Dumbledore's death seemed to have hardened something in Harry. He was colder, and if he wasn't drilling his teammates to the point of exhaustion on the Quidditch pitch, he was glaring into space. Not gazing nor staring, but glaring.

"... it's just so unlike Harry," Hermione said unhappily to Draco, "and I know I should be giving him some concession, he's just lost yet another person he's close to... but I miss him. The Harry I used to know."

The pang that shot through him when he saw Hermione whispering in Harry's ear gurgled in the pit of his stomach. Draco was finally able to place the feeling that ravaged through him and left a trail of heartache. He was actually jealous of Harry. Envy was something he was familiar with, it left a bitter taste of resentment, but jealousy was funny. It made him want to puff his chest out and demand for the same affection.

The two were holed up in the Room of Requirements. Harry had stopped coming after Dumbledore's death, choosing instead to mull things over by himself. Hermione didn't dare disturb him when he was in one of those moods. It reminded her of his behaviour in the beginning of the year, when he was cut off from all magical information at Dumbledore's request to keep him safe with the Dursleys. He had a real go at her and Ron when he joined them at the Order's headquarters.

"I don't know how to reach him when he's like that," sighed Hermione. She knew it was unfair of her to unload on Draco because he had issues of his own that he needed to deal with, but he wore a look of contentment on his face. "Look at me harping on and on about Harry. How about you? How... are you?"

Draco gazed down at her with a little smirk.

"At the moment? Couldn't be better."

Hermione was nestled in his arms, her head in the space above his chest where her head fit perfectly. He didn't care that her hair was tickling his nose and getting into his mouth, or that he was really holding very still to the point of it being rather uncomfortable. Selflessness does not come easily to him, though it is a welcomed feeling, unlike jealousy. There was something satisfying about sacrifice, however small. But that's not to say that he doesn't benefit from their current arrangement – her familiar weight and warmth soothed him more than The Draught of Peace could, and for that he was thankful.

"Let him be," he suggested gently.

"That's what I'm doing! But we need to discuss the ministry's verdict! And–and planning our next steps?"

"Talking about it won't change the ministry's decision," Draco murmured into her hair. So engrossed was he in her presence that she could be talking about boring muggle topics such as quantum physics and it wouldn't have phased him.

He was finally able to be with Hermione completely instead of feeling torn between her and his family's allegiances. Draco was free of his demons now.

Hermione was also feeling lighter in spite of everything.

In her eyes, Draco had risen up to the occasion and she was hopeful that maybe everything was going to work out. The tragedy that she had painted in her mind was slowly giving way to a beautiful future, though thoughts of a red-headed daughter kept creeping into her mind. There was no way she would be able to look at Ron the same way, knowing that he would have been the father of her children. But for now, she allowed herself to soak in this shared moment of solitude.

Being able to lace her fingers with his sent a thrill down her spine. Draco, who once spat slurs in her face. Draco, whom she once slapped across the face. But here they are, intertwined together on a couch in the Room of Requirements.

It went so far as to add a loveseat with an elaborate diamond tufted back and elegantly curved claw feet. The upholstery was a deep green velvet with maroon and gold trim.

"You know, I think that the room has a bit of a sense of humour," Hermione had stated when they walked in to see the latest addition. It was impossible to ignore and its presence planted a seed of awkward tension between the two until Draco broke it by playfully pulling her towards the offending item.

"It would be rude if we didn't acknowledge the room's efforts..."

"Since when were you bothered by manners?" Hermione answered snarkily.

"You wound me, Granger," he said in response, pretending to collapse onto the loveseat and yanking her down with him.

After some minor adjustments, it was how they found themselves neatly aligned on the small sofa.

"Green goes well with your hair," he murmured, holding a strand between his fingers, inspecting how it coiled so tightly.

"Just my hair then?" Hermione smiled.

"Look," Draco said, holding the curl up against the velvet.

Hermione stuck out her robed arm to reveal the red underneath, "Huh, I guess you're right... But I never thought that red and green could go so well together..." She fingered the upholstery and turned to look at Draco.

His lips were directly in her line of sight and she quickly averted her eyes because they reminded her of the way she melted under them and how much she yearned to lose herself in them again. To distract herself, she turned back around and started complaining about Harry instead.

Draco found it amusing, the way she was so invested in telling him all about what Harry's doing and how out of character he's been. It was almost adorable, until he remembered that he was just as unsafe as the rest of them. All his life, he had been under a cover of protection and now he might as well be naked. He was no longer at war with himself, but he had made himself a target.

"I'm not talking about changing the ministry's decision," Hermione said huffily, "I just want to have a solid plan. What questions are we going to ask Delphini? How can we use her to win the war?"

"We'll ask her how we– the war was won." Draco said, catching himself before he could claim any part of the glory that didn't belong to him. "We could ask her about the Horcuxes."

"If she hadn't already told him about them..." A tone of frustration had seeped into her voice.

"So we ask her what she's told him." Draco replied simply, "It's not that hard."

"I just hate not knowing everything."

"Oh, so you're admitting to being a know-it-all?"

"I never denied it." She replied proudly. Why anyone should be offended about being knowledgeable was lost on Hermione. There should be no higher honour than having one's intellect acknowledged.

"Right... then, what do we know so far?" Draco said, prompting her to continue her tirade. He wanted to hear everything that was going through her head.

"Delphini is Voldemort's daughter," Hermione said, "Based on my calculations, she would have been conceived around this time, give or take a few months."

Draco drew a lazy hand across her forehead, tugging a curl gently behind her ear. "Much as I am not interested in discussing the Dark Lord's private affairs, how is her conception important?"

Hermione shook her head, which sprang the curl loose.

"It's not important," she admitted, "I'm just trying to put two and two together. Who do you think...?"

"Knowing my aunt's obsession, she's the most likely suspect..."

"But what if it's not... consensual? What if... it's a punishment?"

The insinuation snapped Draco back to his senses. "The Dark Lord hardly seems like the kind of person to... sully... his person in that manner."

The disgust in Draco's voice was plain but Hermione needed him to look through her perspective. She swallowed tightly, because what she had to say wasn't pleasant at all.

"What could be the highest form of punishment than watching your own wife subject to humiliation...?"

Draco pushed her off him, not roughly but not particularly gently either.

"If you're saying that–"

"Do you think that he's above rape? He's killed, he's tortured, he's an animal!"

Draco stood up, his back ramrod straight as he stared into this distance, seeing what Hermione did not witness... His mother's sickly pallor back on the grounds of Malfoy Manor, he had mistaken her horror for disgust.

"My father would see him dead– in fact, I would kill him myself if he touches my mother." He said angrily.

Hermione's cheeks burned, thinking that he was angry at her for suggesting such a thing. She wished she could take back what had escaped her lips, but even if she had a Time Turner, she wouldn't be able to make him unhear what she had said. She could kick herself and her insatiable need for knowledge, to dissect and hold all the puzzle pieces.

"I–It's natural to feel protective towards one's own family... but–" She started slowly before blurting everything out in a rush, hoping that she wouldn't push him away further, "Delphini might be your cousin, or..." her voice grew smaller and smaller, "Your half sister."

"If you're worried that I may feel some loyalty towards her due to our shared blood, you–" Draco broke off in mid-sentence, unable to finish it because he was imagining the terrors that his mother was forced to go through.

"I've made my choice," he said defiantly, "I will not turn back on it now."

In a smaller voice, Hermione continued, "But, see... the funny thing about Time Turners is that... you can't change something that directly affects the timeline. If, say, I go back in time to stop myself from going back in time, it creates a paradox and both timelines would simply... cease to exist."

"Are you saying that we need to make sure the Dark Lord impregnates Delphini's mother before we kill him?" Draco's voice was as taut as a rubber band waiting to snap.

"I'm afraid so." Hermione nodded, bobbing her head minutely.

A sort of strangled bark escaped his throat and he said hoarsely, "You've got to be joking."

Hermione wasn't much of a joker and she wasn't about to start, especially not in the face of something as serious as allowing sexual assault to take place.

"It's the hair isn't it?" He said quietly after a short while, pressing his fingers on the top of his head.

"The fact that Delphini is still here means that she hasn't done anything to undo her conception..." Hermione said gently, getting up from the loveseat to take Draco's hand.

"Not yet, she hasn't." His voice was muted as he considered all the likely scenarios. If his mother truly was that creature's mother... did it mean she is already pregnant? Did the Dark Lord make his father watch as he impregnated her? Or did he take her in cover of darkness, amplifying the trauma that would be inflicted upon her? Or would he eventually find her and punish her for Draco's misdeeds?

She felt his fingers curl around hers as thoughts chased wildly through Draco's mind. Unwilling to voice his fears aloud, he let her pull him into a hug, accepting the comfort to soothe his anguish.

That night, the four of them assembled in Professor McGonagall's office. What Draco and Hermione discussed had left a stormy look in Draco's face, but neither Harry, Ron, nor the minister himself noticed because as far as they were concerned, Draco always looked like he was about to be sick, with his snobbish airs and purist mentality.

Hermione noticed, though, and her hand fidgeted against her thigh as she willed the courage to pick up Draco's hand. While she might have previously taken it rather casually, something held her back in that office. Maybe it was due to her head of house watching them with concern, or maybe it was the look in his grey eyes, or the palpable pressure that Harry carried in the determined set of his jaw. Whatever it was, she found she could not impart any tenderness she wanted before they were whisked off to the Ministry of Magic.

Delphini looked paler and greyer than any of them remembered. They couldn't have imagined how she lost a part of herself when the Dark Lord stabbed her. Everything she had done, she imagined, would have brought her into his welcoming arms.

At first, she had raged in bitterness. She had known that the Dark Lord was not a compassionate man, but she thought he would embrace her as his equal for the same cruelty and darkness that lived in her... But after cycling through her denial and schemes of winning his affection, she arrived at the conclusion that while she craved love, he had none to give her.

"I need to know everything you've done since coming into possession of the Time Turner." Harry demanded.

"Hello to you too," the witch said sarcastically. "If you think that tone of voice is going to get you anywhere in life, you'd make a poor politician."

"I'm not here to play any games. Tell us and we'll bring down Voldermort once and for all."

"You don't need my story," Delphini said in a sing-song manner, "You only need to know what you're looking for. A cup, a diadem, a snake, and a locket. Did you know? In my timeline, your headmaster died because of him." Her black eyes found Draco's grey ones and she locked on them like a viper sizing up its prey.

"Yeah? Did you know, in coming to our timeline, you might have just erased yourself," Draco spat scathingly just as Harry started to wave Delphini off, muttering that they already knew that he was a prick.

Hermione grabbed Draco, pushing his arm back in disbelief that he would let such crucial information drop at a mere provocation. Draco didn't care, he didn't even look at her. He couldn't look at her because he feared what he would feel. The idea of having to allow his mother to be defiled by the Dark Lord and living with that knowledge was almost too much to bear.

Though Delphini kept her eyes on him, she was deaf to his words as if they didn't bother her one bit.

"Do you know why," she said slowly in response to Harry, drawing out every syllable while staring greedily at Draco, eager to extract every once of pain, "he isn't such a prick in this timeline?"

She flicked her tongue out to moisten her lips in anticipation for what was to follow.

"It's all me!" She laughed.

"Come on, we didn't come all this way for this," Ron muttered darkly. Hermione noted with a start that he, too, looked withdrawn. His hands were lodged deep in his pockets and his shoulders curved inwards.

"I orchestrated your whole romance." Delphini said with a flourish while Ron threw his hands up in the air.

"You can't make two people fall in love." Harry said in a flat voice.

"No, you can't," Delphini grinned, "but you can push two people together if you know the right buttons." She was dancing in her cell now, giggling.

"I know all about you, Harry Potter, wizard-slayer, and his itty-bitty friends! I know that you hate Malfoy with every ounce of your being that you want so far as to ban your son from talking to his only friend, Scorpious Malfoy."

A frown crossed Harry's face and he looked dubiously at Delphini, "It doesn't matter. You're here now, you'll help us, and we'll all have new futures."

"How do you know Bellatrix is your mother?" Draco erupted suddenly, banging on the cell bars, causing Delphini to jump.

"Why so concerned?" She narrowed her eyes at him.

"Because maybe you're just a bastard child whose mother told her a lie, because which madman would hunt down the Dark Lord if he turned out to be their father? Your mother certainly didn't count on it." Draco said through gritted teeth, wrapping his fingers around the bars on Delphini's cell.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you? Afraid of having ties to the Dark Lord? Afraid it might taint you forever? Boy, you've tainted yourself." In a flash, Delphini reached out and whipped Draco's left sleeve up, her fingers digging into his forearm like claws.

"Bloody hell, it's true then," Ron gasped while Draco yanked his arm back and covered the mark with a murderous look on his face.

"So eager to prove himself, he didn't care if he walked right into a death trap. Killing Dumbledore? The Dark Lord never expected you to succeed."

"Oh yeah? I expect your dead daddy told you from the grave, did he?" Draco spat.

"Are you guys about done?" Harry interrupted, a scowl darkening his face.

"The Rowles told me so." Delphini replied to Draco's question like a challenge.

A smile crept onto Draco's face, "The Rowles?" He sniggered. "Did it ever occur to you that they might be lying?"

Delphini turned to look at Harry and made a series of sounds.

"Whoever her mother might be, she's not lying about her father." An edge has entered Harry's voice, growing colder by the syllable, "Unless, parselmouths have suddenly become common?"

When nobody indicated that Harry would get a response, he mumbled something about getting back to business and requested once again that Delphini tell them about her endeavours before landing in their time.

The story that she told them was fantastical and almost hard to believe, from posing as Cedric's cousin and kidnapping Harry and Draco's sons on a journey through time. She told them about how she managed to break out of Azkaban by rallying them to her cause, promising the same promises that her father once did. Since Draco had revealed that he possessed a Time Turner, it was just a question of stealing it from him... and though it was no small feat, since he had surrendered it to the Ministry of Magic, her being there was proof of her success. Her story had the four of them hanging on to every word, but there was one key element that Hermione instinctively latched on to, something that Harry lacked the foresight to keep to himself.

"After everything that you've done just to meet your father, I don't believe you'll turn your back on him now."

Delphini gave a shriek of laughter that sounded very much like Bellatrix's and said, "Would you forgive your darling friends if they stabbed you?"

"Actually," Harry said, a fierce loyalty burning in his eyes, "I would, if they had good reason to."

"What good reason did Voldemort have," Delphini answered bitterly, crumpling to a heap and resigning herself to the cell floor.

"You threatened him, didn't you? You of all people should know that Voldemort does not take kindly to being threatened." Harry's voice was quiet, the words that he meant harshly left his lips reluctantly. Something at the back of his mind told him that she might see the reason in his words and decide not to help them anymore, but her next words showed him that there was no need for concern.

"Well, I am his father's daughter, and I do not take kindly to being stabbed."

"Be that as it were," Hermione whispered in Harry's ear, having dragged him back a few steps, "proceed with caution."

Harry simply nodded in acknowledgement and addressed the witch moping in the corner of her cell, "Prove it. Tell us where to find the Horcruxes."

Surprisingly, Harry's request was not met by any sort of resistance from Delphini whatsoever. In fact, she shared so easily that Hermione and Draco grew suspicious.

"Something doesn't feel right, Harry," Hermione said as they left the holding cell. Behind them, Delphini was making a din, shouting out requests.

"Tell my father, Delphini sends her regards!" Was one of the milder requests amongst a flurry of ruder versions.

"We'll soon find out whether she's reliable." Harry said with a stubborn set of his jaws. In truth, he couldn't bring himself to trust Delphini fully, but with Dumbledore gone, Harry felt lost, and Delphini provided a direction. "Where did she say the diadem was? In the place where lost things are? On the seventh floor, across from Barnabas."

"That's the Room of Requirements!" Hermione and Ron blurted out in unison.

The three of them shared a smile, and not for the first time, Draco felt like he was on the outside looking in. But he gritted his teeth and nodded.

"Ah, how did the meeting with Delphini go? Was it productive?" Scrimgeour appeared, walking towards them in anticipation.

"Better than we could have hoped for," Harry said with a shut expression, which stopped Scrimgeour in his tracks.

"Why, isn't that wonderful?" He ventured, unsure about Harry's contradictory scowl.

Harry seemed to size the minister up and made up his mind when he saw his eagerness, "You did say that we have the ministry's full support... well, we need a necklace... and a cup."