Whew! Thought I'd update this before an ENTIRE YEAR passes.

Now, where did we leave off? In an attempt to resurrect Harry Potter, Hermione Granger has accidentally brought back the dead parts of Tom Riddle's soul. Uh-oh! Tom doesn't seem to be going anywhere, and he claims to want to help Hermione, so the two of them are travelling across Europe, trying to rejoin the friends that she hopes have survived the Death Eater raid on Hogwarts.

After a close-run thing in Amsterdam, Hermione and Tom have escaped the clutches of the Death Eaters and left Percy Weasley for not-quite-dead. Now they are making their way through France, following the enchanted compass that Andromeda gave Hermione. On their last night alone, the two of them have finally...cemented their relationship. At the Chateau Noir, we finally discover exactly who survived, and learn a bit more about what has happened in the years since Bill, Fleur, Andromeda and the kids left Britain.

Meanwhile in London, Percy Weasley, fresh from 'unsuccessfully' intercepting Hermione in Amsterdam, is in St Mungo's, where Pansy Parkinson, a woman of famously doubtful loyalties, has just walked in, dismissing the Aurors who were interrogating him.

And without further ado...

Chapter Fifteen: It Drowns in Itself

Before - 19th July 2002 - Chateau Noir, Uzès, Southern France

They arrived in the early evening, just as the bells in the little muggle town at the foot of the hill began to ring for Vespers.

Andromeda had barely settled Teddy and Victoire on the second floor when she felt a tell-tale crackle in the air. She hurried out to the balcony that overlooked the chateau's small courtyard. For a long moment there was nothing, just that odd, staticky twist against the skin, and then Blaise came tumbling out of nowhere, landing hard on the stone floor. His hand was tight around Ginny's, who in turn held a heavily-bleeding Theo by his upper arm, and the three of them collapsed into an ungainly pile.

They were followed almost immediately by Parvati, Luna and Anthony, who managed to keep their feet upon landing, though Luna swayed dangerously where she held Parvati's hand. Finally Daphne and Draco appeared, supporting Ron between them. As Andromeda turned to go down she saw Ron slump bonelessly against Draco's shoulder, apparently out cold, before she summoned her healing kit, catching it neatly from the air as she raced to the stairs.

By the time she reached the courtyard Bill and Charlie had beaten her there. Charlie was arranging Ron's limp limbs into a more comfortable position where he lay, while Bill seemed to be restraining Theo, who struggled weakly but determinedly against him until the older wizard pressed his lips together impatiently and cast a silent Stunning spell.

"Is this everyone?" he asked, once he'd let Theo gently down to the floor. Bill's bright blue eyes darted around the courtyard to take in the scant new arrivals, his brow furrowing slightly. "Where's Hermione?"

Ginny frowned slightly, looking from Bill to Blaise. "Hermione was never -"

"Granger had other things to do."

Ginny's eyes narrowed as Blaise interrupted her, but when she went to tug her hand free he held fast. Andromeda watched as Blaise slid his thumb across the girl's pale knuckles, and she glanced up in time to see the tense line of Ginny's shoulders relax just a touch. When Andromeda looked at Blaise he returned her gaze with such blank coolness that Andromeda felt herself start to smile.

"You're bleeding," was all she said, stepping briskly forward to press a dittany-soaked bandage to the cut above Blaise's eyebrow.

He scowled, then winced, replacing her hand with his to hold the dressing in place. "Thanks."

Andromeda nodded and turned away, deliberately avoiding Bill's gaze on her.

They had agreed when they first arrived in France that it would be best to engage with the wizarding community in Avignon as little as possible. Though the Ministre de la Magie had never confirmed an official diplomatic stance on Voldemort's regime in Britain, it just didn't seem worth the risk of drawing attention to themselves. Among the muggle townspeople in Uzès it was vaguely known that the beautiful widow who shopped at the market every week lived somewhere nearby, but strangely enough, any time anyone expressed more than mild curiosity about her they would suddenly recall an urgent appointment, or that they had left the gas on at home, or perhaps forgotten to lock their front door.

It was an isolated existence, but they al reasoned that was a small price to pay for safety. Charlie had joined them about a year after they first arrived: grey-faced as he delivered the worst of news: a raid on the Burrow, Molly, Arthur and George all killed. Bill had listened to him in silence, his cheeks growing paler and his jaw tighter with every word.

"Were you followed?" he had asked abruptly, when Charlie had finished relating the story. The younger Weasley had bridled at his brother's tone, but shaken his head.

"No," he had replied. "I'm certain of it."

"Then we stay here," Bill had said firmly, answering Andromeda's frown with a shake of his head. "One day we might need to be found."

"Are you -"

Bill had made a sweeping gesture with his hand. "We stay."

Even when Fleur had begun to grow fractious and distracted, her eyes turning more and more often to to the horizon, Bill had stubbornly refused to leave. Andromeda hadn't realised how severe the Veela woman's need to roam was until the morning that Bill came to sit at the breakfast table, tired and resigned, and had explained to Victoire that her mother would not be coming back.

Andromeda had laid a hand on his shoulder, meaning to comfort, but Bill had surprised her by leaning his cheek briefly against it, before he had risen from the table, long strides carrying him quickly from the room. She had never learned where he had spent the next day and a half, but he had arrived back with new-forged steel behind the blue of his eyes.

She shook off the memories of those past arrivals and exits, and with a last glance around the courtyard to satisfy herself that nobody was in mortal danger, Andromeda quietly slipped away.

She climbed the spiral staircase slowly to the tower bedroom that had been hers since she was a child who spent her summers chasing her sisters around the chateau. There, with the heavy door closed behind her, she pulled out the compass that was the twin to the one that she had pressed into Hermione's palm years before, and watched the needle, which pointed steadily north-east.

Hours later, when the summer light was just starting to mellow into darkness, and the quiet clamour of settling the new arrivals had died down, the needle twitched minutely - the angle between north and east growing slightly more pronounced. A few minutes later, the needle began to gently revolve.

"There's still some dinner left over, if you're hungry?"

Andromeda jumped, even though Bill had spoken quietly, and instinctively covered the face of the compass with one hand. She tried to compose her features as she turned towards him, slipping her hand into her pocket, but his frown told her she hadn't been particularly successful.

"Are you alright?" he asked. When Andromeda still didn't say anything he narrowed his eyes slightly before stepping into the room, drawing the door closed behind him. "Andy?"

She wasn't sure when they'd become close enough for Bill to read the nuances of her expressions: to understand the subtleties of a shrug; a wave of the hand; a tilt of the chin. Usually she was able to dismiss it: such was the way of adults who needed to keep their conversations above the comprehension of inquisitive children.

Bill's eyes on hers told a different story, but Andromeda ignored it, biting her lip as she considered whether it would be worth the obvious lie. "Fine, thank you. A little shaken."

The angle of Bill's jaw tightened, just a touch, though his gaze remained thoughtful. "I think everyone could do with a stiff drink after that news."

If Ted had produced the glasses and firewhiskey from the air, it would have been with a magician's flourish. Bill made it the quotidian act that Andromeda had grown up believing it to be, and she accepted the tumbler he held out to her with a wary gratitude, feeling the gulf of the difference between the two men.

"Is Ron any better?" Andromeda asked, speaking before her thoughts could run away with her. None of the party that had arrived in the courtyard earlier had been in great shape, but given that the youngest Weasley brother had been unconscious...

"He'll be fine," Bill nodded. "Took a Stunning Spell head on, so he's a little shaky, but he came to straight away with an Enervate so we don't think there's any lasting damage."

Andromeda nodded. Her hand seemed to itch with the desire to reach for the compass. "Where did they say that Hermione had gone?"

Bill's eyes narrowed. "Funny thing," he said slowly, sipping his whisky. "They didn't." His gaze flicked down to the empty desktop. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about that would you?"

When Ted had died the needle had swung back to point unerringly towards Andromeda. This was different: the needle had been spinning slowly round, steadily turning through a full 360 degrees. It was as though Hermione were not simply gone, but somehow entirely beyond the reach of the charm that pointed to the bearer of the compass's pair.

Andromeda raised her glass to her lips, holding Bill's stare. "I've absolutely no idea," she said.

6th August 2002, St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, London

"I think we both know you don't want the Veritaserum, Percy," Pansy remarked as Auror Haneda closed the door behind her.

"Do we now," Percy asked drily. Now that the odds were level, he briefly considered making a break for it, running through a mental litany of wandless spells until -

"And I'd advise you against that as well," Pansy sniffed, and Percy let his balled fists relax. He hadn't even begun casting, so he hadn't a clue how she'd known what he intended.

"Against what?"

"Don't be coy, Weasley. You're not a fool, and neither am I." Pansy began examining her nails in an affected show of boredom. "I suggest," she went on, in a voice slow and sweet as treacle, "that you refrain from lying to me."

"Why are you all so convinced I'm lying?" Percy demanded. "What's next, torturing it out of me? I might point out that Granger already tried that one, so unless you've decided to just kill me and get it over with -"

"Not exactly Granger's style though, torture, is it?" Pansy mused, finally meeting his eyes again, and smiling slightly.

"People change," Percy replied tersely.

"Our Lady of The Moral High Ground?" Pansy cocked her head and wrinkled her nose. "Unlikely, I think."

The conversation - interrogation - whatever it was - was taking something of an unexpected turn, and Percy decided to try hiding his discomfort behind bluster.

"Well it isn't as though you knew her very well. Didn't you spend most of your time at each other's -"

"Careful, Weasley," Pansy's smile was back.

Percy subsided against the pillows. His arm was beginning to throb where it was secured to the bed, and he felt uncomfortably flustered under Pansy's searching gaze. "Why don't you just tell me what you want me to say?" he asked tiredly, before another question occurred to him. "What is it you do, anyway? You're obviously important enough to pull rank on the Aurors, but I've never -"

"I have won the Dark Lord's favour," Pansy said, and for a moment her expression turned fragile. "He trusts me to bring him what he wants."

Percy felt a shiver move across his skin at her words. "And what does he want?"

The flash of vulnerability that had shown in Pansy's face dropped away. "An 'end to this tiresome rebellion.'"

Her red-painted lips quirked faintly at the sight of Percy's flinch. She had caught the rasping whine of Voldemort's voice too perfectly to be anything but mocking. Her eyes didn't waver from his, and Percy felt the prickle of gooseflesh for an entirely different reason.

"And what -" he paused, just stopping himself from licking his lips nervously. "What do you want?"

At this Pansy's smile widened. "Isn't that a question," she murmured, sitting back in her chair.

Now - 7th August 2002 - Pont-Saint-Esprit, France

Outside the window the stars lay sprawled across the moonless sky in an endless riot. At some point the night had turned cool, and Hermione shivered as she looked upwards, clasping her elbows to herself.

"Hermione."

He moved his mouth around her name as though it was something he owned; something he had claimed for himself and that Hermione could not help but turn towards the sound of.

She remembered, or half-remembered, Luna's words - call their name as a spell - as she pulled her gaze away from the stars. She caught a glimpse of him; a deeper shadow in the dark of the room; before he stepped to one side, casually removing himself from her line of sight in a way that was deliberate enough to make her blood jump in her veins.

"I realised something." Closer now, but just as quiet.

"What?" she asked, hearing the way her breath caught in the single word, her fingers tightening into fists at her sides as she fought the shiver that threatened to rip its way through her. "What did you realise?"

His breath ghosted against the back of her neck and she sucked in a sharp little gasp, hearing him laugh softly behind her.

"It's a dangerous disadvantage," he murmured, his lips following the curve of her shoulder as he brushed her hair aside. "Feeling, that is," he went on, as his hand traced the neckline of her jumper.

"How -" Hermione asked, then paused, swallowing, as his other hand drifted around the curve of her hip to rest lightly against her stomach. "How so?"

He laughed again as she leaned back against him, and he reached beneath the jumper to palm her breast, pressing and pinching and teasing and how -

"Are you thinking of him?" he whispered, his lips right by her ear; his teeth a taunt, a temptation, as they grazed the lobe; and Hermione jumped as his fingers dove beneath her waistband, his hand curving to fit itself around her, where she could still feel the ache of him from just a few hours before.

"No," she said, her voice low, catching in her throat as she arched her back, pressing into him, her hand moving to tangle itself in his hair as she surrendered to a tremor of longing at the feel of him, hard against her.

She could feel the edge of his teeth at her neck like the most delicious threat, and as he squeezed her breast and pushed her underwear roughly aside, it was true. He was all that she thought of.

"Tom," she choked, and as her pulse seemed to crest and roar between her temples and her thoughts began to dissolve into blissful nothingness, she heard him laugh.

"Liar," he whispered, and Hermione's eyes flew open to see the flash of the familiar round glasses in the windowpane; the empty sockets of the death's head that grinned back at her before she screamed.

"Hermione? Hermione!"

For a moment she could not tell where the dream ended and where he began; whose voice said her name, whose hands shook her awake, whose bare chest was against her back as she struggled and clawed at the arms that were wrapped around her -

And then it was Tom: it was Tom's lips that were soft against her ear, Tom's fingers wound tight in her hair as she took deep, shuddering breaths.

It was Tom who gently moved himself around her; Tom who knelt on the floor by the side of the bed and looked up into her face. It was Tom whose skin was pale and taut across the elegant bones of his face, whose jaw clenched into angular shadow and whose hair fell into unruly curls across his forehead as he gazed up at her and asked, "What happened?"

It was Tom's eyes that darkened with anger as Hermione told him of the dream, and it was Tom's shoulder that she dropped her head onto and sobbed as though it might be enough to exorcise whatever version of Harry it was that had decided to haunt her.

"It was just a dream," he murmured into her hair, and Hermione nodded, wanting desperately to believe him. She remembered the curve of that cruel, too-wide smile and shuddered, and Tom pushed himself backwards, his expression suddenly fierce.

"Who answered the call, when you came looking for a dead man?" he demanded, and Hermione's heart leapt in her chest as his grip on her wrists turned almost painful.

"You did," she whispered. "You're the one who -"

"Right," Tom nodded. "And I'm not letting anyone else anywhere near you, have you got that?"

There was something close to mania in the glint of his eyes, and though she suspected that it should have scared her, Hermione couldn't help but lean in towards him, her breath escaping in a sigh when Tom tipped his chin up to meet her mouth with his.

"You're mine," he growled. "Mine to fight for, mine to live for, mine to -"

"Yes," she agreed. "Yes I am, but -"

"No buts," Tom said, and then he was pushing her back onto the bed, and this time her eyes were wide open, staring into his - that bright and violent blue - before he dipped his head to kiss her; to cement his claim of ownership.

Mine, Hermione thought, as her breath came short and her nails dug into the too-too-solid flesh of him. Bought and paid for.

She remembered the eddying glimmer of the strange place hidden beneath the waters of the Well of Souls; that first salt-taste of his lips as her hands had closed around his.

Mine.

Afterwards they lay together, Tom's fingers playing languidly along the keys of her ribs. "I always thought it a dangerous disadvantage," he said pensively, "to feel things in this way."

Hermione felt her blood run cold, the sickening sensation of déjà-vu, and she turned, very deliberately, to face him. "How so?" she whispered, hoping that her voice sounded anywhere close to normal. She held her breath, waiting for his laugh to turn cruel, for the skin to peel back from the bones of his face and the nightmare to repeat itself and -

"I thought that it would make me vulnerable," Tom answered her softly. "All I ever saw was how Potter was at the mercy of his feelings, how it made him hopelessly reckless and how eventually he died for it, but then -"

"But what?" Hermione asked. She raised her hand and ignored the trembling in her fingers to lay them against Tom's mouth.

"But he wasn't afraid," Tom said, his lips cool against her fingertips.

"Are you?"

The question settled as a weight between the pair of them on the bed, and Tom looked at her: a long look that seemed to work its way beneath her skin to her very core.

The kiss of his teeth against her palm. "Not anymore," he whispered.

6th August 2002, Chateau Noir, Uzès, Southern France

When she found him he was standing on the crumbling ramparts, cigarette clamped between his lips. Andromeda bit down on the urge to scold him to step back, the way she would have done with Teddy. Bill was more than old enough to judge the danger for himself, and not hers to scold besides.

He glanced down at her, expression unreadable. Most of the time Andromeda forgot that Arthur Weasley's mother had been Cedrella Black, but in the evening twilight she could see the evidence of it in the smooth, hard lines of Bill's face, even beneath the tracery of jagged scars.

The cigarette tip glowed as he inhaled, cutting his gaze away, and her mind jumped to what terrible spies smokers made. The unmistakable scent of it. How Sirius had ever thought merely being invisible would be enough to sneak around Hogwarts was beyond -

"Andy?"

It took her a moment to register that Bill was holding the cigarette out to her, and Andromeda's stomach swooped with deja-vu as she remembered Ted doing exactly the same thing that night up in the Astronomy Tower, when they'd finished their Prefects' rounds and it was just the two of them, blissfully, impossibly alone, for the first time ever.

She'd already half-reached for the cigarette before she stopped herself, folding her arms and clenching her fingers against her sides to stop them shaking. "I won't, thanks," she said quietly.

Bill's face - eerie, pureblood handsomeness hidden just below the surface of freckles and scars - tightened momentarily with scepticism. His eyes narrowed slightly, reading more in her refusal than she had meant to reveal, before he shrugged and looked back towards the glowering horizon.

"How long, do you think?"

The compass was in her pocket, her constant companion these past weeks, and Andromeda's fingers tightened around her biceps to stop herself from reaching for it. As it was, she was so conscious of its weight against her thigh that it was almost as though it was burning her. She had been watching the needle twitch in ever-smaller increments for two days, but over the last couple of hours it had held steady, pointing just shy of north west, and Andromeda guessed that Hermione - or whoever was now in possession of the compass - had stopped for the night.

Two days since the owl from Percy. Two days of watching the horizon with silent dread, of hoping that she hadn't given out the means of their destruction.

Hermione apprehended in Amsterdam with unknown wizard, Percy's note had said. Heading to try and intercede now. If you are reading this I have not performed the counter-charm to prevent this owl being automatically dispatched, so please assume that I have been unsuccessful.

"Tomorrow," Andromeda said, feeling the leaden certainty of the statement sitting in her stomach.

"Right then," Bill said, taking a last drag on the cigarette. "I guess we'd best tell everyone to be ready."

He turned as though to leave, and Andromeda shot a hand out, catching him around the wrist. "William -"

"Don't," Bill growled, voice feral enough to bely the slither of waning moon that had appeared in the twilight above them. "Not unless you mean it."

Andromeda dropped her hand. "I -"

Bill gave her another long look, then shook his head. "I didn't think so."

A heavy debt of gratitude to those of you who have stuck with this story despite my horrifying lack of updates. Special thanks to dearest cocoartistwrites for superb prodding and poking and the very excellent suggestion of including a Jane the Virgin-style recap. Onwards!