Chapter Text
Chapter Twelve: The Curse
After dinner, Hermione wasted no time, returning straight to Gryffindor Tower. She carefully tucked the notebook, filled with her collated theories and analyses on time travel, into the concealed inner pocket of her robes, alongside her wand. It felt like harboring a forbidden secret that could not be exposed.
When midnight arrived, the common room at last grew quiet. Hermione pushed the portrait door open. Torchlight swayed in the corridor, its warm golden halo mingling with the crisp moonlight from the windows, casting dappled patterns on the stone floor. Her footsteps echoed with stark clarity in the empty expanse.
Arriving at the seventh-floor tapestry, she stopped, clearing her throat lightly—a small escape valve for the tension coiling in her stomach.
Draco was already standing there. He wasn't leaning against the wall, as he so often did. Instead, he stood perfectly erect, his back to her, a silhouette both solitary and rigid in the flickering torchlight.
“I'm here,” Hermione said, her voice even, but edged with a quiver she couldn't suppress.
Draco turned slowly. By the wavering light from the end of the hall, she saw he was clutching a heavy, bound journal. Its edges were brittle and yellowed with age, the cover embossed with the unmistakable silver Malfoy crest. It emanated an ancient, dangerous air.
That journal, she thought, was a silent bomb, resting quiescently in his hand, yet capable of obliterating all her deductions and plans.
Draco didn't speak. He simply closed his eyes and paced three times before the blank stretch of wall. His steps were low and measured.
A moment later, a dark wooden door materialized. He stepped aside, gesturing her in with a movement that was both graceful and unnervingly rigid.
“In, Granger.” His voice was freighted with an exhaustion he didn't bother to conceal.
Hermione entered.
Inside, the room was the same as before, a chamber seemingly generated for profound conversation. The warm firelight cast a soft glow on the round table and the high-backed armchairs.
Hermione bypassed the distant chair she had chosen last time. Instead, she took the one nearest the hearth, steeling herself with a new resolve to face whatever came. Draco sat opposite her.
Between them on the oak table lay the heavy, ancestral journal, its silver crest gleaming.
Draco reached out, his fingers tracing the embossed crest on the cover, his fingertips lingering for a few seconds on the silver, as if holding a silent dialogue with his ancestor across time.
“This journal,” he said, his voice low and gravelly, “was written by Lucien Cassian Malfoy. A madman in my family obsessed with temporal magic.”
Hermione's heart hammered against her ribs. She stared at the black cover. “You opened it?”
“Of course.” A hollow laugh, laced with self-contempt and disdain, escaped him. “Took me six hours after I got it to dismantle the hundred-plus protective spells my grandfather layered on it.”
He looked up, his gray eyes simmering with a cold, almost desperate fury.
“My father was right. This isn't an inheritance, Granger. It's a bloody curse.”
Hermione blinked once, her throat tightening. She wanted to say something—anything—but held back. He needed time to process what he’d seen, to rebuild order from the chaos in his own mind. So she waited, silent, her pulse a small, unsteady rhythm in the still air.
After a moment, Draco drew in a deep breath, the tremor in his voice smoothed away.
“Cassian detailed the forging and principles of the Disc of Tears. He wrote that the instrument achieves precise time jumps by maintaining temporal stability and utilizing superposed causality.”
“Temporal stability?” Hermione’s brow furrowed.
“Yes.” Draco’s fingertips began to tap on the table. “He found that when an individual makes multiple, long-range jumps across spacetime, it generates a powerful Resonance. If that Resonance isn’t anchored, it leads to collapse and chaos.”
He pointed at a faded line of ink. “The Disc’s solution was to find an individual of high causal frequency—a Resonator—and bind the traveler’s soul to them. That ensures the traveler can return to the last anchor point and prevents the timeline from disintegrating.”
“A Resonator...” Hermione whispered, feeling the chill bloom slowly in her fingertips.
“It specifies that this Resonator is the very person whose fate the traveler wishes to alter.”
His eyes lifted to hers.
“From the moment you made that jump, Granger—you were tethered to me.”
Hermione's hands clenched the robes on her knees. The truth was reflected back at her like a mirror she hadn’t chosen to look into.
“So I wasn't searching for one,” her voice trembled. “I was forced to resonate with you. And the Disc... it keeps resetting me... not because it's malfunctioning, but because it must return me to a point where you are still alive, just to maintain the timeline's stability.”
“Exactly.” His voice was flat, devoid of mockery, weighed down by the crushing reality of their fate. “Every one of your loops is stabilizing the same fragment of time—every failure because you couldn’t change my fate before I died.”
The room began to swirl.
137 times.
She hadn’t been fighting fate at all.
A heavy thud snapped her back—
Draco had slammed his fist onto the open journal, the sound cracking through the quiet room like a thunderclap. Hermione flinched, her spiraling thoughts shattered.
“And none of this is right!” he snarled, not at her, but at the ancient script. His gray eyes blazed with raw, uncontrolled rage.
“Cassian wrote it should take no more than ten jumps—ten loops! That should’ve been enough accumulated causality to revise any segment!”
Hermione's head shot up, her eyes wide with shock.
Ten?
“How many did you do, Granger?” His voice was a low, furious rasp, a volcano of suppressed violence.
“One hundred and thirty-seven loops—two hundred Merlin-damned years!”
He ripped the journal open to the back, spreading it flat on the table to reveal a stark, ragged edge where pages had been torn out.
“Look!” His fingertip, trembling with rage, traced the violated margin. “The rest is torn out! I tried every Mending Charm I know, even the oldest Malfoy family mending spells my mother taught me. Nothing worked!”
His voice was raw, choked with the fury of being deceived and a new, terrible fear.
“This was done with irreversible dark magic. Maliciously! Someone didn't want this seen—there is something else. Something vital, hidden from us!”
Hermione blinked hard, her stomach twisting.
This wasn't just a curse of fate. It was deliberate human intervention.
She pushed her own notebook, the one filled with her Resonator theory, across the table.
“These are my theories,” she said, her voice regaining its steady, logical cadence. “They align with Cassian's. The power of two stabilizing the timeline... it's all here. But the part about revising...”
She paused, forcing him to meet her gaze.
“Malfoy, if the primary method—accumulating causality—was sabotaged or simply isn't working, does the journal mention any other way to revise events? A different path? Specifically, how to revise a death event?”
Draco's gaze went sharp. He began scouring Cassian's text again, his movements urgent, frantic. He turned the pages, his eyes flying over the ink, past the sections on causality they had already read.
“Yes,” he said, his voice suddenly quiet. “Not just causality. He noted another way.” He turned the page, his expression growing complicated as he read.
“Cassian noted that the Disc itself can accumulate power through causal superposition to revise a time segment... but... an emotional bond between the traveler and the Resonator can also be used to revise established events.”
“But that's not all,” Draco rasped, turning back to the journal. His eyes scanned the final intact page, his frown deepening.
“He... he specifically addresses death. Theoretically, a death event cannot be erased, but it can be... transferred.”
He swallowed, his finger tracing the line as if the ink itself were lying to him.
“It says... when a substitute individual... of high causal frequency... at the precise moment the subject suffers magical imbalance... uses a powerful emotional bond... to complete a Fate Exchange...”
His voice grew thinner, strained, as he read the impossible conclusion.
“...then the death event can be revised… allowing escape from fixed destiny.”
Draco’s face was ashen, like marble left too long in the cold. His gray eyes, which had been blazing with anger, were constricting violently. They reflected the firelight but looked utterly cold and vacant.
Hermione's breath hitched. She understood instantly—
She was the perfect substitute individual.
“Damn it...” Draco whispered, his voice choked. “It's a filthy curse. A substitute... Fate doesn't want a solution. It demands a sacrifice.”
He gripped the journal’s spine, his knuckles turned white. The tendons on his hand stood out sharply, trembling with restraint. Fury twisted his features into something almost unrecognizable, then stiffened.
“Granger, if the so-called solution is for you to die—that's not a solution at all!” His voice was thick with a visceral, nauseated disgust.
But Hermione felt surprisingly steady. The despair that had ruled her for centuries fractured—no longer endless, no longer absolute. In its place came a cold, unnatural calm, the kind that comes when there is finally something to fight for.
“Perhaps this is the answer,” she said quietly, her brown eyes clear and resolute. “Malfoy, if fate demands a death—I'll be the one.”
Draco's face went shockingly pale, almost translucent. He stared, frozen for a heartbeat, then he erupted. He slammed the ancient book shut with a crack that echoed like a gunshot.
“Shut up! Granger, are you insane?!”
He shot to his feet, his chair crashing to the floor behind him. In an instant, he crossed the space and was in front of her, his hands clamping her shoulders.
“What gives you the right... how dare you think I would let you die?!” He hissed between clenched teeth. A vein jumped along his throat.
Hermione's eyes widened.
His voice dropped, desperate. “I can't... You can’t do this.”
“This isn't for you.” She forced herself to stay calm, ignoring the trembling inside her.
If Draco was the key, his survival would reverse the dark future.
Harry, Ron, Ginny, Luna, Neville... all the Order members who had died before her eyes... they would all breathe and laugh again.
And the Draco from the 101st loop—the one who had atomized himself to save her—would finally have her true, albeit belated, answer.
She lowered her lashes, crushing that debilitating tenderness.
“Viewed from a Slytherin perspective, it's a profitable exchange.” Hermione looked at him coolly, as if stating a classroom theorem, her voice flat.
“My one life, traded for hundreds. You, better than anyone, know the math is flawless.”
She had accepted it. She was merely a cog in the machine of time—if her breaking meant the machine stopped grinding everyone else to dust, so be it.
She knew this Draco wouldn't—couldn't—refuse.
He wasn't the Draco from the 101st loop, softened by her reluctant affection. This Draco was still the proud, calculating Slytherin.
Draco ground out a rebuttal, nearly a howl.
“Shut up! You think I'd accept that filthy arithmetic? You—”
Hermione winced as his grip suddenly tightened, nails pressing sharply into her flesh. A flicker of pain made her brow crease.
His voice cracked open, low and vibrating with a terrifying force.
“Did you forget?!” he roared, his voice raw, as if torn from his throat. “The 101st me... his last words were for you to live well!”
Hermione felt his hand quiver through her robe, the tremor pressing into her shoulder.
She froze.
In the loops, she had learned to face death, to calculate sacrifice, to find the only viable answer between reason and reality. She told herself only logic could save the most people.
But Draco's outburst shattered it all.
The torment tearing through his eyes was something no logic could whitewash.
This wasn't a calculated debate; it was a raw, emotional deluge.
A great, heavy pressure filled her chest until it felt like it might burst. In that instant, she couldn't separate the furious figure before her from the ghost of the 101st loop.
She opened her mouth, but no sound came.
She wanted to say “Be calm,” wanted to say “It's the best way,” but the words felt heavy and hollow.
“I felt it in my dreams,” he seethed, his eyes red-rimmed. “Do you have any idea what that feels like? It's not an equation. It's not a cost-benefit analysis. That was my blood and my bone, my... everything!”
Hermione quickly dropped her gaze, unable to meet his. Her eyes stayed fixed on his tie, trembling with each shudder of his chest.
“And you dare... you dare use that cold arithmetic to throw yourself on the pyre?!” Draco’s voice was shaking, breaking. “If you do that... then what... what was the 101st me even for?! Did he die... just so you could calmly turn around and announce, 'My turn'?!”
He suddenly yanked her forward, pulling her to her feet. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, his forehead pressing against her shoulder, breath ragged and suffocating.
“I've had enough...” His voice was a low, broken rasp, “Don't you... Don't you dare... I won't... I can't... allow it.”
Hermione’s mind went completely blank. She forgot to blink. A sudden warmth spread across her shoulder, soaking the fabric.
This was a Draco she had never known—not the sneering Slytherin, not the cold, mocking Malfoy heir, but a young man who was, at last, utterly broken by a fate he'd been forced to witness.
Her hand lifted instinctively, only to freeze in the air.
Her fortress of logic and reason was scalded by the heat of his grief.
She remained perfectly still, rigid in his grasp, letting him lean against her.
She realized, for the first time, that her rational sacrifice wasn't a solution. It was an evasion. An evasion of her own feelings, and of the raw, desperate obsession in his eyes.
Her voice was hoarse. “I just...”
She just wanted him to live.
Draco's voice was muffled against her robes, a desperate command. “Don't you ever talk about dying again.”
Hermione's chest ached, a sharp, sudden pang. A dangerous crack spread across her wall of reason.
Hermione shut her eyes.
Biting her lip, she finally rested her hand on his back, a hesitant, uncertain touch.
“Granger... you have to promise me,” he mumbled, his voice thick. “Promise me... you won't die alone.”
Hermione nodded slowly against his hair, her own eyes burning. The wall of her fortress buckled.
“I... I won't.”
Draco seemed to register his own loss of control. He abruptly released her and took a staggering step back, his eyes red.
He pressed a hand to his eyes, dragging in a deep, unsteady breath, trying to regain his balance.
“Don't worry,” Hermione said, her own voice regaining its familiar, analytical calm, a lifeline for them both. “So far, in all my loops, I'm never in mortal danger. Even in the worst of the battle... lethal curses... they seem to veer away from me at the last second. It means as the traveler, my own causality is insulated from this timeline. And we still have time to analyze.”
Her logic was a balm, settling the chaos in the room.
“This journal is too important, Malfoy.” Hermione reached out, her fingertips brushing the ancient cover. “I need to study every footnote, every single theorem by Lucien Cassian Malfoy. Maybe there's something we missed. Maybe there's another way. One that doesn't require a sacrifice.”
He agreed, pushing the heavy, crested journal toward her. His hand was still shaking.
Hermione pulled the journal into her arms, its weight a heavy, tangible piece of their shared fate.
“And,” she added, her mind already working, “now that I have the inventor's name... I can search the library. There might be other texts, things not included in this journal.”
Draco nodded, his face still pale, but his eyes now held the weary, haunted resolve of a co-conspirator.
“Go, Granger,” he said, his voice low. “And don't forget. Next Wednesday. I'll be waiting.”
After speaking, he seemed to lose all his remaining strength, collapsing back into the armchair and closing his eyes.
Hermione looked at him for a moment, then carefully packed her own notebook and the Malfoy journal into her bag.
“Then... next Wednesday. I'll discuss the key events of my loops and my findings.”
Draco didn't open his eyes. He just let out a long, tired sigh and nodded.
Hermione hesitated no longer. She turned the handle and left the Room of Requirement.