This was not Hermione Granger's first time in the Headmaster's office, but it was the first time she had been able to look at it properly.
It was a sunlit, circular room, impossibly full. The phoenix Fawkes occupied his golden perch beside the door — as large as a swan, his red and gold feathers brilliant — and regarded Hermione with one bright, knowing eye, tail feathers swaying. The former headmasters dozed in their portraits along the wall, all except Phineas Nigellus Black, who was very much awake and studying both her and the boy beside her with open suspicion. The Sorting Hat sat on its shelf. Beside it, the sword of Godric Gryffindor lay in a glass case, a faint silver light playing on the blade.
She turned to trace the source of the light and found Professor Dumbledore emerging from behind a black cabinet, robes settling, smile already in place.
"Draco Malfoy." He walked to his desk and sat. "I didn't expect to see you back quite so soon — and with Miss Granger — after our rather heated conversation." His gaze moved to Draco, unhurried.
Draco pressed his lips together and looked at the Pensieve.
"What heated conversation?" Hermione asked. "He never mentioned this."
"Ah." Dumbledore folded his hands. "Before the Easter holidays, an extremely irritated Slytherin boy came to give this poor old man a rather thorough dressing-down, because I had made the poor decision to use you as a Durmstrang champion's hostage." He met Hermione's eyes over his half-moon spectacles. "I should take this opportunity to apologise to you properly, Miss Granger."
"It's all over now, Professor, really," she said quickly.
Her attention had already shifted to the boy beside her.
"Draco," she said, in a lower voice. "You came to Dumbledore's office for me? Without saying anything?"
"It was necessary." He looked deeply uncomfortable. "And you forgave him far too easily, for the record. He should have been in your bad books for considerably longer."
"You idiot—" She meant it fondly. She could feel herself smiling.
"Did you come all the way up here to have a private conversation," Dumbledore said, with the pleasant patience of a man who has waited out much longer silences, "or was there something more pressing?"
"Yes." Hermione straightened. She passed Dumbledore the book. Then she glanced at Draco, who nodded slightly, and she began.
She laid out their reasoning methodically: Tom Riddle's borrowing record, the Klein blue annotations, the book's hidden placement, the gap in the information it contained. The conclusion: someone had told Riddle, in person, that making more than one Horcrux was possible. That person could tell them how many Riddle had actually intended to make. To find out who that person was, they needed to cross-reference the old library catalogue records — and for that, they needed Madam Pince to cooperate, which required authorisation from Dumbledore.
When she finished, Dumbledore was quiet for a moment, examining the book and library card with evident care.
"That is indeed his handwriting," he said. "And you're right about the ink — Klein blue was one of his preferences, especially in his early years here." He turned the card over. "No borrowers after Tom Riddle. In fifty years, no one touched it."
"It shouldn't be in the library at all," Hermione said, with feeling. "However carefully it was hidden, it was still accessible. Anyone could have found it — any student with an interest in dark magic. If the first person who read it put those theories into practice, what's to stop a second?"
"You're entirely right," Dumbledore said. He set the book to one side. "I'll keep it here. It has no business being on any shelf." He looked at her. "May I ask — what do you propose to do with the library records, assuming I grant you access?"
"Compile a complete list of every dark magic book Tom Riddle ever borrowed," Hermione said. "Look for his annotations. See if we can trace the development of his thinking — and identify which teacher he approached. The same teacher who might be able to tell us the exact number of Horcruxes he created."
Dumbledore turned to look at Draco.
"Draco, Miss Granger — both of you." His tone was warm and considered. "What you've done here is genuinely impressive. Not everyone could find the thread of logic inside a fifty-year-old library card."
"Don't include me," Draco said, with a dismissive wave. "It's all Hermione's thinking."
His eyes had landed on Hermione as he said it, and the look in them — pleased and proprietary and a little awed — was not subtle.
Dumbledore's expression became more serious. "I'll write you a note for Madam Pince. She'll give you full access to whatever you need." He reached for a parchment. "I should warn you that the records will be extensive and the search difficult. You may find nothing. But if you do—"
"We understand," Hermione said.
"Good." The parchment slid across the desk toward her. "Take this. You may make any request in the library without giving reasons."
Hermione held it as if it might be revoked.
"You trust us that much?" Draco asked. He seemed to have temporarily forgotten his annoyance with Dumbledore.
"I trust you a great deal," Dumbledore said. "You've both done difficult things without being asked, and done them well." He paused. "That is not as common as one might hope."
Draco looked away from him. His jaw had tightened.
"Not everyone you call upon is able to keep absorbing pressure indefinitely," he said, in a careful tone. "Most people don't choose difficulty because they want to. They choose it because they see no other option. That's worth remembering."
The room was quiet.
Hermione put her hand over Draco's, gently.
"You're right," Dumbledore said, after a moment. He did not say it defensively. He said it as someone receiving a correction and accepting it. "I don't forget that."
Draco said nothing further.
"Professor Dumbledore," Hermione said, steering things forward before the silence stretched thin, "do you know which teacher was closest to Tom Riddle? Which one might have told him the full theory?"
"Almost all of them were fond of him," Dumbledore said, his expression thoughtful. "He was an exceptionally gifted student with an outward manner that put teachers at ease. But one in particular was noticeably more invested than the others — and when Voldemort fell from power, this professor showed a degree of elation that struck me as excessive." He paused. "He retired not long after. Gave no real explanation. I had never seen anyone who loved teaching and acquiring remarkable students quite as much as he did, so his departure never entirely made sense to me."
*Acquiring remarkable students.* Draco felt the name arriving a moment before he heard it.
"Who was he?" he asked.
"Professor Slughorn. Horace Slughorn." Dumbledore studied Draco's face. "I take it the name is familiar."
"We've met a few times," Draco said carefully. He felt Hermione's sharp intake of breath beside him and pressed her hand: *quietly.*
"What did you make of him?"
"He's very interested in Harry," Draco said, choosing his words. "He has been since the start of the year. I imagine he's been trying to add Harry Potter to his collection."
"Yes," Dumbledore said, with a brief, dry smile. "Very much his style." He tapped his fingers together. "I'll need to find a way to approach him. He's cautious, and not easily moved once he's decided to keep something to himself."
"You need the right bait," Draco said. "Slughorn responds to people he considers worth knowing. Bring him the thing he wants most, and he'll open up on his own."
"Indeed." Dumbledore looked at him with something that might have been appreciation. "You think like a Slytherin."
"That's because I am one."
"So I've been reminded." Dumbledore rose slightly, beginning to reach for another parchment. "I suppose, after years of comfortable retirement, old Horace might find himself missing Hogwarts. I'll have to get busy." He glanced at the two of them. "Thank you. Both of you. You've given me a clearer direction than I had before."
"One more thing," Draco said. He looked at Dumbledore steadily. "I want to tell you something about the first year."
Hermione went still.
"Specifically — the night in the Forbidden Forest. Hermione and I were there."
"Ah," Dumbledore said, quietly. His blue eyes, behind their spectacles, did not flicker. "I had my suspicions."
"How did you know?" Hermione asked.
"A few small inconsistencies I couldn't fully account for. I decided not to pursue them at the time." He looked at Draco. "What did you do?"
"After Hermione's Petrificus Totalus, I used Soul Binding. I was trying to prevent the soul from separating from Quirrell. I didn't know it would—" Draco paused. "I didn't know it would anchor it there in the way it did. It's the closest I can find to a partial Horcrux effect. The soul is bound, but not destroyed."
"Yes." Dumbledore's expression was grave. "It's effective. He cannot move from that form. But he cannot be destroyed while the other Horcruxes exist." He looked up. "Which is why what you're doing matters as much as it does."
"I want your assurance," Draco said, "that Hermione won't be held responsible for any of this."
"You have it," Dumbledore said simply.
Hermione exhaled.
Draco scratched her palm very lightly — a quiet reassurance — and she glanced at him.
"We should go," she said. "Thank you, Professor."
They were at the door when Dumbledore's voice came after them, warm and unhurried.
"By the way — I haven't entirely stopped my own research. I've had several conversations recently with Barty Crouch Jr. under certain conditions. I'll tell you more when there's more to tell."
---
"When were you going to mention the part where you came to shout at Dumbledore?" Hermione said, as they descended the moving staircase.
"I didn't shout."
"You gave him a *dressing-down*."
"I expressed some measured concerns."
"Draco."
"He put you at the bottom of a lake. Someone had to say something." He looked away. "You would have done the same."
She would have. She didn't argue the point.
"Don't be too hard on him," she said, more gently. "In that situation, there genuinely wasn't another option. McGonagall explained it to me. I was never in any real danger."
"The point wasn't the danger," Draco said.
She understood what he meant. She didn't press it.
They walked out into the spring afternoon — warm enough to be worth it, sky an uncomplicated blue — and she took his arm and steered him toward the lake before he could disappear into the library.
"Krum doesn't walk this way anymore," she said, before he could bring it up. "I've been making sure of it."
"I haven't said anything about Krum."
"You were about to."
He made a sound that was almost a laugh. His hand moved to her waist.
The lakeside path was busy with couples. Easter had softened everyone into a state of mild romanticism: there were bluebells everywhere, boys picking them, girls accepting them and pinning them at their collars. The air smelled of lake water and new grass.
They passed three couples wearing flowers before Draco said, "Do you like them? Bluebells?"
"They're nice," Hermione said, in a tone that was not quite enthusiasm.
He considered this for a few steps. "Too ordinary?"
"It's not that." She was quiet. "I just can't bring myself to pick them."
He looked at her.
"They're prettier on the stem," she said. "They're only at their best for a little while. It seems a shame to shorten that."
"They'll wither on the stem regardless," he said. "It's just a matter of timing."
"The flower that was picked would care about the difference."
He went quiet for a moment. She could tell from his expression that he was turning this over.
"What's your favourite flower?" he asked, at last.
"I don't have one particularly." She thought about it. "The sunflower's brightness, the camellia's crispness, the rose's warmth — each one has something. But I never want to take them."
"Then what would you accept?"
"What do you mean?"
"If I wanted to give you flowers," he said, with the precision of someone who has already decided what he's going to do and is merely establishing the groundwork, "what kind of flowers would you actually take?"
She considered. Then she smiled slightly, in the way she did when she knew he was up to something.
He pointed his wand at a dry, winter-stripped briar near the path's edge.
The transformation was immediate: stems lengthening, thorns smoothing, leaves unfurling, and then the blooms — pale pink at the edges, deepening to rose at the centre, cup-shaped and perfect. A Hermione rose. He'd told her, once, that it was named for her. She suspected he'd looked it up.
He picked the fullest bloom and placed it in her hand.
"The raw material is a branch that's been dead all winter," he said. "No natural flower was inconvenienced."
She looked at the rose. It smelled warm and faintly of myrrh — the real thing, not an imitation.
"You transfigured a genuine rose," she said.
"I transfigured a rose. Whether it was genuine to begin with is philosophical."
She laughed. "If Professor McGonagall saw this, she'd give you an Outstanding."
A Beauxbatons girl nearby glanced over and immediately began complaining to her companion in a low, pointed voice about what *she* had been given. Draco's expression suggested he had heard and was not displeased.
"Don't be smug," Hermione said.
"I'm never smug." He put his hand at her waist and they started walking again. "I made a convincing argument and then gave in to your position. That entitles me to a small amount of smugness."
"You didn't make a convincing argument."
"I absolutely did."
"You used the osmanthus tree," she said. "The one my neighbour picks to dry and give away — I handed you that argument myself by accident. That doesn't count as winning."
"It absolutely counts." He tilted his head. "In any case: your position on the flowers is consistent with your position on the house-elves."
She looked at him.
"Unilateral decisions about what's best for someone else," he said. "Whether it's a flower or a thinking creature, you object on the same grounds — that no one's bothered to ask."
She was quiet for a moment.
"Yes," she said. "That's exactly it."
"And the house-elves, as you see it, have had their thinking constrained for so long that they don't know they have a choice. Even if most of them say they want to serve."
"They're told, from the beginning, that this is what they are." She looked at the rose in her hand. "If the only world you've ever been shown is one in which you belong to someone else, how would you know to want something different? You'd need the opportunity first. The possibility. Even just a glimpse of it."
She paused.
"Maybe some of them would still choose to serve, after being given that choice. That would be legitimate. But at least it would be a choice."
Draco was quiet. He was walking slowly, which meant he was thinking.
"In his past," she said, meaning Voldemort, "do you think anyone ever asked him what he wanted?"
"I doubt it."
"That doesn't excuse what he became," she said quickly. "Nothing does. But—"
"No. I understand." He looked at the lakeside path ahead of them. "You're not excusing it. You're trying to understand the mechanism. So it doesn't happen again."
"Yes," she said.
They walked in silence for a little while, the bluebells swaying around them.
"When you asked me — that question you asked once," he said, and stopped.
She waited.
"Whether I wanted to be a Death Eater." He looked at the water. "That was the first time anyone had ever asked me what I actually wanted. I didn't know how to answer it, at the time."
She took his hand.
He let her.
---
Madam Pince was not entirely persuaded by Dumbledore's note at first glance. She held it to the light from the window for some time, turning it, examining the calligraphy.
Then she gave a short, sharp nod, handed it back to Hermione, and said: "Come with me."
She led them through narrow passages deep into the Restricted Section, through a section Hermione had never managed to reach before, and stopped before a small wooden door she had genuinely never noticed.
"Not every student can see this door," Madam Pince said, with a composure that suggested she was very aware of this. She opened it with her wand.
What lay beyond was not so much a room as an archive: floor-to-ceiling shelves, stretching further than the light reached, packed with bundles of yellowed library cards, each tied with string, dust settling over everything like a second skin.
Madam Pince surveyed their expressions with what appeared to be suppressed satisfaction.
"Hogwarts has been keeping records since the school's founding," she said. "Good luck." She walked out and shut the door behind her.
Draco stood very still and covered both his own nose and Hermione's simultaneously with his free hand, which she found irritating and oddly sweet.
"Draco," she said, her voice somewhat muffled.
"Give up," he said, firmly. "This is completely—"
"I'll cast a Scourgify." She drew her wand and cleaned a corner.
A small area of shelving became marginally less grey. The rest of the room remained entirely unchanged.
"Do you see?" he said. "Dumbledore was being honest. This is why he warned us."
"I can do it again." She cast the spell again. Another small patch.
"Hermione."
"And again." Another.
He watched her for a moment. She could see him making the calculation.
Then, with a long-suffering exhale, he drew his own wand, stood back-to-back with her, and began casting in the opposite direction.
He didn't say anything more about giving up.
She smiled at the shelf in front of her and kept going.