Hope everyone is doing ok in lieu of the recent earthquakes! Much love to all of you, wherever you are. Your safety is of utmost importance.

x Noelle

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Wand behaves like a compass.

familiarising herself with the flat. Every morning, after the four Slytherins left, she'd venture out. She'd head straight for the kitchen to make a pot of tea – wandless, of course – before she returned back to the room.

But Hermione was feeling more confident this particular morning, and after she'd made her tea, she lingered in the kitchen for awhile. The kitchen was almost immaculate, and she'd learnt from Draco sometime back that it was all Blaise's work, the only one among the four who was adept at using magic in the kitchen.

Out of curiosity, she checked the shelves and found it stocked with ingredients. The boxes of chocolate frogs caught her eye and she picked one up.

"Are you going to eat that?"

An unfamiliar feminine voice made Hermione jump and drop the box in fright. A chocolate frog immediately leapt out of the box, heading straight for the living room, but Hermione didn't even notice. She was far too busy staring in horror at the other girl standing by the counter.

"You're supposed to grab them before they jump out of the box. Where's my bloody wand?" The girl muttered, and cast a glance over her shoulder. "Who are you, by the way?"

Hermione froze.

"Seriously, you look familiar. Merlin, this thing is just out of control!" The girl lunged forward as the frog hopped out of her reach. "So have we met before? I think I – "

"Immobulus."

The frog went still. Hermione sighed in relief when she saw Theo, wand in hand as he stood by the doorway of his room.

"I thought you were leaving, Natasha," he said calmly, striding towards the girl who smiled brightly at him.

"I was, but then I met your flatmate. Who is she – "

"Her name's Hermione Granger," Theo returned flatly. He strode towards the girl quickly and held up his wand to her temple.

Her eyes widened. "Theo, what're you – "

"Sorry, Natasha, but you shouldn't have asked."

A jet of light shot out from the wand. The girl's eyes went blank, before she blinked. Theo caught her as she swayed.

"I just have to send her home," he told Hermione. "I'll be back soon."

She managed a faint smile and watched as Theo vanished with the girl. The house was silent once again. She took several deep breaths to calm herself and went over to pick up the chocolate frog.

"Don't eat that." She jumped at Theo's voice and dropped the frog. When had he returned? He grinned and went over to the shelf, handing her a new box. "Throw out the old one."

Hermione set the old frog aside and carefully opened the new box, making sure to grab the frog before it got away. She chewed slowly on the frog while studying the card in fascination, which had a portrait of an old man called Albus Dumbledore on it.

"You remember him?" Theo asked.

A frown glossed her forehead and she looked up at Theo in confusion. "Am I supposed to?"

He grinned wryly. "He was kind of our Headmaster back at Hogwarts, only he's dead now."

"Oh." Hermione felt a faint pang of guilt for not feeling more distressed about the fate of Albus Dumbledore, but he was just a stranger to her. She set the card aside and looked back up at Theo, only to see him rubbing his temples, a tired frown on his forehead. "Is everything alright?"

"Yeah. Just a bloody hangover, that's all."

She got up to pour him a fresh cup of tea. He took a sip and looked up. "You made this?"

"Yes."

"It's pretty fucking good."

"Thank you." She wondered if he'd take the cup and return to his room, but he made no attempt to leave. "Don't you have to go to – " she trailed off, not knowing what to call the kind of work that they did.

" – the dark side?" Theo supplied, his words making Hermione smile. "Yeah, no. I've got another Death-Eater to cover for me today. We don't have to go for patrols or missions so long as we've got someone to stand in for us."

"But wouldn't he notice?"

"Well, he's become a lot more complacent ever since winning the war." Hermione's eyes widened at Theo's casual jab, but he simply smirked. "Hermione, I work for him but that doesn't mean I fucking adore him. Neither does Blaise or Pansy – and Draco? I think Draco hates him the most. You know that whole saying – 'keep your friends close, enemies closer'? The Dark Lord's got that going for him and he's so stupid he doesn't even see that his top Death-Eater's gone rogue ever since the war began."

She smiled. She worried for Draco's safety, of course, but she couldn't help thinking that him going rogue was just so clever.

"You're thinking about Draco, aren't you?" Theo's smirk widened.

And Hermione blushed.

"It's okay. Just don't pull that love crap Pansy and Blaise does in front of me. Anyway, the Dark Lord's inner circle has expanded since the war began. We're close to a hundred people now, notwithstanding the rest of his army. Only Draco and some of the Death-Eaters meet up with the Dark Lord everyday. The rest of us show up for general meetings."

"So does that mean you're going to be here for the rest of the day?"

"That's right. And you're going to entertain me."

Her eyebrows shot up. "How?"

"Well, I'll find things that make you blush – I think that's pretty bloody entertaining."

She scowled when her cheeks reddened again.

He noticed and laughed. "That's one."

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Draco thought he was hallucinating when he returned to see Hermione in the kitchen with Theo. Boxes of chocolate frogs lay scattered on the table, wrappers and cards strewn everywhere.

Hermione spotted Draco immediately and smiled brightly. "Hey," she breathed, climbing down from the chair and going over to him. Draco tried not to react when she slotted between his arms and buried her face against his chest, because Theo was staring quite blatantly, a perennially annoying smirk on his face.

"I had a lot of fun today," Hermione said, once she'd pulled back from him. But it didn't escape his notice that she still kept her fingers latched on his coat. "Theo taught me how to use Tarantellegra."

Draco shot his friend a flat look. "Of course he would."

Theo laughed. "How was work today, mate?"

"Busy as hell, no thanks to you," he returned and headed to his room. He knew without looking that Hermione would follow him. "By the way, it's your turn to get dinner tonight."

"Why is it never your turn?"

"Because I pay for all our expenses." He shut the door behind Hermione. After he cast muffling and locking charms on the room, he pulled out a brown box from his coat. "This came for you. It's from Andromeda."

Her face lit up and she took it. He settled down beside her as she read the slip of paper attached to the box.

"The Tales of Beedle the Bard," Hermione read out loud, when she shifted the paper and saw the book inside. She turned to Draco. "Have you you read this?"

"No, never."

He frowned at the book. Andromeda's present to Hermione was odd, to say the least. At least his own present made sense. He reached into his other pocket and pulled out the old photo frame that Andromeda sent him.

"Is – is that your mother?" Hermione asked, as she stared at the blonde haired woman standing beside Andromeda in the photograph.

"Yes. You remember her?"

Hermione stared at the picture for a moment, before she smiled. "You look a lot like her."

He could live with that. Better to look like his mother, than the man he'd come to hate with every fibre of his being.

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It came back in the middle of the night and in the middle of a dream.

She'd been having one of her nightmares. It proceeded in the usual fashion – a litany of Crucios, an eternity of torturing and a silent scream wedged in her throat. Draco called her name, but she with could never find him.

This time, the voices of her captors changed. The Crucios morphed into a sentence — one long forgotten, but her heart froze when she heard it again:

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Draco awoke when Hermione's fingers convulsed within his. He cast a quick Muffliato and settled down next to her. It was just in time before she began to thrash around. He hauled her up and cupped her cheeks, ignoring the blows she rained down on him.

"Granger," his voice was calm. After all, he'd dealt with this so often that it never fazed him anymore. "Granger, wake up."

Her eyes focused on him. "Draco?"

"Yeah, it's me."

She sighed in relief and buried her face against his neck. He wrapped his arms around her and held her for a moment. "I remember," she murmured at last.

"What?"

"I-I remember why I was captured."

He froze, then pulled back from her. "What did you say?"

She leaned forward to grasp his hands. "I really do remember. They asked me – " She shuddered and took a deep breath to calm herself. "They asked me where the Deathly Hallows were."

"What?"

"It – it was in the book. I read it earlier and I didn't think much of it...but then I had that nightmare and I remembered," she explained, scrambling up to reach for the book on the bedside table. Draco immediately summoned his wand to him, lighting it up with a silent Lumos. He saw that it was the one Andromeda had given to Hermione.

"The Tale of Three Brothers," Hermione began, flipping through the pages haphazardly and pointing to various paragraphs. "Three brothers. They met Death, and Death said they could have anything they want. The oldest brother – he wanted a powerful wand that Death fashioned from an elder tree."

He froze.

"The second one wanted a stone that could bring back the dead. And – and the third wanted a cloak of invisibility. These are the Deathly Hallows."

His mind reeled. "And the Death-Eaters who captured you wanted you to tell them where they were?"

"Yes. They call themselves – The Peverells."

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The other three Slytherins were quick to come out of their respective rooms when Draco knocked on their doors in the middle of the night. They had their wands with them, faces alert with the knowledge that nothing good ever happened past midnight and that anything could happen during a war.

But it was different this time round. They stopped in surprise to see Draco sitting at the kitchen table while Hermione brewed a pot of tea.

"This better be good," grumbled Theo. He settled next to Draco and dropped his head on the table. Blaise and Pansy sat opposite them, looking tired but curious.

"It is," Draco returned shortly. He waited until Hermione had returned with the tea and poured out cups for everyone. Hermione sat on the other side of Draco, leaning in close as her hand automatically latched onto his jumper.

"Alright, listen up," Draco started and paused, reaching over to grab Theo by the scruff of his neck because the idiot was actually falling asleep again. "Granger has something to say."

Hermione's eyes widened when the others turned to her. "I-I thought you were going to tell them."

"It's your story to tell, Granger."

So she did. She told them everything she had recalled that night. The Deathly Hallows – the wand, the stone and the cloak, the Peverells and what they wanted from her. When she was done, everyone was silent.

Hermione swallowed hard and bit her lip. She could practically see them internalising her information. Blaise was thinking hard, she could almost hear the gears whirring in his head; while Pansy looked utterly surprised and Theo was just confused.

"What you're saying," Blaise broke the silence at last, "is that all this while, we've been chasing for leads when the real lead was with Hermione all along?"

Her eyes widened. "You've been searching for the Deathly Hallows too?"

"Not the Deathly Hallows," Pansy corrected. "The Peverells. Some days ago, we received a tip-off about a secret organisation within the Dark Lord's inner circle. They call themselves the Peverells. We've been trying to find out exactly who they are, but it hasn't been easy."

"Why – why would you want to find them?" Hermione sounded even more confused now, and Theo began to chuckle in amusement, only for Draco to smack him soundly on the head.

"Ow!" Theo glared at his friend, then grinned at Hermione. "Remember what I told you about us hating the Dark Lord? That's part and parcel of that."

Blaise rolled his eyes. "What Theo means to say is – we're Death-Eaters gone rogue. We want to end this war. That's our goal. That's the reason why we're all here."

"You guys – " Hermione still seemed rather unsure, "do you guys help the Order?"

"No." The response was immediate and came from all four of the Slytherins, and both Theo and Draco looked somewhat disgusted.

"No," Pansy repeated, softer this time. "We don't help the Order, because they're in a bad shape – "

"More like fucked-up – "

" – thanks for your input, Theo," Pansy scowled at him and turned back to Hermione. "The Order isn't even equipped to fight one-tenth of the Dark Lord's army, especially since the Dark Lord's been recruiting so much over the years. They're practically in pieces. So as for us, we simply get information. That's what all the phials are for. We get information about the Order and prevent it from ever reaching the Dark Lord. So, for instance, if we chance upon a traitor of the Order going over to the Dark Lord's side, we stop him, extract his memories and kill him right after," she finished bluntly.

"Similarly," Blaise chimed in, grinning when Hermione's mouth fell open in abject horror, "if we find a Death-Eater who isn't loyal to the Dark Lord, we extract his memories, show it to the Dark Lord and let the Dark Lord kill the traitor off himself. That's called thinning out the army, so we prevent the Dark Lord's army from growing. It's all very bloody and brutal, really."

"You couldn't have put it in a nicer way?" Draco growled at Blaise. He turned to Hermione, whose face was white as she clutched his jumper. How would she react if she knew that the mastermind behind this plan was him?

"Sorry," Blaise said apologetically.

"It's fine." Hermione gave them a faint smile. "There just seems to be a lot of killing though."

Theo chuckled. "It's a fucking war, Hermione, and we're Death-Eaters. It's either kill or be killed."

"We just want the war to end," Pansy added. "The war's lasted three years and we'd rather it not last another three."

Hermione fell silent for a moment, before she took a deep breath. "And this...this is the only way to end the war?"

The other three looked at Draco, who simply shrugged. "It's the only way we know how to end the war, Granger."

"I see," Hermione breathed, and looked directly at Draco with a tiny smile playing on her lips. "So – can I help?"