Mirror Image

Hermione, Theo, and Draco each pressed bloody fingerprints to the contract written out by Lucius on the desk. Hermione found the whole thing rather underwhelming, and contradictory. Somehow, the simple presence of blood - of something undeniably and purely their own - was enough to tie their magic together in some capacity, even without a conscious and intentional imbuing of magic into those blood prints. Draco and Theo could press their prints to the page and they still struggled with the practice of Blood magic itself.

And Hermione had expected more ceremony. Some kind of an incantation, a spell, something to say. But there was just the signing of names, fingers cut with a silver blade, and fingerprints. And then Lucius had rolled the contract up and that had been the end of the conversation. A soft, unstable feeling settled into Hermione’s stomach - it rolled and grew when Theo held her hand or Draco gave her his genuine smile. Like it was trying to reach out, to connect with the boys.

Narcissa and Lucius had arranged for Hermione, Draco, and Theo to go for a dinner in Muggle Paris, the distance and the change in worlds the best way to keep the news of their arrangement quiet. The food was unlike anything Hermione had ever had before - artichoke hearts with garlic cream sauce, caviar and crab, beetroot reduction over toasted bread, butternut squash ravioli and mushroom risotto, fresh bread, decades’ aged wine, and a rich chocolate cake for dessert. The place was unlike anything Hermione had ever experienced, and she could see out the window to the Eiffel Tower. After dinner, which Draco paid for quietly and without ever letting Hermione and Theo ever see the total bill, they spent some time wandering the city. They wandered through the Tuileries Gardens, out to the Arc de Triomphe, back to the Seine and the Eiffel Tower. Theo’s hands were always clasped in either Hermione’s, Draco’s, or both. Hermione was suddenly pressing herself close to them, shoulder to shoulder. And Draco made it two blocks from the Tower, back towards the restaurant, before he pulled Theo in for a searing kiss like the one they’d shared in Theo’s room.

When he turned to give Hermione the same treatment, she let herself be pulled close, but she turned her head at the last moments and Draco’s lips met her cheek in a wet, half-open kiss. Hermione giggled a little to herself at the feeling, but she shook her head, too.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, but when she pulled away from Draco, she didn’t see any judgment or disappointment on his face. She only saw kind understanding. “I want to, I just-”

“It’s okay,” Draco said, just as soft and just as quiet. “You don’t have to be in the same place as Theo and me. You get to set your own terms here.”

Hermione got one more kiss to the cheek, and Theo leaned in to give her a kiss on the other cheek, and then they continued their walk through the city.

~~~

The summer seemed to pass faster now that Hermione and the boys were in a formal arrangement. Theodore had been right about their first night as an officially arranged group. Her hands had been glued to Draco and Theo’s, and while Draco and Theo had shared more than one kiss that night, they’d been rather respectful of Hermione’s boundaries. She liked them, she really did, but she wasn’t ready to kiss them yet. The idea of pressing her lips to theirs was scary - what if they thought she did it wrong? What if her lips were chapped? What if, what if, what if? It was intimidating.

The intimidation was quickly drowned out by curiosity and not-quite-jealousy watching Draco and Theo kiss in the following days. Hermione had lost all sense of herself in the Library one morning, and after a rather heated argument about Theo’s charms theory, had pushed him against the shelf and kissed him. For the sheer force of it, it was chaste and closed-lip, and Hermione had felt awkward kissing him with so much weight against him. Would he think she was a great, heavy thing? Would be think it was messy, or maybe to vicious? But Theo had hummed into her closed lips happily and put his arms around her, and he didn't seem to think she was heavy at all. It eased her nerves marginally.

With Draco, her self-control had worn thin while sitting in the garden, the sun bright off Draco’s hair. Again, she gave him a hard, heavy kiss with closed lips in the light of the mid-afternoon sun, and he'd returned the enthusiasm. Again, she'd panicked in the moment - was she sweaty from the sun? Would he think she looked flushed? Would he think she was too aggressive? But he had been happy to hold her, to return the pressure of her kiss, and Hermione felt, suddenly, like she was accepted by these two wizards she called hers.

Hermione had never been in a relationship before, and she didn’t know what to expect. But Draco and Theo were the very model of what good partners would be.

Theo showered both her and Draco in books, in sketches he’d done in charcoal, in little trinkets he found in antique stores. He liked to walk the gardens and cut little bouquets for their rooms.

Draco was more service minded - he started to take over the afternoon tea service duty from the elves and liked to prepare Hermione and Theo’s tea himself, carrying it to them on a tray with shaky, uneven steps. He would make them treats in the kitchen, too, when the elves permitted him to use their oven. Once, Theo had found him cleaning a sweater of Hermione’s by hand, working out a small, barely there stain from a blueberry tart he’d made just that morning.

Hermione surprised herself - she fell into place between them both, offering gentle, physical reminders that she was there. As a child, she’d never been overly touchy with friends or family. Even as she got older, she only tolerated Harry and Ron’s hugs or Molly’s kisses to the cheek.

But with Theo and Draco, Hermione found herself seeking out any and all opportunity to be close to them. Now that she'd broken through that barrier of pressing herself to them, or kissing them, she never wanted to be out of their orbits. She tucked her feet under Draco’s legs when they were reading, she held hands with Theo even when they were only going between the dining room and the main hall, she let them practice braids on her hair just to feel their hands in her curls.

Hermione learned all of that - about herself, about Theo, about Draco - through the heat of July and the first weeks of August. And as she did that, she learned how to be friends with Toma Grozdanov. He wasn’t the Dark Lord Hermione had met in the cemetery, nor the one she had interacted with for a day before she’d locked herself in her room and ultimately run away. He was smart, that was true enough, and his skills with a wand were indisputable. He was thoughtful, which surprised Hermione, but he would present her with books he seemed to produce from thin air, or lessons in Dark magic, or strangely considerate, genuine inquiries into how Hermione was doing. With the boys, he would ask after them, produce gifts from his trunks, and once, he even spent an hour just sitting with Theo after a nasty letter from Thoros had shown up at the Manor.

And Toma was funny. He was witty in a way that had Hermione snorting without thinking about it. It was strangely human, strangely mundane. It didn’t make sense. It didn’t match with the story Dumbledore and Harry had told her about a heartless, cold man. It didn’t make sense to Hermione this man was supposed to be her enemy. Watching him in a big dining chair between Draco and Theo, cracking jokes and talking business and politics with the elder Malfoys, he was just another friend.

~~~

“I’d like to go into Muggle London,” Toma said one morning. Hermione glanced up from where she was sitting with Theo, her off hand clasped in his over the desk in the Library. Draco had already left for the day to work with Lucius, leaving Theo and Hermione with fresh morning tea.

“For?” Theo asked, tilting his head.

“If you’re looking for school supplies, we really should wait for Draco,” Hermione added. It was nearing mid-August now, and the start of school was just around the corner. They’d all gotten their letters already, even Toma. It was no surprise he’d been accepted into the sixth year class as a transfer - a half-blood trying to escape from the Dark magic influences of Bulgaria seemed to be a sympathetic enough story and he had been granted a place through the asylum clauses written into the school’s charter.

“Not school supplies,” Toma said. “Shopping. Regular shopping. And one Diagon Alley stop after that.”

Hermione hummed. It was warm out, but by no means unbearably hot. And though the Alley would be crowded with First Years, she didn’t mind the crowds of new students. “Alright, I’ll take you.”

“I’m not braving the city right now,” Theo said, instantly throwing his hands up. He was always more temperamental about crowds and summer heat, even dying summer heat, than both Hermione and Draco. “It’ll be hell. You two go have fun.”

Theo went back to reading, but Hermione dogeared her page and got up from her chair. “Let me change real quick and we can go,” she said, pressing a kiss to Theo’s hair as she passed behind his chair. It was better to go into Muggle London dressed as inconspicuous as possible, to blend into the crowds, and Hermione didn’t think her stolen Slytherin shirt would blend into Muggle London very well.

They left before noon, taking the floo to one of the shops in Knockturn Alley and slipping into the Muggle world from there. They kept their heads down and turned away from anyone they passed, moving quickly through the crowds. As soon as they stepped through to Muggle London, Hermione dragged Toma onto a bus. The quicker they got away from wizarding London, the better off they would be.

They didn’t need the risk of someone recognizing Tom Riddle with Hermione Granger. Stepping out of the Manor and into the world - Muggle and Wizarding alike - was a stark reminder that Toma wasn’t just another friend. He wasn’t Theo’s cousin, he wasn’t Hermione’s contemporary. He was the Dark Lord returned.

They took three buses, Hermione steering them towards Cardinal Place. Toma grumbled all the way, but he still dutifully followed Hermione onto each bus and grasped the railing when they pulled onto the roads.

“What are we here for?” Hermione asked once they stepped off the last bus. The mall was situated on a full city block, and the bus had let them off at the corner where the main entrance was. She squinted, the sun glinting off the glass of the front doors and into her eyes.

“Things to help me blend in,” Toma said, and Hermione understood it instantly. They were here to create the disguise of Toma Grozdanov. Hermione took Toma’s arm and pulled him into the mall, through the front doors, and to the main hall between the first few stores. She stopped at one of the mall maps, mounted on a big, tilted podium, and searched for a hair salon first. Tom Riddle had dark, striking hair and it was going to be the first thing to go.

She traced a finger down the map, then tapped it over a hair salon. “Here.”

They sped through the crowds of families shopping for the school year, ducking between people and laughing as they nearly ran into others. Hermione had never gone to the mall with her friends like the Muggles in movies, but here with Toma, she thought she understood what it was like. They rounded the hair salon, the smell of shampoo and disinfectant wafting out of the spread doors.

“How can I help you?” asked the man at the front desk the moment they stepped through the doors. He had short hair, frosted-tips, and looked every bit the picture of a boyband hottie. Hermione smiled good-naturedly.

“We need to get this one,” she jerked her thumb at Toma. “A color.”

She’d learned the term in movies and television shows. She wasn’t totally sure she was using the right word, but the man just nodded, took down a note, and went into the back to check in with the stylists, so she must have been somewhat correct.

There wasn’t a wait - good luck met middle-of-a-Thursday-slow-work-day - and Toma took a seat in a vinyl chair when Hermione prompted him. The hairdresser put a cape over him, then started combing her fingers through his hair. She was a big woman, with a full figure and short, spiky hair in pink that matched the acrylic nails on her fingers. She looked at Toma in the mirror and tilted her head a little. “What are we doing today?”

Toma, in turn, looked to Hermione. “We want to lighten it a few shades, make him a little more blonde. Clean up the sides and the back, too. We want to modernize the cut.” Hermione rattled off what they were looking for. She’d been thinking about this a lot, and they needed to make Toma a believable part of Theo’s family, a modern man who belonged to the Nott line.

The hairdresser nodded along, and Hermione thanked the Gods she was somehow making this up as she went.

“And we want it natural and long-lasting,” Hermione added. “We go to a boarding school together, he won’t be able to do a touch up until December.”

The hairdresser assured her they could do something like that, and Hermione entertained herself with a magazine while Toma was taken care of. She’d been sitting in the waiting area for nearly an hour when a teen about her age with sandy hair came and sat next to her. He looked at her, smiling and kind, and Hermione felt a swell of something in her stomach.

“Uh,” Hermione said, closing her magazine. She had never had this kind of thing happen before, and now she was sort of pre-engaged. Her face heated up, though she wasn’t sure why, and she took a breath. “I’m sorry," she said as the boy took a seat next to here. "I have boyfriends so I’m really-”

A familiar laugh tumbled out of the teen’s mouth and Hermione froze. It was Toma, that much was obvious if you were looking at the curve of his brow or the way his lips pulled into a smile. But in the split second Hermione had looked up and seen his hair, tousled and cut and colored, she hadn't seen it.

“Merlin,” Hermione breathed. “This is going to work just fine.”

Toma’s hair was much, much lighter now. Closer to Theodore’s own color, with dark roots left natural so grown out length wouldn’t be noticeable. It complimented his skin well, and the hairdresser had lightened his eyebrows slightly as well to match the new coloring. It was good. Very good. But Hermione had recognized him as soon as she heard his voice. They were going to need something just a little stronger to throw off the whole of Wizarding England.

She paid the hairdresser with money she’d saved up from home, and they left. She had some more stops in mind.

~~~

“Done now?” Toma asked. “You’ve had me poked, prodded, pierced, and plucked like a prize chicken.”

“Are you proud of that little rhetorical play?” Hermione teased.

“I’m serious, Hermione.” Toma had never picked up on Draco and Theo’s nickname for Hermione, and it was strangely reassuring. Hermione was Hermione with Toma, her nickname was for Draco and Theo alone, and that was a part of their relationship Toma wouldn’t encroach on. “I don’t feel like myself anymore.”

“You look like Justin Timberlake,” Hermione corrected. At Toma’s blank stare, Hermione rolled her eyes. “American pop music star,” she said. And she was right.

Toma’s lighter hair wasn’t really bleached or frosted, but it was light enough the likeness was true. Hermione had picked up some colored contacts at a costume store, too, something lighter than Toma’s normally dark, dark eyes but nothing unnatural. Now, instead of charcoal and chocolate, his eyes were more amber and oak. The key was subtlety, in making the changes just natural enough they weren’t outside of normal, human appearance. It was about leaving the door open for people to assume this was Theo's cousin, rather than leaving the option of 'Tom Riddle' on the table of possibilities.

And then to top it all off - to make sure he was firmly in the modern era and unlike any memory of Tom Riddle - she’d had his ears pierced. It was the part of the process Toma most protested, but it was also the part of the process that truly put to rest all suspicion that Toma was Tom Riddle. His ears, exposed under the shortened sides of his hair, were now studded with diamonds.

“Diagon Alley will be a good test,” Hermione said. “You needed to stop there?”

“Just to the bank. We’ll be in and out, and we better not get caught because of the rocks you stabbed in my ears.”

Diagon Alley wasn’t crowded, but it was full. Families were shopping for school supplies, and the vast majority of them looked to be excited First-year families. Seasoned Hogwarts students and their families, like the Weasleys, wouldn’t be shopping until much closer to September 1st, when the heat of the summer would be just a little more manageable. Toma made his way through the crowds easily, weaving his way to the bank at the end of the street. Hermione followed after him, but there was less laughter here than there had been in the Muggle mall.

She caught him in the bank, talking to one of the Goblins with a smile, and her blood ran just a little cold. Because no matter what he said, there would be no explanation for getting into Voldemort’s old vaults except being related in some capacity.

But Toma just smiled as Hermione caught his arm. “They’re taking me back to my aunt’s vault now.”

Aunt? Toma’s story from the beginning of summer, being one of Theo’s distant, far removed cousins, came back to Hermione’s mind. Was he getting into the Nott vaults then? Still, he’d need to be a legitimate part of the Nott family to get through the wards, and as far as Hermione understood it, he wasn’t. Her questions would have to wait, though, as a Goblin came back and collected them both, and led them to the deeper parts of the bank. Old, cavernous passages that Hermione had never seen before were spread in front of them, and they had to take one of the more industrial carts down to the depths of the bank. The tracks they were on were old and rusted, with sudden and abrupt drops into the dark parts of the underground.

The cart careened around a corner, tilting hard, and the sound of water filled the air. Toma tensed as a waterfall approached, and Hermione looked to him for a split second before they went under the water, not around it. Hermione gasped, suddenly drenched, and looked to Toma at her side. He only leaned in close and whispered “is my hair still blonde? And my eyes still lighter?”

Hermione’s eyes searched all over his face, but he looked just as he did coming into the bank. “Yes,” she whispered back, and Toma relaxed.

“It’s an enchanted waterfall,” Toma said, just as quiet as before but far more relaxed. “Washes away all kinds of tricks, potions, spells, and charms. It returns you to the exact form you are at your core. The Muggle ways of altering your appearance must not trigger the magic.”

“Where are you taking us that we have to go through a magical waterfall?” Hermione hissed. She could be fascinated by the magic of it all later, when she wasn’t dripping wet in a sundress next to the most wanted man alive. She could think about how this was a great way of testing how magical enchantments would affect Toma’s new look when she wasn’t scared that someone’s vaults would reject Toma’s magical signature, and they’d be arrested.

The cart slowed to a stop and Hermione heard a distant roar, heat billowing out of the hall to their side. The Goblin escorting them climbed out first and grabbed some kind of shaker of metal and springs, and began to clatter it around his head, making some of the worst noise Hermione had ever heard. She looked back at Toma to see if he was as stunned as she was, but he was acting as if it were all business as normal. So Hermione schooled her face into something neutral and followed Toma and the goblin into the passage to their side.

It was a dragon. Massive, with scars criss-crossing over her face, neck, and body. She was clearly scared of the noise - she’d been trained to fear the noise - and she shrunk away against  the far wall as they made their way around the massive cavern to a second, smaller space. Hermione hated herself for every step, for every moment the dragon shrunk away. But she needed to be there, and she couldn’t make a scene, so she just kept her head down and followed Toma. 

At the other side of the room, there was the usual, expected vault door Hermione had expected to see.

“Your aunt’s vault, sir.” The Goblin was watching Toma carefully, as if he was looking for something and not just at someone. Toma gave the Goblin a look, then Hermione a look, and then stepped to the door of the vault. The Goblin almost looked disappointed.

Magic recognizes magic. There must have been some kind of relation between Tom Riddle and the owner of the vault, or maybe it was something he’d been added to long ago. Was this a Death Eater’s vault? Someone who had added Tom’s magical signature to the vault back in the first war. There would be no way to tell if this was a familiar vault who recognized Tom as a signer on the vault, or as Toma, the made-up nephew of whoever owned the vault.

Toma was only inside the vault for a few moments. He returned quickly, nodding to Hermione and the Goblin both, and then they went back up to the main part of the bank.

“What were you getting?” Hermione asked when they stepped back into the light of day. Toma pulled her to the edge of the bank and down a cramped, dark alleyway between shops. They stepped out into Knockturn Alley between a cursed objects store and the potions emporium and Hermione committed the shortcut to her mind.

“Some old things I asked a friend to keep for me,” Toma said. “I’ll tell you more at home, it isn’t a conversation for here.”

~~~

Hermione leaned against the edge of Toma’s door, dressed in the quidditch jersey from before, the Malfoy name across her shoulders, and sweat-shorts she’d gotten years ago.

Toma’s changed look had been a shock to Draco, Theo, and the older Malfoys, but it was starting to become normal. And they’d all agreed - if he was going to start new in this place, he might as well go all out, even if the older Malfoys didn’t understand the complete complexity of his ‘starting new’. It was very Toma Grozdanov and nothing like Tom Riddle and somehow, it worked. It would certainly trick the older witches and wizards, and it seemed to be helping Toma create his own, new personality.

Hermione watched him for a moment, the candlelight from Toma’s desk shining on his lighter hair. “Are you up for a chat?”

“You’re here to find out what I took from the vaults.” Toma didn’t look up from his books.

Hermione nodded even though Toma wouldn’t see it and stepped inside, softly closing the door behind her.

“Women who are part of an arranged relationship shouldn’t be in their pajamas in another man’s room,” Toma said, turning away from where he was sitting at his desk. He wasn’t being serious, Hermione knew that. “I’ll make this quick.”

“Please do.”

Toma opened a drawer of his desk and pulled out a cup, something silver and engraved and ornate. He tossed it through the air, and Hermione caught it. It hummed in her hands with electric energy. Magic seeking magic, it vibrated in her hands to get back to Toma’s. And yet, it felt familiar. Like she knew what it was, like there was something familiar in the magic of it to Hermione as much as it was familiar to Toma. It must have a little sliver of Toma’s magic in it somehow, enough that Hermione’s own magic recognized it and called to it. After the ritual in the cemetery, Toma and Hermione’s magics had seemed to call to one another. It wasn’t quite like the shared magic Hermione felt with Draco and Theo now they’d signed their agreement, but it was just slightly similar. The difference between the bond between lovers and siblings, the difference between love and fondness.

“What is it?”

“Helga Hufflepuff’s cup,” Toma said. “I made this one fourth.”

Helga Hufflepuff’s cup. It was rumored all four of the founders of Hogwarts had specific items, each one depicted in their official portraits. The Gryffindor sword was well-known to Hermione. It was a symbol of bravery and loyalty. Slytherin supposedly had a locket from his family that represented the nature of Pureblood families as long-standing, ancient lines. Ravenclaw had a diadem, lost to time and enchanted to give the wearer all the wisdom they needed to work through their problems. And the cup - Hufflepuff was said to be the founder who first employed House Elves at the school to feed the students. Her cup, as Hermione understood it, wasn’t enchanted. Just a symbol of her contribution to the school, and the first piece of table-setting set in the Great Hall.

It was a Horcrux, then. And fourth in line… it must have held 1/16th of Tom Riddle’s soul. Not nearly a piece as large as the one housed in the journal, but large enough to be worth something to Toma. To Hermione.

“Why did you go and get it?” Hermione asked, tossing it back. “Gringotts is the safest place for something like this if the Order is operating.”

“You said it best, Hermione,” Toma said. He set the cup on the little table by his bed, next to the lamp and the cup of water there. “I should lean into my humanity.”