The next morning, breakfast felt like playing dress-up in someone else's life.
Kids argued over Quidditch and homework. Owls swooped in with letters and packages, dropping crumbs and feathers. First-years tried not to stare at him and failed. Near the Hufflepuff table, someone was snorting pumpkin juice out their nose.
Normal.
Harry sat at the end of the Gryffindor table, poking half-heartedly at toast gone cold. He could feel the castle underneath all this noise - slow, patient, humming. The hidden disc beneath the stones might as well have been a second heartbeat.
Draco Malfoy, sitting across the hall, appeared to have slept better than Harry, an insult in and of itself.
He sat among the clutch of Slytherins that still bothered to show up. No Crabbe, no Goyle. Pansy was gone. A few stragglers from old families kept their distance, watching him out of the corners of their eyes the way you watched a snake in a glass case.
Draco ate neatly, mechanically, gaze seemingly fixed on his plate.
Apparently.
Harry knew better than to trust "seemingly" with a Malfoy.
The coin.
They needed to talk about that coin.
"Please don't," Hermione whispered, slipping onto the bench beside him.
Harry didn't look away from Draco. "Did I say anything?"
"You're doing the thing with your jaw," she said. "I know that jaw. That's the 'I'm about to start something I can't easily walk away from' jaw."
Harry forced his mouth to relax. "We're going to have to deal with him eventually."
"Yes," Hermione said. "Eventually. Preferably after I've had at least one day to dig through four centuries of restricted magical anthropology texts."
"Time's not exactly on our side."
Hermione's eyes darkened. "That's… literally the problem, Harry."
He snorted out something that wanted to be a laugh and died half way.
A shadow fell upon the table. Someone cleared their throat.
"Weas- oh," Ron corrected himself, ears going slightly pink. "You two are up early."
Hermione visibly steadied herself. "Ron. Hello."
They still hadn't fully repaired the break between them. Hairline fractures in friendships too had also been left by the war. And they all acted just fine, until moments like this.
Ron thrust his hands deep into his pockets. "Kingsley's downstairs," he said. "In McGonagall's office again. Looked like someone fed him bad news for breakfast. Thought you should know."
Harry and Hermione exchanged a look.
"Brilliant," Harry said. "Maybe the castle decided to age backwards overnight."
Ron frowned. "I was serious."
"So am I."
Ron glanced between them, caught the tension like smoke. "What did I miss?"
"Later," Hermione said quickly. "We'll catch you up when we're not surrounded by thirteen-year-olds and bacon."
Ron looked offended. "I can handle-"
"Ron," she said in that voice, which meant stop talking or I will shove a book at your head. "Later."
He closed his mouth.
But Harry caught the look Ron shot him suspicion mixing with worry. Ron hadn't seen the sigil, hadn't felt the Tower, but he knew Harry well enough to sense when he was keeping something big.
Another fracture line.
Great.
Across the Hall, Draco stood from the Slytherin table. It was a movement fraught with purpose. He didn't glance in Harry's direction. He didn't need to.
Harry did too.
"Don't," Hermione hissed.
"I'll be subtle," he said.
"You've never been subtle once in your entire life," she snapped under her breath.
He gave a half shrug. "First time for everything."
He slipped out of the Hall a few seconds after Draco, threading through students, ignoring the whispers. As he passed the staff table, McGonagall's gaze brushed him sharp, calculating. He pretended not to notice.
In the entrance hall, the crowd thinned. Students peeled off toward their classes. The great doors groaned as they opened to admit stragglers from the grounds. Rain-scented air spilled in.
Draco veered down a side corridor, toward the path of the old dungeon.
Harry followed.
He kept his distance not close enough to be obvious, but not so far that he'd lose Draco if the castle decided to play architectural games.
Draco did not glance back. He walked like a man who knew he was being followed and wanted to get to a place where that conversation wouldn't have an audience.
The instant they were fully inside the more silent dungeon corridor, Harry quickened his pace.
"Funny place for a morning walk, Malfoy," he said.
Draco didn't accelerate, but stopped, and then turned, like they'd planned to meet.
"Potter," he said coolly. "Stalking people before lessons now? Hero standards have dropped."
"Just taking an interest in unusual hobby choices," Harry said. "Sneaking around near forbidden temporal anomalies, collecting coins from dead civilizations. That sort of thing."
For a heartbeat, something flickered in Draco's eyes.
Got it.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Draco said.
Harry moved closer. The corridor was deserted, its walls perspiring ancient stone. The castle was listening.
"Last night," Harry said. "Middle of the night, far from the Slytherin dorms, standing in front of a blank wall that definitely isn't just a wall. Coin in your hand with a symbol you shouldn't know.
Draco's jaw ticked.
"Big word, 'shouldn't'," he drawled. "Dangerous one, too. Lot of things you 'shouldn't' know either, Potter. Hasn't stopped you before."
Harry gave him a thin smile. "I earned my disasters."
Draco snorted, sharp and humorless. "That you did."
They stood there, ten feet apart, years of hate and war and grudging, broken truces hanging between them like smoke.
Harry didn't draw his wand. Not yet.
He did slip the folded parchment from his pocket and unfold it with a crisp flick.
The sigil stared up at them from the page.
Draco went very, very still.
"Recognize it?" Harry asked quietly.
Draco's eyes darted from the parchment to Harry and then to the stone beneath their feet.
"Where did you get that?" he asked.
"From a room," Harry said. "Under the castle. One that doesn't show up on any Hogwarts blueprint, and definitely not in Hogwarts: A History. One that reacts very strongly when I walk into it."
Draco swallowed. His knuckles whitened on something in his pocket.
"You're… connected to it," he said.
Harry's mouth twisted. "Lucky me."
Draco shifted his weight. For the first time, he looked not just wary, but conflicted.
"I didn't think it would… notice you so quickly," he muttered.
Harry's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, 'it'?"
Draco ignored the question. "How much did it show you?"
Harry Ember : The pronoun. It. Not "the room." Not "the spell." It.
"You tell me where you got the coin," Harry said, "and I'll tell you how many nightmares I'm having."
Draco hesitated.
Then, with a visible decision, he pulled the coin out of his pocket.
It was darker than Harry remembered from the night: matte black metal, edges worn like it had been through fire and back. The sigil was etched deep, its lines too precise to be hand-carved by any normal wizard artisan.
Even from a distance, Harry felt the air tighten around it.
The Tower in him recognized its child.
"Family heirloom?" said Harry. "Or did you pick that up at Knockturn's new 'apocalypse relics' section?"
"Funny," Draco said flatly. "Do you know what happens to a house like mine after a war, Potter?
Harry kept his face blank. "You mean besides people wondering why you weren't in Azkaban?"
Draco's eyes flashed. "Besides that."
He looked away for a second, expression slicing open. Harry saw the bones beneath the pure-blood mask: exhaustion, anger, a sort of brittle hunger.
"A lot of old money families took… hits," Draco said. "Vaults seized. Artifacts confiscated. House-elves freed by overenthusiastic Ministry initiatives."
Harry didn't apologize. Didn't even pretend to.
Draco continued, his voice tight. "The Malfoy name isn't what it was. Our influence is… limited. But our network isn't gone. There are still people who owe us. People who did business with my father. People who couldn't care less who won the war, as long as they can profit off what's left of it."
"Black market," Harry said.
Draco tilted his head. "Is there any other kind?"
He ran his thumb over the coin. For a second, its edges glowed faintly not with light, but with a distortion, like heat above a flame.
Harry's stomach flipped.
Draco noticed.
"You feel it," he said. Not a question.
"Hard not to," Harry said between his teeth. "Feels like you're waving a piece of a grenade in my face."
Draco let out a short, sharp laugh. "Closer to a key than a grenade. Or both. Depends who's holding it."
He looked up, fully meeting Harry's gaze now.
"A few months ago," Draco said, "someone approached my mother. Discreetly. Anonymous intermediaries. They had… knowledge. Very old knowledge. Things about the first wards on this castle. About certain lines of blood. About a city with a tower that touched the sky."
Harry's heart beat faster.
"Let me guess," he said. "They made you an offer.
Draco's lips curved in a humorless half-smile. "You're not as thick as you used to look in Potions."
Harry resisted an overwhelming urge to roll his eyes.
"They said there is power buried here," Draco went on. "Older than Hogwarts. Older than the Ministry. Older than any pureblood line. They said it's… waking. And that when it does, it will choose a conduit."
"Me," said Harry.
Draco nodded once. "You. Potter, the boy the castle throws itself at. The one destiny apparently can't shut up about. They said" his mouth twisted "you were a kind of… reincarnated leverage."
The words landed like a punch.
Reincarnated leverage.
Not a person. A function.
Harry felt the bristle of Azelar's ghost, cold, at the insult, which was insane, because Azelar was the one who'd made him into leverage in the first place.
"And you?" Harry asked. "What do they want from you?"
Draco's fingers tightened around the coin.
"They wanted a foothold," he said. "Someone on the inside at Hogwarts. Someone who could get close to you without arousing too much suspicion. Who could carry… an anchor."
He held the coin up between thumb and forefinger.
"It's not just a token," he said. "It's a directional focus. A resonance shard. Whatever's under this castle? This thing sings to it. And it sings back."
Harry swallowed.
"Why tell me any of this?" he asked softly. "Why not just keep playing messenger boy? You've done it before."
Draco flinched.
Something ugly twisted in his expression. Shame. Fury. Self-disgust.
"I'm done being someone else's errand owl," he said. "First my father, then the Dark Lord, then the Ministry breathing down my neck, waiting for me to slip so they can throw me in a cell and call it justice. I'm not doing it again for a group of faceless fanatics with grand ideas about rewriting time."
Harry stared at him. The words had the ring of truth. Bitter, jagged, but real.
"You said it's a foothold," Harry repeated. "So you're. switching sides?"
Draco snorted. "Don't flatter yourself. I'm not suddenly signing up for Gryffindor Moral Crusade Club."
He lowered his voice.
"I'm saying we have overlapping interests," he said. "I don't want them controlling whatever's under this castle. You don't want anyone controlling you. The coin binds me to their game. But it also gives me access. And right now, you need information more than you need another semicompetent Auror."
Harry considered that.
Draco Malfoy-as-informant was objectively insane. But Draco was also a Slytherin with a bruised ego, family pride, access to old networks, and a survival instinct honed by years of brushing against Voldemort's orbit.
If the Keepers or the Temporal Circle, or whoever-the-hell, had approached Narcissa wanting a puppet inside Hogwarts, they'd picked the right puppet. Which also meant Draco sat closer with their plans than anyone in the Ministry.
"You're proposing a partnership," Harry said slowly.
Draco grimaced as if the word tasted foul. "I'm proposing a transactional arrangement. I feed you what I hear. You keep me out of Azkaban when this all goes to hell. And maybe, if you somehow manage not to break reality, I walk away from this with my house name not completely gutted."
Harry's mind reeled.
Which is to say, on one level: this was reckless. On another, this was how wars were actually fought-with deals in corridors and informants whose motives were a mess.
He recalled Kingsley, exhausted in McGonagall's office, talking about races.
He thought of Hermione, asking him to tell her if his mind started slipping.
He thought of Azelar, smiling on a balcony over a burning city.
"Who came to your mother?" Harry asked. "Names."
Draco shook his head. "None. They were careful. Proxy owls. Masked meetings. Voice-distortion charms. The coin came in a warded box keyed to Malfoy blood. If we opened it without the right signature, it would've incinerated the contents."
"So you trust them?"
"I don't even trust myself," Draco snapped. "I trust leverage. And for once, I'd like it pointing in a direction I choose."
Harry let that sit.
The coin pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat out of sync with his own. In answer, the Tower inside him hummed.
"Let me see it," Harry said softly.
Draco hesitated.
"If you can feel it," Harry added, "then you already know I'm the one it's tuned to. Right now, you're holding an overloaded wand by the wrong end. Let me see it."
Draco's jaw clenched.
"Try anything and we both die horribly," he muttered.
"Good incentive not to," Harry said.
Draco held out the coin.
The moment it touched Harry's palm, the world narrowed.
The dungeon corridor blurred at the edges. The stone beneath his feet shivered. For a moment, his vision doubled-present and past overlapping.
He saw the corridor as it was now. And as it had been once: wider, lined with different torches, symbols carved along the walls in that same serpent-eye motif.
He felt the Tower's attention slam fully into him.
It is mine, it whispered old magic. Through coin, through disc, through stone.
Harry gritted his teeth.
"Back. Off," he hissed, unsure whether he spoke aloud or within his own mind.
The pressure eased, fractionally.
Images slid underneath his eyelids - not full memories, just impressions.
A circle of hooded figures passing coins like this one around a table.
A cold voice from behind a mask.
The word Convergence.
Harry took a deep breath and let the coin fall.
It dropped into Draco's waiting hand with a weighty little clink that sounded disproportionately loud.
Draco studied his face. "Well?"
"They're planning something at Hogwarts," Harry said. "Big. They're not just watching. They want to trigger… some kind of convergence event. Pulling timelines together. You're their tether. I'm their fuse."
Draco swallowed. "And the thing under the castle?"
Harry looked down, feeling the Tower's amused, dangerous attention.
"It's the bomb," he said.
A silence stretched between them.
"So," Draco said finally, voice thin. "Still think I'm just having an 'unusual hobby choice'?"
"Oh, you absolutely are," Harry said. "You're just not doing it alone."
He folded the parchment with the sigil and tucked it into his pocket.
"Fine," he said. "We work together. For now. You feed me anything you get from your mysterious friends. I keep you from accidentally detonating your own skull with that coin."
Draco arched a pale eyebrow. "And in exchange?"
Harry smiled, thin and mirthless.
"In exchange," he said, "I make sure that when this all explodes, you're standing on the side that doesn't get erased from history."
Draco huffed. "You always did have a messiah complex."
Harry stepped back.
"No," he said in a soft tone, feeling Azelar's shadow coil behind his ribs. "This time, I'm trying something different."
He turned and began back up the hall. "Potter," Draco called. Harry glanced over his shoulder. "They call themselves the Circle of Eterion," Draco said. "The ones who sent the coin. That's all I have. For now." Harry nodded once. Circle of Eterion. Qyetl: named after the Tower-city that shattered time. Of course they were. The low hum of the castle followed him as he walked away. For the first time, he didn't feel like it was just watching. It was as if it was waiting.