Chapter Text
As they climb down, the vegetation grows increasingly lush, dense enough to swallow the path entirely. Ferns unfurl in thick, glossy layers, brushing against her legs.
Without Draco acting as their tour guide, Hermione doubts she would ever have found the caves at all, and perhaps that’s precisely the point, judging by the plethora of wards that he’s forced to dismantle one after another. After a few muttered expletives, a massive stone arch finally reveals itself, opening onto a dark void underground.
“Name?”
Hermione leaps back in surprise, instinctively yanking back Draco by his shirt in a poorly executed attempt to shield him from whoever spoke. He seems more amused than endangered, gently prying her fingers from his sleeve and takes her by the hand.
“Ivan…” Draco berates, addressing the shadowed figure inside the cave. She squints and realizes that a man is seated comfortably behind a makeshift booth, as if issuing tickets to an amusement park. Which is ironic because visiting a warfare site is probably the furthest as one can get from jovial entertainment. All that’s missing is a sign reading Queue here, followed by a chart of prices.
Three Galleons for general admission.
Two Sickles extra for guided tour.
No refunds in case of dismemberment.
Souvenirs available at the exit (assuming there is one).
“Ivan is me.” The gatekeeper stupidly retorts in a thick Slovenian accent, baring a line of yellowed teeth. With greasy hair, veined cheeks, and a general air of unpleasantness, he looks uncannily like Argus Filch.
“I know, you dolt,” Draco steps toward Not-Filch, tugging her along. “You know who I am. Why do you insist on doing this every time?”
The man answers with a string of incomprehensible Slavic muttering, sounding mostly like insults.
“And she?” he asks, pointing at Hermione.
“My wife, Hermione Malfoy.” Draco replies, as if it’s the most normal thing to say.
It’s not.
She’s about to admonish him for it, and deliver a concise lecture on why he believes she—Hermione Granger, first witch of the Noble House of Granger—would agree to such a barbaric practice as taking the man’s name. They’re no longer in the 16th century, where coverture was a fun concept where women ceased to exist as a legal person once they get married, making her an actual possession of her husband. If that were the case, then maybe he should take her name instead, because he’s just as much hers as she is his. Possibly more, given recent events.
Draco squeezes her hand. Once, twice. A silent warning. She tries to collect herself, recalling his earlier instruction.
“You need to calm your urges to act all noble and brave”
Hermione grinds her teeth, biting back the retort sitting on the tip of her tongue.
Ivan notes her name, and she glares at Draco, considering he’s personally responsible for ensuring that Slovenian officials now have this particular indignity permanently inked into their records.
“Password?”
“Laško Pivo.”
And just like that, the dark cave isn’t so dark anymore. Mumbling something akin to goodbyes to the bitter gatekeeper—or more likely something less polite—Draco steers her away.
“Pivo?”
“Means beer. Laško is one of their brands.”
They venture deeper into the cave, the sunlight thinning behind them as the air becomes damper. Their steps echo off the stone walls, which rise surprisingly higher than she would have expected for a cave. She’s not claustrophobic, but she’s grateful that the wide passage spares her the indignity of crawling.
“And before you say anything, Slovenia is one the few countries where, although it’s not an obligation, it is customary for a wife to keep her maiden—”
“How completely patriar—”
“—And let me remind you, that you were an Undesirable for a long time—”
“In Britain!”
“Slovenia has been an ally of the Republic for over two years, so yes, your name has been circulating here. Ivan might not seem particularly sharp, but it’s just a front. It is possible he read your name somewhere. It would have caused an unnecessary hassle to explain why public enemy no.2 is suddenly my wife.”
She hates to admit that he has a point. It made sense. Bugger.
“Fine.” She concedes reluctantly.
Very quickly, the outside light fails to reach the cave’s depths. Just before darkness threatens to swallow them whole, a row of torches fixed to the stone flare to life one after another, casting wavering gold across the tall walls.
Draco slows, his grip on her hand momentarily loosening, before tightening.
“We didn’t talk about it,” he continues, suddenly unsure. “What would you choose?”
“I haven’t thought about it…” A white lie, since she’d already held a full internal debate with herself and reached a provisional conclusion. “But I think I’d like to keep my name.”
He nods, eyes on the rocky path ahead. “Maybe hyphenated?”
“If I do, then you should too. I don’t see why only the witch would have to.”
He considers this, no doubt calculating how many ancestors would be scandalized and rise from their graves to object, should he commit the unspeakable act of compromise and sharing his wife’s name.
“I think it would be a reasonable ask.”
She raises an eyebrow. “You’d agree to be named Draco Malfoy-Granger?”
A corner of his mouth lifts, amused. “I actually like having a piece of you. But only if you do too.”
Hermione looks forward again, the sound of water becoming louder the more they walk. Soon enough, a large stream flows at their left.
“Let’s put a pin on that,” she says, warmed by the idea that he didn’t reject her proposition and even likes it. Her thumb brushes absently over the back of his hand in pure affection.
“Where is everyone?”
A reasonable question, considering they’ve been walking for five minutes without encountering a single soul. Aside from the rush of the stream and the echo of their footsteps, the cave is eerily silent. She may be a novice when it comes to the manufacturing of warfare, but even she knows such an operation requires some workforce.
“Deeper. This is only the upper level. We’ll drop our bags and then head to the lab.”
After another stretch of walking, Draco steers her away from the main passage. Settling his hand at the small of her back, he ushers her toward a narrower path branching off to the right. Stalactites hang low from the ceiling above, their pale tips gleaming faintly. The ceiling dips further, forcing them to bend and duck unless they fancy accidental impalement.
Hermione had reached her quota for this year.
They reach what appears to be a dead end, or rather what has been glamoured as one. Draco raises his wand, and the illusion dissolves, revealing a small wooden door set into the rock. It creaks in disapproval when he pushes it open.
“After you,” he says without much enthusiasm as though fully aware he’s not presenting her with a five-star suite.
Something closer to a storage cupboard might be a more apt description.
The room is carved directly into the rock, its rough stone walls uneven and damp. The ceiling hangs low enough that Draco has to mind his head when he walks to the small desk to deposit their bags.
There is no window, no decoration, yet the simplicity lends it a certain rustic charm. A narrow bed is pushed against one wall, covered with a mousy brown blanket on which a massive hawkmoth bats its wings, before flying out of the room.
Hermione hopes to find it again.
“Surprisingly, this isn’t the worst accommodation I’ve had this year.” She jokes, but as with every casual reference to Azkaban, Draco looks faintly horrified and reacts like it’s a personal failing on his part. He sinks onto the bed, picking at the blanket instead of looking at her.
“As I said, not your typical vacations.” He grumbles.
“I know,” she crosses the space between them, slipping inside his parted legs, and laying her hands softly on his shoulders. “Once this is all over, I’ll even let you take me to one of your lavish châteaux in France.”
This grabs his attention and his eyes gleam up at her, his mouth quivering with barely suppressed anticipation.
“Actually, I was thinking Greece for our honeymoon. My family own a quaint villa in Naxos.”
“Of course, they do.”
His hands snake around her waist, drawing her closer. She melts into him.
“Once this is all over?” He asks boyishly.
“Once your despicable master is dealt with, you can take me anywhere your family fortune has claimed.” She seals her promise with a kiss, which turns into something more heated than she had planned.
“Speaking of,” she takes a step back, “Show me what Mr. Despicable plans to do here.”
As they make their way toward what Draco had called the “lab”, the path dips lower and deeper, the air turning chillier, the kind that seeps into bones and makes the jaw clench. A quick warming spell does the trick, but it does nothing to dispel the sense of foreboding lingering in every shadowed corner.
“Is it a good time now to ask you what type of weapon is being manufactured here?” Hermione casts a Muffliato for good measure to make sure that Draco says yes.
He scans the corridor, but aside from Ivan the gatekeeper, they have yet to encounter another human. He leads her further down until the passage opens onto a narrow ledge overlooking a large trench.
Hermione steps closer and immediately regrets it. Her hands clutch the rusty railing tightly.
At the bottom of the trench is a giant enclosure, filled with Puffskeins. Probably hundreds of them. Furry, round, harmless creatures, but known to be used in magical clinical trials.
Their faint squeaks fill the silence. Some roll aimlessly. A few stare upward with wide, uncomprehending eyes.
She still doesn’t know what the weapon is about, but the Puffskeins sure have front row seats to it, forced to test whatever cruelty Voldemort has in store.
Her chest tightens with indignation.
Despite the Muffliato, Draco lowers his voice. “The weapon concerns mind magic.”
Hermione doesn’t look at him, still outraged at the sight below her. So they’re being tested with mind magic. How utterly barbaric…
“When you say mind magic…”
“Mind control,” he replies. “Mass control. His idea is to…create a collective mind.”
Her skin prickles with a clammy cold sweat, goosebumps rising, despite the warming charm. It doesn’t sound good.
“And who is being so generously invited to this collective?”
“Everyone is at risk,” Draco says, his fingers picking at flakes of rust on the railing. “But primarily Muggles, Squibs, and—"
“Muggle-borns.” she finishes flatly.
“Yes.”
“So he wants to control the population. How unoriginal.”
“Indeed. Unsurprisingly, he wasn’t the first to have this idea. The Slovenians have been attempting something similar for years, until they ran out of funding.”
“Let me guess,” she snaps. “He graciously offered to pay for the whole thing in exchange for ownership at the end.”
Draco gives a short nod. “With the condition that the research remains here.”
“How kind of him to encourage local industry,” she replies bitterly. Her gaze drifts back to the pit, one of the Puffskeins licking diligently the damp rock face with its abnormally long tongue. The rest mill about in confused clusters, bumping into one another pointlessly.
They look…normal. Then again, Puffskeins are not renowned for their intellectual prowess so if they were being mind-controlled, it might go entirely unnoticed. She watches the licker spins slowly in place, pause, then resume its devoted analysis of the wall.
Yeah. Perhaps another study group might have been more suited when it comes to cognition.
“And how does one weaponize mind control?” she continues. “I mean… Imperius exists, but I’ve yet to see anyone cast it over an entire population. Voldemort is powerful…but no one is that good.”
“That’s because it won’t be cast,” Draco says. “It’ll be a potion. He already has a name for it—Mens Mortis.”
She turns to him. “A potion.” She exhales, pinching the bridge of her nose, suddenly exhausted by the prospect of this new threat. “How does he plan on administering it? Mens Mortis, you said? It won’t be exactly subtle, and once it gets known what this potion does, people will go into hiding.”
“This part is regrettably already settled. The Slovenians already developed a method to spray potions.” Draco explains, pushing off from the railing and gently ushering her onward to resume their descent into what increasingly feels like the earth’s core as the path dips deeper below.
“They can convert it into a gas,” he continues. “Disperse it through ventilation systems. Residential buildings. Shops. Hospitals. Hotels. Schools…Public transport.”
“Oh,” she stupidly says instead of hyperventilating in abject terror. “And once an individual is exposed…”
“They lose independent cognition. Thought, speech, movement…all redirected.”
“To whom?” Hermione asks, though she already knows. Maybe that’s why Draco stays silent.
She lets out a short breath that might have been a laugh. Denial presumably. “So Voldemort becomes the central mind and us, his minions?”
“In essence, yes.”
They turn a sharp corner, and the ledge dips further, spiraling along the stone wall. Another trench yawns open at their side, but this one is shallower, the bottom creeping closer. They finally appear to be approaching the ground.
“Linking one mind to another at that scale…and especially to put Voldemort as the central mind,” she thinks aloud. “It’s…tricky magic. Very unstable. Multiply that by thousands, millions…is that even feasible?”
She hates that she sounds like a CEO calmly assessing the doability of an R&D initiative, weighing risks and timelines, as though the outcome wasn’t the dismantling of free will across Britain. Possibly beyond, knowing that the project manager is a sociopath.
“Bellatrix has been put in charge of that part, and from what we heard and seen…she hasn’t been particularly successful on that front. As you say…it’s tricky.”
A silver lining. But still.
They stop in front of the final trench, this one filled with shallow brown water and floating aquatic plants. Logs seem to drift on the murky surface, but when one comes to life, Hermione concludes that they’re facing another group test, this one consisting of Dugbogs. Crocodile-like creatures whose only purpose seems to lurk across water lilies and snap flies mid-air. Poor things.
“Those are her test subjects for the second part of the experiment. Once the potion is complete. As you can see, they still retain their free will, whatever that means for Dugbogs.”
“I fail to see the endgame here,” Hermione admits, staring at the pond. “I get that he wants to control people, possibly have himself a nice little mindless army to win the war, but then what? He’s stuck with a horde of robots who can’t think for themselves. Or attend to their basic needs, like eat, sleep…unless he tells them to?”
Draco lets out a long sigh, as though he’s already embarrassed on Voldemort’s behalf.
“That,” he says dryly, “is precisely what my mother pointed out, hoping he’d back off from this insane idea. But he didn’t…Instead, his plan is to give people back a semblance of autonomy once the war is won. They’ll go back to their jobs, their families, their friends…their lives will look the same.”
“But?”
“But Mens Mortis will never leave their system. He’d still have access to their minds.”
Her stomach sinks.
“For what?”
Draco gives a humorless laugh.
“Concealed dictatorship, of course.” He scoffs.
“He’ll establish a proper government. With elected officials, debates…The whole democracy.” He makes a vague gesture with his hand. “Except, through their collective mind connection, he’ll decide who people vote for. What opinion they hold. If women should have more children. If non-pureblood people should apply for top-level positions…”
“And the Muggles?”
“That’s the long game plan. Eventually he intends to turn all of Europe into a full wizarding territory. He’ll make Muggles think that emigrating overseas is their own idea. Over time, he’ll spread Mens Mortis worldwide and make the other continents think that Europe never existed, preventing them to come here.”
Hermione’s mind reels with the infinite possibilities of having a dark sorcerer rule over the continent through mind connection alone. There will be no public executions, no endless displays of terror and violence. But—
A world of people quietly surrendering their free will without ever realizing it. That’s horrifyingly worse.
Over time, they might even come to admire Voldemort. History books might even call him a great leader. Statues would be raised in his honour. Streets and stadiums would bear his name. Within a generation, no one would even remember there had ever been another way to think.
How sick.
“Is there any cure to this potion? Once it reaches the brain…the effect is…permanent?” She gulps, her voice cracking.
“For there to be a cure, there first has to be a potion,” Draco reassures her, but still manages to avoid the question. His hand settles at the back of her neck to comfort her before sliding around her waist. He tugs her closer as they resume walking, the narrow ledge finally giving way to solid ground.
“Right,” she says, forcing herself back into reality. “And for any of that to happen, the potion first needs to connect every victim to Voldemort’s mind. Then, somehow, its effects have to recede just enough for them to function normally while still leaving the connection intact.” She snorts, relieved. “That sounds even more impossible than the first part.”
“Exactly,” Draco grins evilly. “As I said, they don’t even have a functioning potion yet…Bellatrix is going ballistic over it. Calling everyone incompetent. She claims she already knows how to link everyone’s mind, but that she can’t make sure as long as they don’t give her a working potion.”
“Let me guess…you’re the reason why Mens Mortis still doesn’t exist? What exactly are you doing when you’re dispatched here to oversee operations?”
“Sabotage, mostly,” he says with a proud grin. “My parents and I made a few… creative edits to the potion. Enough to ensure it never sees the light of day. Without them, it would probably have been ready five months ago.”
“Really?” she gasps.
Five months ago…she had still been locked up in Wing X in Azkaban. Merlin, she’s not even sure that Draco had found her yet.
The Malfoys have been playing both sides for longer than she thought. Or rather, playing to their advantage, as usual. Siding with Voldemort was likely a matter of shared interests under the common and convenient theme of pureblood supremacy. At first.
However, this goes beyond politics when your leader intends to implement mass mind control. One can sign up for a political cause and still be rightfully vexed when the man in charge has been quietly drowning kittens in his basement.
Still. It takes a certain kind of nerve to interfere rather than simply look away.
“Your master is a complete moron. How has no one noticed you’ve been rigging his experiments?”
“Stop calling him my master,” he scowls, “If not for the Vow, I’d have ceased any association with him already. As for the how, come on. I’ll show you.”
Steering her forward with a hand pressed on the small of her back, Draco guides her through a tall, narrow fissure in the rock wall. A few steps later, a dark metal door appears, at odds with the natural scenery of the cave.
“Brace yourself, Andrej is…peculiar with contamination hazards.”
Hermione doesn’t have long to wonder what he means. The instant the door swings open, a thick white fog smelling like detergent engulfs them, followed immediately by a gust of wind that nearly qualifies as a category four hurricane.
Her hair whips across her face.
Well. She has never felt so aggressively sanitized in her life.
Apparently, this still fails to meet Andrej’s standards, considering how someone (presumably Andrej himself) barrels toward them in visible distress, waving frantically at a rack of bright yellow full-body protective suits. The wizard is frail and short, but radiates some kind of authority nonetheless.
“Yes, Andrej, we know.” Draco drawls, and she guesses that he has survived this exact procedure many times before.
Draco grabs one from a hanger, wraps Hermione in it, and—much to her horror—gathers all her hair beneath the hood before tightening the cord around her face until only her eyes and nose remain visible. She shoots Andrej a suspicious glare, whose own hair has received no such treatment. It floats around his head in a wild and unkempt halo, similar to a white cloud defying gravity.
Draco grins, then turns and dons a suit over himself.
They look utterly ridiculous. Two human sausages fully prepared for a nuclear catastrophe. To complete this charming set, all that’s missing is—
“Duh paperrr chevely, Meesterr Malfoy!”
Draco rolls his eyes and bends to retrieve two pairs of blue paper booties from a basket.
As he slips them carefully over his dragon-hide boots, Hermione decides she’s going to have to suppress this unerotic memory for the sake of their sex life. Some things simply cannot survive crossing into The Ick territory.
Andrej claps his hands in approval and motions for them to follow, speaking animatedly as he marches to the center of the vast cavern.
“I done many testingz, and I tink I know what da problem was.”
He launches into a lengthy explanation of the modifications he’s made to the potion over the past weeks. Hermione makes a sincere effort to follow, but the combination of the potioneer’s thick Slavic accent and her own attention drifting toward the lab around them makes it difficult.
In the middle of the cave stands a massive cauldron, easily three times the size of a standard one. Around it, a dozen smaller workstations are each occupied by workers. They move between shelves and counters, some bent over cutting boards as they dice potion ingredients, while others are hunched over smaller cauldrons, stirring with deep concentration.
Once they reach the central cauldron, a faint haze rises from its surface, sharing the same distinct shimmering maroon hue as the other smaller cauldrons on other workstations, no doubt all preparing some variation of the same concoction.
“…changed for—uh…how you say…” Andrej gestures vaguely at the cauldron. “Silvur, but brown-ur, more orange, uh—”
“Copper?” Hermione supplies.
“Yes! Yes, coppur cauldrons.” Andrej brightens. “Because you see, other cauldrons too thin, but now coppur can go verrry, verrry hot when we add pearl dust.”
Draco peers into the cauldron, feigning mild interest. He then fishes a parchment roll from his trousers pocket, a task made considerably less dignified by the hazmat suit. Hermione recognizes the ingredients list Voldemort gave him this morning, written by Narcissa.
Andrej summons a pair of half-moon spectacles and unrolls the parchment.
The colour drains from his face.
“B-but—Meester Malfoy…dis cannot be right. We have decided that Occamy eggs are bad with pearl dust…you remembur? First it become rock. Den rock turned to kaboom! We clean for five days last time.”
“That’s why we adjusted the dosage.” Draco points at the parchment. “With fewer eggs. Diced, not crushed. We believe it won’t turn to solid.”
“I do not tink less eggs vill—”
“Are you questioning Lord Voldermort’s instructions?”
Andrej freezes and Draco taps the parchment.
“Because he’s the one who proposed the modification, along with my mother, who I’m sure you remember for her patience whenever someone disagrees with her.”
Andrej’s face somehow turns even paler and looks like he wants to throw himself into the bubbling cauldron.
“No, no, of curse not.” He swallows. “I am only saying dat maybe—”
“What you think is irrelevant. Just stick to the latest instructions and try not to embarrass yourself further. The Dark Lord replaced the previous chief potioneer for less.”
Andrej’s eyes drop to the floor, his knees turning slightly inward. He looks less like the head of a secret weapon laboratory and more like a schoolboy who’s being scolded.
She feels almost sorry for him, then remembers that this whole act is designed to prevent a catastrophic mind-controlling potion from ever being completed.
If Andrej’s lab happens to explode again as collateral damage, so be it.
Which is exactly what happens three days later.
As Andrej predicted, adding the Occamy eggs to the pearl dust causes every cauldron to explode in rapid succession.
Fortunately, no one is injured, but the blast is powerful enough to shake their bedroom on the other side of the cave, where Hermione and Draco had spent the afternoon curled together—a recurring pattern over the past few days.
The task of “overseeing operations” proved far less demanding than Hermione initially imagined, consisting mostly of Draco strolling around the lab to supply unhelpful commentary, then retreating to his quarters for the rest of the day.
She accompanied him a few times, if only for the pleasure of offering her own pointers and unsolicited advice. Some of which Andrej even listened to with great enthusiasm. Unfortunately, her pedagogical instincts quickly resurfaced. Before long, she found herself explaining proper brewing techniques, correcting measurements, and offering genuinely valid suggestions.
So she let Draco oversee the difficult task of shepherding everyone into idiocy. Not that she had much choice. After she offered Andrej a suggestion that was catastrophically close to being correct, Draco quickly banned her from the lab.
The day after, the explosion reveals itself to be the culmination of his management contributions. As they hurry into the lab, Draco makes a valiant effort to conceal his delight.
“Clearly the copper cauldrons are at fault,” he says to a distraught Andrej, now expert at gaslighting the poor elderly wizard. “The potion’s temperature went too high because of the material.”
Andrej stares at him in disbelief, soot coating half his face.
“Perhaps brass cauldrons would be more suitable?” Draco presses on, then leads Hermione out of the lab after Andrej nods, his lower lip slightly trembling as he gazes around his destroyed lab.
As they exit through the narrow fissure, still snickering about the incredible news that the lab will be out of commission for a few days, they fail to notice the sharp click of heels striking against the damp rock.
“I must have missed the owl announcing that it was Bring Your Pet to Work day.” Bellatrix emerges from the shadows, her dark eyes raking over Hermione in blatant disgust. Draco shifts half a step in front of her, his shoulder brushing hers. Sweet. Not that she needs protecting.
“Bella,” he warns. “In case you’ve forgotten what the celebration at the Manor was about, Hermione is my wife. I must insist you address her with the respect she’s owed.”
“Filth like her deserves nothing. Certainly not respect,” Bellatrix hisses. “What possessed you to bring it here? The first chance she gets, she’ll go back to her little friends and tell them everything she saw—”
“She won’t,” Draco’s voice softens and he turns slightly toward Hermione, wrapping an arm around her waist. “Isn’t that right, darling?”
“As if I’d ever believe she switched sides—”
“I couldn’t care less what you think of me,” Hermione cuts in.
She slides her ringed hand up Draco’s chest. Just her luck that out of everyone in Voldemort’s ranks, Bellatrix is the only clever witch to see through their game. Still, a simple reminder that the Malfoys had no qualms in accepting her should suffice. If Bellatrix refuses to accept that fact, then she’s willingly choosing to turn her back on her own sister.
And Voldemort, whom Hermione suspects Bellatrix harbours a deeply unhealthy crush on.
Yes. Best to go with that angle.
“Our Lord believes me and that’s all that matters.”
Judging by the way her dark curls seem to vibrate with barely contained jealousy, she chose right.
“Our Lord?”
“We got close, you know. Living together and all.”
“He doesn’t trust you!” she shrieks, pointing a finger toward Hermione, but Draco smacks it aside before it can reach her face. “Not like he trusts me.”
“Maybe. But less than he trusts Draco. Oh, and Lucius. And your sister.”
“I am his most trusted advisor!”
“Really?” Hermione presses on, to Draco’s annoyance as he pinches her hip, no doubt a secret code for stop antagonizing her.
She ignores it completely.
By the way Bellatrix fidgets with the chain of her necklace, Hermione suspects she’s close to blurting out something. What? She doesn’t know, but she won’t miss the chance to push her over the edge.
“I haven’t seen you much at the Manor in the last few months. That’s where the big decisions are made, you know. Your sister is there, her husband too.”
Bellatrix’s expression darkens.
“Oh, but perhaps you’re simply too busy. Being stationed in a cave and all.”
Draco sighs.
“Granger—”
“No, no,” Hermione continues sweetly. “I’m sure it’s an honour. Or a way to keep her away.”
Bellatrix edges closer, foam nearly gathering at the corners of her mouth. Draco steps between the two witches, trying to defuse whatever disaster Hermione is provoking.
“Bella, enough—"
“He’s put me in charge here,” she snaps, gesturing around them. “And—he trusted me with his most precious mission.”
“I doubt that.”
“He did!” and the need to prove herself strikes in the best way. “To protect,” she blurts. “Something to protect”
Oh.
Hermione stills, and so does Draco, probably connecting the dots at the exact same time. They were together when Bellatrix rambled about her vault during their wedding celebration, after all.
“…dirt like her shouldn’t even be allowed in Diagon Alley…”
“…never let her anywhere near my vault. You should….”
“And what would that be?” Hermione asks, one eyebrow rising slowly.
“Like I would ever tell you.”
But Hermione already knows. She doesn’t need Bellatrix to spell it out. Merlin, she sincerely hopes the crazy witch doesn’t. Best to let her think her secret is still safe.
All Hermione needs is to get close enough to whatever is hanging around her neck. She can’t see the pendant itself, but knows enough about pureblood habits and their tendency to keep valuables close. Or in that case, the mean to get to those valuables.
Lucius keeps it locked in a safe.
Draco keeps his in a warded box beside his bed.
And Narcissa? Around her neck. And judging by the way Bellatrix’s hand won’t leave that chain, Hermione would wager her own vault that the sisters share the habit of wearing their Gringotts key on a necklace.
“As if our Lord would ever be so foolish to entrust you with something important,” Hermione scoffs. “You can’t even work out a decent spell for his mind-control project to function properly.”
“Cruci—”
“Experliamus!”
Draco shouts the spell at the same time Hermione slams Bellatrix against the nearest wall. One arm pins her by the collarbone while her hand jams her wand beneath her jaw.
Enraged breaths spiral from Bellatrix’s nose, her lips curling into a snarl.
Her anger is so consuming that she fails to notice Hermione’s nonverbal Gemino spell.
Inside her pocket, a duplicate of Bellatrix’s necklace takes shape and the weight settles reassuringly.
“How does it feel getting bested by a Mudblood and your nephew?” she murmurs into her ear before taking a step back with what she hopes is her best impression of Draco’s particular brand of insufferable smugness.
Before Bellatrix can reply, Draco throws her wand into the Dugbogs’ murky pond, leaving her to retrieve it from the muddy water, which Hermione imagines will provide hours of entertainment.
“That,” he snarls, “is for attempting to cast the Cruciatus Curse on my wife.” Bellatrix lunges at him, but he doesn’t so much as flinch. “Consider yourself lucky that your test subjects have already been fed today. Otherwise, I’d have happily tested whether they’re carnivores and fed them your fingers one by one.”
And with that inspirational speech, Draco takes Hermione’s hand and leads her away.
They don’t speak until they reach the bedroom, but their shared excitement is enough to fill the silence. Hermione can’t help but bounce with giddy delight as her fingers close on the necklace hidden inside her pocket, able to trace the unmistakable shape of the pendant.
The door clicks shut and Draco is on her immediately. He grabs the sides of her head, his grey eyes twinkling with great expectations.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Depends,” she replies coyly, “Does your line of thought begin with Horcrux, and end with your aunt’s vault?”
A rough laugh escapes him and he kisses her once in answer before pulling away and letting out a triumphant whoop.
“Can’t believe this is finally going to be over.” He exhales as he drags both hands down his face before clapping them over his mouth.
His relief is contagious. And she hasn’t even shown him the best part yet.
“Sooner and easier than we thought,” Hermione announces.
She pulls the duplicated necklace from her pocket and extends her closed fist.
When Draco’s eyes narrow on it and his breath falters, she opens her hand.
The pendant drops, suspended by its chain.
A polished brass key spins lazily in the air, tiny emeralds flashing among the lattice metalwork. A surprisingly delicate object for something guarding a fortune.
And the last fragment of Voldemort’s soul.