Back in the common room, Harry and Ron have already gotten started. Hermione supposes she shouldn't take offence to this; she'd told Harry to go ahead, and she couldn't have expected them to wait. Could she? But she would probably have waited, if only to be polite. For a while, anyway. She wasn't that far behind Harry.
It soon becomes clear they weren't making any progress on their own. It's apparent why almost as soon as her bum hits the chair.
"Horcruxes?" she repeats doubtfully. She's never heard the term referenced in any sort of magical text or lesson. "And you're still sure that's what he said?"
"Yes."
Hermione tries to remember that Harry and Ron have probably talked a lot more about the modified, obvious lie of a memory Slughorn had originally given to their headmaster. The word 'Horcrux' doesn't sound as strange to them. Hermione hasn't been around much and she wrestles her mind into overdrive, striving to catch back up. Racking her brain, she tries to recall that farce of a memory in as much detail as she can. Tom had asked about... something. Horcruxes. And Slughorn had acted completely affronted that he'd even dare and essentially tossed him out. The spectator didn't see Tom land on his arse in the stone corridor, but that's what Slughorn implied had happened.
"So what happened after Tom mentioned it, this time?"
"Slughorn still shut it down, but not that quick. Tom asked and it was obvious that it really rattled him. He tried to emphasise how Dark it was but it was clear he knew he shouldn't be talking about it. He even brought up how stringent Dumbledore is about the topic, making Tom swear himself to secrecy that they'd spoken at all."
"Is it a topic?" Hermione asks, still fishing for clarity. "Or is it a thing?" Harry looks confused. Frustrated, she tries again. "Is it something I could pick up or is it an idea?"
"It's a thing," Harry explains, looking relieved to have the answer to something, however meagre. "It has to be an actual item, because Slughorn said you 'make one' by splitting your soul."
Hermione and Ron both stare at him, slack-jawed, in mutual astonished silence. Hermione manages to break it first. Harry answered one solitary question and now Hermione has approximately ninety-six more. All she can bring a voice to, however, is, "...that escalated, didn't it?"
* * *
When Ron's gaping mouth finally closes, he and Hermione team up to practically push Harry out the portrait hole to take the memory to Dumbledore.
Even though it's now far past curfew, Hermione's quite sure Dumbledore won't chastise Harry about it. It's been weeks and weeks since he told Harry to get this from Slughorn, and he'll want to know straight away.
As soon as Harry's finally outside the common room and on his way to the headmaster's office, Ron turns to Hermione. He still seems a little dazed, as if his brain can't wrap around the concept of soul-splitting. Hermione supposes that's reasonable.
"No wonder Dumbledore doesn't want it talked about."
No kidding. Both determined to stay awake, they retreat to a table to do some homework. Once, Hermione thinks Ron might have sought out Lavender to pass the time, but not tonight. Maybe it's only to keep from having to explain ditching her as soon as Harry returns, but Hermione doesn't think so.
With a bit of a jolt, Hermione realises it was only a few hours ago that Lavender was tackling Ron from across a sofa, displacing teeny little first years like Gobstones. Maybe Ron finally did ditch her for good, or maybe he's just enjoying whatever time he can wrangle without her.
Hermione decides not to bring it up.
She quickly becomes immersed in her own thoughts anyway. Soul-splitting. If Dumbledore is so adamant, Hermione's confident there won't be any texts on it in the library. Tom Riddle clearly hadn't found anything and somehow, Hermione thinks it unlikely that Dumbledore's added the subject matter to the library inventory in the time since then.
With no basis whatsoever to work from, Hermione still feels a building certainty that it has something to do with how Voldemort survived the Killing Curse when Harry was a baby. It's one of the most enduring mysteries of all, and there's no doubt it would be a fixation for Dumbledore. How had he done it? It had to be sorted.
Was it with a Horcrux? Hermione is beginning to believe it was.
* * *
"She's pretty funny, actually," Theo says, getting his hair out of his eyes as he reaches down into his bag.
Draco grits his teeth. It's not that he wouldn't consider Hermione to be funny. But even he can admit that most of their time together isn't spent joking around. The idea that Theo Nott has seen it and - and cultivated a side to her that Draco himself hasn't is absolutely maddening.
It's not that he couldn't do that. Of course he could, anytime he likes. But right this minute, they're stuck in this stupid farce of fake pairings because of his own rash actions. So aside from stealing kisses that don't last long enough in the hallways after dark, Draco can't nurture that side of Hermione himself.
What if she thinks Theo is funny in return? And actually, he knows she does. He saw her laughing right there in the library, a genuine and free sound he's certainly never brought out of her.
Draco tries his best to remind himself of the point. The whole purpose of this - outside the fact that it's really his doing in the first place - is that it seems realistic between her and Theo. Natural. Organic, something believable for Theo to infuriate his abusive prick of a father and to turn focus away from Draco's affections towards her, all at the same time.
What if Draco just isn't funny, though? Or what if Hermione doesn't think he is? Maybe she has a different sense of humour from him. What if Hermione wants someone who can make her laugh like that all the time?
He swallows hard, trying to focus on his Transfiguration essay. Even if Theo did successfully put up a convincing show tonight (both in the Great Hall during dinner and in the library later), Draco is the only one who's brought out another different side of Hermione. Maybe they don't spend their hours together laughing like that, but they spend them doing other things - things Theo's never done for her, and never will.
There are other sorts of genuine and free sounds that Draco makes her make. Sounds that she wants Draco to make her make.
This helps, but only a little.
Zabini flings himself into a chair at their table and this helps more. Draco welcomes the mental shift.
After six minutes of peace (if that), Blaise asks Theo how it went, and Draco's on edge all over again. He considers escaping to their dorm itself, but the dangling titbits of opinions and detail keep him hanging there, pretending like he isn't.
Zabini knows it's all false, but he still asks Theo if Hermione ("Granger") seemed reluctant. Draco fights back the hot flash of jealousy that of course she's reluctant, but she probably didn't show it, and no, it doesn't mean anything because she's definitely reluctant - how could she want to be there with Theo instead of him? She wouldn't. It's absurd. Not to mention how desperately Draco wants to be there in the library, revising with her like any two normal students and how badly he wishes they could do exactly that. Any night; every night.
Because they aren't any two normal students. They could never be. Back in March, they were as close to that as they could have ever been - just two students being assigned joint projects and revision across myriad NEWT lessons. But not any longer. How fast things have changed makes Draco's head spin.
Mudblood to Muggle-born. Granger to Hermione. Potter's Princess to his princess. His... precious witch. His.
('I am not yours like that')
Bollocks, Theo hasn't even held her hand in the hallways between classes yet, hasn't even kissed her on the cheek when releasing her. How can Draco ever do this? He curses internally, trying to force himself into line.
Theo's busy answering Blaise's latest question, about whether Hermione seems to show any aversions to Slytherins or if she's playing her part in all this. Theo tells Blaise, both of them ignoring Draco as if he's a wall sconce, that she did ask, and that he'd expected her to. It's reasonable that she would. And Theo says he was honest, that it's obvious she's not inferior to any of them in any sort of way, that her magic is clearly strong (if not possessing some of the strongest magic in the whole school) and that between his fiend of a father and her, it's obvious who deserves their place in wizarding society.
Blaise is as silently stunned as Draco is.
"You... told her that?" Zabini finally manages, a shaky hand over his mouth.
Theo blanches. "Do you disagree?"
Draco doesn't. He can't, not any longer. He can admit to himself that whatever nonsense Lucius raised him with was absolutely ridiculous. Even if the (extremely reasonable) argument of Dumbledore favouring the Gryffindors, namely Potter-and-Co, is true, Draco knows she's talented. His upbringing says her magic should be a joke. Not an illusion, necessarily, but something she shouldn't be able to wield with any competence. But she overcame an eleven-year knowledge deficit to be top of their class, and it wasn't a fluke.
There are other Muggle-borns in the school, of course. But it only lends credibility to the knowledge that they didn't end up with their magic by accident. Even if it was some gigantic genetic mistake, some kind of magical lottery they all won, their sheer ability to wield it without any prior childhood exposure shows that the skill must be outside blood and base genetics.
Draco's no idiot. Anybody with a brain can look around at pureblood society and see it's a dwindling population with dwindling prospects. Every family is intermarried, and there's no possible way to spin that to a positive advantage.
He admits he didn't care to look at it deeply enough until he met a witch who challenged all those stereotypes. Apparently Theodore Nott was, though, and he tries to stomach this knowledge, too.
Had Zabini? Draco is deeply curious. Blaise tends to stay uninvolved from the blood purity discussions (in the past two years, these have evolved more into rallies) that occur in the Slytherin common room from time to time. Blaise's mother has married seven times, and Draco knows they've been mostly half-bloods. But none of the unions produced children - other than her initial marriage to Blaise's father - and he wonders if one Lady Zabini holds some of those pureblood views when it comes to procreation.
"I don't... disagree, necessarily," Blaise says furtively, dropping his voice to a lower register and looking over his shoulder. "Obviously, she's talented. And obviously, she's hot. But if we're talking about this seriously, that still doesn't mean I'd want her."
Draco's split perfectly down the middle with raging offence at the statement and a vibrant flood of relief. His wand hand twitches around his quill.
"Suit yourself, Zabini," Theo says, raising his voice in turn. Draco glances around and sees that Goyle's made an entrance. Time to crank up the performance. "But I quite fancy her. Maybe she can teach me a few things, eh?"
He winks and Draco wants to throw up all over his dragonhide leather shoes.
He resists, but only just.
Goyle waits for Crabbe, and Draco wonders how this might go. The pair might ignore the three of them, sitting near the fire. He'd given Crabbe a glimmer of hope in the hospital wing, telling him he'd let him know when his mission might need a second set of hands. He'd meant it (although he has a significant addendum to it that he's politely not going to inform Crabbe of in advance). Crabbe seemed to tell that the offer was real(ish). It felt... like a tentative kind of truce, each waiting for the other to either break it or solidify it.
Indeed, Crabbe seems to hang back. Goyle's the one to instigate tonight, an odd combination of hesitant and defiant. It's as if his pea brain is envisioning a certain performance and his mouth refuses to cooperate. Draco longs for the open realisation that Goyle is nowhere near up to this task, but alas, Goyle persists.
"So... Nott. You're next to dip your toe in the muddy pool, eh?"
The casual descriptor fools no one. Crabbe can't hide a coughing snorting scoff, turning red in the effort to either define it cleanly or hide it altogether.
Meanwhile, Draco's a horrifying jumble of wanting to stand up for Nott's girl (his girl, his bloody sodding fucking girl) and cheer Theo on in his inevitable rebuttal. Draco shouldn't capitalise on this. He knows this fact as basic as the number of fingers and toes he possesses. This is now Theo's fight, and Draco hates it with every cell of his body.
Theo takes a theatrical amount of time, gazing about the room at the Slytherin portraits of powerful witches and wizards alike, watching and waiting. He eyes the rest of the room's physical occupants, calculating allies (or, at the very least, silent observers) and open foes. He cracks his knuckles, his fingers interlacing and then shoving outwards as if straining for the added flexibility.
Draco's insanely jealous of this performance, of the opportunity to posture this way, of the inevitable crunching against Goyle's jaw. It should be him. His entire body quivers with the hated necessity of remaining uninvolved. Disinterested.
A specific floral scent of expensive perfume tells him that Pansy is near him, probably coming to watch the scene right behind his chair. He can't be bothered to address her, though. This is the time he should leave Theo to the scene, to go elsewhere with his presumed reinvigorated relationship with his long-time former girlfriend, show he couldn't possibly care less what Theo Nott does or doesn't do - much less for whom.
He can't. Pansy seems to know this and ducks down, crouching near his ear where no one else could hear. She begins to whisper a series of nonsense, some absolute gibberish about Charms that he can smile and nod about, and pretend to care. She drapes her hands over his shoulders, sliding them down across his chest to clasp her fingers together right over his heart.
"I fucking hate it too," she whispers next with a sweet smile, "in case you think I don't. I do. Has he ever stood up for me like this?"
Draco can form an intelligent response to this, at a minimum. "He's never needed to, Pans. He would never need to. But he'd do it."
"Oh, no," she sings through clenched teeth. "He thinks she's smarter than me, that her magic is stronger than mine, and on and on until the whole world burns. I've never heard such praise out of him."
Draco blinks. Had she overheard Theo and Blaise speaking about it just a few moments ago? Had she been right there and none of them noticed her? Or has Theo expressed those views before now?
This could easily go sideways, and he shouldn't let that happen. He can be jealous. Sure he can, as long as he's only one quarter of the equation. But if a full half of the equation is teetering on the edge of rationality, it could all fall apart.
"Pansy..." he turns into her ear, keeping one eye on Theo. He can't help it. "None of that means he's attracted to her or thinks she's a better match for him than you are. He's with you for a reason. Just because I prefer her doesn't mean Nott does."
Pansy sniffs imperiously, but Draco can read between her lines. Maybe she can tell he's trying to convince himself just as much as he's trying to convince her. He'd told Hermione that Pansy is perceptive, and that's irritatingly accurate.
"Trust me, Parkinson. He's putting on a show for his father, and that's all. He's aiming for the extra benefit of disguise. If everybody thinks he's done with you, they won't look for the two of you together when you run after term ends. It's all a long play for him. Trust him, alright? He's looking out for you."
This is all an exact regurgitation of what Theo's already said to him. He's not betraying any confidence here. Theo wants to get as far away as possible with Pansy, safely, before anybody thinks to search for the pair of them. It could work. Theo has just as much riding on this as Draco does, in a different way.
This side conversation with Pansy has distracted them both. Crabbe's joined the debate without preamble, and Draco's awareness of the escalation comes when Theo socks Crabbe right in the jaw.
He hops back, shaking his hand out in the air and cursing wildly. Goyle grins, a stupid expression undeniably at home on his face.
"Shit!" Pansy squeaks and Draco leaps out of his chair. He grabs Crabbe by the collar and shoves him into the wall.
"What the fuck was that, Vince?"
Crabbe, still struggling to recover, gasps, "Nothing. He's fucking delusional, that's all. It's pathetic."
Draco peers over his right shoulder to see Blaise wrangling Theo in the direction of the dorm, his hand roughly gripping Theo's robes at the shoulder. It seems patronising and that's probably smart.
Draco's violently suppressing the urge to demand a repeat of exactly what Crabbe said and what Theo said in response. What had finally been so offensive that Theo hit him? What retort should have been Draco's? What defence of Hermione had Theo offered in Draco's place?
"At least you saw her for what she is, didn't you, Malfoy?"
This takes him a minute. Crabbe is grunting into his personal air and he wants to recoil from it automatically. He lets himself watch Blaise disappear with Theo in hand, down to the lower dungeons, before he responds. He nearly has to choke it out.
"How so? A wet hole to use, some witch desperate for acceptance?"
This makes his stomach turn, but it seems to do the job. Crabbe chortles in agreement. "A dirty excuse of a wank, that's it. Let Nott have her, eh?"
Draco concurs without delay, letting Crabbe down as if they're comrades at arms.
"Pathetic," he manages, shaking his head and moving to grab his bag. Pansy keeps her mouth shut, looking concerned, but moves towards her own dorm without comment.
"He'll see how disgusting cunts like hers are treated soon, won't he, Goyle?" Crabbe tosses this over his shoulder casually, assuming Goyle stays within earshot without bothering to check.
Draco nearly retorts without thinking, remembering in the nick of time that it's Theo Nott who is currently defending Hermione Granger. As Theo's been shoved towards bed, Draco can't argue the overall point. He has to seem... disinterested.
He's not sure which is harder: the restraint to not murder Crabbe in his bed an hour from now, or the ability to ignore Theo making Hermione laugh as he kisses her hand goodnight.
* * *
Tense common room aside, Draco still must silence his curtains and bed for his own sanity. And privacy. They're one and the same, really. It's more important than it's ever been, his ability to fixate (while he's awake) and dream (while he's not) with some basic level of secrecy. It might take another week or more to sell this fiction, and while he can easily be 'working' on the vanishing cabinets overnight, he knows Hermione is correct in playing it safe. They shouldn't risk being seen together.
He wants to scream, because this is no different than it was three or four weeks ago. The secrecy feels the same. And he needs the time away with her more than ever before.
He has to be working on his mission. Snape knows what it is, now. Crabbe knows enough to know he's close to needing assistance with testing. He can't shirk all that and spend his nights with Hermione, both of them sneaking out of their dorms the way they were before.
His subconscious screams in protest. Why does it matter? Just do it. He has a hard time arguing the point. No one knew before. They can keep it up again now, if he's careful.
Say he spends every third night 'working' on the cabinets. Another third could be with Hermione, in the Room of Requirement as a different manifestation. The final third could be here, in his own dorm in his own bed.
With another public excursion or three with Theo, Hermione could easily begin to sneak away, again. Draco needs it.
He really does. All this juggling, the orchestration. He just needs her, just simple and straightforward. Just Hermione. Just him. Just the bed the Come and Go Room provides, a night away from everything else.
Who knows how many more they'll get?
* * *
The Gryffindor common room is blissfully empty, no need to avoid either Ginny or Lavender. When he returns from Dumbledore's office, Harry seems twitchy, verging on paranoid. Hermione casts several privacy charms to set him at ease. There's a small pile of shredded parchment in front of Ron, keeping his hands busy while he waited for Harry to return with Hermione earlier, and it's only grown since.He's just as eager as she is to hear what Dumbledore had to say.
Harry doesn't seem to know how to start off. Hermione gives the most obvious prompt, the one thing continuing to rattle around in her overstuffed brain.
"So what does a Horcrux do?"
"It stores a piece of your soul, so that, in the event of your death, not all of you dies. Or at least, that's the intention. I suppose it could get all bollocksed up in the execution -"
Ron snorts with a morbid sense of humour. "Can you imagine going through that to have it not work? If you died anyway?"
Hermione ignores this, still fixated on Harry's answer. "How does soul-splitting make a Horcrux?"
"Dark magic," Harry states unnecessarily and Hermione fights back an eyeroll. "A certain spell does it, after the - the murder of someone. He wouldn't get more specific than that, but he suspects Voldemort of having several of them."
This should shock her more than it does. But really, he's probably murdered an incalculable number of people. Is it so surprising that some of those deaths might have been specifically to preserve his own life?
"He also thinks we've destroyed some, already."
"Like what?" Ron asks, bewildered, but Hermione's mind is racing back to their second year.
"The diary?" she says in unison with Harry, who adds, "and Dumbledore found a ring that belonged to one of his ancestors."
He tells them Dumbledore's theories, of how the casual use of the diary implied several Horcruxes, of how important certain magical artefacts would have been to Voldemort and how he probably used others that he could find. Then he drops another bomb.
"The snake?" Hermione repeats in a numb tone. "How?"
Harry shrugs. "Hard to say. Same as the others, I expect, but Dumbledore's guess is that he made that one recently."
So Voldemort can't be killed until all his Horcruxes are gone, and he's made one 'recently,' whatever that means. Hermione turns it over and over in her mind. Could he make more? Surely, there's a limit. The soul can only be split so many times.
Hermione's brain likens it to a piece of paper, and how no matter what, it can't be folded in half eight times. It reaches a point where it can't continue, can't physically fold over another time.
It's not a point of saturation; that isn't quite it. It's almost the opposite, a point of dissolution. There's nothing left to split. It would be too small to cut in half again. Would that make him weaker? Do the Horcruxes have powers of their own? Do they communicate? With each other, with him? They're parts of the same soul, after all.
Gods, what she wouldn't give for the right books.