Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Before God, before Creation, before magic, there was only darkness. “And darkness covered the face of the deep.” He could recite the scriptures in his sleep, an age-old repetition. The words were by rote. “And God said let there be light, and there was light.” That was the first day.

 Here, pre-dawn. A snap of the fingers was just sound, no spark at all. 

Chaos.

Chaos was the space between earth and sky, was the breath in his throat, rasping and over loud. Chaos was a yearning, gaping pit. And at the bottom of that pit, in the center of that darkness: a need with no name. A creature stirring, waiting for light, for life, for a hand to reach out and touch. 

Chaos was an empty chest.

The light burned his eyes, and he blinked back at the man in front of him, dark-suited and pug-nosed. The man’s hand found the back of his head, and he slammed it into the metal table top. Blood trickled down his face. A hum behind his eyes, a firestorm in his chest. Boiling, aching madness.

 “Return me to the pit,” he snarled. “Or tear my chest apart, if you must. It doesn’t matter. What is an insect next to a god?”

Another blink, and only blackness greeted him. “And God saw light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.” Light. Light was a girl’s laugh, was the warm brush of her red mouth, was her gasp of pain as the basilisk fang entered her stomach. Light was her blood leaking between them. 

The light blinded, and the drug blurred the faces of the men standing over him, their expressions like those of onlookers at a zoo. A glass window to tap. I never knew my parents either. The pain was clean. A sharp shock that ran through his whole body.

Harry. Are you going to leave me here, Harry?

And then, darkness again. The night had never scared him before. He was the monster children feared, after all. The darkness welcomed him. But now what was waiting in the dark? A hiccup of panic beneath his sternum. An empty palm stretched out and searching. Magic, just out of  reach. He had pulled himself from the other side by will alone. He had defeated death itself. He had pushed past every boundary he could find. And yet in the face of that infernal blackness, that terrible absence, that abscessing wound , he felt— 

.

Across the table, Harry could feel that Draco was staring at her. The weight of his gaze was heavy and she shifted, scraping the bottom of her plate with her fork. The sound was shrill, and Harry’s eyes flickered open and closed. The long wood table in front of her. The black of her eyelids. Blink, and— 

“It’s idiotic,” Parkinson was saying at the other end of the table. “Muggles are perfectly willing to butcher us, and we what? Just pull all our punches? Shoot them down only for them to get right back up again and kill us some more?” 

The argument was tired, Harry thought. And not one she felt particularly like rehashing tonight. But once Parkinson was on a roll it became obnoxiously difficult to stop her. And it wasn’t just her. Probably about half the Order felt this way. And the other half… 

“Yeah,” Ron said. “I think we should let people get back up again actually.”

The other half thought that Harry hung the moon, and that was exhausting enough on its own. 

“Then you’re a fucking idiot,” Parkinson said, leaning forward in her chair, resting her elbows on the wood. She didn’t actually live at Grimmauld, but she came here enough that it often felt like she did. Blaise, Draco and Parkinson were like a three-headed creature. They were never separated for long. Pansy was just the only one of them that Harry didn’t get along with. 

Probably because she had, for as long as Harry had known her, a very marked anti-Harry agenda. And also because she was prone to fighting everyone in earshot, which Harry thought was pointless. But at least she had finally stopped calling Harry Princess. Small victories.

“So not wanting to gun down helpless Muggles, that makes me an idiot?” Ron’s face had reddened with emotion, and Harry sighed. She really wasn’t in the mood to deal with a Parkinson and Weasley blow out tonight. “You’re beginning to sound an awful lot like Riddle, Parkinson.”

Parkinson’s face warped as if Ron had slapped her. “I am nothing like him,” she hissed. “I didn’t ask for this fucking war, Weasley. I’m just trying to actually end it.”

Harry’s heart rate kicked up. Mentions of Voldemort always did this to her, even though it had been— 

“None of us asked for this,” Ron said. The flush had spread across his pale cheeks and down his neck. “Some of us are just actually trying to fight it the right way.”

“The right way?” Parkinson said. “You really are unbelievable, Ronald. The right way is through, not killing off the entire wizarding populace for some idea of a peace treaty that’s never going to fucking happen.”

“Enough,” Harry snapped, and the entire table turned to look at her. “Just leave it. Both of you.”

 “But what if I think Weasley is an idiot, too?” Blaise said, idly. He was sprawled in the chair across from Parkinson, his feet propped on the table, his eyes dark. He was in a foul mood tonight. Cho, seated beside him, edged her chair away from him.

“Don’t start,” Harry said, shooting him a warning look. “It’s policy. And it’s not changing. So drop it.”

Parkinson’s expression soured further. And it was Harry that would have to go with her on mission tomorrow with her pissed off, which made her less sympathetic to Ron’s point of view. He didn’t have to always rise to the bait. 

Harry pushed to her feet, grabbing her plate and bringing it over to the sink. She could feel that Draco’s gaze had followed her, and her shoulders tensed. He agreed with Parkinson, she knew. So did a lot of the Order, and not even just those that had been in Riddle’s camp before the merger. The Order’s control of the war effort was precarious, and everyone was grating under the pressure of maintaining the course. Three years since the Fall of the Ministry and they were still having the same conversations. And every day… every day everything just grew heavier.

One more day. One more day and she would be gone from here. Probably, it was concerning that Harry found time off to be this draining. She Occluded the thought away, staring at the water swirling down below, wiping her mind free of all of it. It would all be better when she was out on mission.

“Yes, thank you, Princess,” Parkinson said. “We can always count on you to keep the peace.”

“Pansy,” Cho said, softly. 

“Leave Harry alone,” Ron said. 

“Draco,” Pansy said. 

Draco remained silent. But Harry could feel the weight of his expectation on her anyway. 

Harry’s grip tightened on the porcelain rim. The silence in the room felt heavy, and all of a sudden Harry couldn’t stand to be here a moment longer. Peacekeeper, she thought. What a laugh. It had been intended to be a blow anyway.

Harry did not have peace left inside her. 

She heard her name being called, but she didn’t respond, making her way up the stairway. She was a leader now, she knew. It was a position she had not asked for. And that she did not want. But she could not escape from it even if she wanted to. Her desires had never been a true factor. The Girl-Who-Lived. The Chosen One. All she had wanted was to be a soldier in this war. 

And even that had been denied her.

She pulled the window on the top landing open and pushed out onto the roof beyond. The city washed over her, a cacophony of motion. Fucking hell, she thought. She didn’t know how much more she could take. 

She raised her hand in front of her. Her fingertips were sparking. A bad sign. She clenched her fist, and they died out.

Six years of war now. Was Parkinson right? Were they really so naive as to think the Muggles would ever let them live in peace now that they knew what they could do? Growing up, hadn’t Harry witnessed their hatred for magic every day? Hadn’t she felt small in the face of it? Harry exhaled. Bugger, but what did it matter? 

This was easy, Voldemort had said that day at the Unveiling. Did he have any idea how this war would spin out, how hard it would all turn out to be?

But then they weren’t meant to be following Voldemort’s blueprint anymore. He wasn’t meant to have power over her. Over anyone.

 Harry stared out at the stretch of the city in front of her, the long line of gabled rooftops, the lights pressed against the dark night. As soon as she sat still it all washed over her, an endless tide that not even her Occlumency shields could hold back. And she couldn’t put words to any of it, because if she did…

He’s dead, Harry reminded herself. Tom Riddle, Lord Voldemort, whatever you wanted to call him, was dead. No one could have survived this long in Muggle captivity. And she wasn’t meant to care that Voldemort was gone. Not when there were so many other people she should be mourning instead.

  Fucking pathetic, she thought, scuffing her feet along the edge of the rooftop, and then pushing off, and crawling back through the window and dropping into the hallway below, starting back down towards her room. She should at least try to get some sleep before the mission tomorrow, however unlikely that seemed.

But, “You know the wards are thinner out there,” she heard a voice say, and she startled, turning around and meeting Draco’s gaze. 

He had followed her up here, it would seem. There was that hiding place gone. She would have to find a new one. Though hiding places were few and far between these days.

 “It’s not safe.”

 Harry’s shoulders rose. “I know,” she said. She did. She just had trouble caring. “Sorry.” 

Draco pushed off the side of the wall, coming towards her. His hands went to her hips, pulling her into him, and Harry frowned at him. She’d been hoping to avoid this, too. 

“Draco,” she said, a warning.

“I know,” he said, lowly. 

But Harry was not sure that he did. His eyes had darkened, and he was staring at the line of her jaw as if contemplating lowering his mouth to it.

“We’ve talked about this,” she said.

“No,” Draco said, his gaze flickering back up to her eyes. “We haven’t. You’ve avoided, and I’ve said I would give you space. But we haven’t talked about it.”

That was probably fair. But Harry didn’t want to talk about it. How was she meant to say any of it out loud? She had tried, and it had felt… Even now, even now after all this time … 

 She turned away from Draco, facing the window, suddenly unable to even look at him. From here, she could see just a sliver of the moon.  

“I’ve given you space, Harry,” Draco said to her back. Harry could feel his gaze on her still, like the weight of it might just make her sink down past the floorboards and into the room below.

 I can’t be what you want, she thought. Not now, not ever. She knew that. 

“Now I want an answer.”

Why then was it so hard to say it? Six years, six years and...

Her hand clenched at her side, and she turned back to face him. “I just need more time.”

Draco’s expression twisted, and Harry knew she had hurt him. Again. “I know it’s not the answer you want,” she said, lamely. 

“No,” he agreed, his jaw ticking. 

“I’m trying,” Harry said, but Draco just shook his head, looking down at his feet. 

“Are you?”

 He looked back up at Harry, his expression tortured, and Harry felt herself melt. Voldemort is dead, she told herself. Again. She told herself that at least five times a day. If he had survived the Fall of the Ministry, she would know. Even with the Horcrux gone, she would know. But even if he had been alive, what would it have changed? That night at Riddle House had been an ending as sure as any other. Death, rebirth, a battle on the front lawn. 

But she had...

“I will,” Harry said. “I am, I just…” She forced her legs to move forward, her hand to reach out and take his in hers.

 Draco looked down at their clasped hands, his brow furrowing.

 “Just give me a little more time, alright?”

“I’ll wait forever,” he said, seriously, not lifting his gaze to meet hers, just looking at their interlaced fingers. 

It made Harry want to pull away, a familiar feeling. Nothing good would be discovered in his gaze. It would be better if he just averted his eyes, let her be whatever she was now in peace. Half a person at most. A soldier, not a woman. A husk, too, like all the other casualties of war. 

“I’ll wait forever if you’re actually trying, if you actually want this like I do. But I won’t if you’re just waiting for him to come back.”

Oh Draco, Harry thought. “He’s not coming back,” she said, softly. 

It wasn’t the same thing at all. But it was still true. Tom Riddle was dead. But even so.

He still had his claws in her. 

.

Hermione frowned at the diagnostic spell, tilting it to the side, and then deciding that no, even at that angle it didn’t say anything good.

 “I told you,” Mulciber said, and she turned to glare at him. He was leaning back against the side of the wall, his feet crossed in front of them. And he looked, as he always did, like a total arse.

“I know you did,” Hermione snapped. But she hadn’t believed him. She hadn’t wanted to believe him. But he was right, god damn him. Behind Mulciber, Astoria was administering the daily potions to the patient, a 34 year old Halfblood named Eloise Sparrow, but her prospects were looking grimmer by the minute. She didn’t have any family to speak of, but Hermione felt a strange connection to her. She’d been visiting her now for eight months. She’d had high hopes for this one.

“The rest of them look much the same,” Mulciber said. “Their bodies have acclimated to the stimulants, and there’s next to no point continuing to administer them.”

“The point would be that the potions are keeping them alive.”

“Semantics, Granger. They’re essentially dead, as is. They have no access to their magic except the amount that’s in the potions.” He gestured at Eloise again as the sight of her proved the point. Maybe it did. “We’re wasting manpower. Tell her, Greengrass.”

Astoria paused, and then looked up at Hermione guiltily. “I don’t think it’s hopeless,” she said. But even Hermione could admit that she looked tired, and that was coming from someone who hadn’t slept a full night in years now. She was tired, too. It didn’t mean she felt like giving up on an entire ward of people.

 Mulciber glared at Astoria.

“I don’t. I just think it’s… unlikely.” 

“We just need to try a different set of potions,” Hermione said, stubbornly. “I’m sure there’s something. Pomona will have thoughts.”

But that wasn’t true either. Pomona was exhausted enough as it was, and all of her ideas had been used in the first round. Or the second. Or the twelfth. They were running out of things to try.

“And with what manpower are we brewing these miracle potions?” Mulciber said, raising an eyebrow. 

Hermione exhaled. Potions related to the mind were notoriously finicky to brew and most of the Masters at the hospital wing were ill equipped to handle the demand for them. And while Snape still brewed for them when he could, he had refused a position working in the hospital wing. And it wasn’t enough. He could brew sun up to sun down every day and it still wouldn’t be anywhere near enough. And potions weren’t even Hermione’s specialty. 

Truthfully, neither was healing, and she shouldn’t even be in the ward now. She had an upcoming deadline for tech development, but in the last nine months she’d given more of herself to this task than her many others, because in every one she saw Ginny, and felt Ron’s fear again that she would come back like all the others. She wasn’t sure she could handle that. Not after everything else. 

“I don’t know,” Hermione said. “But there must be something in the Archives. We have to keep trying.”

“You’d need a miracle,” Mulciber said. “Can you pull one of those out of a hat, Granger, hmm?”

Prig, Hermione thought, making a wordless sound of frustration. She turned on her heel, heading out of the ward, and down to her office. She hadn’t even been back to her office for more than a shirt change in ages. But there were some books that she had been meaning to look through for ideas.

 She heard someone calling her name though, and she turned and saw Astoria hurrying after her, her Healer’s coat flapping behind her. She stopped in front of Hermione, pushing her hair back. 

“Listen,” she said, and Hermione wondered what she was going to say, what way she could have to make any of this better. But Astoria paused, ringing her hands in front of her, “Do you know if Draco’s coming again this week? To visit his mother? I, mean he should be, but he also should…be, you know?” 

Hermione exhaled. “I’m not sure what Draco’s plans are, Astoria,” she said, though as far as he knew Draco was pretty regular in his visits. He was nothing if not a dutiful son. Probably, Hermione thought, Astoria just wanted to talk about how to tell him about the worsening condition of the patients. But Hermione had a million things she should be doing instead. 

“I’m sorry,” Hermione said, raising her hands and backing up. “But I have to go.” 

But to do what, Hermine had no idea. Astoria looked hurt as Hermione made her escape, but Hermione had drama enough on her own, and she couldn’t spend her time thinking about Astoria’s feelings. Or about Draco’s feelings, for that matter.

 As usual, it was Harry’s business leaking over into her life. And Hermione had already told Harry to handle this one before it got more out of hand. But then Harry didn’t have to deal with Astoria on a regular basis like Hermione did, because she avoided coming to the hospital wing like the plague. So once more, it fell to Hermione. 

I don’t have the spoons, her mother would say, a shorthand for when she was feeling particularly emotionally exhausted. She used to always say it in fights with Hermione’s dad, and he would laugh, and toss a plastic spoon at her, and the fight would be over. He’d taken to stashing spoons around the house for this purpose. Hermione would find them when she was cleaning, and think that one day she would marry someone like that. Someone that would stow plastic spoons to throw at her to make her feel better.

Ron was waiting for her outside the door to her office. “I brought dinner,” he said, lifting a plate. “It’s probably cold now though, I’ve been waiting awhile.”

It sounded like an accusation, and Hermione crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ll reheat it,” she said. 

She spelled the door to her office upon, and stepped into the small room, Ron following behind her. Her office was jammed full of an eclectic bunch of things: tech prototypes, a potions bench with half-filled bottles spilling over the edge, a smattering of clothes hanging over various surfaces, and books, stacks and stacks of books. Merlin, she’d been meaning to take a pile of them back to the Archives. Reginald was going to murder her. 

Ron looked around the room, vaguely aghast, and Hermione picked a shirt up off the corner of her desk and clutched it to her chest self-consciously.

 “I think this is a safety hazard,” he said, looking around the room, scratching at the place where his real arm met his prosthetic. 

Hermione flushed. “It’s fine,” she said. She stepped forward hastily and took the plate. “Looks good,” she said though she was sure it would taste like nothing to her. She’d lost all her appetite months before, but she would force it down if it meant Ron would go back to Grimmauld, and let her work in peace.

“Well, you look like shit.”

“Thanks,” she said, oddly stung, raising a hand to her hair, and then forgetting again that she’d shaved it, and there was no hair for her hand to meet. Her hand fluttered awkwardly mid air.

She knew what she looked like. Too skinny, her skin dull, her nails bitten to the quick, her clothes haphazard, her hair… The hair had been a hassle, she reminded herself.

“Not like that,” Ron said, exasperated. “I just meant—”

“I know what you meant,” Hermione snapped. “And my answer is still the same.”

“And what answer is that?” Ron said, testily. He looked like shit, too, Hermione thought meanly. His long face had grown gaunt and brittle, and his familiar eyes were bloodshot, and looking at him, Hermione thought... 

“That I don’t have time for this, Ron. Maybe next week, we can…”

“You said that last week.”

Hermione wondered if Monica Wilkins still argued with her husband about spoons.

“Maybe Tuesday then,” Hermione hedged. 

“Hermione. I’m not trying to—”

Hermione picked up a book at random. 

I’m looking for a miracle, she could tell him. A rabbit pulled from a hat. There’s an entire ward of mental patients who need me, and a deadline looming for the new explosive, and Mulciber can’t be right, not about this, not if Hermione Granger had anything to say about it. 

He knew all that though. She’d said all of it before. And he’d said his part, too.

“I’m worried about you, Mi,” he said, finally. 

But Hermione knew it was more than that. 

He was restless. He was unhappy shut up in Grimmauld. Parkinson was a menace. Harry was too distant. He missed his mother. He missed his father. He missed George. He wanted to find Ginny. He wanted to do something. He was sick of staying in a rickety old house waiting for people never to come back home.

And Hermione understood, she did.

It was just that she was all out of spoons. 

.

“What do you think?” Kingsley said.

Tonks stretched, rolling the crick in her neck. “I think we’ve been looking at these documents for ten hours straight, and they all said stuff we already knew.” Kingsley grunted. “And I think I have a five-year-old back home who’s going to give me hell, because I promised him I wouldn’t do this again, and I knew at the time it was a lie, but I said it anyway.”

Kingsley released his breath on a laugh, standing and pushing back from his desk, and walking over to the charmed window. “There are perks to being unattached.”

Tonks frowned. “Come back with me to Grimmauld,” she said. “Ted’ll call you his royal majesty and make you show him the fireworks again. It’ll help your ego. Or if he’s actually asleep for once, I can make you a drink.”

Kingsley smiled, but, “My ego is fine,” was all he said, examining the tapestry in front of him. 

Azkaban’s old prison warden had been a man named Mugworth. He’d been a grim kind of fellow, and this office had been his, and though it had been charmed within an inch of its life, like with the rest of the prison, there was only so much that could be done to make it habitable. And while the walls were overlaid with richly woven tapestries, and the furnishings had been replaced with warm oak furniture, the room still unnerved Kinglsey.

 Even when he’d been an Auror, he hadn’t liked coming to Azkaban. And now they had made it their base. It was the lesser of a great many evils, but Kingsley was tired of choosing the lesser evil. He was tired of being a leader, too. But there hadn’t been many other options.

He fucking missed Mad-Eye.

“Give a think on Nurmengard, Shack,” Tonks said, shrugging on her jacket. “I still think it’s an alright option.”

Kingsley snorted. “It’s Grindelwald’s prison,” he said as if that was enough to end the conversation. 

But Tonks was too young to remember that war. 

“Yeah, and this is Azkaban,” she said, waving her hand around. “I think we’re used now to a little grimness.”

 She was too young to remember Riddle’s first war either, and the differences between them had never felt so vast. She was right though. Once more, it was one evil or another. They needed the space.

“I’ll think on it,” he said, lowering his head.

There was a knock at the door, and Kingsley waved his wand over it, poking at the wards. Gibson. He straightened his vest, and searched for his suit jacket, sweeping his wand to clear their dirty dishes.

Tonks raised her eyebrows. “It’s 3am,” she said. “Forget the jacket.”

“I’m trying for a modicum of decorum, Nymphradora,” he said. “At least around people who aren’t you.”

She rolled her eyes, twisting her back, and then picking her bag up off the floor and heading over to the fireplace. “It’ll all keep for the night, Shacklebolt,” she said. “Even the king needs to sleep.” 

She grabbed a handful of Floo powder, and tossed it into the flames, green welling, and then the flames had settled, and Tonks was gone.

Kingsley smoothed his jacket flat, and then, “Enter,” he said.

The door swung open. “Shacklebolt,” Gibson said, inclining her head.

Gibson had been the head of the Ministry’s Public Relations Department during Riddle’s reign, a major player in the overthrow of Scrimgeor’s regime and the creation of Riddle’s. Kingsley still remembered the feeling that week in the Ministry as her team swept through it, all of their boxes neatly ticked. Voldemort’s political success had seemed unavoidable, a bureaucratic miracle. She was as sharp as they came.

But six years later, and Kingsley had no clue what to do with her. He had her working in tech development, because she had a background in Muggle technology, and they needed men there. But it was a downgrade for her, and one he knew that she didn’t appreciate. He could come up with a greater use for her, he knew. But, he couldn’t bring himself to trust her. Not when she had been so close in to Riddle’s inner circle. He had limits to how far his goodwill went.

He had been right to find the jacket at least, he thought with an internal sigh. Even at three in the morning, Gibson was dressed to kill. Her long dark hair was pressed straight, and her cobalt blue dress was crisp at the corners. 

“Gibson,” he said. “How can I help?”

She smiled, a mega-watt smile that did not reach her eyes. “Just need your signature on the new suppliers,” she said.

 She held the papers out in front of her, and Kingsley took them, flipping through. His eyes hurt from the amount of reading he’d done already tonight, and he should get his glasses, but he wanted this over with as quickly as possible. Perhaps Tonks was right, and he should have gone with her. But he didn’t like being back at Grimmauld either. There, all he could think about was the number of people they had lost. He had fought three wars now.

And this wasn’t the reason Gibson was here anyway.

“And to ask me if I’ve thought about what you said,” he said, looking up at her.

Gibson inclined her head. “You know that the tech department was set up to create weapons,” she said. “You’ve got us making glorified lockpicks.”

Glorified lockpicks, Kingsley thought. Because they were doing rescue missions instead of offensive ops. What a way to phrase it. She was not the only one that felt this way, Kingsley knew, that they were simply treading water as the sharks descended. Inaction was the lesser evil. But it felt evil all the same.

“Eventually, it’s not going to be enough.”

Kingsley knew that, too. 

“I know Muggles,” Gibson said. “Better than you do apparently. But I wouldn’t think I had to remind you what they’re capable of.” She shot her gaze over to the monstrous stack of papers sitting on his desk. “How many of those bear good news?” she asked. 

None of them. And yet, did that mean that they used their power to kill? Did that mean they began to pull together an arsenal? The thought was daunting.

The truth: Kingsley was an Auror, not a politician. He was not Dumbledore. He was not Mad-Eye either. He was not a king, whatever Teddy Lupin said. He was simply a man in far over his head. And whatever decision he made, he would have to face the consequences of it.

“My position hasn’t changed, Gibson,” he said.

Gibson set her jaw. “I understand that you’re worried about the optics. You want to be the good guys. But there are no good guys in war. Only winners and losers.” 

We have already lost, he could tell her. But there was always more still to lose. He knew that much, too. Principles were luxuries. And they were running out of space. 

“The Dark Lord understood that,” Gibson said, and for a moment she looked as young as she actually was, not even thirty yet. It made Kingsley feel, all at once, unbearably old. “Why don’t you?”

Yes, Kingsley thought. Riddle had understood that. 

But Riddle had lost.

Kingsley was just trying to pick up the pieces. 

And he was tired. It was too early to be this tired. The finish line was not even in sight. All Kingsley had was lesser evils. 

.

At her table in the corner, Harry watched the wedding guests swirl around and around, pink and orange and silver and green. They blurred and then refocused.

 “They look happy, don’t they?” said Luna beside her.

 Harry blinked back at her. 

“What?” she said. 

“It’s the last night anyone will be happy for a long time.”

 Her large blue eyes were shining. 

Harry’s chest hurt. She raised a hand to it.

“Don’t you think you should enjoy it?”

Harry looked again at the dance floor. Bill and Fleur were dancing in the center of the tent, amidst the floating fairy lights. The marks were stark red against Bill’s face. Still healing. My fault, Harry thought. It was the hundredth time she’d thought that in the weeks since she’d been back at the Burrow. She raised her hand to her throat again, but she had taken the necklace off, and her hand only met skin.

Till death do us part. 

Fitting, he had said.

Bill did look happy. It was a feeling that Harry thought that she might never feel again.

Ron and Hermione were dancing, too. Neither of them were particularly good at it, but that hardly mattered. It was about having someone to hold, Harry thought. Her lip curled.

 Harry looked down at her hand and it was sparking. She clenched her fist. 

“Harry.”

“What?” she said, but when she looked up again the tent was empty.

 Darkness had stolen over the room. Even the stars had been extinguished. 

“Luna?”

She turned again, and Riddle was standing in the middle of the empty tent. He offered his hand out towards her. 

Harry shied back from him. 

“Where did they all go?” she asked. 

Riddle smiled at her. It was not a kind smile. 

“You killed them,” he said. “Don’t you remember?”

Harry shook her head. Her chest, her chest ached.  She pressed her hand against it, and felt blood trickling between her fingers. “What?” she said, again. The red looked almost black in the dim light.

When she blinked again, Riddle was right in front of her. He reached a hand out for her face, pushing her hair back from her face. His fingers lingered on the scar on her forehead. “Turnabout is fair play,” he said, gently. 

“Tom,” she gasped. Her chest, her—  

He smiled at her again. “Are you going to leave me here, Harry?”

But when she blinked, her eyes were regarding the ceiling at Grimmauld, and Riddle was dead again. “It was you who left,” she told the still room. And then she rolled over, and the darkness greeted her once more. 

.

When Harry came downstairs, Tonks was asleep at the long, wooden table, her head pillowed against her arms. Her face was pulled inwards in a frown, and she looked quite small in comparison to the large kitchen. Teddy must have been protesting again. Good luck, kid, Harry thought. It wasn’t going to change anything. All it would mean was that Tonks’d had another poor night’s sleep on top of all the rest of it.

It was just after four now, and the house was quiet. Everyone was still sleeping. This early was one of the only times Grimmauld was quiet. Harry liked the mornings. She measured out the coffee grounds, and then leaned against the counter as she waited for the water to heat. Everything felt more manageable in the dim morning light, and the dream lost some of its power in the familiar setting, unease sliding off her skin.

Are you going to leave me here? dream Riddle said. But where? Where could he possibly be?

Voldemort was dead, she reminded herself. 

Probably it was just the conversation with Draco getting to her. And yet, it reminded her eerily of her dreams in fifth year. Back then, she had thought— 

But what did it matter what she had thought back then? The Horcrux was gone. Riddle, too. There was no link between them anymore.

The pot beside her whistled, and Harry startled.

Tonks groaned, blinking her eyes awake. Harry set a mug of coffee down in front of her. “Again?” 

Tonks rubbed her eyes, and ruffled her hair. It was a tawny golden color today. Remus’s color. “Pretty sure he built a furniture barricade.” 

“A tactical genius,” Harry said, and Tonks smiled, though it was tight around the edges. 

“I don’t know what to do about him, honestly, Harry,” she said. “He’s growing up. How’d that happen?”

“I think you could still take him,” Harry said, sinking into the seat across from Tonks. 

“Yeah,” Tonks said, morosely. She tapped her finger against the ceramic cup. It was one of the ones that Hermione had brought, bright pink with a koala in a tea mug on it. “The four year anniversary is coming up soon. How the fuck has it been four years?”

Harry didn’t know what to say to that. Remus had been dead for four years, she thought, as if testing the thought in her head. And what about the others? Arthur, gone for two years. Molly for six. Sirius for seven. Dumbledore, Luna, McGonagall, George, Ginny. Her parents, her parents had been dead twenty-two years now. And Harry, still— 

Harry still missed them every fucking day.

She had too many people to mourn.

Tonks shook her head, and when her hair resettled, it was pink again. “Sorry,” she said, gently. She set her hand over Harry’s in a comforting gesture. It was always other people comforting Harry. The thought made her strangely angry. She pushed at the feeling, wrapping magic around it and shoving it to the side. “I know you know. The coffee helps. Thanks, Princess.”

“Not you, too.”

Tonks smiled impishly. “Sorry, love. The crown fits you. You and Kingsley both. Royalty.”

“It doesn’t,” Harry said. “Parkinson is just a cunt.”

“And that everyone can agree on.” Tonks stretched her back. “You feeling ready for today? Who’s on your team for this one?”

Harry exhaled, standing and heading for the cupboard. Nobody else would be up for at least an hour, but she’d get breakfast going anyway. It was the least she could do. “Like you don’t know.”

Tonks grunted. “Who’d have thought I’d be a bureaucrat? Watch out for Travers though. I know you can handle him, but—”

“It’ll be fine, Tonks,” Harry said, floating the ingredients out towards the counter. “I’ve got Finnegan and Parkinson and Smith, too. They’re steady. And Travers isn’t too bad. I prefer him to Rookwood. Or Gibson.”

“Yes, but you know what he—”

Another old argument. “We need the men,” Harry said. “Travers will do fine.”

Tonks looked as if she wanted to say more, but at Harry’s look, she dropped it, exhaling. “I just want you to be careful, Harry,” she said. “We can’t afford to lose you, too.”

“I’m always careful,” Harry said. 

Tonks gave her a look as if to say, you know that’s not true. But it was close enough to true, Harry thought. She always came back at least. The Girl-Who-Lived. There was only one person who could kill her.

And he was already dead.

After another moment’s perusal, Tonks raised her hands, gesturing for Harry to pass her the bowl by her elbow. “Alright then, come on, I can do the hash.”

“Don’t forget salt this time. That shit was nasty.”

Harry looked up, surprised. Blaise was standing in the doorway, fully dressed for work, his hair damp from the shower.  “You’re up early,” she said. Blaise normally didn’t deign to rise before ten.

“And already making demands,” Tonks said, dryly.

“Took the early shift,” Blaise said, straightening his cufflinks so that you could see the ornate silver beneath his dark suit jacket. Harry didn’t know why the Slytherins still insisted on dressing as if the world had not fallen apart. Harry supposed it gave them some modicum of control, but she still thought it was ridiculous. “Fuck knows why.” 

Harry did know why. But she wasn’t going to say it if he wasn’t going to bring it up.

Blaise took Harry’s mug from the counter, and took a sip. 

“Oi,” she said. “The pot’s still hot, git. Pour your own” 

He looked up innocently at her. “But then it wouldn’t be yours, Potter.” 

Harry sighed, waving her hand haphazardly at the pot, and it poured a cup out, and pressed at Blaise’s hand, still holding her mug.  “There,” she said. “Drink up, arsewipe.”

Tonks watched her do this with interest. “You can cast wandlessly? I didn’t know that.”

Harry looked over at the coffee mug still pestering Blaise. He was ignoring it, sipping blithely from hers. 

 “Oh,” she said. “Well, some yeah, I guess.” 

She thought about the sparks at her fingers, and clenched her fist. The only person besides Dumbledore she knew that cast wandlessly was Voldemort. But it wasn’t like Harry normally meant to. And thinking about it made her feel strange. 

“Make the toast at least then, if you’re up,” Harry said to Blaise to chase the feeling away.

“Am I meant to be punished for rising early then?” he said. He headed towards her, the coffee mug following behind him. 

Harry sighed, and snatched it mid-air. “Everyone is meant to pull their weight equally around here, you know.”

“Yes, I know, Potter,” he said. “This regime is very gungho for community building, less so for murder. I’ll make your toast. But I miss elves. These hands aren’t suited for manual labor.”

“Eat at the mess then.”

Blaise’s nose wrinkled, and Harry turned back to the stove, pouring her bowl of eggs into the skillet. Five hours to go, she thought. Five hours until she was out of here. She tapped her fingers against the counter, watching the eggs change colors. 

“I’m going to try and coax Teddy down,” Tonks said from behind her. “If there’s banging furniture it’s just an irate five year old.”

Harry nodded, and then it was just Blaise and her in the kitchen. She looked up at him, and found him already watching her. He had sliced the bread with magic, and it looked lopsided, but there was no point asking him to redo it. She exhaled. She didn’t want to have this conversation with him again.

He looked at her for a moment more, and then turned back to the toast, making a sound of disgust. “I haven’t asked anything of you, Potter. Don’t act like I have.”

He didn’t have to though. “I want to find her, too,” Harry said. “You know I do. I just can’t—”

“Go in with expectations. I’ve heard your spiel enough times. No need to remind me. I can recite the next bit too if it would speed things up.”

Then why don’t you hear me? Harry wanted to say. But then perhaps that wasn’t fair. 

“From the scouting we’ve done, this base looks promising, but I don’t—”

“Want me to get my hopes up?” Blaise said. His lips quirked up, but it was not a particularly jaunty look. “Don’t worry about me, Potter. It’s quaint of you to think I have hopes in the first place.”

But he didn’t stay to hear her response, pushing off the counter, and striding towards the fireplace. He tossed the powder in, and disappeared into the Floo without another word, leaving Harry alone in the kitchen. Typical Blaise, Harry thought. He always had to have the last word.

He did have hopes though, Harry knew, no matter what he said. They all did. It was why being back here weighed so heavily on her. Out on mission at least the only person she had to answer to was herself. And that was weight enough. And every day another pound added. 

It was better not to hope at all. 

.

Draco had always hated hospitals, even back before he’d had reason to; but he didn’t think there was a single place on this earth he hated as much as the Azkaban hospital wing. They had cleared out one long row of cells to form a single ward to house the mind patients so that the Healers could come look at them all at once, and the only privacy allotted to individual patients was a thin curtain around the bed. The pale blue drapes against the dark stone were stupidly bright, and even the smell of heavy cleaning charms could not fully mask the dank, rotten one of the prison. 

As always, the indignity of it grated. Before, if anything had happened to his mother, they would have paid an entire team of Healers to look after her. There would have been a private ward in St, Mungos, an elf to cater to all her needs, a garden of charmed flowers. He and his father would have come every day, and told her stories to keep her up to date, so that when she woke, she would feel as if she had not missed anything. Draco could see so clearly how it all would have been.

 Instead, now all he had was a tinny metal chair, a floating collection of witchlights in a long and crowded room, and absolutely nothing that was not horrendously depressing to tell her.  The offer of a bouquet from her gardens felt paltry. Still, he banished the previous set, replacing flowers that had not even yet begun to wilt just for something to do. A reminder that he had returned.

His mother was sitting up in bed, but her eyes were closed, her hair hanging lank over her pale, delicate-featured face.“Hey mum,” Draco said, leaning over pressing a kiss to her forehead and smoothing the hair back before sinking down into the chair beside her bed.

When he had been a boy, before he had been Hogwarts age, he’d broken his arm playing with Greg on the Goyle estate. Draco had fallen from a large tree, and the bone of his forearm had pierced through flesh, splintered clean in half. Greg had brought him back to the Manor, weeping that he had killed Draco, though truthfully he’d only passed out briefly from the shock and pain. His parents had brought him to St. Mungos, and though they had not spoken, he could so clearly recall the way they had looked at him, the tightness around their eyes, their lips pressed close together. He had known, as he had laid in the hospital bed, his nose full of the smell of disinfectant and too much spellcraft, that when he woke they would be there waiting for him. That if anything were to happen to him, they would always be there.

Draco inhaled the stale air. Every week, every week for two years he had come here. And every single time it felt… It felt like he had taken a slow-acting poison three years ago when the Ministry fell and his mother was taken, and this, all of this was just the consequence. The aftershocks of some tremendous pain. A wound long festering. 

Narcissa’s eyes flickered open, and she blinked back at him, dull-eyed. The potions had clouded her eyes so thoroughly that you could hardly see the color of them, just a murky blue. It was not his mother in the bed at all, he thought, but some other creature he was latched to eternally against his will. And one day, his mother would appear and tell him that she had been waiting for him this whole time. She would chide him for being so ridiculous, for not having searched harder for her, she— 

But it wasn’t the kind of thing his mother would do at all. She would not want to disappear, and if she did, upon her return, they would never discuss it anyway. It would be ill-mannered to speak of it, no matter how he felt. Telling himself that now did not help at all, however.

“Draco,” he heard a voice say, and then he turned and saw Astoria Greengrass standing in the hallway between beds. He realized his eyes had been closed, and that he had fisted the bedspread in his hands hard enough that the fabric had left indents on his palm. He released the fabric, feeling his cheeks flush. He had not wanted to be seen like that. Especially not by her.

“Greengrass,” he said, his shoulders tensing. 

Although Astoria was here almost every time he came to see Narcissa now, Draco was still somehow always surprised to see her. Why he could not precisely say. Perhaps it was because he felt like she belonged instead three seats down at the Slytherin table, laughing so hard at his Weasley impression that she snorted pumpkin juice out of her nose. Or out on the Quidditch pitch at the end of a long practice, mudsplattered and redcheeked, saying, Come on, Malfoy. I did good, didn’t I? Or perhaps at the Parkinson’s lakehouse, pretending to read on the dock as he and Zabini horsed around in the water, lowering pink rimmed glasses to stare at him.

 She was a long-limbed girl of twelve with an overabundance of freckles and a crush on him. It was fucking absurd of her to show up here every week and tell him that his mother was not getting any better. 

“You can call me Astoria, you know,” she said now though, a smile breaking out across her face. It made her seem much younger than twenty-two, and the sight of it caused his lip to curl. “We have known each other since childhood after all. It’s a bit silly to still call me Greengrass.”

It was what he had himself just been thinking, but suddenly Draco did not want to think anymore about childhoods, and he turned his gaze back to his mother, blocking the sight of Astoria away. Narcissa’s eyes had closed again, but he could see her pupils moving behind her eyelids.

Astoria came closer, waving her wand over the bed. A diagnostic spread across the length of her body, an array of multicolored runes. Draco ran his gaze over it. He’d looked at this one enough that some of the readings were familiar to him, though in general, they still read like nonsense to him.

“How does she look?” he asked, gruffly.

Astoria’s lips tightened, which Draco supposed was answer enough, and he released his breath on a sharp exhale. “I suppose it’s hopeless,” he said, feeling the urge to kick something. The bed stand or perhaps Astoria, since she was closest. The thought was sudden and vitriolic.

“Of course it’s not,” Astoria said though. “We just haven’t landed on the right thing. We’ll find something that will work for regenerative purposes, we just haven’t—” 

“Now you sound like Granger,” Draco said, his voice hard-edged. “I don’t need mollycoddling, Greengrass. I am not a patient for you to care for.”

“I know that,” Astoria said, but she looked wounded and a bit confused, and her hand was gripping the tray quite tightly. “I just don’t want you to give up when there’s still a chance that—”

“That what? She’ll wiggle her finger? Perhaps one day, she’ll lift a whole arm again. But my mother is never fucking coming back. Not how she was. Not ever. So you can stop fucking lying to me.”

 Astoria flinched, and then said, in a very small voice, “You needn’t take it out on me.” 

She had flushed a dark pink, and made as if to turn and depart, but then seemed to realize that she was still carrying the full tray of potions, not yet administered, and she released a huffy exhale, and Draco wondered if she would go anyway, but then she squared her shoulders and went to the head of the bed, lifting Narcissa’s head and opening her mouth to pour the potions down her throat. She did not look at Draco at all, and Draco watched her do it, his breath rattling in his chest. He felt a bit as if he’d been running, or flying very fast. 

Astoria finished administering the potions, and then smoothed her Healer’s coat flat, and re-picked up the tray. Normally, while Draco was here, she chattered incessantly about all sorts of things, shooting him embarrassingly obvious glances. She did not even attempt to mask what she felt. It was a trait at odds with most of the people from his world, and as always, Draco  wondered how much of it was a performance and how much was real. He had trouble believing that she would be so flagrant if she were genuine.

Still. I would disappoint you, he thought all of a sudden. The thought sat like lead within his stomach.

 “Astoria,” he said, but she still did not look at him. And what was he meant to say? 

She had just been trying to help, he knew. She was a Healer, not a child. Perhaps it was unfair of him to question her motives. He just had no room for it. Not for her feelings and not even for her aid. What use were her lies? Her hope, too, was meaningless to him. All he wanted was to wake and to have his mother back at his bedside. All he wanted was to wake and somehow recognize the world around him. And yet, everytime he woke again, nothing had gotten any better. 

Everytime he woke, it had only gotten worse.

.

Any second now,  Harry thought, tapping her wand against her wrist in an anxious rhythm, glancing up at the camera above her head. One one hundred, two one hundred, she counted, and then she flicked her wand in a complicated motion against the wall, and a loud explosion went off in the room beyond.

One, two, three, and— 

Harry ducked into the room, through the clearing smoke, her wand out against her wrist, her gaze sweeping the space. 

 “It’s clear,” she said, pressing a finger to her temple where the comm spell originated. There were only two soldiers in the security room this late, and the spell had knocked them both out. They were in luck it seemed.

Told you! Boom boom, pow! You just need to add another flick to really— 

“Stuff it, Finnegan. Keep the comms clear.”

Mine is clear, too, Parkinson said. But there is tech that might interest— 

“Don’t get distracted,” Harry said. “We’re here for the prisoners, not for tech.”

Harry could practically feel Parkinson rolling her eyes. Yes, mum.

The soldiers were slumped over in their chairs, motionless, and Harry moved around their bodies to the main board. The entire far wall was taken up with an array of screens stacked on top of each other, and she ran her gaze over them. 

“Oh, fuck.”

 She could see her reflection cast back to her in the screen, a long-faced man in his early thirties, face slackened by horror.

She tapped her temple. “They’re here,” she said, turning on her heel, and unsheathing her wand, and stalking down the hallway. “Smith,” she snapped. “Is the transportation field down yet?”

“Not yet.” Smith’s voice was slightly strained. Not enough for Harry to really worry, but enough that she wouldn’t press her. “Give me five.”

That was alright. Harry would go on foot. She had made it down two hallways, and up a flight of stairs before she ran into another soldier, a woman this time.

 Harry ducked her head in deference, but, “Private Stevens?” the woman said, squinting at Harry. “Why have you left your post?” 

Harry rifled through the options that she could use an excuse, and then looked up at the woman, offering her a smile. All of them would take too much time to implement, and time was something that she didn’t have to spare.

 “Stupefy,” she said, and the other woman’s legs gave out, her expression frozen in a mask of shock.

 Harry caught her by the armpits, and lowered her to ground, stepping over her body. Her gaze went back up to the camera overhead. But the alarm remained silent. They couldn’t count on that for long though. They’d have to leave as soon as Smith got the field down. She checked her watch. Forty-three.

Harry took the stairs two at a time, making her way to the fifth sublevel. The door was locked, and sealed shut by a palm reader, and keypad, but Harry had both. She pressed her palm against the pad, keying her keycard at the same time, and the door clicked open. She checked the watch on her wrist again. Fifty. It wouldn’t be long before the Polyjuice ran out. She started down the hallway to the left, but,“You there!” she heard, and she turned and looked behind her.

There were five soldiers guarding the hallway. She hadn’t seen them on the security feed. She’d been distracted by the room they were guarding. Sloppy. But five was nothing.

She raised her hands, palms up. “Hullo,” she said. “I just came to relieve Matthews.”

The soldier’s face closest to her warped. “Matthews?” he said, and then Harry was flicking out with her wand in a smooth motion and blasting him back against the wall. 

He hit the side of the hallway hard, and then slumped to the ground, but the next soldier was already coming towards her, and Harry was stepping forward and knocking his gun aside with her armguard, hitting his wrist so that he dropped it and then continuing the movement, and bringing her elbow up to his face.

 He stumbled backwards, but the next soldier had reached her.

 It was strange to fight in a body that was not her own, and her next dodge was too slow, and he got a hit to her stomach, and she exhaled heavily, and then shifted her weight, and hit out with her arm, decking him on the face, and then stunning him so he collapsed to his knees. 

Harry’s heart rate had increased and she could feel the Polyjuice raging through her system. She had only instants left as Private Stevens. Not the time, she thought, shaking her head. She sent off two more stunners in rapid succession, and the soldiers collapsed to the ground. Only one left.

 “You’re one of them ,” he told her, his face warping with disgust. He reached for something at his belt, but Harry drew her wand in a sharp motion, and he was blasted backwards.

“You’re damn right,” Harry said, standing over his prone body, breathing heavily.

A shudder ran through her, and when she looked down at her hand again, it was her own. 

She sighed, shrugging off the outer jacket, now two sizes too big for her.

 Stealth was rapidly becoming less and less of an option. “Travers,” she said. “Check in.”

There was silence over the comms for a moment, and Harry knelt down over the closest soldier, retrieving the key card from his belt. 

Give me ten, Travers said, eventually. His voice was very even. But his voice would probably sound even as he was dying.

“You have five,” Harry said, levitating the soldier marionette style, and pressing his palm to the scanner 

The door clicked open, and Harry was stepping into the long, narrow room. 

The first thing she noticed was the smell, rot layered under antiseptic. They had been hard at work then. 

Her throat dried, and she wanted to turn around and bolt, but she forced herself to step further into the room. 

“We’re going to need to converge here,” Harry said, her voice tense. “My portkey won’t take all of them. Sublevel five.”

Harry stepped further into the room, and the lights flicked on, illuminating the long row of cages, probably thirty in total, all hunched low to the ground, all full. 

Her stomach turned in on itself. 

Five. The readings had said there was enough magical energy for five wizards at the most. How in the world were there thirty people here? The ceilings of the cages were low enough that the people were forced into a crouch, and the bars were iron lined to dampen their magic, but they should still have magic. 

Their eyes did not track her as she stepped between them, but Parkinson was better with locks than Harry was, and it’d be easier to wait for her while she cleared the space. She could see a door set in the back of the row of cells. She looked up towards it, blinking. 

Harry.

Harry put her hand to the padlock of the first cell. A middle-aged woman looked back at her, her eyes bleary. Her head was buzzed, and Harry could see incision marks on her skull, again and again, hastily stapled back into place, and the sharp dart of her collarbones through the shapeless grey scrubs they had her in. Her eyes attempted to focus on Harry, though Harry could see it was a struggle. 

She opened her mouth, but no sound would come out. There was distress on her face, and Harry rushed to comfort her. “We’re here to help you get out,” Harry said. “We’ll portkey you to a secure location just as soon as the transport device is down.”

“Harry,” she rasped. “Harry Potter.”

Harry frowned, kneeling down beside her. “Do I know you?” she asked, trying to look for similarities on the woman’s gaunt face, but she couldn’t find any, just a sort of relentless pain. Even if she had known her before, she was not sure she would recognize her now. 

“Here,” Parkinson said, moving into the room. She had a semi-automatic over her shoulder, and there was a scrape across her face, blood dripping onto the collar of her uniform jacket, but she was back to herself, same as Harry was. She stopped up short when she came into the room. “Fucking hell,” she said. 

Her mouth was tense with anger. “Potter,” she started, but Harry didn’t have time for Pansy’s emotions on top of her own.

She stood. “Get them open,” she said. “I’m going to clear the far end.” 

Parkinson looked like she wanted to protest, but then she nodded, and then pulled her tools out. “Fucking Snatchers,” Harry heard her murmering under her breath.

Harry walked down the rows at a neat clip, making her way towards the back of the room, trying to avoid looking in the cages. 

Still. How long? she thought. Could they be wizards from the Fall of the Ministry? So many people lost that day. But that was a pathway that wasn’t worth walking down. She had no intention of— 

There was just one door in the back of the room. And it was made fully from iron, a huge hulking monstrosity, and it was keyed to another palm read. There hadn’t been a security feed on this one, and yet… 

Harry. 

Harry leaned towards it and heard the hum of electricity in the door as well, and she frowned. She flicked her wand towards the hallway, and the body of the guard she’d used for the original key pass came floating in. She heard a cry of surprise. 

“A word of warning if you’re going to be floating bodies, Potter. Honestly. The fuck.”

 Parkinson pulled the first door open, holding out a hand to help the woman out. The body came floating down the aisle. The prisoners were too far gone to even seem unnerved, which disturbed Harry. It didn’t speak well to their mental capabilities. But that was also a problem for later. She sorted the worry, and shoved it to the side behind a mental wall. And once the body reached her, she pressed the man’s hand to the palm reader, and then lowered him gently to the ground.

 They’d have some new key system soon, Harry was sure. They never stayed ahead of them for long. But the only thing that mattered was that it had worked for now, and she heard the buzzer go as the lock opened.

 Harry looked at the door again, running her gaze up and down the expanse of it. It was as tall as the ceiling, and Harry thought that beneath the rest of the plaster walls was probably more iron.

 An iron cage. The only thing outside of spellcraft that could keep a wizard. 

 There was something disconcerting about this cage however, like the prison was sucking her forward, and she wondered if it were a trap. Like the door might just swing shut behind her. Or like there might be something horrible trapped inside. 

And yet Harry was going to open it anyway. 

She glanced back at Parkinson. “Come get me if I can’t get out,” she said. 

“Aye, aye, sir,” Parkinson said, offering Harry a half-hearted salute.

Agrippa’s sake, Harry thought, and then pulled the door open. 

Harry froze.

It was, as she’d suspected from the outside, a cell, though it had much stronger magical protection than the rest of them, fully lined in padded iron, and run through with an electronic field. Harry was sure Hermione would be dying to tear apart its mechanisms and figure out how it worked exactly. But all Harry wanted was to be out of there. Even with the door open, she could feel the pull of the room, like a gaping black hole, sucking the magic from her skin.

And there, leaning against the back wall, there he was.

For a moment, Harry thought her legs might give out.

Six years, she thought again. Six years since she had seen Tom Riddle that last night at Riddle House. But looking at him now, it was as if the time had slipped away. 

Like the woman in the cage outside, Voldemort’s head was buzzed, and she could see a series of lacerations across his skull beneath the short dark hair, his skin stretched tight across his bones, but his eyes were sharp flints, taking her in all at once, and even here, locked in full sensory deprivation, he still seemed powerful.

It shouldn’t have felt like that. In this moment, he should have seemed at a disadvantage.

Harry wondered what he saw when he looked at her. I’m not that little girl anymore, she thought, but she felt… Merlin, but she felt…

She felt like she was sixteen again.

Harry tried to Occlude the feeling away, pushing at it and pushing at it, but it wouldn’t go.

“I thought you were dead.” Her voice sounded as if it were coming from a completely different person. Harry could be anyone at all.

Voldemort put his hands to the floor, pushing himself to his feet, but when he took a step forward, his legs buckled, and he put a hand to the wall to steady himself. 

He was bare footed, in the scrubs they’d provided, and they hung strangely off of him, like loose skin. He was half the size he’d been when she’d last seen him. He could have been anyone, too. The thought pulsed through her. A part of her wanted to step forward and help him, loop a hand underneath his arms and let him lean on her. If he’d been any other prisoner she would have.

 But he wasn’t any other prisoner.

And Harry had no clue what she was meant to do. 

She heard the pop of apparition behind her, and she pivoted, reluctant to turn her back on Voldemort. Smith must have gotten the field down.

But it was Travers standing in the center of the room. He looked over towards her, still standing in the doorway, and for a moment, Harry wondered if she could slam the door shut, and leave Voldemort there, unseen by anyone but her.

  Are you going to leave me here, Harry? dream Riddle had said. 

Gods, but what if he really had been calling to her?

“What’s this then?” Travers said, coming towards her.

Harry’s spine stiffened. “Take the first round on,” she said. “Parkinson will finish with the rest of the cages, and then follow. I’ll clean up here.” 

But Travers’s gaze had already caught on Voldemort, still standing at the back of the cell. Voldemort met his gaze, but did not say anything more. 

“Travers,” Harry snapped.

Traver’s lips quirked, but he did not make a move to go.

Harry set her shoulders. “That was an order.”

She could feel Voldemort’s eyes on the two of them, heavy. 

Travers looked between the two of them, his gaze lingering on Voldemort, and Harry wondered if she would have to— 

But, “Ma’am,” he said, ducking his head, and then he’d turned to take the first round on, leaving Voldemort and Harry alone. 

When Harry turned back to look at him, he still had not moved. He must be bad off then. Or maybe he was just pretending to be crippled so she would take pity on him. Hadn’t he proven that everything was a game to him? And Harry couldn’t even imagine him weak. 

“Are you going to leave me here, Harry?”

His lips pulled upwards in an attempt at a smile. It was ghoulish.

She should leave him here. It would be the smart thing to do. For the war effort if not for herself. 

And yet…

Harry huffed a breath. “We don’t have a lot of time,” she said, shoving the door open further with her hip. “Come on.”

Voldemort was silent for a moment, and then she heard a huffed laugh, almost as if he couldn’t help it. “Sometimes I fucking love do gooders,” he said. 

And then he had reached the door and Harry was stumbling backwards to let him through.

He passed close enough to her that the hairs on her arm rose. 

And then he had stepped over the threshold.

A full body shudder went through him. For a moment Harry was worried that he was going to collapse. His eyes flickered open and shut, and his jaw clenched tightly enough that the bone stood at sharply in contrast.

“Are you alright?” she asked. 

Voldemort turned slowly to look back at her. 

“Am I alright?”

There was a faded white scar across his face, slashing across his forehead, going through his eyebrow, and stopping mid cheek, Harry wondered how he had gotten it. 

The thought was almost clinical. It was completely removed from reality. 

That last year, that least year he’d looked so disconcertingly perfect. 

Now it looked as if he’d been carved to the bone.

“Can you apparate?” she amended. 

He did not answer, just continued to look at her, his eyes taking in her face rapid-fire. Harry released a shuddery breath, pushing magic at her Occlumency shields. Later, later she could sort through her thoughts on it. But now she needed to hold herself to the present.

“Is that…” she heard Parkinson saying. And then, “The fuck, Potter?”

Harry turned reluctantly. Most of the cages were unlocked now, and there were a dozen more prisoners to be transported by the second portkey. 

“Was I just supposed to leave him in there?” Harry snapped.

Yes, a voice inside her said. Yes, of course she was.

“Leave the fucking Dark Lord in the gaping prison hole you found him in? Gee, Potter, I wonder why—”

But she choked on her words, raising a surprised hand to her throat, and Harry looked and saw that Voldemort had raised his hand, and was regarding Parkinson’s purpling face with an interested expression.

 Harry pointed her wand at him. “Drop it,” she said.

But she was almost surprised when he did, turning to look at her again. He did not look at all contrite. Instead he ran his gaze over her again. It was a hungry appraising look, one that made Harry’s skin prickle, her breath catching in her throat.

“You can’t take him back. Not him. Not after everything.”

After everything, Harry thought. She wondered what Parkinson thought constituted everything. There was so much that no one knew but the two of them.

I held his soul inside me for sixteen years, she thought. And I’ve spent six walking around as if I were half a person. Had that been because of the war? Had it been the war or him? 

And why did they feel as if they were the same?

“I don’t have a choice,” Harry said, still looking at him.

“That’s what you always say,” Parksinson said. Her voice was low and intense, and for a moment, it sounded as if she were begging Harry. “And yet you always have a choice. It’s the rest of us—”

The guard at Harry’s feet woke with a gasp, and Harry looked down and met his eyes. 

“Wizard bitch,” he hissed, and fumbled for his belt. 

Harry drew her wand in a sharp motion. But it was too late. 

“And that’ll be the alarm,” Voldemort said, his gaze flicking up to the ceiling where a light was flashing, and soon a loud blaring began to sound.

Harry released her breath. She’d been hoping to avoid that. 

“Smith,” she said, pressing against her temple again. “Report.”

“The anti-transportation devices will be back up,” Voldemort said in that same bland tone. “It’s part of the alarm failsafe.” He judged the stunned guard with his bare foot, and then as Harry watched, he knelt down, removing his key card and then, to her astonishment the shoes and socks from his feet, sitting down and pulling them on his own feet. With that accomplished, he pulled the gun from the belt, standing. 

Harry tore her eyes away. All of it, the whole thing— 

“Harry,” Pansy said, grabbing Harry’s arm. Her face was drawn. “I’m asking you, alright? You know how I feel about him, about what he did to my family.” 

Harry blinked. And what about what he did to mine? she thought. He had orphaned her, too, the same way he had Pansy. How many families torn apart by his first war and then his second? Now, the third one had almost wiped out the wizarding population all together. Did that mean she should leave him in the dark? That she should kill him?

She had thought she would have to once. 

She looked over at him again, and found that he was still watching her. 

Like this, he was hardly recognizable. A shade. A half-man. A patchwork creature. A monster waiting in the dark. A man locked in a cupboard, hidden from sight but still alive, still searching.

Harry’s heart pounded overtime in her chest.

She looked back at Pansy. “I’m sorry,” she said. 

Pansy’s face warped, but there was a knock at the door, three sharp raps and then two in quick succession, and then Smith was barrelling into the room.

She slammed the door shut behind her, warding it quickly. “They’re coming,” she said, pressing back against the door. 

“How many?” Harry demanded.

Smith shook her head. Her arm was shaking, and she put her hand to it, as if to steady it, and Harry looked down and saw that it was dripping blood. 

“You’re hurt.”.

Smith grit her teeth. “It’s not bad.”

A lie, Harry thought.

She blinked, open, closed, magic pressed into her Occlumency shields. Push all the rest of it aside. Parkinson, Smith, Voldemort. The dead-eyed blankness of the patients surrounding her. The fear, too. She didn’t have a use for any of it. 

She tapped her temple. 

“Finnegan, can you clear a path through to the gate? Northside. We’ll meet you there.” 

Parkinson’s face was still set with anger. But it was to her that Harry turned. “Through the looking glass?”

Parkinson released her breath on a shaky exhale. “You know I hate running missions with you as point, Potter.” 

She might hate it, Harry thought. But she would still do what needed to be done. Harry kept Pansy’s gaze, and then Pansy shook her head, unsheathing her wand and stalking towards the door.

Harry watched her disappear down the aisle, and then she looked back at the prisoners surrounding them. Fifteen left. All of them vulnerable to attack. And behind them, he was still watching her, something assessing in his gaze.

She was not the same girl she’d been six years ago, Harry knew that. But it was still odd to see the evidence of this in his appraisal of her, as if he were trying to find who she had been then in who she was now. There was so little of that Harry left that it was odd to watch someone try, like a ghost from the past coming to haunt her. But wasn’t that what he was? 

There was a clanging from the doorway.

 “They’re here,” Parkinson said, backing up. “The wards won’t hold long.”

Harry’s grip tightened on her wand. “Alpha three,” she said. “The windows will be facing northside. We try and locate a room as fast as we can.”

Smith unsheathed her wand, starting down the walkway, Harry trailing behind, Voldemort dogging her footsteps

Smith was limping, too, in addition to her wounded arm. Neither was a good sign. Harry regulated her breathing, and stepped forward towards the door. Her heartrate didn’t even rise anymore. Instead she felt as if her focus had been narrowed down to a pin point. 

Fighting was easier than all the rest. 

The door blasted open. 

Parkinson hit the first soldier with a stunner, and his body crumpled to the floor. But the soldier behind him had his gun loaded. 

Bang. The clang of metal on metal. 

Urine sprayed from the bedpan Harry had summoned. The smell rose sharp and acrid in the air. 

“Ew,” Parkinson said, her nose twitching. 

“Commentary to a minimum,” Harry said, kneeling to take the gun from the hand of the closest. The metal was still warm from his hand. 

But she pushed that thought to the side as well. 

They stepped forward as one towards the hallway to meet the next wave.

Before they reached the door, Harry looked back one more time at Voldemort. His hand was gripping the gun tightly enough that his knuckles had turned white. 

But there was no time to consider any of it. Not with the fight so close at hand. Harry ducked into the hallway.

The men were on them at once. It was harder for them to shoot though at such a close range, and the wizards were good at taking advantage of the fact. 

Three surrounded her, and Harry became a blur of motion. 

Harry kicked out at the knees of the closest soldier, whirling back around to stun him, while she brought the gun in her left hand up to whack the second man against his cheek. He reeled back, and she stunned him, too. 

Two down. The third one’s face was quite close to hers, shadowed by his helmet and set with determination. 

He released his breath and pulled the trigger.

The bullet hit Harry midthigh, and pain tore through her. She made a sound as the iron bullet lodged deep in the muscle, and the soldier’s face warped in close up.

The hallway blurred and refocused. Harry raised her hand, pulling magic from her chest, reaching and— 

The second bullet hit the dragonsbone plate at the center of Harry’s chest, already bloodcoated. It knocked her back several paces. 

 The third soldier fell to the ground, a gunshot in the center of his chest.

Harry looked up in astonishment, and met Voldemort’s gaze. His eyes were so dark it was as if his pupils had entirely swallowed the pale blue of them.

Her mouth softened. 

And then he was turning, the gun still raised. There were five men in the hallway still.

Further down the hallway, Parkinson was grappling with two, Smith the other three. 

But Harry felt momentarily paralyzed. 

Voldemort raised the gun, and another man fell. 

She could feel him, Harry thought. She could feel his magic, rising around him, causing the back of her neck to prickle. He shuddered. It made her want to— 

His shot went wide. Smith turned to look at Harry, her hair flying out behind her. “Potter,” she said. “We have to—”

Bang. 

For a moment, Smith looked surprised. Blood dripped from her mouth, bright red across her face.

Bang. 

The last soldier fell. Smith’s legs gave out.

She looked over at Voldemort.

  Tom, she thought.

He turned as if called by the thought.The alarm was still blaring, loud and insistent, and her breath was rising, and she— 

I want to be free, she’d told him once. 

It was what she had wanted. To be free of him. To be free of all of it.

His expression tightened. 

“Potter,” Parkinson said. She was kneeling by Smith, and Harry startled.

 In the doorway, the eyes of the woman from the cage were watching Harry. 

“Will she make it?” Harry asked.

The bullet had gone clean through Smith’s throat. Parkinson’s hands, plugging the wound, were coated in blood. 

“No,” Pansy said. Her voice was strained.

She shook her head, her hands trembling.

Harry stepped forward, replacing Pansy’s hands with her own. She could feel the warmth of the blood, and the ragged lines of the wound. It was sickening. 

But it was not the worst thing that Harry had done. 

“Go,” she said, looking up at Pansy. “Take the prisoners on and secure a room. I’m right behind you.”

All at once Pansy looked quite young, her eyes wide. There was blood in her eyelashes. “Potter,” she said. 

“I’m right behind you,” Harry repeated. 

Their faces were washed by the oscillating light of the alarm. Lit and then cast in darkness within the span of a heartbeat.

 Pansy stood, waving the prisoners forward. 

“Smith,” Harry said, looking down at the woman in front of her. “Hold on.”

But Smith could not answer. There was a horrible gargling sound coming from her throat, and her eyes had gone hazy. The blood flow was sluggish.

 “It’s alright. You’re going to be alright,” Harry said, but what she was thinking was, there is no time for this.

She looked up down the hallway. There would be more men coming. And they couldn’t be here when they came, not if they didn’t want to all die. 

The alarm made it hard to think. There would not be an easy way to transport her, and— 

A hand came down on her shoulder, and Harry startled, and when she looked up it was Voldemort standing over her. “Let go,” he said. 

Her hands slipped from when he had jostled her, and the blood rushed faster between her fingers. No, Harry thought. But he pulled at her, picking her up beneath the armpits, and her hands left Smith behind.

 “No,” she said aloud, struggling against his hold, hitting out with her arm, pushing magic behind the motion.

Voldemort reeled back, but then he came forward again, almost as if he had been expecting it, grabbing hold of her arm. His hands were like claws.

 “She is dead,” he hissed. “There is no point in us being so, too.”

“Then go,” Harry said. But he stayed right where he was.

And she knew he was right. 

He yanked her forward again, but Harry dug her heels in, still looking down at Smith. She did not know Smith well, though this wasn’t the first mission they had run together. She knew that she liked Muggle football, and that her husband played the mandolin, that she liked to joke with the younger operatives that she was their work mum. 

And she was going to die in the hallway here alone. 

Harry released her breath. 

Voldemort was still holding her arm. She could feel every point where he was touching her.

 She pulled her arm from his grip, breathing hard. He looked back at her, his mouth softening, and then Harry had turned and started down the hallway to the doorway Parkinson had gone through, leaving him behind.

Harry knocked three times and then twice more. The door swung open.

“That wasn’t right behind,” Parkinson said. 

“This room secure?” Harry said, pushing into the room. 

Voldemort came in behind her, and Parkinson shot him another hate filled gaze, and Harry felt the sudden urge to step between the two of them. It was an odd feeling, and one she didn’t have the time to examine.

“As secure as it can be,” Parkinson said. “I need help with the window. The glass is thick.”

She did not ask about Smith, and Harry did not offer.

“Right,” Harry said. She turned back to the door, and shoved magic at it in a clumsy ward, before she limped across the hallway towards the long window. Parkinson had raised the blinds, and looking out, Harry could see that Finnegan was down below, standing in the wreckage of the fence, the car behind him. At least that had been taken care of.

“Alright,” she said, brandishing her wand. “Stand back,” she said to the prisoners. “On three.”

“And a three, two, bombarda maxima.”

The glass cracked midway through, and then shattered outwards, the wind blowing in through the open window, whipping her hair around her face. She raised a hand to push her hair back and was almost surprised to see it still covered in Smith’s blood. 

Fuck, she thought, before she shoved it to the side as well.

Above them, the moon had risen high in the sky. They had been in the base much longer than they were meant to. But then nothing had gone according to plan. 

“Levitate the first group down then,” she said. 

Voldemort was still standing by the door, and Harry limped back over to him. She raised her wand, drawing pathways through the air, muttering warding charms under her breath. He watched her do it with an indiscernible expression, and for a moment she wondered if he was going to say something more to her, but he didn’t. She would make herself crazy if she let her mind get taken over again by trying to understand him at a time like this. She would have time to second guess herself later.

And what was he meant to say? What was she?

The wards wouldn’t last long anyway. There was very little they had found that could hold up to a true assault. 

“Make yourself useful then,” she said to him, her voice stiff. She nodded her head at the table next to her.

His expression twisted, but he flexed his hand, waving it over the table, and it shoved in place in front of the door.

“Potter,” Parkinson called, her voice strained. “A little help please.”

Harry shook her head, limping back across the room towards her. She would have to go to the hospital after this to get her leg patched, though she hated going there. And she would have to find Terrence and tell him what had happened to Smith. And then go to Kingsley for debrief. And then find a cell that would hold the Dark Lord. And then she’d— 

Harry closed her eyes, swaying. But she wasn’t going to let herself get overwhelmed. She squared her shoulders, and forced herself to the present. 

The first group had already met Finnegan down below. Harry raised her wand to help Pansy do the rest. It was almost funny to watch the bodies levitating through the air, like puppets growing smaller. The weight of the bodies pulled at her magic. The spell wasn’t meant for this purpose. And Parkinson looked peaked as well. But desperate times called for desperate measures. 

Once they were on the ground, Harry released the magic, and felt relief flood her system.

Drink. She would drink with Blaise back at Grimmauld once they got out of here. She’d fucking earned it.

There was the sound of thudding against the door. It wouldn’t take them long to get through the door. 

Voldemort stepped up behind Harry, and she halfway turned to look up at him. He looked insubstantial, like a dream. Or a nightmare. Blink, and he might disappear. 

He clambered up onto the window ledge, crouching and looking out through the shattered windowpane. The moonlight cast over the planes of his face, his pale eyes glinting silver, and then he looked down at her. “Through the looking glass,” he repeated. And then he offered her his hand.

There was blood dripping down Harry’s leg, and she could feel Parkinson’s gaze on her, too, accusing, and Harry thought, I don’t need your help. 

I don’t need you at all.

  She clambered onto the ledge beside him, ignoring the hand. 

When he had last seen her, she’d been a child, but it had been six years of war since then.

You lose, she’d told him once. 

She had thought of things like that, as if one of them would always be the victor. But she looked at him now, and could only think that they had both lost everything that mattered. 

He was just one man. And what was one man in the face of a war? What was the point of being frightened of him now?

Harry pushed herself off the ledge, the air whistling around her as she waited for the ground to meet her. For a moment she was freefalling, and then the wind caught her, and she was flying.