Mirror Image

Hermione found Toma in the library. He was sitting close to the chess board on the table, sunlight low in the window and casting long shadows behind Toma’s body. He sat there, silent, with fingers steepled under his chin and Hermione watched him. In those moments - when she was sure Toma knew she was there, but was content to allow her to watch him - she observed so much of what made him an enchanting student before. His aristocratic features, not unlike Draco’s, and the way his eyes seemed to get steely when a particular thought crossed his mind.

When it became apparent Toma would not move or speak, and she’d already watched him for some time, Hermione interrupted the silence of the room.

“You’ve been in here all day?”

Toma hummed. “A while. Draco and Lucius are still out. Narcissa and Theo went shopping.”

“Shopping?”

Toma didn’t elaborate. He usually didn’t, but there was something about it in this instance that made Hermione feel like he was being melancholic. Perhaps he just didn’t care to elaborate, but it was as though he was preoccupied, his mind elsewhere. He opened his mouth to speak, but closed it just as quickly. He instead gestured for Hermione to join him on the other side of the table. She crossed the room and sank into the chair slowly, silently, purposefully. On the table between them, the chess board was set up. White and red marble. They sat there, looking at the chess board for a few minutes, neither one of them moving more than when Toma would reach out and tap on the king.

“White moves first,” he said finally. He reached down and finally moved a piece - his E pawn forward two spaces to the middle of the board. Hermione watched him take his fingertips off the tip of the piece, and she smiled. There was no way to counter an attack when it wasn’t an attack yet, so she simply moved her own E pawn out to meet Toma’s.

His king-side knight jumped forward to F-3.

Her D pawn moved forward 1 space. Still no attack to defend against.

Toma moved his own D pawn forward. He didn’t take his finger off the pieces, letting it rest there in silence and stillness. “Draco is displeased with me.”

As if that were an unusual state. Hermione leaned backwards. “What did you do?”

The laugh Toma let out was sharp but warm. Warmer than it had been before. “I set a date for his Dark Mark. He’s upset it is too close to your engagement party. He says he’d like you and Theodore to know him without the mark on his arm.”

Hermione ignored the way her stomach clenched down and the way her heart rate jumped.

“It’s not unreasonable,” Hermione hedged. “He doesn’t want the first time I see him bare and open to be marred by the symbol of a terrorist group that wishes I were dead.”

It was no secret Hermione was still against the idea of Draco joining the Death Eaters, even if it was a logical move for better information. Toma had, true to his word, told both Hermione and Theo when he and Draco had come to a decision about taking the Dark Mark. Communication was the new rule for their relationship. Partnership. Whatever it was that Toma, the boys, and Hermione seemed to cling to between themselves. Communication was good.

Whatever this was, it was not necessarily good.

Toma took his finger off the pawn, and Hermione leaned forward to move her queen-side bishop across the board to G-4.

Toma’s pawn on D-4 captured Hermione’s on E-5. Hermione’s hand shot out and moved her bishop back to F-3, capturing Toma’s knight.

He paused. “Hermione?”

“Toma.”

He looked up at her, and she saw something in his eyes. Warm. Brown eyes somehow lighter.

“Tom, for today I think.”

He had never asked her to call him Tom before. Hermione wet her lips. “Tom.”

Tom held her eyes in his and his eyes went unfocused. Like he was looking through her, to the otherside of the room. In an instant, they snapped back to her. “Do you think I am a bad man?”

Hermione sucked in a difficult breath. It seemed to get stuck in her throat, but Hermione only pulled the air forcibly through her lungs. It was a complicated question. Tom was a complicated man. In his past - when Tom Riddle had been Voldemort - he had been a bad man. The worst kind of man. He’d killed people, innocent people, and he’d reigned terror on the Wizarding world. Tom had been responsible for so much destruction. Fear and anger and pain. Deaths and losses and broken families. Tom Riddle hated Hermione for who she was and the circumstance of her birth and in any other world, he’d kill her.

But Toma Grozdanov was sitting across from her, playing a game of chess. He was an advocate for the separation of Muggle and Wizard. He was living in Hermione’s home, the Malfoy Manor, and he was keeping her secrets.

She was keeping his.

Toma had not killed anyone since Wormtail. Since Toma had returned to their world at Hermione’s side and at her behest, he had not killed anyone.

Tortured, yes. Killed, no.

At Hogwarts, he was her friend. He was funny at times, thoughtful and smart. Hermione watched him at school, and home in the Manor. The warmth, the light, the way his eyes seemed to glow. The softness of his face.

“How many horcruxes have you consumed?” Hermione countered. Tom’s face split into a smile, wide and powerful. Happy. For the first time since Hermione had known Tom, it was a genuine smile.

“Four, as of this morning.”

It was more than she could imagine. Four pieces of Tom’s soul, reunited, and the math was easy enough. Almost 95% of the soul. Almost an entire man. And he’d done it in secret. Hermione should have been upset that Tom had broken this new promise to honest communication, but she couldn’t find it in herself to be upset. It was personal, more personal than even Hermione’s bond with Draco and Theo. She’d never felt comfortable sharing with Tom too much about the relationship she had with the boys, and in this moment, she could not expect Tom to share the nature of his very soul. His magical core.

It must have been difficult, to become a man so many decades after he’d been born. To regain that humanity whose absence was the only reason he was able to commit so many acts of terror before.

“You’ve kept some.” It was true, and Hermione wouldn’t let him ignore it. Not when there was an agreement of communication in the balance, not even as her heart ached for the pain he must feel in this moment. “Why?”

Tom moved his queen to take Hermione’s bishop at F-3. He moved his finger off the piece quickly as though he was more confident than the move was deserving of.

“I am not immune to the call of immortality.”

Hermione watched him. He was a man, the transformation from monster back to human complete. In all ways, he was alive again. The smaller the surviving soul fragment, the longer the road to recovery was. Back when Voldemort had been killed that night in Godric’s Hollow, he’d only held a sliver of his soul. Less than 5%. He’d been reduced to nothing more than a mist, a nightmare, something parasitic just to live. Now, he was alive. Moral. Full of a soul he’d not felt in decades.

Hermione took Tom’s pawn, and he did not retaliate. He moved his bishop forward, and Hermione moved her king-side knight to F-6.

There were moments when Tom reminded Hermione of Harry. They were so different in so many ways, but they shared an affinity for trouble. Tom was better at getting out of trouble than Harry was. They were both skilled wizards, though Tom was more studious. And they were protective. Harry and Tom had both hurt Hermione in the past, but only Tom had truly stood up for her, to the other Purebloods, to the Slytherins long before Theo and Draco told their friends about their engagement, to the professors, to Hermione herself. He might not have done it with words - Tom never told people of Hermione’s greatness. But being around her was an endorsement of her even as a Mudblood. He’d taught her that she was powerful, worthy of attention and trust, love and inspired support from those around her.

The library lapsed into silence. Tom was staring at the board, his eyes unfocused and his chest still. His breaths were too shallow and too even to be noticed. Hermione watched him. It was hard to think of him as the Dark Lord. All year- no. For two years now, Hermione had seen him transform. Gone was the dark hair and the apathetic eyes and the harsh words. They’d been covered up, and somewhere along the way, Tom’s mask had become his real face. He was kind now, thoughtful and witty and strangely devoted to his friends. He called them his equals now. He told them his secrets. He was worried he might be a bad man.

He had made Hermione feel, for the first time in her life, like she was not only the smartest person in the room, but that it was a good thing she was.

Hermione lifted her finger and pushed forward, connecting with her king. It toppled onto the board and rolled with a clatter, banging into the neighboring pieces. It was a concession, early and almost immediate. It was too early to tell who would be triumphant. They had equal opportunity to reach a check, they could have each given the other a more robust, tactical challenge. Her king wasn’t threatened, not really, but she wanted Tom to see. She was not afraid of him. She was not going to challenge his crown - not because she couldn’t, but simply because she didn’t want to.

“No, Tom. You’re not a bad man,” Hermione said, getting to her feet. “You want to know how I know?”

Tom looked up at her and there was pleading in his eyes. Weakness. It was a sight Hermione had never seen before.

“Because you could have pointed out any one of the weak moves I made in this game, and you didn’t. You could have taken more aggressive moves against me,” Hermione continued. “You could have taken more of my pieces. You are letting Draco get engaged before he gets Marked. You have helped Theodore in his quest to find his Muggle-mother’s family. You haven’t cursed me for speaking my mind in almost a year now.”

Tom sucked in a breath, his face crumpling in the smallest way. Just a wrinkle in his brow. Hermione’s heart clenched tight in her chest, and she stood. “But there’s one reason more than anything else that means you are a good man.”

“What is that?” Tom asked. He was still too proud to sound small, but there was a quietness in his voice that Hermione had not heard before. She imagined it was vulnerability.

“You’re my friend.”

~~~

“Now that we’re engaged,” Theo said, a wicked smile on his face. “We should really discuss how Draco’s going to live up to his family expectations of being the next house-husband.”

“What?” Hermione startled from where she was penning a note. “Lucius isn’t a house-husband.”

Theo’s smirk was downright mischievous. “Lucius doesn’t work, Mya.”

“Yes he does,” Hermione immediately said. “I’ve seen him. He leaves for work, Draco goes with him.”

“Wait,” Draco cut in, looking up from his own book. He’d been checked out of the conversation, determined not to give Theo the satisfaction of his reaction. But this was something he needed to respond to. “You thought we were going to work all this time?”

“Weren’t you?”

Theo let out a genuinely gleeful laugh. “No! Lucius doesn’t have a job, he just likes volunteering. Draco tags along because he’s freakishly interested in how nonprofits and oversight boards work.”

“What?” Hermione repeated. Her face was pulling into a smile even as her cheeks heated with embarrassment. For months, over a year really, she’d thought Draco and Lucius were going to work, some kind of business or maybe a consulting-type thing, every morning. 

“Narcissa is the one with the business,” Theo said. “Honestly!”

Hermione turned to Draco. “You need to explain what the hell is going on, Drake.”

Draco rolled his eyes. “With Regulus dead, and Sirius and Bellatrix in jail, and Andromeda cut out of the family, all of the Black family assets were passed to mother back when she first got married. She inherited all of the stocks in Goblin-mines, the travel company that is partnered with Zabini Hotels, half the businesses in Knockturn Alley, and the entirety of the enchanted fabric conglomerate that supplies the materials for all the major clothing manufacturing brands in Wizarding england.”

“Cissa runs all of those businesses?” Hermione asked. “I’ve never seen her take a meeting! In the summer, she and I spend all day just laying about!”

“Mother takes meetings on an infrequent basis. Her business endeavors are largely self-sufficient and can run themselves. She only goes in for the quarterly budget meetings and for major employee shifts.” Draco sniffed and went back to his book, but not before he added one more thing. “Father spends his days as a sitting member of the board of governors for Hogwarts, treasurer of the Association for Conservation of Magical Creatures, and  volunteer political partner for the Board of Small Business Development. A few others, but nothing that takes as much time as those three.”

“What about the Malfoy family seat in the Wizengamot?” Hermione asked, hands on her hips. “Who is running that?”

Draco’s face screwed up in a disbelieving scowl, confused and offended. “Wizengamot? Mya, the Malfoy’s are french. We don’t have a Wizengamot seat.”

It was as though Hermione’s whole world ground to a stop. She hadn’t realized… But it made a kind of sense. Lucius had never seemed to hold consistent hours. And Hermione remembered Sirius saying something about the Malfoy’s moving to England. The Wizengamot was composed of Wizarding England’s most ancient and wealthy families, but now that Hermione was thinking about it, none of them would have been held by families who came to England in the more recent centuries, even if they married into the more powerful families. If Narcissa held all the other Black assets, it was reasonable to imagine she held the Black seat in the Wizengamot, too.

“Don’t be so sad,” Theo teased. “We’ll buy him a seat on the Wizengamot if you need to vote-pack so badly.”

Hermione pursed her lips. She was embarrassed, because Theo was right and because he’d said it outloud, but mostly because she hadn’t thought about Draco not working. Her vision for the future had taken a much more concrete shape in the last year - she’d get married to these incredible men, they would continue to change the world around them, they would fight two wars against two sides, and when it was over, Toma and Hermione would take charge of the Ministry. Theo and Draco would be with them, making the world a better place for all magic-kind. All her plans, all her dreams of what the future  would hold were suddenly foggy again and out of focus.

Draco got up and crossed his bedroom, ducking down on one knee to lean over Hermione’s body and press a kiss to her head. Hermione turned and caught his lips in a second kiss, deep and passionate. “I’ll do what you want,” he said easily. “But if left to my own devices, we’d have the cleanest Manor of all our friends and we’d throw the best parties.”

“And if I leave Theo to his own devices?” Hermione asked, pressing her lips back into Draco’s and breathing words into his mouth.

“That’s a dangerous proposition,” Draco whispered, and Hermione felt a second set of fingers tickling down her spine. She broke the kiss with Draco and he lifted himself to meet Theo over Hermione’s head. They kissed, hard and sure and just as deep, and Hermione felt a blush rushing to her face. “He’s always getting into trouble,” Draco panted.

“Don’t tease me,” Theo whispered. “I don’t reward bad behavior.”

“Who said you’d be in charge of rewards?” Draco countered.

“Boys,” Hermione interrupted, hands on their chests. “If anyone is in charge of rewards tonight, it’s me.”

~~~

The Weasleys weren’t suspicious, no. Never suspicious of Hermione, nor of their own sons. But the truth of the matter was that it would have been stupid to not be concerned. Hermione had always been a bit difficult to look after - her very personality resisted mothering and she spent half of her life in the Muggle world, out of reach. But she’d been so distant lately, more so than in previous years. She no longer told them fond stories of the Muggle world, and she didn’t stay at the Burrow for more than a few days at a time.

It might have been excusable if Hermione was still close with Ginny, Harry, and Ron. But Ron had written home enough times about her new friend Toma, and Harry said they really only saw her during classes, at meals, or on trips to Hogsmeade. But the era of the Golden Trio studying into the middle of the night, spending every minute together, being glued to one another’s sides was over it seemed. The boys had also, frankly, started to worry for Hermione because of the strange new way she seemed to bend into Pureblood culture now.

Ginny said she’d started closing her dorm curtains tight, spelling them closed. Sometimes, she could hear Hermione practicing magic that Ginny had never heard before. Molly and Arthur didn’t know if that was because Ginny was the year below Hermione, or if their resident bookworm was teaching herself advanced magic early.

Either way, they were concerned.

They were more concerned when Hermione started to spend her time at the Burrow in conference with the twins instead of Harry and Ron. It felt counter-intuitive. Like when you see an animal do something anti-instinctual, like a dog on two legs or a rabbit swimming. It felt like something had shifted between Hermione and the twins, like they could talk without saying a word. The twins, too, had changed. Quieter, more reserved, and where they may have been cautious before with sharing their schemes, they were now paranoid about it. They wouldn’t talk about their products, they never discussed the magic they used or their friends. Hermione, too, refused to talk about what she and the twins had been working on together.

It was enough that Molly considered, briefly, that perhaps the twins had been the ones to explain what a Pureblood arrangement was. Perhaps they’d been the inspiration behind Hermione’s recent guest column in the Prophet, especially if they had friends getting engaged. Molly had wondered for a time if Fred and George would enter a formal arrangement themselves, given their twin bond.

Arthur, while confident there was nothing wrong per say, did worry, especially after his wife made her case in a particularly repetitive and shrill way. So he called in a favor from a colleague and pulled Hermione’s parents’ address from their file in the Muggle-integration department. They lived in a little suburb outside of London proper, a neat row of houses with little yards and bay windows.

Hampstead Garden was a short trip. Arthur went after work, making his way across the city and enjoying the bus trip excitedly, and he knocked confidently on the door of Number 8. It was a cute house - brick and white trim and a white door - and he heard a dog inside barking. Hermione had never mentioned a dog, and Arthur wondered if Crookshanks was okay with a puppy playmate. The curtains in the side window shifted, and Arthur turned just quick enough to catch the face of a toddler pressed to the glass. Big, blue eyes and blonde hair, and Arthur suddenly felt like he was in the wrong place.

The door opened to reveal a young woman, probably in her twenties, with curly blonde hair. She was holding a baby on her shoulder, small enough to have a burping towel under its chin. “Can I help you?”

“Ah,” Arthur said ineloquently and stalled. “I’m looking for the Grangers, but I’m afraid I might have the wrong address. This is Number 8, no?”

“It is,” the woman said kindly. “But I don’t know any Grangers. Perhaps they were the previous owners? We bought the house from a lovely couple, oh. It must have been at least a year and a half ago? They were traveling, I don’t remember their names… Going to Australia, though!”

That sounded familiar. Harry and Ron had told the Weasleys that Hermione’s aunt in Australia was ill, some kind of accident. But he had thought… wasn’t it just last summer that Hermione had been picked up by a neighbor at the train station? Where was she living if her parents had sold her home?

“I am very sorry to disturb you,” Arthur said. “I didn’t know they had moved and it’s been some time since I saw them.”

“No problem,” the woman said, and then she closed the door and Arthur was left standing on the doorstep, feeling out of place. He walked back down the road, far enough to duck into a quiet alley and disapperate away to the Burrow. Molly was waiting for him, hands on her hips.

“Well?”

“Where are the kids?” Arthur asked instead of answering her.

“Percy is out,” Molly said. “The twins are in Diagon Alley for the evening. Ron and Harry are upstairs, Ginny is at Luna’s across the hills.”

“Call the boys down, would you?” Arthur kissed his wife’s cheek as she bustled away, and Arthur put on the kettle for tea. He heard Molly scream for the boys, he heard Ron and Harry’s thumping steps down the stairs, and then they were crowding into the kitchen and looking at Arthur expectantly.

“You went to see ‘Moine, Dad?” Ron asked eagerly. He’d been pretty nervous for Hermione since Harry and his discussion about Hermione and Toma, though his parents hadn’t known about that.

“Not exactly,” Arthur said. He rubbed his head. “Boys, when did Hermione’s aunt get into that accident?”

“Fourth year,” Harry said quickly. “Is something wrong with her aunt?”

Arthur rubbed his brow harder. “No. No, I don’t think so. Hermione’s parents weren’t there. There’s a new family living in the house, and they claim to have bought it more than a year ago. Before Hermione’s aunt got hurt.”

Harry’s face was screwed up in confusion. “Where are they?”

“I have no idea,” Arthur said. “According to the Ministry, the Grangers should have been in Hampstead.”

Ron’s face got hard all of a sudden, like he’d found some kind of resolve for battle. “It’s got to be the bloody Death Eaters.”

Arthus shook his head. “We don’t know that.”

“Why else would they disappear?” Harry said, so quick to jump to Ron’s conclusions. “What if they’ve been attacked?”

“They haven’t been attacked,” Molly said reassuringly. “Honestly. Where would Hermione be staying if not with them? She would have told us if her parents had been attacked and she would have to us if something terrible happened. Most likely, they moved. The Ministry wouldn’t be in the business of tracking Muggles, and Hermione is nearly 17 now. They won’t need to contact her parents at all pretty soon.”

Harry shook his head. “No, that doesn’t make sense. Hermione told me she’s been staying at home this summer, but she would have told us if she moved. Something’s wrong.”

Arthur put a hand on Molly’s shoulder. “I agree with Molly, boys. There’s nothing wrong, just a case of mistaken addresses.”

The boys didn’t accept his conclusions, but they did clear out. It was as though they came to some sudden and instant agreement, just between the two of themselves, and that was all they needed. They said they were going to go and get Ginny from Luna’s house, but both Arthur and Molly knew it had more to do with gossiping with Ginny and Luna to get more information on Hermione. Ron and Harry wouldn’t give up on this, even if they pretended to for the older Weasley’s benefit. As soon as they were gone, Arthur turned back to Molly and huffed.

“I don’t know,” he said. “If they simply moved and Hermione never told us, or if something worse happened. All I know is that we have no idea where Hermione is.”

Molly tittered. “Poor dear. I do hope she’s well, I have been so worried.”

“You and I both.”

~~~

Severus,

Please see me in my office this coming Monday.

Albus