Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Draco

Brickle is still talking.

Remaining near the edge of the room longer than there is any reason to justify, the weight of the table presses lightly against my spine where I’ve leaned back into it without noticing when it happened. The conversation in front of me has nothing to do with me and everything to do with why I haven’t moved.

Teddy is half-sprawled across the floor beside Granger, one leg hooked over hers in a way that would be inconvenient if she treated it as such and therefore is not. Her hand moves through his hair without pause, fingers catching briefly before smoothing through, her attention divided between him and the board laid out between them. Brickle sits opposite, rigid with focus, watching Teddy attempt something that is almost certainly not how the game is meant to be played.

“Brickle does not believe that’s how it goes,” Brickle says, already irritated.

“It is now,” Teddy replies, entirely unbothered.

Granger doesn’t look up when she speaks, but there’s something faint in her expression that gives her away. “Then explain the rule again.”

Brickle draws himself up, prepared to do exactly that, and Teddy leans further into her, already waiting for the answer like this is a routine they’ve run enough times to know every part of it.

It is easy for them.

That is the part that stays.

Not careless. Not thoughtless. There is too much awareness in all of them for that. But easy in the way something becomes when it no longer needs to be questioned. He reaches. She answers. Brickle adjusts. No one hesitates. No one stands outside of it wondering where they’re meant to fit.

My fingers curl slightly around the stylus, the carved edges grounding against my thumb as I turn it once, slowly, giving myself something steady that isn’t the pull of attention I haven’t redirected.

I could move.

There is nothing stopping me from stepping forward, from crossing the space and making myself part of something that is already in motion.

I don’t.

Across the board, Teddy reaches too far, nearly knocking a piece loose, and Granger’s hand moves before it falls, catching it, setting it back without breaking the rhythm of the moment.

“See,” Teddy says immediately, satisfied with himself. “It works.”

“That is not how you determine if something works,” Brickle snaps.

Granger exhales softly through her nose, conceding just enough to keep the peace. “It didn’t fall.”

Teddy beams.

The look he turns on her lands harder than it should.

Something in my chest tightens before I can dismiss it, not sharp enough to be pain, not clean enough to be ignored, sitting somewhere in between where it lingers longer than it has any right to.

“I want to go outside,” Teddy announces suddenly, already shifting upright.

Granger’s hand stills briefly in his hair before sliding to his shoulder. “For how long?”

“Not long.”

A lie.

Her gaze lifts, measuring him for a second before she nods. “Stay in the back garden. Then come find me in the lab.”

“I know,” Teddy chirps.

He leans in without prompting, pressing a quick kiss to her cheek, and she turns just enough to meet it before brushing his hair back and pressing her own to his forehead, the motion automatic, familiar.

“Go on then, love,” Hermione says in a voice mothers reserve only for their children and he takes off across the room at speed.

A step before he would reach me, his path shifts. Subtle. Deliberate. A slight angle that carries him past without ever entering the space I occupy.

He doesn’t look at me.

Doesn’t slow.

Doesn’t acknowledge me at all.

The absence of it registers like an arriving tsunami.

Something in my chest drops, quiet and immediate, the reaction settling before I can force it into something more manageable.

The door closes behind him and Granger watches it for a second, then pushes herself to her feet.

“I’ll be in the lab,” she says to Brickle.

“I will redirect him,” Brickle replies.

Her gaze passes over me as she moves toward the door. Not lingering. Not searching. Simply registering.

Then she’s gone.

The room changes. Not visibly or in any way that can be pointed to. But the warmth that had been contained in that space thins, leaving something sharper in its place.

And I am still standing here.

There is no reason to remain.

Brickle’s hands still over the board before dropping, his attention shifting fully to me.

“You’re going to wear a hole in the floor if you keep that up, boy.” Brickle is still talking.

Not in the clipped, efficient way that usually makes him useful, but in the way he does when he’s decided I’m being particularly insufferable and intends to drag me through it until I either concede or walk away. His finger is raised in emphasis, his voice edged with frustration that he’s no longer bothering to hide, and the words themselves blur together after a point because the argument is predictable even if his phrasing isn’t.

“You can’t just keep—” he starts, then stops to recalibrate, clearly deciding mid-sentence that I’m not giving him enough to work with. “You’re doing that thing again. Shutting it all down and calling it control.”

Leaning back against the table, I turn the stylus slowly between my fingers, letting the weight of it ground me somewhere more useful than whatever point he’s trying to make. The wood is warm from use, the carved edges familiar under my thumb, and it gives me something steady to focus on while the rest of the house breathes around us.

“I’m working,” I say, because it’s simpler than engaging.

“That’s not what this is,” Brickle snaps, dropping his hand and stepping closer. “You’ve been like this all morning. Not listening, not answering, just—”

A crack splits the air, the floorboards shaking with a faint tremor.

Something heavy, loud, wrong enough that it cuts straight through his voice and into my spine before I’ve consciously processed it.

Everything in me stills for the space of half a heartbeat.

Then the scream comes.

High. Thin. Tearing.

Teddy.

The stylus slips from my fingers and strikes the table as I’m already moving, the motion sharp and immediate, cutting Brickle off mid-word as I cross the room and hit the door without slowing. The corridor narrows around me, vision tunneling into direction and distance as I take the stairs too fast to be careful, the sound still echoing, still wrong, still—

“Mummy—!”

The word fractures on itself, breaking apart into something smaller, more desperate, and it drives me forward hard enough that I don’t register the door opening, only that I’m outside, that the light hits too bright and the garden resolves all at once into something I don’t want to see.

A body lies in the grass.

Dark hair spread across the ground. Limbs at angles that don’t align with anything living. The shape is close enough that recognition hits before correction, fast and absolute, and for a single, disorienting instant everything in me reacts as if it’s her.

My chest locks around it.

Breath stalls. Thought follows.

And then the details shift under a second look, wrong in small, critical ways that drag logic back into place even as the first impact still echoes through me, leaving something raw behind it.

Not her.

Teddy is on his knees beside the body, hands gripping her shoulders, shaking hard enough that her head rocks with the motion, his small frame rigid with the force he’s putting into it as if he can pull her back through sheer insistence.

“Mummy, please,” he chokes, voice breaking, breath hitching between words as he leans closer. “Get up. Please, get up—”

His grip slips, then tightens again, fingers digging into fabric that doesn’t respond.

“You said you’d always stay,” he whispers, the words catching in his throat as his voice drops, losing what little force it had left. “You promised.”

The sound of it hits harder than anything else.

Not because of volume. Because of what’s underneath it. The certainty he had when he believed it. The way that certainty is collapsing in real time.

I close the distance in the next breath and reach for him, pulling him back before he can brace against it. His body fights immediately, twisting hard in my grip, small hands pushing against me with a strength that comes from panic rather than control.

“No—no, she’s not—” The words fall apart as he tries to get free, to turn back toward the body. “Let me go—”

“It isn’t her,” I say, forcing the words through a throat that doesn’t want to cooperate, tightening my hold and pulling him in closer when he tries again. “Look at me. It isn’t her.”

He doesn’t look.

His fingers knot in my shirt instead, face pressing hard into my chest as if proximity to anything living will anchor him, will keep this from becoming real. His heartbeat hammers against me, too fast, uneven, the rhythm wrong enough that I feel it in my own chest, my breath catching once before I force it back into something usable.

Behind me, the door slams open.

I turn at the sound, instinct sharp enough to cut through everything else, and see her there.

Hermione stands in the doorway, one hand over her mouth, eyes fixed on the scene in front of her in a way that tells me she understands it immediately. Brickle is just behind her, rigid, his composure stripped down to something visibly shaken.

She moves before I can say anything.

Crossing the distance quickly, not careless, not out of control, but with a kind of urgency that leaves no space for hesitation, she drops in front of us and reaches for him.

“Teddy,” she says, her voice tight but steady enough to hold. “Look at me. I’m here.”

He jerks at the sound of her, his grip on me tightening before he twists, searching, and then he sees her.

The change is immediate and physical.

The tension in his body snaps in a different direction, his weight shifting forward as he wrenches out of my hold hard enough that I let him go before it turns into something worse. He collides with her, arms locking around her neck, burying his face against her shoulder with a force that says he’s still bracing for her to disappear.

“I thought—” he gasps, the words breaking apart as he tries to get them out. “I thought you—”

“I’m here,” she repeats, one hand sliding into his hair, cradling the back of his head as she pulls him in. “I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

Her voice steadies as she says it, even with the strain under it, even with the way her gaze flicks once toward the body before she forces it back to him.

You promised you’d stay.

The echo of it doesn’t come as words this time. It sits lower than that, lodged somewhere under the surface where I can’t immediately force it back into place, too close to everything that just happened, to the way my mind filled in the wrong answer and made it real for a second too long.

I step back, the instinct to move, to act, to fix something reasserting itself now that he’s no longer trying to reach the body.

Bill needs to know. The wards need to—

“No!”

Teddy’s head lifts just enough to look past Hermione, his eyes finding me with a clarity that cuts through the remaining panic.

“No! Don’t go,” he says, voice unsteady, breath catching as he tries to hold it together. “Don’t leave me.”

The momentum I’d already set in motion stalls.

Every instinct I have pushes forward, lining up the next action, the next necessary response, but something else presses just as hard in the opposite direction, unfamiliar enough that it takes a second to recognize what it is.

“Please,” he adds, quieter this time, the word almost lost against her shoulder.

The choice settles in that space.

Not clean. Not simple. But clear enough.

Instead of turning away, I step back toward them, closing the distance I’d just created. My hand lifts before I’ve fully decided to do it, smoothing his hair back from his face in a motion that feels foreign and precise all at once.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I say.

The words come out steady and for once, they aren’t strategy.

Teddy doesn’t let go.

Even as his breathing begins to steady in uneven, stuttering increments, even as the sharpest edge of panic dulls into something quieter and more fragile, his grip remains locked around her as though loosening it would risk something he is not willing to test. His fingers twist into the fabric at her shoulder, pressing hard enough to leave tension in the line of his hands, his entire body anchored to the certainty of her being there.

Hermione adjusts without asking him to.

One hand remains in his hair, fingers moving in slow, repetitive motions that have no purpose beyond grounding him, while the other shifts beneath his weight, supporting him in a way that absorbs the force of his grip instead of correcting it. Nothing about the movement is rushed. Nothing about it draws attention. It is simply what is required, and she meets it without hesitation.

She does not look at me.

All of her focus is fixed on him, contained and deliberate, the rest of the world narrowing to the space directly in front of her and nothing beyond it given enough weight to matter. It leaves me standing just to the side of it, close enough to step in if needed, far enough that I am not part of what is holding him together.

The body remains where it fell.

It occupies the edge of my vision whether I turn toward it or not, an unavoidable presence that prevents the moment from settling into anything resembling safety. The angle of the neck is wrong. The stillness is wrong. There is nothing in it that suggests anything but finality.

I shift my position by a fraction, placing myself between it and Teddy’s line of sight. The adjustment is small enough to go unnoticed unless someone is looking for it, but it changes what he will see if he looks up.

Brickle notices anyway. His gaze flicks between me and the body, something tight and unguarded in his expression before he reins it back into something closer to composure. He doesn’t speak, which is unusual enough to register, but the silence works in our favor.

No one moves to take control of the situation.

The house remains too still behind us, the garden holding its shape as though waiting for someone to decide what this becomes.

Hermione’s voice is the first thing to break that suspension, quieter now, directed entirely at Teddy as she draws his attention back to her, guiding him with a steadiness that does not match the strain I can see in the rest of her. It takes effort for him to follow. His gaze pulls once toward the shape behind me before she anchors him again, pressing his hand flat against her chest, giving him something immediate and real to hold on to.

His fingers curl against her instinctively, clinging to the proof she offers.

The logic is simple enough for him to accept but not enough to erase what he saw, but enough to keep him from turning back to it.

I let out a breath I had not realized I was holding and force my attention toward the problem that remains unresolved.

The body did not get here by accident.

The wards are still intact. I can feel them, steady and unchanged, the familiar hum sitting at the edge of my awareness exactly where it should be. Nothing has torn through them. Nothing has triggered the kind of response that comes with a forced entry.

And yet we heard it hit.

Loud enough to carry through the house. Loud enough to cut through Brickle’s voice and send me running before I understood why.

My gaze lifts, tracking the open stretch of sky above the garden, mapping the invisible boundaries of the wards from memory and instinct. They are designed to repel, to deflect, to keep anything hostile from crossing without resistance.

Not to stop something that is simply dropped. Not something that is no longer alive or a danger.

The conclusion forms quickly, sharp and unwelcome.

This was not an intrusion.

This was a delivery.

My attention returns to the body with more intent, forcing myself past the initial impression and into the details. The clothing is too similar to be coincidence. The resemblance is not exact, but it does not need to be. It only needs to be close enough to achieve the effect it was designed for.

On me.

On her.

My jaw tightens as I catalog what I can from this distance. No movement. No visible breath. No indication of anything that contradicts what it appears to be.

“We need to move her,” I say, keeping my voice low and controlled, directing it toward Brickle without pulling Hermione from where she’s focused. “Not here.”

Brickle nods once, sharp. “I’ll get Bill.”

He hesitates for a fraction of a second, gaze moving between us, then turns and heads back toward the house at a pace that borders on abrupt, leaving the door to fall shut behind him.

The garden settles again.

Teddy’s grip loosens by degrees, his breathing evening out into something closer to normal, though he does not let go entirely. Hermione shifts her weight slightly in the grass, adjusting to support him without asking him to release her, her hand never leaving his hair.

Up close, the strain she is holding back is impossible to miss.

It shows in the tightness at the corners of her eyes, in the rigid set of her shoulders beneath his weight, in the careful control of her breathing that does not quite align with the moment she is in. Nothing about her suggests she has room to absorb what just happened, and yet she does not allow any of it to reach him. Every instinct that would pull her attention outward is redirected, contained, forced into something steady enough for him to lean on.

It is not denial.

It is a decision.

Watching it unfold, I recognize the shape of it immediately, even if the method is nothing like my own. The restraint, the prioritization, the deliberate refusal to let anything unnecessary interfere with what matters directly in front of her. It mirrors something I have spent years refining, stripped of its usual detachment and replaced with something far more dangerous.

I move before I fully decide to.

The distance I had maintained becomes untenable in a way I cannot justify as strategy, my steps closing it in a quiet, deliberate shift that brings me within reach without interrupting what she is holding together. It’s close enough to feel the residual warmth of her magic in the air, close enough that if she shifted even slightly our hands would meet, close enough that standing anywhere else would now feel like a deliberate absence.

Her awareness adjusts.

Not enough to break her focus on Teddy, not enough to draw attention, but I see it in the brief tightening of her grip, the subtle shift in her posture as she registers my presence and allows it without question. There is no acknowledgment beyond that, no glance, no words, but the absence of rejection carries its own weight.

We do not speak.

There is no space for it that would not fracture what she is keeping bound together by sheer willpower, and so the silence remains, not empty, not neutral, but shared in a way that feels intentional rather than accidental.

I stay where I am, close enough to matter, not close enough to disrupt, the three of us held in a fragile, temporary balance that should not work and does anyway.

For now, it holds.

The door opens again before the quiet can become anything more stable.

Bill comes out first, wand already in hand, his expression stripped of anything unnecessary as he takes in the garden, the body, Teddy in Hermione’s arms, and me standing close enough that there’s no reasonable way to pretend I’m separate from them anymore. Charlie follows half a step behind him, broad shoulders tight, gaze cutting first to the body and then immediately away from it, toward Teddy.

The shift in him is subtle, but I catch it. He sees enough to understand why Teddy’s still clinging like the world has tilted beneath him.

Bill doesn’t waste time asking what happened. His attention drops to the grass, to the shape sprawled at the edge of the garden, then lifts toward the sky above the wards with the same conclusion already forming behind his eyes.

“Dropped?” he asks, voice low.

“Yes,” I say, keeping my own voice quiet enough not to draw Teddy’s focus back toward the body. “Wards didn’t react to breach. We heard impact first.”

Bill’s jaw flexes once, and that is the only visible reaction he gives before his wand hand shifts, tracing something careful through the air. The wards hum faintly in response, present and intact, which should be reassuring and isn’t.

Charlie moves toward Hermione and Teddy with far more care than he used crossing the garden. He slows before he reaches them, dropping his height slightly, making himself smaller than he is, which would look absurd under different circumstances and doesn’t now. Teddy’s breathing catches at the change in movement, his fingers tightening immediately in Hermione’s shirt.

Hermione feels it too. Her hand moves through his hair again, slow and repetitive, but her own shoulders tighten beneath the effort of keeping him steady.

“Ted,” Charlie says softly, rough voice gentled down until it barely resembles him. “I’m going to take you inside for a bit.”

Teddy shakes his head against Hermione before Charlie finishes, the motion frantic enough that she has to adjust her hold to keep him from slipping.

“No,” Teddy says, muffled into her shoulder. “No, I’m staying.”

“I know,” Charlie answers, crouching closer but not reaching yet. “I know you want to stay with your mum. But you don’t need to look at this anymore.”

Teddy’s head lifts just enough for one terrified glance to cut toward the body, and I move before he can catch more than the edge of it, shifting into his sightline again. His eyes snag on me instead, wide and wet and still too full of what he thinks he saw.

For a second, he doesn’t look away, his sad eyes pleading with me to wake him up from this nightmare.

Something in my chest pulls tight.

Hermione’s grip changes around him, not loosening exactly, but preparing. She understands what Charlie is asking. She also understands what it will cost Teddy to let go, and the conflict moves through her body before it touches her face, a tightening through her arm, a brief press of her cheek to his hair, one more second of holding him as if the additional time can make the separation gentler.

“Teddy,” she says, her voice steady only because she forces it there, “Charlie’s going to take you inside. I’ll come in soon.”

His face crumples at once. “You said you wouldn’t go anywhere.”

“I’m not,” she answers, and the words come quickly, almost too quickly, her hand sliding to the side of his face so she can make him look at her. “I’m here. I’m right here. I’m not leaving the house. I just need you inside where you don’t have to see this.”

He swallows, breath shuddering through him, and his gaze flicks to me again, like he’s checking the promise against someone else, like the shape of staying has already expanded before any of us were ready for it.

Charlie reaches then, slow enough to give Teddy time to see it coming. “Come on, brave little dragon. Just inside.”

Teddy resists for half a second, his hands locked in Hermione’s shirt, and she has to peel his fingers away one at a time with more tenderness than the situation has any right to demand. The first hand comes free. Then the second. His face twists, and he reaches back for her before Charlie has him fully in his arms.

Hermione leans forward and kisses his forehead, holding there for a breath too long.

“I’ll come,” she whispers against his skin. “I promise.”

That word cuts through me again.

Promise.

Teddy lets Charlie take him, but only because Charlie holds him close immediately, blocking the garden from view with his own body as he turns. Even then, Teddy’s head stays twisted over Charlie’s shoulder, eyes fixed on Hermione with a desperation that makes the air feel too thin.

He doesn’t scream this time.

Somehow, I think, that’s worse.

Charlie carries him toward the door, murmuring something too low for me to catch, and Teddy’s hand stays lifted for her until the doorway takes him from sight.

The moment he’s gone, Hermione changes.

It isn’t dramatic. She doesn’t collapse all at once. There’s no sound, no sharp inhale, no visible break anyone else would necessarily understand. It’s smaller than that and worse because of it. The shape she’s been holding for Teddy has nowhere to go once he isn’t there to receive it, and without his weight in her arms, her hands remain suspended for a moment as if her body hasn’t realized he’s gone.

Then they fall.

Not far. Not hard. Just down to her sides, empty and useless, fingers curling once against nothing before she seems to notice them and closes them too tightly over her own knees.

Her breathing shifts next.

She hides it well. Better than most would. But I’m close enough now to hear the break in the pattern, the too-controlled inhale, the held breath that follows, the careful release that fails to empty her lungs completely. Her gaze is still fixed on the doorway where Teddy disappeared, but it isn’t focused anymore.

Bill speaks behind me, something about containment, about not touching the body until he finishes the first scan.

I barely hear him.

Hermione’s shoulders drop another fraction, and that’s what moves me.

Not thought. Not permission. Not any of the careful considerations I would’ve used yesterday to justify staying exactly where I was.

I step into her space because standing outside it is no longer tolerable.

She turns her head slightly, only enough to register movement, and whatever protest might’ve formed never reaches her mouth. My hand finds her upper arm first, firm enough to anchor, not hard enough to startle. Her sleeve is warm beneath my palm, the muscle under it rigid with restraint she hasn’t had time to release.

“Granger,” I say quietly.

Her eyes lift to mine.

There’s too much in them.

Shock, fear, the lingering violence of what she saw, the raw edge Harry left behind yesterday and this morning and every moment since. All of it is there at once, too much for the careful control she’s trying to force around it.

I don’t ask if she’s all right.

She isn’t.

Instead, I draw her up and in.

For the first heartbeat, she goes still against me, body caught between instinct and disbelief, hands hovering somewhere between us as though she doesn’t know where they’re meant to go. Then the breath she’s been holding shudders out of her, and she folds forward.

Not gracefully.

Not neatly.

She folds like something in her has finally run out of strength.

My arm goes around her before she can correct it, hand spreading across the middle of her back, holding her against my chest as her forehead presses into my shoulder. The contact hits with enough force that everything else narrows around it, the garden, the body, Bill’s voice, the wards humming overhead. For a moment there is only the weight of her there, the heat of her through layers of fabric, the tremor she’s fighting so hard to keep from becoming visible.

Her hand catches at my shirt.

Not much. Just fingers closing in the fabric at my side.

It’s enough to speak volumes.

I tighten my hold.

Bill’s voice stops for half a second behind us, then resumes lower, directed elsewhere. He doesn’t interrupt. No one does.

Hermione takes one breath against me, uneven and too shallow, then another that gets farther. Her hand tightens once, and I feel the effort of her trying to put herself back together while still standing inside my arms.

I should loosen my grip.

I don’t. In fact, I won’t.

Whatever line this crosses has already been crossed. Teddy’s voice did it first. Her empty hands did the rest.

So I hold her there, close enough that her next breath drags against my shirt, close enough that when it finally comes in full, I feel the shape of it move through both of us.

Bill’s voice cuts cleaner once the worst of the initial shock has passed, the cadence of command settling back into something practiced as he finishes the first sweep of the wards and lowers his wand slightly, attention returning fully to the body without distraction.

“Charlie,” he calls toward the door without looking up, already knowing he’s still close enough to hear, “keep him inside. No one comes back out here until I say so.”

There’s a muffled acknowledgment from somewhere beyond the threshold, the sound of movement carrying faintly through the house as the door closes again and seals the garden off from the rest of it. The quiet that follows is different now, less suspended, more contained, as though the situation has been acknowledged and given shape.

Hermione doesn’t pull away immediately.

The tremor under my hand lessens by degrees, her breathing further evening out into something that resembles control again, though it takes longer than it should. When she does move, it’s gradual, her weight shifting back just enough to break the full contact without stepping out of reach entirely, her hand lingering at my side for a second longer than necessary before she seems to realize it’s there and lets it fall.

She doesn’t look at me.

Her gaze drops instead, tracking somewhere past my shoulder before forcing itself toward the ground, toward anything that isn’t the place she had been anchored moments ago. The absence of Teddy leaves a visible gap in her posture, a space that hasn’t yet figured out how to close.

Bill straightens fully then, his expression set into something harder now that he’s confirmed what he needed to confirm. “She’s been dead for hours,” he says, voice level, controlled. “No immediate curse signatures on the surface. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any.”

My attention shifts back to the body, the details aligning with his assessment as I take in the stillness again, the unnatural angles, the lack of any residual movement that would suggest anything but finality.

“They wanted us to see her,” I say, the conclusion sitting heavy but undeniable.

“Yes,” Bill agrees without hesitation. “And they possibly even wanted him to see her.”

The distinction doesn’t need to be clarified.

Hermione’s shoulders tighten at that, the reaction small but immediate, her hand curling once at her side as though resisting the urge to reach for something that is no longer there.

“We move her now,” Bill continues, already stepping forward again, wand lifting as he prepares to handle it himself. “I don’t want her left exposed any longer than necessary.”

I nod once, moving without waiting to be asked, circling slightly to take position opposite him. Up close, the resemblance is worse, not better. The differences are obvious when examined, but the intention behind it is unmistakable, constructed carefully enough that at a distance, in motion, in panic, it would be enough to deceive.

It had been enough.

My jaw tightens as I reach down, forcing my focus into function, into the practical requirements of moving dead weight without disturbing anything that might still be relevant. Bill murmurs a containment charm under his breath, the magic settling over the body in a thin, controlled layer before he gestures for me to lift.

The weight is wrong.

Not unexpected, but wrong all the same, heavy in a way that has nothing to do with mass and everything to do with what it represents. I don’t allow that thought to linger, adjusting my grip and lifting cleanly when Bill does, the two of us moving in practiced coordination toward the edge of the garden where the ground is less exposed.

Hermione doesn’t follow.

She stays where she is, standing now but not moving forward, her arms folded tightly across her middle as though holding herself in place. Her gaze flicks toward the body once as we move it, then away just as quickly, her focus snapping toward the house instead.

Toward where Teddy is.

The distance between her and the door feels longer than it is.

Bill sets the body down carefully near the far edge of the garden, reinforcing the containment with another low-spoken incantation before stepping back to assess it. I release my grip at the same time, straightening slowly, my hands feeling briefly foreign at my sides before sensation settles back into something usable.

“We’ll need to identify her,” Bill says, more to himself than to either of us. “And figure out where they got her.”

“They didn’t take someone at random,” I reply, my gaze returning briefly to the face before I force it away. “Too deliberate. Too precise.”

“No,” Bill agrees, his expression darkening. “They didn’t.”

The implication hangs there.

If they can do this, if they can get close enough to replicate her likeness, close enough to deliver something like this without breaching the wards, then the margin we’ve been relying on is narrower than we’ve allowed ourselves to admit.

Bill exhales once, controlled, and rolls his shoulders back as if setting that aside for later. “I’ll take this from here,” he says, already shifting his focus toward the next steps. “Go check on him.”

The instruction isn’t directed at me.

Hermione doesn’t move immediately.

Her eyes close briefly, just long enough to gather something back into place, and when they open again, there’s a clarity to them that wasn’t there a moment ago. Not absence of emotion. Not control in the way I would define it. Something else. Something courageously chosen.

She nods once, almost to herself, and turns toward the house.

Her steps are steady, measured, but there’s a slight hesitation in the first one, a fraction of a second where her body seems to resist the movement before she forces it forward.

I watch her cross the garden.

Watch the way her shoulders square again as she reaches the door, the way her hand lifts to the handle without pausing this time, the way she disappears inside with that same deliberate control she’s been holding onto since the moment she stepped out here.

The door closes behind her.

And when she’s gone, the garden feels colder without her in it.

Bill is already moving again, adjusting the containment, reinforcing the wards around the immediate area of the body with sharper, more focused magic than before. His attention is elsewhere now, fully engaged in the problem in front of him.

Mine isn’t.

For a moment, I remain where I am, the imprint of her still lingering where she had been, the echo of her weight against me not yet settled into something I can file away and ignore.

That is a problem I no longer see as a problem.

I turn toward the house before I can decide otherwise.

Inside, the air shifts immediately, warmer, louder, the muted sounds of movement carrying from deeper within as the rest of the house continues on, unaware or deliberately ignoring what just happened outside.

It doesn’t take long to find them.

Teddy’s voice reaches first, still uneven but no longer breaking, threaded with something that sounds like forced normalcy. Charlie answers him, quieter, steady, keeping him engaged in something simple enough to hold his attention.

Hermione stands just inside the room.

She hasn’t moved far past the doorway and for a second, she doesn’t seem to notice me.

Her hand rests lightly against the wall beside her, fingers splayed as though grounding herself against it, her gaze fixed on Teddy where he sits with Charlie, wrapped in a blanket that is far too large for him, his currently dark hair still mussed from where she had been holding him.

He looks smaller like this.

Contained.

Safe, in the way safety can be manufactured when everything else has gone wrong.

Hermione exhales and it’s the first full breath I’ve seen her take since we stepped outside.

Not forced or controlled.

Just… there.

Her shoulders drop with it, the tension easing by a degree that is almost imperceptible unless you’re looking for it.

I don’t announce myself.

I don’t need to.

After a moment, her head turns slightly, awareness catching up with presence, and her eyes find me across the room.

She doesn’t speak.

Neither do I.

There’s too much in the space between us for words to handle cleanly, too much that has already been said without either of us choosing to say it.

So I step further into the room instead. Not stopping at the doorway. Not staying at the edge.

Closer.

Not enough to disrupt what she’s holding together, but enough that leaving again would no longer be simple.Charlie keeps Teddy occupied with a worn deck of Exploding Snap cards spread across the low table, the usual bite of them dampened so they only spark and hiss instead of snapping outright. It is simple enough to follow without demanding too much from him, loud enough to fill the room without forcing anyone to speak into the wrong sort of quiet, and Teddy watches the cards with a concentration so fierce it almost looks like interest until his eyes flick toward Hermione for the third time in as many breaths.

She notices every time.

Her hand moves to his hair without interrupting Charlie’s deal, fingers threading through the dark strands with the same slow, steady rhythm she used in the garden. Teddy leans into it immediately, but he doesn’t stop checking on her. His gaze keeps finding her face, her throat, the rise and fall of her breathing, as if the proof she gave him outside has to be gathered again and again before it can hold.

“I’m here,” she says softly, before he can ask.

His mouth tightens, small and wounded, but he nods and looks back down at the cards Charlie’s placed in front of him. He picks one up, studies it for too long, then puts it in the wrong pile with the kind of grim determination that suggests the rules have become less important than the act of doing something with his hands.

Charlie lets it stand.

Good man.

I remain a few steps inside the room, close enough that I can see the tremor in Teddy’s fingers when he reaches for the next card, close enough that I can see Hermione press her thumb once against the inside of her wrist when she thinks no one is watching. Her shoulders are squared, her spine straight, every line of her held in place with the same impossible discipline she brings to everything else, but the control is thinner now. Not broken. Never that simple. Just worn translucent enough that the strain shows through.

Teddy’s gaze lifts again.

This time it does not go to Hermione.

It finds me.

The look is uncertain at first, as though he’s remembered I exist and does not yet know what to do with that information now that we are back inside and the garden isn’t directly in front of him. His fingers press against the edge of his card, bending it slightly, and something in his face tightens with the effort of deciding whether to ask for what he wants.

I move before he has to.

The empty chair near the table scrapes softly against the floor when I draw it back, not loud enough to startle him, but enough that he knows I’m coming closer. His eyes follow the movement the entire way. Charlie glances up once, quick and assessing, then returns to the deck as if this is perfectly ordinary, as if men who have spent years surviving by distance routinely choose the chair nearest a frightened child without making a spectacle of it.

Hermione’s hand stills in Teddy’s hair only for a moment, then it resumes, slower than before.

I sit beside the table, not opposite Teddy, not beside Hermione, but near enough that if he reaches, he will not have to lean far. The placement is deliberate. So is the fact that I do not explain it.

Charlie slides a card toward me. “You know how to play?”

“No,” I say, taking it.

Teddy’s eyes widen a fraction, outrage cutting cleanly through the fog of shock. “You don’t know Exploding Snap?”

“I have somehow survived the deficiency.”

Hermione’s breath shifts behind the faintest sound that might have been a laugh if the day had been gentler.

Teddy looks at the card in my hand with the grave disappointment of someone discovering a fundamental flaw in an adult he had briefly considered competent. “You have to be fast.”

“Tragic,” I reply, turning the card over as if it might reveal something beyond a badly charmed dragon that immediately attempts to bite the edge of my sleeve. “I am known for moving very slowly.”

Charlie coughs into his hand.

Teddy’s mouth twitches.

It does not become a smile, not properly, but it is close enough that Hermione’s fingers pause against his hair again, this time for a different reason. Her eyes lower to Teddy’s face, and the relief that moves through her is so slight I would miss it if I were not already watching too closely.

The next round begins with Teddy explaining the rules to me in a voice that still shakes but grows steadier as he speaks. He corrects my grip on the cards, frowns when I do exactly what he tells me and still lose, and informs me with great solemnity that I am “not very good at this.”

“I am beginning to suspect the game is rigged,” I say.

“It’s not rigged,” Teddy insists, leaning forward for the first time without immediately pressing back into Hermione. “You’re just bad.”

“That seems unlikely.”

“It seems very likely,” Hermione murmurs.

I look up before I can stop myself.

She is still watching Teddy, not me, but the corner of her mouth has softened into something almost there. Not happiness. Not even amusement in its whole form. But something living. Something that had not been in her face when she walked back into this house.

The sight of it catches beneath my ribs and stays there.

Teddy reaches for the deck, but his hand falters halfway, his attention snapping toward the window. The garden is not visible from this angle, curtains half-drawn, glass reflecting only the room back at us, but his body doesn’t know that. His shoulders rise toward his ears, and the card slips from his fingers onto the table.

Hermione leans toward him at once. “Teddy.”

His breathing quickens.

Not enough for panic but enough to warn of it.

Before she can gather him fully back against her, I set my card down and shift the deck closer to him, placing the dragon-faced card on top with deliberate care.

“You were explaining why this one is useless,” I say.

His eyes flicker back to me, unfocused for a second before the words reach him.

“It’s not useless,” he says automatically.

“No? It bit me.”

“It’s supposed to.” Teddy’s imperious words are aptly pair with the rolling of his eyes.

I fight the corners of my mouth to remain vigilant. “A design flaw.”

“It’s a dragon,” he says, and this time irritation does more of the work than fear. “Dragons bite.”

Charlie’s gaze flicks briefly to mine, and whatever he sees there makes him keep quiet.

Hermione’s hand remains in Teddy’s hair, but she doesn’t pull him closer. She lets the thread hold where it is. Her eyes lift to me then, just once, and the gratitude in them is too bare to look at directly for long.

I return my attention to the cards.

The game continues, unevenly at first, then with more shape. Teddy does not forget. None of us do. His attention still jolts toward Hermione whenever she shifts, and each time she answers before he can ask, with a touch, a murmur, a press of her cheek briefly against his hair. But the intervals stretch. The panic doesn’t disappear. It learns, slowly, that it does not have to occupy every breath.

At some point, his knee knocks against mine under the table.

He freezes, eyes going wide with panic.

The contact is slight. Accidental.

And I do not move away, letting my leg fall into his.

After a long second, he relaxes into me.

Hermione sees it. I know she does because her fingers still, because her breath catches just enough to be heard if one is listening for it, because the room seems to gather itself around that small point of contact as if it matters more than it should.

Teddy keeps his gaze on the cards but his knee remains against mine.

Something opens in my chest with such quiet force that I have to lower my eyes to the table before my face betrays me. It’s not triumph. Not satisfaction. It is more dangerous than either of those. A want so immediate and fierce that for once I don’t have the strength, or the desire, to make it smaller.

I want this.

Not as an abstraction. Not as an indulgence. Not as something I can admire from a doorway and then deny myself because denial is cleaner. Safer.

This.

His small shoulder leaning gradually away from fear. Her hand moving through his hair. The table between us. The ugly little cards sparking under a charm. The careful, impossible quiet of being allowed near enough to matter.

I want them.

The thought should terrify me. And maybe it does, a little bit, but it does not make me move away.

When Teddy’s head begins to dip, the fight drains from him quickly, exhaustion dragging at every line of his body until even his stubbornness cannot hold against it. Hermione shifts, ready to gather him closer, but he lifts one hand blindly before she can, fingers searching across the edge of the table.

They find my sleeve.

The grip is not frantic this time.

That is what steals my breath and undoes me.

It is tired. Deliberate. The small, clumsy hold of a child who is nearly asleep and still knows exactly what he is reaching for.

“I’m here,” I say quietly, before he can ask, before he can wake enough to need the reassurance.

His fingers tighten once, then ease, but they do not let go.

Hermione looks at his hand on my sleeve, then at me, an unspoken question in her gaze.

There is no way to mistake what has changed in the room now. Not fully. Not after the garden, not after the chair, not after Teddy reaching for me while half asleep and trusting I will understand what to do with it.

Her face shifts around the knowledge, fear and relief moving too close together to separate cleanly. She does not smile. She does not speak. But the way she looks at me is different from the way she looked at me this morning, and the difference moves through me with more force than any accusation ever could.

Charlie rises slowly. “Let’s get him upstairs.”

Teddy’s hand tightens in my sleeve at once.

Not Hermione’s.

Mine.

Charlie notices. Hermione does too. The room goes very still without anyone choosing to make it so.

I cover Teddy’s hand with mine before he can wake enough to panic, my palm settling over his small fingers with a care that feels unfamiliar and immediately necessary.

“I’m coming,” I tell him.

His lashes flutter, but he does not open his eyes. “Promise?”

The word cuts differently this time.

Still sharp. Still dangerous.

But now it is being offered to me like salvation.

I look at Hermione first, because I cannot seem not to. Her eyes are bright, her face pale, and something fragile moves through her expression when she realizes I am waiting. Not for permission exactly. Not even approval. Just acknowledgment that I understand what this means.

She gives it with the smallest nod.

Barely there.

Everything.

I look back down at Teddy and fold my fingers more securely around his. “Promise.”

Only then does Teddy let Charlie lift him. Even then, he keeps hold of my sleeve until the angle makes it impossible, and when his hand finally slips free, I am already standing, already moving with them, already choosing the direction before the old instinct toward retreat can make its argument.

Hermione falls into step beside me.

Not behind.

Not ahead.

Beside.

Our shoulders do not touch, but the space between them is narrow enough that the possibility of it follows us all the way to the stairs.

Teddy fades in and out on the walk upstairs, exhaustion dragging at him hard enough that his head slips forward against Charlie’s shoulder every few steps before jerking weakly back upright again. Each time it happens, Charlie adjusts his hold automatically, one broad hand spreading across Teddy’s back to steady him without waking him fully. The corridor lights throw shifting gold across the walls as we move, the old house creaking softly around us in a way that would normally feel irritatingly alive and now feels strangely careful instead, as though Grimmauld itself has recognized something fragile moving through it and decided not to interfere.

Hermione keeps pace behind Charlie, close enough that Teddy can reach for her whenever the panic resurfaces. It happens twice before we even reach the stairs.

The first time, his hand lifts blindly from where it rests against Charlie’s shoulder, fingers flexing weakly through the air before Hermione catches them immediately, threading her own through his without breaking stride.

“I’m here,” she murmurs, her voice low and steady.

His breathing evens again within seconds.

The second time, his eyes crack open halfway, unfocused and glassy with exhaustion as they move frantically through the corridor until they find her.

“Mum?”

Hermione’s entire expression softens in a way that feels almost painful to witness.

“I’m right here, love.”

Only then do his eyes close again.

I should look away.

Instead, I watch the shape of her hand wrapped around his and feel something dangerous continue rooting itself deeper beneath my ribs with every step.

The staircase groans under Charlie’s weight as we reach the second floor. Ahead of us, the corridor narrows slightly before opening toward Teddy’s room, the door still standing half open from where Charlie left it earlier. Warm light spills out across the floorboards in uneven stripes.

Charlie shifts Teddy higher against his shoulder. “Think he’s nearly out.”

“He’s fighting it,” Hermione says quietly.

“Yeah.” Charlie glances down at Teddy’s dark head tucked against him. “Poor kid’s scared if he falls asleep he’ll wake up and you’ll be gone.”

The words land heavily enough that none of us answer immediately.

Hermione’s fingers tighten once around Teddy’s small hand.

Something moves across her face before she smooths it away again, but not quickly enough to stop me from seeing it. Guilt. Sharp and instinctive, as though Teddy’s fear has become something she should have prevented rather than something inflicted on him by people cruel enough to weaponize his love for her.

The realization irritates me instantly.

Not her guilt.

The fact that she carries it automatically.

By the time we reach Teddy’s room, he’s barely awake enough to register the movement anymore. Charlie lowers him carefully onto the mattress, keeping one arm braced behind his shoulders until Hermione immediately steps into the space beside him and Teddy latches onto her sleeve with startling force for someone half unconscious.

“No,” he mumbles thickly, eyes still closed. “Stay.”

“I am staying,” Hermione says at once, already sitting beside him on the edge of the bed. “I’m not going anywhere.”

His breathing catches anyway.

Charlie looks at me over Teddy’s head, something thoughtful moving briefly through his expression before he steps back far enough to give Hermione room to settle him properly beneath the blankets.

“I can stay with him tonight,” Charlie offers quietly. “If you need—”

“No.”

The word leaves Teddy immediately.

Weak.

Exhausted.

Absolute.

Charlie blinks once. “Alright then.”

Teddy’s hand twists harder in Hermione’s sleeve. “You stay.”

Hermione brushes his hair back from his forehead, exhaustion pulling visibly at the corners of her eyes now that the immediate adrenaline has begun to wear off. “I will.”

His breathing eases slightly, but not enough.

I can see it happening in real time.

The way his body still refuses to fully let go. The way each breath catches halfway. The way his fingers continue tightening every few seconds like he’s checking she’s still physically there.

Charlie sees it too.

“So we all stay,” he says easily, like this is the most natural conclusion in the world. “Problem solved.”

Teddy’s eyes open slightly at that, unfocused gaze moving sluggishly between us before settling on me.

There is a long enough pause that I can feel Hermione become aware of it too.

Then, quietly, his little voice guts me. “You too.”

The words hit with enough force that for one disorienting second I genuinely forget how to breathe.

Charlie covers it instantly, stepping back toward the door with deliberate casualness. “Right. Good. Excellent plan. I’m going to grab water before one of you passes out.”

He leaves before either Hermione or I can answer, the door clicking softly shut behind him and leaving the room abruptly quieter than before.

Teddy is still looking at me.

Not afraid.

Not uncertain.

Just tired enough that whatever instinct usually makes him wary has burned itself out completely, leaving only honesty behind.

“You promised,” he whispers sleepily.

Something in my chest pulls so tightly it borders on pain.

“I remember.”

His eyes finally drift closed fully after that, the tension in his grip loosening by small degrees as exhaustion begins dragging him under for real this time. Hermione keeps one hand tangled in his hair while the other remains trapped beneath his grip, her posture curved protectively around him despite the obvious fatigue beginning to settle heavily into her own body.

Neither of us speaks for a while.

The silence inside the room feels different from the one downstairs.

Smaller.

Softer.

Dangerously intimate.

I remain near the foot of the bed longer than I mean to, watching the gradual shift of Teddy’s breathing as it deepens into real sleep, watching Hermione continue stroking her fingers slowly through his hair long after he no longer seems aware of it.

Eventually, she exhales shakily.

The sound is quiet enough that I might have missed it if the room were any louder, but I don’t miss the way her shoulders dip afterward.

Or the way her free hand trembles once against the blanket before she stills it.

“You should sleep too,” I say quietly.

Her laugh catches strangely somewhere between amusement and exhaustion. “I don’t think I can.”

The admission settles heavily between us.

Hermione finally lifts her gaze from Teddy to me, and the full weight of the day is suddenly there in her face again. Not hidden behind function or focus or caretaking. Just raw fatigue stretched tightly over too many fractures at once.

“You held me together out there,” she says softly.

The words catch me off guard badly enough that I go still.

Her eyes drop briefly toward Teddy before lifting back to mine.

“I don’t think you understand what would’ve happened if you hadn’t.”

Something hot and complicated twists sharply beneath my ribs.

I cross the remaining distance toward the bed before I fully decide to do it, stopping close enough that I can see the faint redness still lingering around her eyes, the exhaustion hollowing shadows beneath them, the way she’s holding herself upright now through little more than force of will and maternal instinct.

“You would have survived it,” I say quietly.

“That’s not the same thing.”

No.

It isn’t.

The realization moves through me heavily enough that I feel it settle somewhere permanent.

Her fingers shift unconsciously against Teddy’s hair again. “He trusts you now.”

The words are barely above a whisper.

I glance down automatically toward Teddy’s sleeping form, toward the small hand still loosely curled in the fabric of Hermione’s sleeve like letting go entirely remains impossible even asleep.

Then I look back at her.

“So do you.”

I don’t mean to say it aloud.

The second the words leave me, something changes in the room.

Hermione goes completely still.

Not startled.

Not defensive.

Just still in the way people become when something reaches them too directly to immediately process.

The silence stretches.

Heavy.

Breathing.

Alive.

And when her eyes lift fully to mine again, there is nothing guarded left in them at all.

Hermione’s gaze remains fixed on mine for another long second before she looks down abruptly, like the weight of being seen that clearly has finally become too much to hold in direct sunlight.

Her hand stills completely in Teddy’s hair.

“I should check on Bill,” she whispers, though neither of us believes that is what she actually means.

Teddy shifts faintly between us, breathing deep and even now, exhaustion finally pulling him somewhere safer than memory. Hermione waits a beat longer to make certain it holds before easing carefully away from the mattress, every movement slow and deliberate so she doesn’t wake him.

I step back automatically to give her room.

The loss of proximity is immediate enough to irritate me.

Of course she bloody notices.

The corner of her mouth softens faintly before she turns toward the door, pausing only long enough to glance back at Teddy once more before slipping quietly into the corridor.

I follow a moment later, a dog on her leash.

The door clicks softly shut behind me, sealing Teddy inside warm lamplight and steady breathing while the corridor beyond feels strangely cold by comparison. Hermione only makes it three steps before stopping altogether, her hand pressing briefly against the wall beside her like she needs the contact to steady herself.

“Hermione.”

The sound of her name in my mouth seems to undo something.

She turns too quickly, crossing the distance between us before I fully register the movement, and then she’s against me with enough force to drive me back half a step before instinct takes over and my arms close around her automatically.

Not careful. Not tentative. Just immediate and thorough.

Her face buries hard against my neck, breath breaking against my skin in one sharp, shaking exhale as her hands fist in the back of my shirt like she’s been holding herself together through sheer violence of will and has finally run out of strength to do it alone.

My entire body tightens around the feeling of her.

“Easy,” I murmur, though the word comes out rougher than intended.

She shakes her head once against my throat in a tiny, desperate motion that says easy has absolutely nothing to do with this.

So I stop trying to make it smaller.

One hand spreads across the middle of her back, pulling her fully into me while the other slides into her hair, fingers threading carefully through the curls at the base of her neck. The contact draws a quiet sound from her, barely audible and devastating enough that I have to close my eyes for a second against the force of it.

She fits here frighteningly well.

Like my body has already memorized the shape of holding her.

The realization hits hard enough that I lower my mouth to the top of her head before I can think better of it, pressing a slow kiss into her hair.

Hermione stills completely.

Then, tentative enough that I almost don’t feel it at first, her mouth brushes the side of my neck.

Every muscle in my body locks.

A violent shudder moves through me before I can suppress it, the reaction so immediate and physical it borders on humiliating. Hermione makes the softest sound of startled realization against my throat, and when she tries to pull back instinctively, I tighten my hold before she can get far.

“No,” I say quietly, the word roughened into something almost unrecognizable.

Her breathing catches, sconces reflecting off her whiskey hued eyes.

Carefully, slowly, I slide two fingers beneath her chin and tip her face upward until her eyes fully meet mine.

The look in them nearly ruins me.

Exhaustion. Want. Fear. Relief. All tangled together so tightly there is no clean line separating one from the other.

“Yes, Hermione,” I say softly, because pretending I don’t understand what just happened would be cowardice. “But now is not the time.”

Color rises immediately across her cheeks, but she doesn’t look away.

“Teddy needs us,” I continue, my thumb brushing once lightly along her jaw before I can stop myself. “And I’ll be here if you need me. In whatever way you need me. But not like this. Not tonight. Right now this needs to be about him.”

For a second she just stares at me.

Then her entire expression crumples into something painfully vulnerable and she exhales one long, shaking breath like I’ve just handed her back a piece of control she didn’t realize she was losing.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

The sincerity in it hits harder than the kiss did.

A faint smirk pulls unexpectedly at the corner of my mouth before I can suppress it. “For what?”

Her laugh comes out breathless and uneven. “For not letting me make an emotional decision while catastrophically overwhelmed.”

“That does seem like a wise but very stupid thing I would do.”

Hermione huffs another tiny laugh, still standing impossibly close, still held loosely in my arms as though neither of us has quite remembered to let go yet.

Salazar.

I am so completely fucked.

Before I can stop myself, my hand slips lower and gives her a light smack through the fabric of her trousers.

Hermione startles with a soft gasp, eyes flying wide.

“Now,” I murmur, voice dropping lower despite myself, “be a good girl and turn around. Allow me the dignity of readjusting myself in relative solitude.”

For one stunned heartbeat she simply stares at me.

Then the sound that leaves her is pure startled laughter, bright and helpless and so genuinely amused that something in my chest gives way entirely.

“There he is,” she says through the remains of a giggle.

I arch a brow. “Go.”

Still laughing softly under her breath, Hermione finally steps out of my arms and turns obediently toward Teddy’s room, one hand briefly covering her mouth as though she cannot quite believe the conversation that just occurred.

I watch her walk away for exactly one second longer than is appropriate.

Then I lean back against the corridor wall, close my eyes, and drag a hand down my face while my body attempts to recover from the fact that Hermione Granger kissed my neck like she belonged there.

Inside the room, Teddy shifts faintly in his sleep.

Hermione looks back at me over her shoulder, warmth still lingering visibly in her face now beneath the exhaustion.

And then, quietly, she opens the door and waits for me to follow her back inside.