aim for here,” Granger says. “Five hours time.”

It’s almost 7 o’clock now. That gives them until midnight to be back at Hogwarts, or else somewhere they can safely reappear in in 1996 and apparate back to school from. Malfoy Manor would not be that place.

Granger winds the Time-Turner back 19 years and the spiral of light shatters the contained cosmos, hurtling them to 1977.

“Good, you’re on time,” Regulus — Living Regulus — says as the fabric of reality stops unravelling around them. The classroom is only a little different, clearly inhabited by an older teacher, and the same could be said for Regulus. Though he is much more startling. Stood almost in the same place, the shift from drowned phantom to living boy is suddenly unsettling after the veil draped view of the castle and the realisation that Draco wants something more. A parallel between them like dirt beneath his nails. He wants to scrub it out but it won’t budge. God, he better not end up like Black.

His battle against Voldemort better be a win.

Regulus pushes up from his crossed-arms lean against the nearby wall and heads for the door. “We need to leave immediately.”

Granger quickly untangles them from the Time-Turner and they rush to follow Regulus.

Together they stride in silence to the Headmaster’s office since none of them had any floo powder to use in a different fireplace. It’s the riskiest part of their plan, given Dumbledore knows them both so well in their time, but they’d had no other option, so Draco had given up his thieved stash of Slughorn’s example polyjuice potion from the start of the year and they’d both taken hairs from quiet, unassuming people in their houses—

“Put this on,” Regulus orders as they reach the stone gargoyle, pulling something from within his robes. It’s a cloak, velvety and patterned in deep hues.

“What is it?” Draco asks.

“Har—” Granger cuts off, eyes wide. “It’s an invisibility cloak. But how did you…?”

Regulus frowns. “You know it?” Then he seems to realise something and his face smooths out; closes off. “Right. Of course. Yes, it’s an invisibility cloak. No need for polyjuice.” He smiles slyly. “Just some close proximity.”

Granger flushes and really, Draco is having a similar reaction, which is ridiculous, so he snatches the cloak and pulls it over them both. His stomach twists. She really does have to be close to him to hide them both under here.

He can smell her. Ink and parchment and something softer, sweeter, like vanilla. There’s the fresh mountain air as well, but it sharpens the scent in a way that would be better suited to the smoke of a fireplace or old books.

A shudder runs through him. He shakes his head to try and dislodge the unwelcome smell and returns to reality as they enter Dumbledore’s office. The old headmaster is there, at his desk with his half-moon spectacles low on his nose as he writes with a beautiful curling grey quill. Nearly twenty years younger, his face is less lined, less shadowed, though his thick hair is still white as snow. He slowly looks over the rim of his glasses at Regulus as the boy speaks and it’s the same look he gave Draco before him and Theo went back to Nott Manor. Like he sees through it all. That keen gaze flickers behind Regulus, over them, eyes twitching as though he feels something there. But his searching look uncovers nothing and Draco slowly lets go of his breath.

Nothing that he lets on to, anyway. Draco puts nothing past the wizard. 

“Will you be returning tonight, Mr Black?” Dumbledore asks.

“If I have any say in it,” Regulus answers. “It will be late though. Way past curfew. Can I, anyway? I’d rather not stay the night at home.”

Dumbledore contemplates the answer and then nods. “You may enter straight into the Slytherin common room, then head straight to bed.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Dumbledore smiles and gestures him towards the roaring fireplace. Regulus takes an overly large scoop of floo powder from the ancient iron pot affixed to the wall and waits a moment, not knowing where Draco and Granger are, shuffling along behind him. 

He throws the powder in to the flames and they flare green. “12 Grimmauld Place.”

And they all walk through.

They spill from the twisting inferno into the drawing room of the Black’s ancestral home, alone.

Granger slips from beneath the cloak and expels a rather large breath. Draco huffs. At least he smells of more than parchment.

Draco stays where he is under the cloak, glad for it, given the alternative was simply hide. Now, he follows them into the foyer and the path of a pleasantly surprised Walburga Black.

“Regulus, dear! We weren’t expecting you for another half hour or so.”

Regulus shrugs. “There were no first years around to torment tonight,” he says blandly and his mother’s gives an high chuckle and a cutting smile.

“And this is—” her smile falters into a sneer she doesn’t bother hiding. “Your… date?”

Granger’s spine is so rigid it puts steel poles to shame. The fury Draco knows so well tempers into a brilliant smile and she steps forward to boldly offer her hand.

“Morrow Starling. Pleasure to meet you, Mrs Black.”

Walburga lifts her nose and considers Granger. “Starling. Hm. Half-blood but not a bad family. There are only so many purebloods out there these days, I suppose. Well met.” She acquiesces to the handshake, barely, extending a graceful arm and shaking only once.

With a long suffering sigh, she pats Regulus’s cheek and sweeps into the back of the house.

Regulus is stiff-backed as he leads them up to the topmost floor and his bedroom. Draped in Slytherin colours, it’s a neat and dark room, full of shelved books and unobtrusively placed knickknacks. A package of dark brown paper sits on his emerald green bed.

“Is that for me?” Granger asks.

Regulus nods distantly and opens his wardrobe to fish for his own dress robes.

Granger hesitantly picks up the wrapped garments so Draco tugs off the invisibility cloak and comes to stand by her side.

“Mum’s fairly proper, so I wouldn’t worry too much,” he says. The paper comes off quickly after that, but the dress that pours out in a puddle of dark shimmering silk makes Draco want to swallow back his words.

The whole package is pressed against Gragner’s chest. “Well. Would you both turn away as I dress, please?”

Draco does as she asks. He notes Regulus changing as well, off to the side, and feels distinctly uncomfortable. It’s a few long minutes before Granger coughs lightly. The sound jolts through him and he turns.

Silk such a dark burgundy it’s almost black and patterned in something subtly floral hugs her torso. Ruffles meet in a v-neck, exposing her collarbones and the length of her neck, one side extending to curve along the edge of her hip, ending at her thigh in a pooling split.

“It’s…” she begins, and she doesn’t need to say more as she slowly turns. The ruffles look about to slip from her shoulders and they tumble down to meet at the small of her back, revealing an expanse of warm skin.

“You look…” Draco trails off.

“Is it okay? I thought it would be more conservative. Dress-robes even. There’s a cloak to go with it. And the heels fit.” The slit parts smoothly over her leg as she presents the small court shoe. “But I’ve still to do my hair and makeup.”

“Not the most subtle thing my cousin could have sent, but no one could deny you fit in in that. Only someone who does would dare.”

“What?!” She squeaks. “‘Dare’?!”

He smirks. “Don’t worry. It’s bold way but not risqué. It will make the right impression.”

Her breath shudders from her and the gaze that meets Draco is so unsure that he wants to assure her but he’s tongue-tied. So he nods.

She inhales deep. “Okay.” Then she sits at Regulus’s desk and Draco watches as she pulls various things from her bag and gives herself a slight dark eye, purple blush, and plum-brown lips. She quickly tames her hair next, piling the curls into a bun with a few pieces purposefully escaping, and adds a simple silver necklace.

When she turns and he sees exactly what she’s done, Draco can only blink. She’s transforms her into something of his own kind. Dangerous. Shadowed. Yet still Granger.

“Perfect. Are you ready?” He holds out the cloak and she takes it with a nod. “We’re just on time.” Regulus sweeps past Draco to the door and Granger follows, pausing as she takes in the full length of herself in Regulus’s mirror. Her mouth presses into a line.

Draco swallows. “You’ll be a hit, Granger. Not mugglish at all.” He grins and winks, earning an eye-roll.

“I’d swap places with you if I could. I’d much rather spend the next few hours perusing books than at this party,” she says.

”And miss the opportunity to begin your career in espionage? You might love it.”

She doesn’t look convinced.

”At least you can show off your new dancing skills. I expect you two will make quite the image. Rub it in all their Death Eater faces, a muggleborn dancing with a Black.”

”I’d still rather be in the library,” she mutters.

”Well, I couldn’t pull off that dress, so do what needs to be done, Granger.”

“You’re an idiot, Draco Malfoy.”

“What does that make you?”

She opens her mouth, smiling now, but Regulus interrupts. “You’re both idiots and we only have so much time. Come on.”

Granger slides past him.

“Wait. Granger,” Draco blurts. She turns. His heart in his throat, he tugs the ring off his finger and picks up her hand to press it into her palm. “Show it to my mother in case anything happens.”

“Your signet ring?”

“It’s got markings for the Black family on it too. It should be enough to convince her.”

Her fingers close around it.

Draco throws the invisibility cloak back over himself and crawls silently down the stairs after Granger and Regulus. He lingers on the stairs as Walburga and Orion speak loudly about the party, almost entirely ignoring Granger on Regulus’s arm as they stride into the drawing room.

“Ah, one moment, I forgot something,” Regulus’s voice comes through the door and then he returns, stalking towards the library. The spell whips from him in a low murmur and sharp movements. Instead of the chains that dragged Draco to the floor, the runes hum and glow silver until the door clicks open. Without a word or glance of acknowledgement, Regulus departs once again.

Leaving the way clear for Draco.

As the light from the drawing room flickers green on the inscription of tujours pur, Draco enters the Black family library.

The Dark skitters over him and he lets a slow smile spread across his face.

He can practically taste his freedom on the delicious air of magic.

Chapter Text

Twisting, consuming, heatless green flames tear over her skin and in the mere moments between the drawing room of Grimmauld Place and the terrifying unknown of Malfoy Manor, Hermione imagines the fire’s raging deliverance burning through her flesh with all the guarantees of Morrow Starling. Someone who doesn’t have to claw for purchase in a world that doesn’t want her. The muggles in her line so distant their names are forgotten to living memory, lingering like ghosts in history. She imagines the green rippling in her vision like the surface of a star imbuing her blood with all that she lacks, igniting her magic so that it’s all anyone can see and it’s all anyone cares about.

The smartest witch of your age.

I am a witch, muggleborn or not.

All the fire really does is spit her out into the heart of the Death Eaters.

The foyer they enter is opulent, the dark marble veined with silver and scattering the glow of the crystal chandelier, thrumming with the low hum of an orchestra and a heady smell that’s immediately dizzying.

An aged and imperious house elf gestures wordlessly towards a set of open double doors further down the hallway and snaps his fingers so that their coats and cloaks float from their shoulders.

Hermione’s heart lurches at the sudden air skittering across her back. She doesn’t want to remove her cloak yet! But she clenches her jaw and allows it to happen; she can hardly enter the party wearing it. Then what was the point of having it at all? A midnight stroll of the grounds? Actually, the thought of escaping the presence of purebloods and dark witches and wizards she hasn’t even entered yet sounds wonderful.

She almost flinches when Regulus picks up her hand and tucks her arm around his. He’s different already, in this setting. None of the indolent slouching or biting smirks. His callous indifference has turned into something more aristocratic and there’s a little of the ghost she knows in the nod he gives her.

Walburga and Orion enter the ballroom first, Regulus leading Hermione in on their heals and god, but her heart is beating like a cantering horse as the party envelopes them.

Something sharp and almost sweet immediately hits the back of her throat, softened for a moment by the tobacco smoke wafting from couches in the corners and beneath that, dark fruits and oud almost choking her. Men and women laugh low from their places on the velvet sofas, mingle in silks by shimmering windows, or dance in the centre of the room. The room itself is unlike anything Hermione has seen before. Tall, shadowed ceiling, more marble, dripping with opulence. A tray of green drinks in fogged champagne coupe glasses floats towards them and Regulus takes one but Hermione hesitates.

“They’re more of a symbol. Not too alcoholic, don’t worry,” he murmurs, so quietly she almost doesn’t hear him.

She takes one. At least with it occupying one hand and her other curled into the arm of Regulus’s robes, she won’t fidget.

“Orion! Walburga! Welcome,” Abraxos Malfoy detaches from the crowd, a large figure cut in the blackest wool with that pale Malfoy hair gleaming in the low light, a woman of similar severity by his side that must be Myrine Malfoy. “Fashionably late, as always.” The words are meant as charming, Hermione can tell, but they’re a little lacking. He shakes Orion’s hand and kisses Walburga’s cheek.

“I’m afraid that’s my fault, sir,” Regulus says with a similar aloof charm as he shakes Abraxos’s hand. Another pale head comes over, a girl on his arm. “They had to wait for me to return from school.”

Lucius and Narcissa. The cousins lock eyes for an electric moment, or at least it feels that way to Hermione, when Narcissa Black turns her keen appraisal onto her.

Abraxos looks pleased. “Regulus. I’m glad you chose to join us tonight.” Something glints in the elder Malfoy’s eyes and the weight of the words shivers over Hermione. Regulus only embraces it.

“The pleasure is mine. It’s an honour to even be invited.”

“You’re family, son. The invitation is implicit. But who is this, might I ask?”

Hermione holds her spine aggressively straight as his attention shifts to her.

“My date for the evening. A Miss Morrow Starling.”

She bobs a slight curtsy. “Thank you for having me, Mr Malfoy.”

Draco’s name on her tongue, spoken to the wide shouldered and powerful grandfather that looks barely older than her parents, is dissonant. The signet ring burns in her mind. Draco will be in the library now, searching for the key to horcruxes.

“So that’s her name,” Narcissa hums and looks up and down Hermione’s length. “You were tight-lipped about her in your letters, Regulus, though I see you were going for maximum impact. Very dramatic.”

“Starling,” Lucius says. “Not friends with the Everard’s, are you?”

They’re a wizarding family living in the same area, one that had been on their list for their supremacist-leaning political views and old Hogwart’s headmaster, but she quickly found out one scion were amongst some of the first to be killed for not joining Voldemort. Their views only went so far. Had they made a mistake, choosing a family close to one that could be under scrutiny at this time? Hermione shakes her head.

“Rightly so. They wouldn’t be here. And on the arm of a Black, no less.” His derision is evident.

“Now now, Lucius,” Abraxos says. “Young Regulus here is wise enough to have selective interest. Was it a meeting of minds and hearts in these permissive times?”

Regulus smirks. “She’s a smart girl. How many O.W.Ls was it, Row?”

“Ten,” Hermione almost croaks, the answer coming out in a sudden jerk.

“All of them Outstanding.” Well, one Exceeds Expectations but she decides not to mention that tonight.

Abraxos looks impressed. “Magical ability like that makes up for other shortcomings. I’m glad to see halfbloods proving themselves. It makes me  want to consider a demonstration to bring some of that drama dear Narcissa mentioned. Liven the party up a touch. But it’s only early.”

Her blood heats. Proving themselves? A ‘demonstration’ as though the scant drops of muggle blood in the Starling line automatically demotes her to entertainment? Even his grandson didn’t do as well as her.

Hermione forces herself to grin and say, “If you change your mind, make it a duel.” Perhaps she’d use the spell the half-blood prince wrote in that infernal potions book. Cutting a man like Abraxos of Lucius Malfoy is tempting enough to lower her moral standards for an evening.

“Take that as a warning, sir,” Regulus says easily.

“Delightful!” He claps Regulus on the shoulder. “Do enjoy the night, both of you. Orion, find me later, we must continue our conversation from last time.” 

“You know our thoughts align, Abraxos,” he chuckles. “We’re here, after all.”

“The extent of which is an unexpected pleasure, so please, humour me. There may yet be some new ground to uncover.”

Regulus tenses almost imperceptibly and takes a sip of his drink.

Hermione isn’t sure, Orion is a hard man to begin with, his severity with a crueler touch than Abraxos’s strength, but she thinks his face hardens a little more.

“Fine, fine. If you insist.” Orion waves a hand dismissively, smile more akin to a grimace.

Abraxos and Myrine leave to greet more guests. Lucius tilts his chin and follows his parents, but Narcissa lets him fall from her grip and lingers.

“It’s nice to see you, cousin. And it’s nice to meet you, Morrow.” Then she too, leaves.

Hermione takes a gulp of the bitter green liquid.

“There’s the Greengrasses,” Walburga says. “The Yaxesly. Notts. We’ll say hello to the Carrow’s first.”

Their quartet travels the room and Hermione — Morrow Starling — is introduced to a handful of the families on her memorised list, receiving mostly disinterest before Regulus pulls her away.

“Bottom’s up, Starling,” he says, and against her better judgement, she finds herself tipping up her glass.

Exams she can handle any day. The immediate, visceral peril she’s experienced with Harry and Ron is something she’s grown used to. But this is entirely different. The danger here is an unspoken threat. It’s in the dark magic potent in the veins of Death Eaters she’s rubbing shoulders with and the violent potential of her secret. The war is on a tipping point in this time. Not just muggle murders or politics spoken at select parties anymore but the slow crossing of a line that will end in the deaths of James and Lily Potter at Voldemort’s hands. Has it happened yet? Have the first witches and wizards been killed? Was it the Everards?

Voldemort isn’t here tonight, at least, not yet.

Regulus draws her to the dance floor as a waltz begins and she forces out a sigh as they begin to move. Closer to her height, Regulus moves as elegantly as Malfoy, but softer.

One, two, three. One, two, three. 

She’s glad for their hours of practice now. Abraxos’s words means a misstep here is a mark against her false halfblood name and a question of her worth. If she cannot even dance like us, why should we accept her? Ridiculous, archaic, and by no means a good measure of a person, it is a tradition retained to set the purebloods apart from the rest of wizarding society. Nott knew that and thanks to him, she is prepared.

Regulus spins her across the floor with gentle precision and she concentrates on the steps. The first dance slides into the second, the drink sparking in her veins and her chest swells with the vivacity of it all. The emotion of the music, the power of her Cinderella position; here, in the centre of a Death Eater party, is a dirt-blooded muggleborn girl holding a secret that could cause the downfall of their self-chosen monarch, dancing like she is one of them.

And they can’t tell the difference.

The dance ends and they move to the refreshments tables.

“I can eat this, right?” Hermione whispers.

Regulus picks up a brie, fig, and prosciutto crostini and takes a bite.

“…yes?”

“We’re sixteen. No one will care if we eat the hors d’oeurves,” he murmurs.

“Even me?”

“Even you. It’s not like you’ll be coming back.”

“Well, then. If that’s the case.” Hermione scoops up a goat’s cheese stuffed mushroom and almost groans. Then some smoked toasted trout. “I didn’t eat before this,” she says. “Merlin’s beard, this is good.”

Regulus huffs a laugh through his nose.

“You’re not eating!” Blood burns into her cheeks and she pulls her hand away, glancing around nervously.

“I’m not hungry.” He shrugs. “Why didn’t you eat before?”

“There was a quidditch match. My friends are on the team and they won, so there was the celebration in the common room and…”

“Nerves?”

“No.”

“What?”

She doesn’t want to think about Ron right now. But the kiss replays in her mind. Lavender running up to Ron the moment the team came through the portrait hole in their kit and grinning like fools. The look of surprise on his face. He kissed her back almost immediately to raucous cheers.

Despite the fact that Hermione had invited him to Slughorn’s Christmas party.

Harry had looked at her, not hollering or clapping or anything else, and it had given her the perfect opportunity to leave.

She wants to ask Regulus about Ron, suddenly, but this isn’t the ghost of the boy, it’s the living thing and he’s got a mean streak she doesn’t want to walk herself into. “A boy being an idiot and me being an even bigger one,” is all she says. Then she stuffs another appetiser into her mouth.

“Count yourself lucky. Love is for idiots.”

“Oh, really? How did you get the cloak?”

His gaze slides to her. “What of it?”

“You know that I know it’s James’s. Did you steal it? Or did he give it to you?”

He scoffs. “I’m not an idiot.”

Is that really what he thinks? That love is idiotic? What is his path from boy to ghost and how does James Potter chart it? How does Regulus end up bloody and drowned, alone? She knows he found a horcrux, but she hadn’t managed to ask what happened to it or why he died. It hadn’t been relevant since the more important goal is learning how to rid Harry of Voldemort’s soul and Hermione had assumed Harry and Dumbledore had retrieved it. She’d been waiting for Harry to tell her, stuck in a limbo of what she doesn’t know and honouring Draco’s plea to not be revealed.

“I didn’t have you down as a thief,” she says.

He shrugs again. “I didn’t have you down as an idiot.”

She bites her tongue. He can figure that one out on his own.

It’s the kind of comment she expected from Malfoy when she told him why she was crying, not Regulus — who supposedly defies the Dark Lord for the love of James Potter — but he’d been oddly quiet. 

“Evan,” Regulus says. Hermione blinks at him and, seeing him pale as a sheet and staring wide-eyed at someone behind her, turns.

A boy their age with blond hair frowns deeply at the pair of them.

“I hear her, but I don’t remember it,” he says. “Didn’t think there would ever be any Gryffindors in this company. Didn’t think Regulus would date one either. Why are you keeping secrets?”

Regulus casts a sharp glance around them but the music and din of conversation is loud.

“Don’t go saying that to anyone else, Rosier,” Regulus says.

Evan… Rosier. Regulus said he wasn’t a threat in this time. But he becomes a vicious Death Eater in only a couple of years.

“Who is she?”

“Morrow Starling.”

“That sounds wrong.”

Regulus takes a deep breath in through his nose.

“What are you doing here?” He asks. “Is Pan here?”

“She always refuses.”

Evan’s lakewater gaze blinks to Hermione. “I’m getting a right loud whine with you two together. Sounds like dark magic of a sort. Do you know why I’m hearing water around Regulus now?”

“Um,” she says. “What?”

“You’re being weird, Evan,” Regulus says.

Evan gives him a scathing look and reaches beyond Hermione to some trout. “Water?”

“You hear water?” She asks.

“Ever since you showed up.” He plops the cube of fish in his mouth and Hermione’s blood runs cold.

This conversation is perhaps the most dangerous of them all and it slants the setting into a new reality. For a moment, she felt bold, standing tall and fooling everyone, but now the doubt creeps on the drawn out bowing of a violin and whispers she feels on her bare skin and she wonders how she ever thought she could do this. She’s only ever been personable enough to get by, not nearly enough to hoodwink Voldemort’s lieutenants.

“Another dance, Regulus?”

“Evan—” he bites his mouth closed. “Sure, Row. Let’s dance.”

The boy tracks them as they return to the dance floor, and Hermione settles light fingers on her bag, thinking of the ring it holds. Just a couple more hours. 

Then they’ll have the books and they can go home.

Regulus lays a hot-blooded hand on her waist and she shivers. As they begin to dance, he looks at her with a slight frown etched between his brows.

She tries to ignore it.

Chapter Text

Evan’s here.

Evan’s here.

A high pitched whine like dark magic and the tide in his ears. What do those things mean?

Regulus dances another waltz with Granger and every time they turn just so, he can’t stop himself from looking at his friend. Evan looks back. He doesn’t stop; watching them from the sideline in a way that has Regulus scanning the room in case anyone else notices.

“We can’t dance forever,” he says.

Granger doesn’t answer for a full three step. “I know but I don’t think either of us particularly want the alternative.”

“What alternative?”

“How is it you said it? We pretend to be absorbed with each other?”

Regulus grimaces and glances at Evan again. If they stop, will he come over? They will have to act absorbed to stop that, like Granger is a Gryffindor girl Regulus was keeping quiet about until he brought her here. He sighs and lets go of his anxiety, his tension and sickening fear. He lets go of all of it.

When he looks back at Granger, he’s able to do so with a small smile. “I think we could manage, we dance well together. Where did you learn?”

“Draco taught me. He wanted me to be prepared.”

“For what? It’s a party, not a war zone. Were you really so worried of what would happen tonight? This is just an excuse to get into the library so there’s no real danger. And you’ve got the protection of a halfblood name.”

The music sweeps on and on. Regulus has to fight to maintain his steady calm.

“You don’t know what happens after this. What he does,” she murmurs.

“What happens?”

Granger shakes her head vehemently. “I’m not going to tell you.”

“You’re going to Obliviate me anyway.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s what I would do to stop me from using whatever information you’re trying to get. How do you know I’ll wait otherwise?”

“You don’t. You’re the reason we’re looking in the first place.”

“But I wait, what, twenty or so years to act on it? When I can no longer get into the library?”

She shakes her head, glancing over his shoulder at what he knows is Evan, ever watching.

“It’s complicated,” she says.

“You’re going to Obliviate me though, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” she sighs. “Probably. Just to remove Draco and myself from your memories since you don’t remember us in our time.”

“So you can tell me,” he says.

“What I say could change things.”

“What you’ve said so far doesn’t make me want to follow in Sirius’s footsteps.”

Granger opens her mouth and shuts it again. Regulus waits.

“James isn’t enough?” She asks.

“He’s got a son,” Regulus bites the words, immediately wanting to take them back as heat rises to his cheeks.

“He does,” she murmurs.

“You want me to defect though, don’t you?”

Her gaze lingers on him. “We’re only here to get the books.”

His answering huff of a laugh is harsh. “So I can join the Death Eaters then?”

“If you fancy.”

Regulus doesn’t know what he wants to do. Dancing with this strange girl from the future, a bright flame bold amongst all this Dark, he feels an absence keenly in his chest. Sirius had it. When Regulus lost it exactly, he doesn’t know. Somewhere amongst the slow gutting of all that is soft about him and the gentle decent into war. There’s a knife in his hand now and he can finally turn it away from himself but where to aim it next? At those like his brother and his marauding gang, who would seek to restore the rotted flesh he cut away, so that the darkness could seep into the empty space and replace that old softness with power — or at the Dark Lord himself? For what? James Potter?

The battle to keep calm ends with a blink and he’s left feeling very little at all.

“Can we stop dancing now?” He asks.

Granger sighs. “Yes. I’ve got a stitch.”

Regulus offers his arm absently and she takes it. They find an empty couch in a corner and settle into it, making sure to sit close even though Regulus wants to curl his lip as they do.

His future self’s shit is his own business. If he want’s Regulus’s help now, then fine, he’ll give it, but it’s no declaration of a side or of any feeling. He’s not in love with Potter and his actions won’t come from a flight of fancy. He’s not Sirius.

Evan is still watching them intently so Regulus shifts closer until his thigh is flush with Granger’s and leans in towards her ear. He opens his mouth and—

Realises he has no idea how to enact this masquerade.

“Sorry,” he murmurs. “Evan is— but I’m not sure—”

“You said you’d have flirted with me,” Granger says in a rush.

“What?”

Her hand comes to rest on his thigh and it’s like lightning through his blood.

“In the future. I—well Sirius flirted with me when Draco and I arrived on Halloween and when I told you, you said you would have too.”

His lips curl in a half smirk. “I did?”

She nods.

“Too bad for Sirius that I’m the one that got to see you in this dress then.”

She grimaces. “I’m glad it’s you and not him.”

Not many people have said that to Regulus before. “Aren’t I a little old for you?”

She laughs. “Not right now, you’re not.”

Regulus drifts his fingers over her hand. “Too bad for Malfoy that I’m the one that gets to sit here with you like this.”

Her gaze flickers. “Again, I’m glad it’s you and not him.”

His fingers graze up her arm and she clenches her jaw behind her smile.

“Me? Really?” Regulus asks.

“Is it so hard to believe?” She turns her gaze on him fully and it spears right through his gut.

“Yes.”

“You’re attractive, smart, a little mean perhaps, but I’ve met a brooding Quidditch player before and that didn’t stop any of the trove of girls after him.”

He flushes. “Girls go after Sirius, not me. He’s the one that’s all that.”

“Have you ever returned someone’s attentions or do you simply turn down anyone who comes even remotely close to trying?”

“Fucking alright, Granger.” Regulus contemplates her words as he continues his slow mapping of her arm, tracing patterns that has his knuckles grazing her ribs and following the path with his eyes. He’s never really cared about getting girls before, is that his issue? James had been so quick to change after their match; be vicious on the pitch. Regulus is only now catching the implied but not off it and it’s such a contradiction to what he knows. His parents hated his softness, so he was mean; they saw it as a weakness so he pushed it away and even Sirius has a matching shadow beneath his charm and charisma. Would James have given him a moment of his time had he not been vicious? Would he have seen Regulus if he was just a soft, shy, worthless ghost?

“How…” he begins. “How would I do that?” He cringes.

“You’re doing a fairly good job currently.”

He freezes, looking up at her. “I am?”

“Touch is an effective method. Body language says almost as much as words do. That… that Quidditch player, he didn’t really know how to flirt either. It was more… intense stares… with him.”

She’s blushing and so’s he and it’s new to him, this breathless kind of giddiness.

“I might not be convinced to defect, but this is making the party more fun,” he says with a smile.

She scoffs and opens her mouth to say something but her eyes flick over his shoulder instead as a rustle of whispers breaks through the crowd.

“What is it?” Granger asks.

Regulus guides her up and starts to lead them, agonisingly slowly, towards the other end of the room. There are french doors leading to the gardens.

“What is it?” She asks again. He grins back at her and pulls her towards him, pushing them both into an alcove for a moment as though they were embracing.

Quietly, so, so quietly, he says against her neck, “someone important has arrived.”

There’s painfully few people who would cause that reaction.

Granger picks up quickly who would be the worst.

The chatter increases and they’re forced to stay in their alcove lest it look too obviously like they’re fleeing. The doors are only a handful of feet away.

A shrill laugh cracks over the music.

“Bellatrix,” she breaths.

Regulus listens with his entire being. She’s talking loudly, making a fuss in the way he knows his cousin to do when she wants to be the centre of attention, so it must just be her.

“No Voldemort,” he whispers. Granger remains tense.

Regulus shifts them, putting his back to the side wall so he can see out and she tucks in next to him. He almost jumps out of his skin when Evan appears between them and the door.

“Why are you hiding?” Evan asks.

“We’re not,” Regulus says, but it looks like it, the way they’re pressed into the shadows. His grip tightens on Granger’s back as he decides what to do. It’s only his cousin but Narcissa has mentioned how close she’s gotten to Voldemort and if he even gets a whiff of someone not quite right — never mind Granger, Regulus doesn’t want the Dark Lord’s eyes on him. Not for anything short of Regulus’s choice to be seen.

Granger makes the decision for him and pulls them both from the shadows.

Evan and Granger lock eyes and his friend shudders. “God, that’s awful.”

His face goes distant, bloodless, and it unnerves Regulus so much that he almost flees through the doors no matter how it would look.

“Evan, snap the fuck out of it.”

“My cousin is here?” Bellatrix calls. “Regulus, dear!”

Shit. Evan shudders and it’s a rock and a hard place but Regulus shoves Granger towards the boy and away from himself. “Evan. Listen to me right now. Don’t be weird and look after her.”

A breath before Bellatrix spots them all, Regulus is walking away and through the parting crowd. 

“Cousin,” he greets.

“Reggie! You are here!” She practically screeches. Wild black curls frame her harsh grin and she swans forward in an elegant mass of tulle and lace. “I knew it, I knew it! Didn’t I say it, Cissy? That filthy blood-traitor might have left us but Regulus would never. And here. You. Are. Oh, the Dark Lord will be pleased.” Her head snaps towards Regulus’s father. “Is this it?”

Orion’s expression darkens.

“Is this what?” Regulus asks.

“Are you the new heir to the most noble and ancient House of Black, cousin?”

Is he? Sirius had left an age, an eon, a lifetime ago and his mother had burnt his face off the tapestry in the drawing room and yet his father’s silence had spoken volumes. Still, it says everything.

Bitterness swirls through Regulus.

Sirius won’t ever return. His father will one day have to make peace with that fact and let go of the precious first born son that committed the most heinous crime to their family, and accept that the disliked, soft-hearted, weak second born son is the one that will uphold that highest value.

Regulus won’t ever leave.

His lips curl and his heart races but he says, “Yes.”

The fervour in Bellatrix’s eyes rises to a frenzy. She tears out her wand and points it at Regulus, sending him to his knees with an involuntary jerk of magic. His arm is caught in the claw-like grip of her hand. She drags back the sleeve of his robe.

“You should get the Dark Mark, cousin. That Dark Lord would be so glad to have you,” Bellatrix murmurs.

Regulus’s mouth goes dry. His heart thumps with the sudden whiplash of his emotions. What he wanted so much a moment ago — the title of heir, the approval of his parents, the love — turns rancid. But isn’t this what he has been headed towards since the war began and Sirius deserted him in the hallway hung with generations of Blacks?

When the knife, so lovingly placed in his hands, was urged towards his chest, was this dark power now meant to fill its place?

Is he not meant to take the Dark Mark?

Blood-traitor or heir. Loyal and beloved or a blackened mark on a tapestry. Death Eater — or nothing at all.

Bellatrix’s wand touches the bare skin on his forearm and Regulus meets her crazed eyes with a steady gaze.

She cackles and releases him to swan away into the party. “If only I could, little cousin!”

Regulus is left kneeling on the floor, his insides scooped out and that blissful feeling of nothing all that remains within him.

Chapter Text

Regulus looks every part the Black family heir as he strides through the parting crowd, away from Hermione. 

Come back, she thinks, and desperately wishes for the ghost that feels like her own version of the boy.

Without Regulus, the allure of the party recedes, unveiling the sharp double-edged blade of the Dark beneath; the perfumed air wraps around Hermione’s throat with an absinthe breath and pure-blooded attendees turn alien.

With Bellatrix’s arrival, the shift from party to display is apparent.

The Dark Mark is exposed.

In her attempt to cast eyes away from herself, Hermione had fallen into the distraction of Regulus Black, and it’s like forgetting a step when she catches Lucius Malfoy sneering at her with his sleeves rolled up to proudly bare the black ink against his pale skin.

She inhales sharply as goosebumps flood over her. Draco superimposes over his father, the brief sideways glimpse she’d gotten of his Dark Mark when it was briefly unmasked had shaken her more than she’d cared to think about. She’d known he had it. Had thought about it in the darkness of her dorm room many times after Harry’s tirades and their late nights in the restricted section. But seeing Lucius so garishly showing it off and looking so similar to Draco is paralysing.

“I knew it, I knew it!” Bellatrix’s shriek electrifies her nerves and she almost jerks back as her gaze tears towards the sound.

Bellatrix. God, but she knows how Harry felt having to watch Peter Pettigrew escape in their third year, now that she has to hear Bellatrix’s shrill cadence rattle through her memory straight to the battle in the Ministry. She will murder Sirius. Regulus, tonight, doing all of this for her and Draco on no more than the fact that he would have never told anyone about Kreature’s suit, has no idea.

She sees Sirius pass through the archway. Sees the veil appear. Hears Harry’s scream.

And then she sees another Dark Mark. 

A third. A fourth.

How are they so brazen? Most of their identities remained hidden until Harry revealed them in the Quibbler interview; Voldemort had guarded his inner circle largely even from each other.

But just as she spies another and shifts her gaze, she forgets who she’d been looking at.

She looks back and thinks, yes, them, and logs the name in her mind, but the moment she turns—

Who was it?

“Mudblood.”

A spell, to erase their identity once the Dark Mark passes from the line of sight. So they can be brazen, roll up their sleeves and revel in the exposition as they watch fear flash in the eyes of friends and neighbours, for it all to be forgotten the next second. But how was the spell done—

The drinks.

Hermione hadn’t noticed anything wrong, no hint or scent of a potion beneath the alcohol but—

“Mudblood.” Evan.

Hermione whips around. He’s staring at her, through her, face contorted with a strained agony and a frenzied rage.

“Mudblood,” he hisses, barely above a whisper. “I hear your screams.”

She stumbles back, hand flinching towards her wand, but she cannot draw it here.

“How did you get in? The sword, the sword.”

What is this?

His face twists in a violent grimace and he grips an ear.

“Mudblood. It’s awful. The screams. Mudblood!”

She needs to get out of here.

Hermione shoves past Evan, not caring anymore what anyone sees or thinks, to the doors Regulus had been leading them towards. If Evan is overheard, she doesn’t think she’ll make it out of this party alive.

Get out, get out, get out.

Her fingers finds the handle and then the cold envelopes her.

She trips and catches herself on a stone—something and runs as best she can in these damn heels into the gardens.

For a moment there is only her, the harsh sound of her rapid breathing, the thrumming heat of her bare skin, and the ache in her feet. Then she presses herself into the cover of the tall hedges and the silence of the night. She’s out. She’ll have to go back in for Regulus, to leave, or maybe she’ll just apperate all the way back to Grimmauld Place and knock for Draco. Regulus is fine here. He’s not the one—

“Morrow, wasn’t it?”

Lucius Malfoy had materialised from the darkness. He raises his eyebrows.

“That was quite the exit.”

Hermione goes rigid, the cold infecting her in a brutal flood.

“No, no, don’t worry. No one else cared or even noticed. But, you see, I had been watching you when Rosier junior began saying something rather interesting. It looked as though he was calling you mudblood. I wouldn’t have put any stock in it had you not fled into the night. But… you did.”

He had been, hadn’t he?

She’d only forgotten. Maybe there was more utility to those drinks than simply showing off.

He stalks closer and she leaps to the side, away from the hedge, and draws her wand. He tuts.

“Now there’s no need for that. I only want to talk.” And yet he drags his wand from his pocket.

Hermione wastes no more time.

“Stupify!” She launches the spell. He parries it with lightning speed.

“It must be true,” he says with a sneer. “You are a mudblood. Does my cousin-in-law know? It would be embarrassing if you had managed to fool him.”

She casts again, firing spell after spell that he returns with terrifying skill. A blast of red singes the flora behind her. She doges blazing green light. More and more and she can barely keep up.

Her incarcarous has rope tearing through flowers. But then Crucio collides with her shoulder. A gasping yell is torn from her throat and she’s thrown to the ground, mind blind with pain. It lasts a second. An eternity. It leaves her shuddering, lungs spasming, stars swarming her eyes and exploding in her head. Her wand. Where’s her wand?

“I have no predilection for violence. But really, what did you expect when you entered my house under a false name with so weak a protection as Regulus Black?” Lucius stands over her. “Did you think you could masquerade as one of us? Did you think he would save you? Foolish girl.”

Her wand is still in her hand. Her nerves were too on-fire for her to notice, but the pain only cramped her fingers into a claw around it. Of course she still has it. She had walked into Ollivander’s at eleven years of age and the wand of vine wood with a dragon heartstring had chosen her, but a man like Lucius Malfoy would take it from her and call her undeserving.

“Stupify!” She screams, jerking her shaking arm up and pointing that wand and all her magical might at him.

It hits his chest with booming violence and hurls him backwards.

“What did I think?” She says and hauls herself upright. “What did you think, following me out here?”

Draco’s father, no older than twenty, lies prone on the night-grey grass, entirely at Hermione’s mercy.    

If I Avada him in the back, do you think anyone would notice right now? Draco had said onto their first foray into 1977.

No one would notice now. But she wouldn’t erase Draco from existence, never mind the horrendous implications on time. She wouldn’t murder someone either. Even Lucius.

She blows out a long breath and looks up at the stars. Regulus shines fiercely bright from the heart of Leo, as distant as the ghost waiting for her nineteen years in the future and the boy in the ballroom with his cruel walls.

“Well.”

Hermione’s wand is raised before her mind catches up.

Narcissa Black — Malfoy — is surveying the scene with practiced neutrality. Her wand is clutched by her side and she cuts a careful, sharp glance to Hermione. “Explain.”

Hermione lowers her wand.

“He heard Evan Rosier call me a mudblood.”

“Are you one?”

“Yes.”

“The idiot boy.” Narcissa sighs. “What are we going to do about this?”

Please not another duel.

The ring!

Hermione fumbles in her bag and fishes out Draco’s signet ring, taking a breath before proffering it to Narcissa.

Her brow twitches in a frown. Carefully, she takes the ring and inspects it.

“What is this?” She asks.

“Complicated, if I’m honest. I’d hoped not to need to give it you. But then your husband… please, just let me go.”

“You think a ring is going to grant you a way out of this?”

“Please. It’s not safe for me—”

“Nor Regulus, thanks to your foolish behaviour. My husband will tell the Dark Lord of this and my cousin will be the target of his wrath.”

“Let me alter his memory! I know Obliviate. I can make him forget this happened!”

Narcissa shakes her head, her hand closing around the silver. “Do not go near my husband again. What is this?”

“It’s… your son’s.”

She raises her eyebrows.

“I said it was complicated. But he told me to give it you in case anything happened because you would help me.”

“You’re telling me that you aren’t from this time.”

“No.”

“And your reason for coming here?”

Here, as in 1977? Or here as in the party — Malfoy Manor?

Hermione glances at Lucius and the skull and snake ink stark in the moonlight.

“Your son doesn’t want it.”

Narcissa follows her gaze. “It can’t be taken off.”

“You’ve tried?”

“Of course not. But the Dark Lord is a greater wizard than I or you or any other I have met. He designed it so and thus it is.”

“Then you understand the position your son is in.”

She opens her palm and looks down at Draco’s ring. “He doesn’t want it.”

Hermione says nothing.

“How do I know this is no forgery?”

“It—he didn’t— it’s all he gave me.”

She hums. “It has my magic in it. I can feel it. It is all you would need.” She offers it back and looks to Lucius. “Though that is a flawed evidence.”

Hermione takes the ring and holds it tight, not wanting to put it away. “You’ll let me go? I can…” Hermione looks to Lucius too.

“Yes. Go back to Regulus and leave our home before I change my mind. I will deal with my husband.” Narcissa brushes past her and crouches beside Lucius.

“What about you?”

Narcissa closes her eyes for a long moment. When she meets Hermione’s gaze, it with an expression so keenly sharp that Hermione can barely stand to maintain eye contact. “I suppose if I manage to stop my son from taking the Dark Mark in the first place, you’ll know.”

“He needs to take it. You cannot mess with time.”

“I’m wise enough to know what can and cannot be messed with.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Narcissa almost snarls. “This trust goes both ways.”

Trust.

Just enough.

“Okay.”

Hermione leaves. She makes sure to check herself over on her way back to the manor, using a few spells to fix her hair and remove the mud and scrapes. Her arm still aches with the phantom linger of Crucio. The spell doesn’t do any real damage to the body, but her arm doesn’t believe it. God, the agony.

She slides around the side of the manor to re-enter through the foyer and collect her cloak. At the door to the ballroom, she sees Regulus and Evan in the same spot, engaged in a heated discussion. Regulus bites one last comment and then shoves past Evan for the garden door. Evan spots Hermione then and winces. He grabs Regulus and says something. Regulus spins. Their gazes collide. Tension visibly ebbs from him and then he’s making his way through the room towards her.

“What the fuck happened?” He asks as he spills from the ballroom. “I was with Bellatrix and then I couldn’t find you and Evan told me you’d ran out. That Lucius had followed you.”

“Evan knows,” Hermione begins.

“I know. He hears things but he doesn’t put much stock in any of it because he thinks it makes him weird.” Regulus winces.

“We should leave.”

Regulus nods. “What happened with Lucius?”

She tells him in interrupted, quiet words as he gets their cloaks and they return through the flames to Grimmauld Place.

“I’d have never thought he’d attack you,” Regulus murmurs in the quiet peace of the drawing room.

Hermione spots that blackened piece of the tapestry. “He’s done it before.”

Regulus’s grey eyes flicker but he says nothing, just slumps into a chair. “You should go find Malfoy.”

Right. Malfoy.

The adrenaline leaves her in a rush. They’re back in relative safety with some extra time to spare and books awaiting her.

With that thought in mind, she leaves Regulus for the Black family library.

Chapter Text

The green flare and crackle of the flames fades, leaving a languid, potent silence and the Dark laden books dripping magic off the shelves. Draco doesn’t hesitate to slide between the stacks. It’s much like the rest of the London town house — narrow and crowding, reaching upwards with it’s green patterned walls and midnight brown wood — but it also extends further than it has any right too. There’s no initial antechamber, simply immediate rows of bookcases, though the space Draco was expecting is only a dozen in.

Where the collection of Nott Manor was just that: a showcase of plinths and magical objects and an afterthought of books, and Malfoy’s own library was open and levelled, it’s artefacts displayed tastefully in niches, the Black family have wasted no space.

The room opens just barely, enough to show descending staircases mirrored on either side and a long blackened table extending between the two, boasting a single book.

It sits in the centre. A taunt, a temptation, a trap. Draco palms his wand and hovers his other hand over the blank leather. It has been touched by magic but it’s ordered, seeking — nothing harmful that he can detect.

Winters spent ensconced by the tomes at home have taught him a little on how to feel the magic woven through enchanted objects. It calms him to be in a similar place once again.

He flips open the book and deduces quickly that it’s a catalogue. At least it looks like it. But it’s spelled. The words are a messy scrawl that he can’t read no matter how hard he tries. It likely requires a spoken password to un-jumble it. His mother keeps a few books like it.

Well, that’s no help.

Naturally, there are no signs as to what can be found down either the left or the right staircase, but as he circles around the table and walks close to the bookcases on the other side, small notations shimmer into existence. In iridescent silver cursive, they look handwritten, as though some ancient Black was fed up of nothing being labelled and did it themself. At least they light up for Draco; his Black blood is good for something.

A creak comes from the front of the room, so quiet Draco questions the sound, but he leans his head to get a view back to the entrance anyway. Nothing. The door is shut.

He heads deeper into the stacks. All the books he inspects on this floor are strangely ordinary. Household magic and advanced theory on their subjects at school (no wonder Regulus is so smart) and all the Dark Arts a powerful wizarding family might want to ensure their continued influence. One note curiously reads ‘for bribery’. There’s magical genealogy, wards and counter-measures (no surprise there), even ‘battle madness’ and ‘prolonged use of Dark magic’. The latter has another note: ‘preventative care — read. IMPORTANT’. Important is definitely the word for it. Just look at Voldemort. Draco almost wants to add (but he doesn’t know the spell) ‘or you’ll end up looking like a snake. An ugly, demented snake — UNATTRACTIVE’. Although that’s probably not the worst affect splitting his soul has had on Voldemort, but to the vanity of the noble purebloods, that might be the bit that gets through to them. He could hardly say ‘will turn you into the most powerful Dark wizard of all time but all you’ll want to do is murder, rule, and generally be an fucking c*** to everyone.’ Actually, Draco thinks highly enough of the Black’s to assume they know where to draw the line. But perhaps the apparent value of books on ‘battle madness’ and examples like Bellatrix Lestrange paint a different picture of the family. Draco hopes belatedly that Granger doesn’t have to encounter his aunt at the party.

There’s a soft rustle to Draco’s right. He whips towards it.

From the dark corner between two stacks, he stares back out towards the dim light of the walkway and into the shadows of the shelves beyond, but it’s all empty.

On slow, quiet feet, heartbeat racing, he raises his wand and creeps forward. “Homenum Revelio,” he whispers.

Nothing.

There’s no one here, just the dusty old creaking of a library full of questionable magic.

It doesn’t take long to check all the shelves on the ground floor and find nothing on horcruxes. Draco pauses and glances between the two staircases. It’s here that the Dark Magic feels strongest. Like it’s seeping up, gaseous and deadly, from the lower levels. The ink on arm writhes so strong he can’t help but look towards it, hidden by his glamour and the layers of his robes, wondering if the snake too is writhing. He passes his wand to his right hand and stretches out his left.

Left, then.

He strides down the stairs, bypassing the first (which appears more of an artefact collection), then the second level (a reading room), to the bottom. The third floor down.

If the top floor had the most relevant, least Dark magic, then wouldn’t it stand that the truly heinous, blackest of Arts, be buried the deepest?

It feels like a descent into Hell.

Still, he does not stop feeling at home.

Something twinges in his chest at that, but he ignores it. This level is akin to the ground floor in aesthetic design, though its stacks are not two columns of neat rows, rather clusters of labyrinthine lines lit in a dimmer, eerier glow.

Jinxes, hexes, curses… interesting, but not what he’s here—

A patter, like quick footsteps.

Draco casts protego reflexively. The shield is pointless, no spell is flung his way, but he’s certain this time that the interruption of the otherwise entirely silent library is not either his imagination or the skittering of magic.

Someone else is here.

“Homenum Revelio.”

Something.

“Come out,” he orders.

There’s a low, affronted squeak and a growl and more steps, off-beat and—

A house else pops into view looking unimpressed.

Of course. Kreature.

“You—you! You’re not a Black! You’re not one of my lovely, noble masters! Who are you to order Kreature!” He splutters.

“I am a Black,” Draco replies.

“But Kreature does not know you!”

“Do you know where I could find a book on horcruxes?”

The house elf presses his mouth shut and glowers.

“I need to learn how to destroy horcruxes. Go consult the catalogue and find the book that has that information. I’ll be in the reading room. Bring the book to me.”

Kreature’s face twists but he snaps his fingers and disapperates with a crack.

By the time Draco has made it up the stairs and settled into a comfortable leather armchair, Kreature has reappeared with Secrets of the Darkest Art.

A rather obvious title, but thank Merlin for the stalking house-else so that Draco doesn’t have to spend all of their remaining precious time on finding it. It’s only been half an hour since Granger and Black left.

Draco takes the book and Kreature retreats to linger on the edge of the space, watching him with narrowed eyes.

“Light the fire, would you?”

With a snap, heat and light roars from the fireplace.

“I think some food would be good too. Keep my mind sharp as I research. Make me whatever Orion and Walburga had for dinner tonight and bring it to me here in thirty minutes.” Whatever gets the house elf gone for a little while. 

He cracks away.

Draco opens Secrets of the Darkest Art, a surprisingly plain text, old and dusty and with no strong magic that he can sense, and flicks through.

It takes him perhaps five more minutes to find the correct chapter.

Horcruxes 

The ritual to make one… Draco’s mouth goes dry. He’s never read or heard of anything like it. It’s immensely complex. Stomach-turning. As a shiver builds and trembles through him, he’s suddenly glad Hermione isn’t here to read it.

He wishes he wasn’t reading it.

With an arid swallow that scratches his throat, he turns the page.

To unmake and restore the soul.

Voldemort could do that?

Only by the way of veracious remorse—

Never mind. Though if he were so inclined, the ‘pain of which could cause the wizard’s annihilation’ would be doing Draco a favour.

To destroy a horcrux.

Draco sits up straighter, his heart leaping into a canter.

To bind a piece of the soul into an object is to make the antithesis of a mortal form. Flesh is weak, easily sundered and infected, whereas a warded article will neither age or rust or decay. It’s only weakness is such that the soul becomes dependant on the enchanted object, as it is unable to exist without a container. But the horcrux is so spellbound to be nigh indestructible, thus this weakness is virtually impossible to exploit. No less than utter ruination, rendering it beyond magical repair, will destroy a horcrux. The hard-won destruction of the vessel will also be the death of the soul fragment it hosts.

Utter ruination.

Draco reads the passage five times before his mind can catch up amongst the shock.

For Voldemort to die, so must Harry Potter.

Kreature cracks into existence some time later with a plate of food that instantly makes Draco’s gorge rise. The house elf grumbles and places it, along with a glass of something, on the sidetable, then retreats to his vigil at the edge of a stack.

Draco can’t move. It’s the same reaction as when Granger was trying to convince Potter that he was telling the truth — that he wanted to help. He can’t bring himself to say something, do something; move.

He just… sits.

It’s a bitter irony that he turned from Voldemort because he didn’t want to commit murder, only to be faced with the same act to free himself.

Kill Dumbledore and earn his place amongst the Death Eaters. Kill Potter and begin the Dark Lord’s defeat.

Even if Draco weren’t to do it himself, he is still one of only two alive who knows the Chosen One is a horcrux and can only offer the information of his utter ruination to anyone willing to follow through with what Draco cannot.

Granger.

Talk of ruination; this would ruin her.

Draco glances at the plate Kreature brought him. Lobster Thermidor. It’s cold now and he doesn’t know a spell to reheat it.

“Kr—” his voice has vanished. He clears his through and tries again. “Kreature, reheat this.”

A snap, and the plate is once again steaming, the smell once again nauseating, but Draco forces himself to eat it, washing it down with the diluted white wine.

All the while thinking of the lobster sitting in some tank, waiting to be chosen.

Waiting to die.

The slaughter will have happened just as Draco was reading the truth.

“Kreature, retrieve for me books on soul extraction; analyses on the Dementor’s kiss, specifically how it is done, and any related experiments performed by wizardkind,” he continues rattling off anything he can think of that might have a scrap of information that could help them get rid of the piece of Voldemort’s soul without killing The Boy Who Lived.

Granger and Regulus return a little early, almost giving Draco a heart attack when the door distantly echos shut, but then she calls to him.

“Malfoy? Where are you?”

“Down here,” he yells back. “Stairs on the left.”

She practically floods into the room, head up high, cheeks flushed and brimming with vivacity. None of the anxiety of prior to the party.

“You’re back unscathed. At least you don’t look like any Death Eaters chewed you up and spat you out,” Draco says.

“It wasn’t for lack of trying.”

He raises his eyebrows.

She turns her gaze to the stack of books and immediately begins riffling through them. “What have you found?”

The words land on him tongue and he swallows them, twisting out a different sentence. “Nothing we didn’t already know. These are all on dark magic that will hopefully prove relevant.”

He expected her to deflate, was prepared to bear the brunt of her disappointment, but instead she huffs.

“Well. These are good choices. I suppose it was too much to expect the answer would be lying around here when most books won’t even speak on horcruxes. I just…” she slams a cover shut and paces away, inspecting the room curtly.

“What happened at the party?” Draco asks. What he really wants to ask is: what do you mean not for lack of trying?

She almost smiles. “I had a duel.”

Draco pushes to his feet. “What?! With who?”

The smile vanishes. “Your father.”

He splutters, unable to find the words, and she explains everything.

“Merlin’s beard,” he murmurs. “Perhaps I should have gone instead.”

“I think you being Regulus’s date would have been as bad as bringing a mudblood.”

Draco hums and assesses Granger again. “Do you… enjoy this, Granger?” He’d rarely seen her so charged. Animated, yes (she often is in practical classes), but she has a potency to her tonight that he hasn’t seen before.

She blinks wide eyes at him as she contemplates his question. “Harry has rubbed off on me.”

“Are you saying he enjoys the danger?”

“I think we’re both addicted to the adrenaline at this point.”

“What’s adrenaline?” He can’t stop himself from saying it.

“What’s ad—?” Her eyes bulge. “And your kind look down on us muggle-borns?! It’s the rush you feel, the heightened awareness of danger and the euphoria of coming close to but escaping death.”

A smirk curves his lips. “I know what adrenaline is, Granger.”

“You asked the question!”

“I wanted to see your face go all red and judgemental.” (It had).

“I am not judgemental.” She crosses her arms and strides back to the table, giving up her investigation of the reading room and once again nosing through the books.

“No, of course not.”

Granger glares at him.

He can’t find anything else to say after that, the oily nausea returning as he watches her frown in concentration at their spoils. So he doesn’t say anything. He leaves her be.

“If we didn’t have to get back into the castle near midnight, we could have simply stayed here when the Time-Turner took us back to our time.” She glances around them. “I wonder if there’s some way Regulus could give us access in the future. It couldn’t be you with the normal entry spell, of course. Hm. I guess bringing all of these back to our time will be enough.”

“You’re not taking them.”

They both spin to the sound of Regulus’s voice at the foot of the stairs.

“What do you mean? We can hardly read them all here!”

He rolls his eyes. “You can take them to Hogwarts, but you’re not taking them into the future. I have no way to trusting that you’ll bring them back.”

“Of course we’d bring them back!”

“So you say.” His face is inscrutable.

Draco shrugs at the boy. “We can research well enough in 1977, Granger.”

“That’s rather impractical,” she says.

He shrugs again. “We’ll manage.” In all honestly, Draco doesn’t mind the idea of frequent returns to a time where no one knows him.

“Won’t anyone ask where you are?”

“No more than they might if we’re simply hiding in the Restricted Section.”

She chews her lip but doesn’t say whatever thoughts are hiding behind her brown eyes.

“Good. Let’s go, then,” Regulus says and turns to climb back up the stairs.

They cart the books through the floo flames in Granger’s rather small beaded bag. She drinks in the sight of the Slytherin common room when they return to Hogwarts, and the image of her, in that dress, amongst the lake-green dark sends a shiver through Draco.

“I never got to see it,” she murmurs to herself.

They don’t bother with the invisibility cloak at any point given the late hour and make it to the Restricted Section to unload their contraband and then to their designated classroom with ten minutes left to spare.

Something changes in Granger in that time. Regulus left them at the library with a nod to Granger and merely a glance to Draco, and so it is just them. Waiting.

It’s the deflation he expected earlier, a curling in of her shoulders and she even slumps into a chair.

It unnerves him until he remembers. Adrenaline. Isn’t there some sort of crash after that?

When it’s time to go, he walks over to her and offers a hand up. She takes it, and blinks blearily as he loops the chain over their heads, closing her eyes fully as the magic whirls around them, returning them to 1996.

Regulus isn’t there when they arrive and worry instantly etches onto Granger’s face.

“He probably got bored of standing here and lost track of time. We’ll talk to him tomorrow,” Draco says.

She nods. “God, I need my bed.”

“Hold on a moment, Granger. Sit back down.”

She slides into what Draco is sure is the exact same chair.

“Ringkull?” An old and kindly looking house elf pops into being in the room.

“Yes?”

“Would you bring us some tea?”

“Yes!” She disapperates.

“Draco!” Granger exclaims, like his name is all she needs to scold him.

“What?”

She goes on to actually scold him, of course. “You entitled git! You can’t just call a house elf! This isn’t your Manor and they deserve to have their evenings to themselves with how much they have to run around a school full of adolescents every day! It’s nearly midnight!”

Draco isn’t surprised Granger is a ‘free elf’ type of witch.

Ringkull appears with a tray of tea and biscuits and a grin, which melts even Granger’s firm demeanour and she accepts a steaming mug.

She takes a sip and sighs.

“You needed it,” Draco says.

She looks about to glare at him but instead it turns into a frown and far too considering an expression. Heat rises in Draco’s cheeks and it’s mortifying. Why had he said that? Why had he gotten her tea? He should have left her to go to bed rather than spending even more time with her and nursing her like a sick… the word clangs through him… girlfriend. He flushes harder, the blood downright burning the tips of his ears and down his neck. It’s only—well she had been subjected to one Death Eater calling her mudblood in the middle of a ballroom and then having to battle Draco’s own father. He thought tea might help.

All to get called an entitled git.

Granger opens her mouth and Draco inwardly cringes. But before she says anything, she flinches.

“Themap!” She drops her mug on the tray with a clatter and leaps up, her entire being limned with panic as she races to the exit.

“Granger, what—?!”

“Sorry! I’ve got to—go!” The doors bangs into a bookcase behind it and Granger disappears in a blur of fabric, leaving Draco decidedly alone.

Chapter Text

The invisibility cloak is fisted in Regulus’s hand as the frigid November night whistles through the Astronomy Tower and cuts through his dress robes. The party’s events had driven him up here the moment Malfoy and Granger vanished into the future and now he’s left wondering, fabric in hand, if there had been a secondary motivation that drew him into the stars. 

Regulus had been attempting to brew an invisibility potion when James found him in Slughorn’s classroom.

They came in laughing, as they always seemed to be. No Sirius, thankfully. Just Potter and Lupin. But even with only half their gang, they still suffocated the space. Or maybe it was just James that shrunk the empty room — and Regulus’s immediate awareness of how much distance lay between them. Their laughter didn’t die when they saw him, exactly, but it dimmed and faded until the silence returned, uncomfortably heavy.

Lupin walked past, parchment in hand, and Potter lingered just a step beyond Regulus’s desk.

Regulus held his breath.

James turned towards him.

“What are you brewing?” He murmured.

Regulus ignored him, looking back to the potions book and begging his mind to remember how to read. He’d entirely lost his place and he couldn’t mess this up; it was a far better option than Polyjuice.

James leaned in and Regulus snatched the tome away. “I need to concentrate, Potter,” he hissed.

“Didn’t realise I was such a distraction.”

Heat burned in Regulus’s cheeks. What did he mean by that? Of course he was distracting Regulus, he was talking to him and trying to peak at the book—

“What are you making an invisibility potion for?”

“Don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong.” Regulus hugged the book to chest and glared over his cauldron at the hazel eyes that met his back unfalteringly.

“Is it for the party? You are spying—

Lupin had chosen that moment to return and Regulus still isn’t sure if he’d been glad for it or not. It was an odd mixture of the two. He glances down at the velveteen cloak in his white-knuckled grip and admits to himself that it was maybe more disappointment than relief. It makes him feel almost sick. Weak. He’s so weak.

“Use this instead.”

Not thirty minutes later did James return with the cloak.

Why had he given it to Regulus? Was it just for Sirius sake? The galling hope that Regulus needed it for some morally virtuous cause rather than something malicious? Where did his actions tonight lie in the grey expanse between the two? Closer to good, he’s sure. He hates that Sirius and James would approve of what he’d done.

There’s a scuffle behind him and Regulus expels a long breath.

“Occupied,” Regulus intones.

“And?” James Potter asks.

“And I don’t fucking want you here, Potter.” Lie. Regulus is such a liar.

James enters his field of vision and his eyes rake over every inch of Regulus before he replies.

“Sucks for you.”

Regulus whirls on the boy. “Are you trying to get me to punch you?”

James’s answering smile is cutting. “Yeah, why not.”

“The fuck has got your wand in a knot?”

“Bad day. How’d the party go?”

Regulus snaps his jaw shut and turns away as it all flashes through his mind. “Get lost,” he bites out.

James sighs and slouches back against the railing. “If you want me gone so bad, pitch me over. It was a long walk up here and I can’t be bothered to make it again going down.”

Regulus’s wand is drawn in a heartbeat and he fires a jinx at James’s leg.

James hisses as his knee collapses, but half on the floor, clutching his thigh, he laughs.

“You didn’t need to come check on me,” Regulus says.

“You’ve got a right nasty streak, Black.” His hand slaps against the railing and James groans through his grin as he pulls himself up.

“Nasty streak? Don’t insult me.”

“You’re horrible.”

God help him, but his shoulder’s relax a little at the words. “Yet you’re still here.”

“It’s not for your nasty streak.”

“No? What else is it for? Want a kiss, Potter?”

In the dim, silvered light, James’s cheeks darken and he opens his mouth but clearly doesn’t know what to say so he shuts it again.

Regulus chuckles, harsh and mean and he knows this isn’t how he should be doing it but he meant what he said to Granger and if James is embarrassed by even the thought of kissing Reg—

“Go on then.”

“What?” The words register with a sick kind of flipping of his stomach, half horrible hope and half painful dread. Regulus blinks at James, but the boy’s expression is neutral.

“Kiss me, Black.”

His stomach turns over again.

“Not on your life.”

“All bark, not bite.”

“I just jinxed you.” As if James was being serious about the kiss, anyway. But Regulus’ breathing has gone off-kilter.

“And I told you to push me off the tower,” James says.

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t about to fucking kill you.”

“Point and case; nasty streak.”

“Right, cause murdering you would make me Full Nasty.” He swallows and wants to press a hand against his chest but he forces both of them to grip the cloak and his wand tighter lest they get any ideas about his chest or James’s—Merlin’s beard, he’s light-headed. At least their conversation is turning back to familiar territory.

“Maybe nasty wouldn’t be a strong enough word,” James says.

“Maybe not. Got any better ones? Maybe if you find one I like, I’ll do what you want.”

“What, kiss me?”

Regulus’s gaze snaps to James. He looks so calm. Head tilted slightly to the side, eyes dark and soft, like the lake at dawn when Regulus is sleepy and can imagine drifting in its quiet peace.

“You want me to kiss you?” The words come out slowly, barely more than a breath as if he dare’nt say them at all. 

“Probably better than being pitched off the tower,” James says.

“I—it would be much better, but,” his mouth has gone dry, he shouldn’t have put so much emphasis on much, oh god, “if you touch me, I’ll jinx you again.”

James finally looks away. “Tempting.”

“You’re giving me whiplash, Potter.”

“Now you know how it feels,” James grumbles.

A biting strip of wind runs fingers through James’s messy hair and it takes Regulus an infinite, agonising moment, to understand the meaning of the boy’s sentence. His heart thumps painfully even as his grip relaxes.

“Still butt-hurt about the match, I see.”

“You didn’t have to listen to your brother’s tirade in the common room once I got back.”

Regulus forces a laugh. “Shit. Sirius always was a sore loser.”

“The actual worst.”

“That’s your friend you’re shit-talking.”

“And your brother.”

“He deserves it and more.”

“Does he?”

Regulus sends a glare at the side of James’s head. As if feeling it, he shrugs.

“So that’s why you were here,” Regulus says.

“No fun parties for Gryffindor that night.”

Regulus wants to ask why he’s here this night, the words lingering on his tongue with the promise of torture. He opens his mouth, hating himself but desperate to return to the panic of a few moments before, when they were talking of kissing—

But James gets there first.

“I asked around and heard of the wizards killed.”

That guts the remnants of want from Regulus.

“Forget what I said, Potter. You’ll be better off.”

“Will you?” James looks down at the cloak, still in Regulus’s hand as though he can’t bear to let go of this scrap of James, as though James feels that point of connection just as keenly. Not a real touch, but something of his against Regulus’s skin. Something to make sure they came back together, to keep them together now. “What happened tonight? What were you doing?”

“I said I don’t need saving.” Regulus visibly cringes saying it again.

He should give the cloak back. Be done with it. Just shove it against James’s chest and leave him to the stars and the wind and curl up beneath his duvet absent of all the warmth he so sickeningly desires.

“That’s not why I’m here,” James murmurs.

“Why are you here?”

James shrugs.

“I was hoping for some fucking peace and quiet.”

James’s steady gaze rests on him and he takes deep, calming breaths, utterly unable to hide the hiss of air through his nose as his chest heaves.

“I can be quiet,” James says. “But you’ll have to tell me eventually. I won’t stop coming back here until you do.”

Here.

Regulus doesn’t reply. He can’t. His ribs are too tight and at this point he isn’t sure what words might spill through his lips. So he clenches his jaw shut and by some miracle, James keeps his word.

He’s quiet.

Until Regulus’s heart finds its normal rhythm and his breath settles and his muscles loosen, James doesn’t say a thing. Until logical thought returns and the peace he was seeking seeps through to his bones and Regulus knows he should give the cloak back so James can leave, he doesn’t make a noise. Even then, James is silent, as though he doesn’t want Regulus to return the one thing holding them here in this space either.

But that’s wishful thinking.

Still, Regulus holds on a moment longer. Then another, and another. And James Potter doesn’t leave. Doesn’t break his word.

He stays.

He’s quiet.

Chapter Text

Hermione skids to a breathless stop a corridor away from Malfoy and forces her feet into a casual pace and her lungs to expand. Was that enough? Did Harry see?

The thoughts worry through her with a frightening intensity as she makes her damning journey back to the Gryffindor common room, dipping into the girls’ toilets to spell away her makeup and change into her green jumper and shorts. Her heart — Merlin’s beard her heart — it’s dizzying.

Ron flashes through her mind, a reprimand, a confusing counter, a bitter apathy as she thinks of him kissing Lavender.

Invite Draco. That’ll show him.

Isn’t that what Regulus had said about Slughorn’s party? Her pulse slows. It’s just Malfoy. It would hardly be the end of days if Harry finally found out.

It would show Ron. Not that she’s about to invite Draco, even if she trails down the line of thought like a secret caress in the empty hallways. The thrill of arriving with him as whispers erupt (as they would, and probably worse than when she’s been Viktor’s date), his smirk at Harry’s disapproval, his little quips and his eyes on her; a dance to music rather than the ghostly cadence of Regulus Black. But Draco would never say yes, even if she wanted to ask him. She understands why and she wouldn’t want him to put himself in the kind of danger that could bring besides. A shudder of cold runs violently through her, a sort of queasy feeling proceeding it. It’s the fresh memories of tonight that have turned her onto these odd thoughts. She has more pressing concerns in the form of her best friend. It might not be the end of the world… but it won’t be good if Harry saw them (not to mention her frantic fleeing; God, what would that look like?)

When she approaches the portrait hole, her heart returns to her throat.

Harry is waiting.

Has been waiting, if his pyjamas are any indication.

“Hi, Harry,” Hermione says.

“Hi, Hermione,” he replies.

“I didn’t expect you to still be up.” The map lies in his lap, the folds spilling onto the sofa. She glances at it.

“You left and didn’t return.” He follows her gaze. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Hermione crosses her arms. “So you magically stalked me.”

“It’s past midnight! I went looking for you when the party ended, figured you were waiting it out, but seriously, the castle is huge.”

“Where did you find me?” Her heart skips a beat as she asks the million galleon question.

“Third floor.” His green eyes say the rest.

She sighs.

“You believe him, don’t you?”

“I believe Regulus. We both do.”

“You can really see him?”

“Yes.”

Harry’s head falls back against the sofa, his jaw tense and his expression too complicated for Hermione to decode as he stares at the ceiling. She sinks into a seat next to him and pulls his hand into her own.

“I’m sorry. I know it’s not what you want to hear — that you could be… but I’d rather figure out how to destroy it than hope it isn’t true.”

“A horcrux.” The word sounds so broken. “It’s so much easier to hate Malfoy than to wonder if this is it.”

“If this is ‘it’?” Hermione breathes.

“What Dumbledore is getting at.”

She blanches. “He knows?”

Harry shrugs. “He knows something. My meetings with him have been lessons on Voldemort, before, as Tom Riddle. Everything new I learn is like a… like a…” he sighs. “Like a puzzle piece slotting into place. This connection between us; I’ve always known him. Even if I lacked the details. There’s a memory of Slughorn’s that Dumbledore has, but it’s been tampered with and he wants me to get the truth. As far as the fragment I’ve seen goes, it’s about a ‘rare bit of dark magic’. Dumbledore is adamant.”

So that’s why Dumbledore asked Harry to ‘get to know’ Slughorn. Hermione hates to even question the headmaster and her previously unfaltering faith in the wizard, but could there be stock in Malfoy’s fears? Would he use him? Would he use Harry? 

“He thinks the magic is that of horcruxes,” Hermione says.

“If it is, then I’ll owe you an apology.”

A small huff of laughter escapes her. Harry replies with a rueful half-smile and she squeezes his hand tighter.

“How are you going to get it?”

He sits back and with his free hand, he slides the still-full bottle of Felix Felicis out of his pocket.

“You didn’t give it to Ron!”

“I’m not the one that would resort to cheating.”

Blood rushes into her cheeks. How did he know about that?? “That was different. That was try-outs!”

His smile is bigger now.

“So you’re going to use Liquid Luck to get the memory.” There’s no fault with the plan that Hermione can see; some good has come of the Half-Blood Prince’s potions book it seems. She’d glower at it if it were present.

He nods. “I’ll do it soon.”

“Tell me when you do and I’ll be there with you.”

“Just you?” His voice takes on a sardonic tone. “Or Malfoy too?”

She stares into the flames and recalls all off their strange weeks together in a hazy flash. “He’s not half as bad as he used to be.”

“He called me a four-eyed troll just this week.”

Hermione snorts. Harry looks at her askance.

“Sorry,” she says. “That’s just such a bad insult.”

“Tell him that, would you?”

Her stomach drops. So Harry knows now. And he’s… okay with it? It makes her warm and ill in equal measure. Like he’s legitimising their relationship. Validating her choice. That’s just silly. But it makes her realise just how highly she holds Harry’s opinion, and not because he’s the Boy Who Lived or the Chosen One, but because he’s her best friend. What place she might carve in this magical world is made worth it by him and Ron and the others. She needs both.

Hermione presses her eyes shut briefly against the swell of emotion. “I’ll tell him to quit it altogether, though whether or not he listens to me is a different matter.”

They fall into a distracted silence, as if both adjusting to the secrets aired between them. She should tell him the whole thing, and she will, but he looks barely able to cope with the idea of being a horcrux and she’d take as much weight off his shoulders as she’s capable of. Her lips press together. Another day. Let her do this for him first. Let him let her. Research if her talent after all, even if she’s been doing stupid things such as illegal time travel and dancing with Death Eaters to get the material. It’s not like she’s going to repeat that particular escapade. They have the books, all they have to do is travel back to 1977 to read them, still within the safety of Hogwarts magical stone walls. Frankly, it’s the least she can do, when he’s the one that has to live like this.

I’ve always known him.

Known the darkest wizard of their age since a babe and yes he’s still good. All that wickedness inside him and yet the boy whose hand she holds in her own has never faltered.

“Come on,” Hermione says. “Let’s go to bed.”

The next morning, dawn having barely broken over the castle, Hermione makes the trip to the library only to leave a note for Malfoy savaging she needs to do homework today but he can contact her with when he’d next like to meet with the fake galleon she’s left him — one of the old DA ones — and to search out Regulus. There’s no small amount of relief when his ghostly echo is lingering in the Restricted Section and he accepts her update with a distant look.

“Do you remember any of it?” Hermione asks.

“No. But I remember what came after. It makes sense now.”

He doesn’t elaborate.

Hermione spares an hour to be with him but he looses focus more and more, a distant tide washing him slowly away, until he tells her she can go and that he’ll find her later. However long ‘later’ will be is a mystery. One that worries her as she returns to the common room and a sleepy Harry and Ron. Harry doesn’t mention her and Malfoy.

Nor does Malfoy use the coin as she spends her day in the common room, the sun reaching its zenith in a wonderfully clear winter sky then sinking towards the horizon in rosey pinks and burning indigos.

It feels like an odd tension, neither of the boys breaking the silence, though the latter has no idea that Harry knows of their illicit meetings. Still, it’s as though he does, as though something has come between them. Is it because she dismissed him with a note after running off last night?

Regulus comes in as they’re packing up for dinner. Checking nobody is watching, she whispers, “How’s Malfoy?”

He raises his eyebrow, fighting a smirk. “Fine. He’s spent the day doing homework too.”

“He didn’t seem… off?”

“Should he be?”

She’s stopped from answering when Harry blinks in her direction.

When Malfoy finally contacts her, requesting they meet after classes the next day, the tension saps away.

Chapter Text

Something altered between Regulus Black and James Potter that night atop the Astronomy Tower. That location, once a cold and distant refuge for Regulus, became a here, a meeting place, a spot no longer his own but intrinsically connected to another.

You’ll have to tell me eventually. I won’t stop coming back here until you do.

Those words had been Regulus’s singular focus since James spoke them into the night between them. His orbit; his knife-edge of anticipation and fear.

Days past in which Regulus had no idea how to return to those stars and face all that was James Potter. He distracted himself with Granger and Malfoy’s frequent returns, going to the Restricted Section where they had set up shop and lingering, trying to glean what it was they were searching for. Neither seemed eager to answer so he took the hint and never stayed long. But each time he stretched it longer, as long as he could, or even just hid in a different aisle, because, each time, he knew James Potter would be there too. Not with the impossible pair, but in the library or sitting at the fountain in the Central Hall, watching him. Always. Watching him.

As though he knew.

As the week dragged on, that suspicion became certainty. His eyes said it all: James Potter knew something and was waiting for Regulus to spill his guts over the Tower.

Classes end on Friday and Regulus finds himself wandering slowly to the library, even though he’s sure Granger and Malfoy will be no different. But still he’s drawn there, his discomfort at being unwanted bellied by his need to learn what his older self sent them to him for.

Awkwardness has him stopping a good distance away when he arrives. They’re settling in. Malfoy doesn’t look at him or Granger, just flicks open a book and begins reading, turned towards the fire crackling in the hearth. Granger gives him a thin-lipped smile.

“Hi, Regulus,” she says.

“Hi, Hermione.” The name feels as awkward on his tongue as he feels. But they danced together, sat close — all things that should have created some kind of bond or familiarity between them, and yet this week her hesitancy has infected him.

Just now, she looks over at Malfoy after saying it. There’s a growing tension between them, that much Regulus can see. It’s not because of him and what happened at the party, is it?

“How is the research coming along?” He asks, forcing himself to lean up against the shelves.

Granger shrugs. “It’s… coming along.” She’s already said how complex the dark magic is, that it’s not a curse they’ve ever come across of heard of before he himself told them, but even Regulus’s future doesn’t hold the key. He supposes that makes sense.

The words he wants to say spill onto his tongue and he swallows them back. There’s no point asking if he can help. He made it clear from the beginning what he thought of this whole enterprise and even after the party they haven’t changed in their behaviour towards him. Again, it makes sense. He can’t fault them for it. Why does he even want to be involved?

James.

Regulus shoves the thought aside.

He knows exactly what changed between them that night. Regulus can no longer deny that the pressure point Granger and Malfoy used to coerce him into helping them was right on the money, all it took was James talking of kissing him and Regulus’s sudden, unexpected desperation to press his lips against the other boy’s, for all pretence to be violently torn away.

It’s perhaps the reason why Regulus has been avoiding a return to the Astronomy Tower.

It is exactly why he will eventually return.

“Well, you know where I am if you need me again,” bitterness coats his mouth. “Can I expect you here tomorrow?”

Granger looks at him with soft, wide eyes and her lips part.

“Yes,” Malfoy says, cutting across her without a glance, and whatever words were on her tongue falter too. Her lips press together but her gaze remains soft and something else he cannot parse. Had she been about to say more? He lingers. For him to stay, perhaps?

He wishes she would. But she doesn’t.

“See you then,” he says, and pushes from the shelves to leave. Maybe if he encroaches on them enough like some lake leech, they’ll let him stay. Granger might, at least, even if Malfoy would never.

Slipping from the Restricted Section, he freezes when he meets the gaze of James Potter. The other boy was waiting for him. Knew he was coming.

Sirius, Lupin and Pettigrew surround him, between them, all sat at a table across the way, talking and laughing over their work. Sirius follows James’s stare and tenses. The two break into harsh whispers that has Regulus’s skin crawling as he forces his feet back into motion. Fuck, he has to walk right past them — Potter’s intention, no doubt, and the thought infuriates him with every step closer. One step, panic. Another, fury. The next, painful desperation.

Sirius breaks off and rises. “Reg,” he breathes.

“Fuck off, Sirius,” Regulus bites back.

His brother’s face doesn’t twist, only a flicker of anger rushing through his twinned grey eyes, but as his mouth opens again, Lupin lays a casual, distracted hand atop Sirius’s. Sirius’s head snaps towards the touch, a look crossing his face that Regulus shies from with all its open vulnerability. He looks at James instead. Gives him the slightest tilt of his head. James’s chin dips the barest amount.

“Wait, Reggie—”

“I said fuck off, Sirius.”

He doesn’t linger to hear the louder whispers that chase his exit.

Regulus heads straight for the Astronomy Tower, wanting to run but forcing himself to stroll, since it will take time for James to catch up and if he gets there and has to think about all the possibilities those whispers held, he might just pitch himself over the edge.

It doesn’t take long.

James follows at a distance when Regulus gets close, then the last trickle of other students fades and as Regulus steps up to the railing, James rushes in.

His breath is coming quick from exertion and Regulus shudders as he takes in the movement of James’s shirt-covered chest. The Gryffindor tie he wants to wrap around a fist.

“What did you tell Sirius?” Regulus asks.

“Nothing. There wasn’t anything to tell.”

“So he knows you gave me your cloak and that I was making an invisibility potion for the party? He knows you’ve been watching me, somehow?”

James hesitates. “No. He doesn’t know any of that. But he knows of the two you’ve been hanging out with and that you took the girl to the party. He suspects the same thing I do.”

The blood drains from his face. “How do you know about them?”

“Well, we met them, for starters. Falling out of a rather small cupboard.” He pulls some parchment from his robes, shows him the front of it. Messers Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs proudly present The Marauders Map. “The rest we learnt from this.”

“What… what is that?”

James hands it over. Regulus opens it and sees the map of Hogwarts and all the names within it. It takes him only a few heartbeats to find the Restricted Section. Hermione Granger sitting next to one Draco Malfoy.

Regulus shoves the parchment at James, almost flinching when it smacks against his chest — when did James move closer? — and he feels the other boy’s warmth. His hand jerks back.

Malfoy.

No wonder they have questions.

Regulus turns to the open air and the low hanging sun. He’d thought it was just about the party and he’d planned what he would eventually say to James, even if he often got distracted by other thoughts, but this is entirely different. More revealing than Regulus had intended. And Sirius knows? It feels too open up here suddenly, the wind ripping away his armour and the empty sky exposing him for James to see. His breath begins to short.

He’d been so caught up in the sickening delight of James watching him close enough to see him comings and goings, of the boy’s apparent care of his wellbeing, of… kissing. Regulus hadn’t seen that it was none of that at all.

Of course it’s James here. Regulus wouldn’t have entertained the same level of inquiry from his brother, not even close. God, do they know too? Is it not just Malfoy and Granger using his feelings against him but his own brother? James, the source of it all in the first place? Is he only here to take advantage of Regulus’s pathetic crush for their stupidly righteous fight? Regulus is well aware that Sirius plans to join The Order of the Phoenix when he graduates. He can only imagine James will too.

He grips the railing as his legs begin to tingle and he worries they might collapse entirely. Presses his eyes shut against their treacherous watering.

What’s the adage?

All if fair in love and war.

And the wizarding world is at war now, after all.

“You going to Slughorn’s Christmas party?” James asks. He leans back against the railing and pulls out a golden snitch, tossing it into the air and letting it fly from his hand before catching it again.

“What?”

James shrugs. “You’re part of the Slug Club, aren’t you? I heard— well, it’s just… Lily said something about it.”

Lily. Of course.

“Yes,” Regulus chokes out.

“Sounds like a right bore to me. Are those dinners actually any fun?”

“You haven’t asked Lily?”

“Nah.”

“Yeah, they’re alright.” Even Lily, who sometimes talks with him and the potions genius that is her old friend Severus when Regulus isn’t being an arse, which is more often than not in the Slug Club, if he’s honest. He almost got kicked out at first from one too many comments.

James hums. “Who are you taking?” He says it carefully, probing, Regulus suspects, towards Granger.

“No one.”

“Isn’t it a thing to take a date?”

“Should I care about that? Or are you warning me that you’ll be there?”

“Do you want me there?”

“Might avoid it entirely if you come in on Lily’s arm.”

“Just Lily’s?”

Regulus shoots him a glare that says he’s not up for James’s shit today. No flirting or whatever this might be.

“As if anyone else would invite you,” Regulus says.

“As if Lily would invite me.”

James says that, but Regulus knows that the animosity that has followed the two of them the entirety of their Hogwarts career has vanished lately.

“Then how else would you be there?”

The golden snitch flutters futilely in his hand. “I guess I won’t be.”

“I guess I’ll be alright to attend, then.”

James throws the snitch again. It zips around Regulus’s head before James leans close to snatch it from the air, taking his breath with it. “Won’t be as fun, but sure.”

Mean. This is mean. A kind of cruelty that even Regulus is above.

But he can’t help how he sinks into James.

They talk. Or, more accurately, James talks and Regulus sometimes gives a stupid retort that has James smiling or laughing. He falls silent after a while, not knowing what to say, how to continue this… normal conversation. James doesn’t seem to mind and gives Regulus a steady stream of thoughts from homework to Quidditch to things Regulus can’t recall later because it’s so trivial and yet it keeps him riveted. He wonders, between sentences, if he were to begin to talk back properly, not just in quips or needlings, would James then press the point and demand answers? It halts his tongue. Draws him into himself to the point where even James can’t speak through the awkwardness.

“I’ll tell you another night,” Regulus says before the silence can choke him further.

“Okay,” James breathes.

Regulus leaves. 

Knowing now that James is following him on an enchanted map, Regulus cannot bring himself to go to Granger and Malfoy the next day. He hides in the common room instead, beyond reach, watching the lake water dim with an uncomfortable queasiness.

Evan, who asked no questions after the party, either from his own shame and strange hearings or Regulus’s lack of brokering the subject, sits far from his watery contemplation. The others sense nothing wrong and banter and work as usual.

After dinner, when most have gone to their bed and he’s sure the stars are out in all their glory, Regulus returns to the Tower.

James is there.

Regulus can’t form the words, so James does it for him. Once again, they talk of nothing of consequence. Only this time, Regulus talks back.

The third night, Regulus knows he has to finally take that knife to his stomach and spill his guts. Get it over with even if it leaves him to bleed out slowly. The alternative is an agony he won’t subject himself too.

The weekend had been more anxiety ridden than any for months. Years. Sirius had been lurking almost as much as James had, conspicuously waiting close to the Slytherin common room in the hope of catching Regulus unawares.

Pandora had tucked herself next to him on a sofa that evening and whispered, “Sirius is waiting for you. I see him out there.”

See. Much like Evan hears.

Her pale eyes were distant and she reached into her pocket for her tarot cards, but Regulus stilled her with a touch.

“I know.”

But Regulus doesn’t want to talk to Sirius. Isn’t ready for that.

The walk to the Astronomy Tower feels endless from all the way in the dungeons, up and up and up with time enough to contemplate what he will say.

It’s pointless. It all goes out of his head when James smiles at him, wide and easy and true.

That smiles fades at whatever look is on Regulus’s face.

“What is it?” James asks.

“I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

His face falls alongside his shoulders.

“Okay. What happened at the party?”

Regulus shakes his head. “That’s not the place to start. The pair I’ve been with. Granger and… Malfoy.”

Regulus explains the gist of it. That they came from the future to break a curse. That they’re fighting Voldemort in some way and the party was a distraction to get them access to the Black library, nothing more.

“That’s why they’re always in the Restricted Section,” he finishes.

“What curse?”

“I… don’t know. They wouldn’t say.”

James looks thoughtful, agitated and chewing his lip. “Who is it on then?”

Regulus flushes.

“They didn’t tell you? How did they get you to help? Are you sure you can trust a Malfoy?”

Honestly, no. But he trusts Granger. Trusts what they said and that beyond Kreature, he’d never tell anyone how he feels about James Potter.

“Regulus,” James groans. “This is dangerous! What if they’re working for him and are just using you?”

“Like you are?” He spits.

James’s face twists with evident confusion. “What?”

“They’re not working for him, James. He could go to my parents and they’d probably help, or the Malfoy’s. They’d surely have anything we do. Don’t—” he raises his hand to cut James off “—Draco is the spitting image of Lucius and Narcissa. I’m sure, okay?”

“How?”

“Because it’s your son!”

He hadn’t meant to say that.

James goes pale, draws back, and Regulus hates it. “What?”

His heart thunders and he wants to step forward, reclaim that space between them, but when he does, and fuck but he does take that step, James stumbles back.

Regulus freezes.

He sees the thoughts stirring in a storm behind James’s eyes and their unknown sweeps panic through Regulus in equal frenzy.

“My… son?”

Regulus pulls his hands into himself, schools his face into neutrality and grips the railing.

“Yes. He’s Granger’s friend and apparently I — or I suppose, we — can’t help in the future, so they came back to me now.”

“We?”

“Well, they must have gone to you first. But I’m the one with the library full of Dark Magic,” he says it wryly, with a bitter smile.

“Right. You. My son. They came to you.”

It makes his skin crawl, the way James says it and looks at him. He knows it’s odd, has thought it the whole time, but it makes a sick sort of sense too. Sirius might not be able to access the library now and Regulus would do anything for the boy across from him, messy haired with those stupid round glasses. “Are you okay, James?”

“Sure.” He isn’t. But he blinks away the daze and mimics Regulus’s awkward positioning. “I’ve always wanted a kid.”

Regulus nods.

“So you’re helping them break the curse.”

He shrugs. “Barely. But… yes.”

“For my son.”

He turns so James can’t see the flush in his cheeks. “Shouldn’t I?”

“I suppose. And they, you, are fighting You Know Who?”

“I suppose.”

James sighs. The awkwardness seeps out of him and his whole body deflates. He leans with his forearms against the railing. “Is there any way I can help?”

Regulus smiles a little at that, only because James can’t see him. “Probably not. I’m not sure there’s anything more I can do to help either.”

“Thank you. For telling me.”

Regulus scratches him thumb over the metal beneath his palm. It draws James’s gaze.

“It’s late,” James says, quietly. “We should sleep.”

“Yeah. We should.” Regulus doesn’t want to leave. So instead he watches James go.

It’s a while before Regulus returns to that place. Nights come and go and he thinks about it, about James, about what they briefly had there amongst the stars, but he doesn’t return the next night, or the next.

It’s a full week later when he does. James has returned to normal, no longer watching Regulus. Sirius still seems to want to talk, but James must have said something, because it’s more tentative. Easier to avoid. Some of the ache of giving up that here with every word he spilled has eased and he finds himself okay with its return to an isolated refuge. Sleep had found him heavily the previous night, stealing him into the late morning of Sunday, so now it escapes him and his feet follow an old pattern formed long before James Potter.

He makes the climb to the Astronomy Tower in the silence of Hogwarts halls, late enough to be past the prefects’ rounds.

The door gives easily and he breaths a sigh that crushes from him when he realises.

Just like before, James is there.

Here.