Kevin had barely finished telling Dumbledore what had happened when the Aurors arrived, professors close behind.
"Albus, what's going on?"
Professor McGonagall was first through the treeline, her robes snapping at her heels. She spotted Kevin and the others immediately — the whole ragged, dirt-smeared group of them.
"Nothing to worry about, Minerva." Dumbledore's tone was light, almost fond. "A few restless students who wandered out of school grounds and straight into the arms of some Death Eaters who'd been lying in wait."
He glanced sideways at Kevin as he said it. Kevin, standing at his elbow, had gone very still and very small.
McGonagall read the situation in an instant. She turned to Kevin, one finger already rising — then caught the Aurors watching from ten paces back and swallowed the lecture whole. Her eyes found Kevin's instead, and the look she gave him was thorough, clinical, and devastating.
We will be having words.
Kevin tucked his chin toward his chest. There was brave, and then there was suicidal, and arguing with McGonagall fell firmly in the second category. He'd seen her make Dumbledore look apologetic. He wasn't about to test his odds.
He gave his account to the Aurors quickly. Bored, wandered into the Forbidden Forest, encountered hostiles. Standard teenage misadventure. He left out Norbert entirely — that particular detail would not be improving anyone's mood. The Death Eater bodies were mostly intact, which gave the Aurors something useful to work with: locations, identities, any hideout worth raiding.
Once the lockdown lifted and the Aurors had what they needed, Kevin spotted a familiar silhouette sprinting across the grounds toward them.
He moved fast.
Hermione was still a hundred metres out. Harry and Ron were behind her. Kevin grabbed his chance, pivoted, and slipped away around the back of the crowd before McGonagall could redirect her attention.
He caught up with Hermione before she reached the main group, steered her gently by the shoulder, and began walking her toward the castle.
"You're okay?" She was slightly breathless, scanning him for damage. "Why did you leave school grounds? What happened?"
"Long story. I'll explain on the way."
Harry and Ron fell into step beside them. Kevin walked and talked, giving them the broad outline — the Death Eaters, the confrontation, Dore.
But if he was honest with himself, the fight wasn't what was occupying his mind.
It was the bracelet.
He'd always meant to dig deeper into it. Study the alchemy, trace the origins. Life had piled up the way it always did, and it had stayed on the shelf. He'd never imagined he'd stumble across someone who already knew its history — a stranger, showing up at exactly the right moment in exactly the wrong place.
"So hold on," Harry said, when Kevin had finished. "You and Hermione are basically each other's Horcruxes?"
"Not quite." Kevin turned his wrist over, studying the soft gleam of the bracelet in the low light. "We're not carrying indestructible soul fragments. It doesn't work like a true Horcrux. But the soul protection — the way it anchors you, the way it keeps you from dying permanently — that part works the same way."
He'd told them everything Dore had shared. Draco had been there for the whole conversation; there was no point filtering it now.
"That's still extraordinary," Hermione said quietly.
"That's insane," Ron said, not quietly at all. "So if we all borrowed the bracelets and wore them for a couple years, could we get the same thing?"
He was already doing the arithmetic. Undying squad. Permanent protection. The possibilities lit up behind his eyes like a spell going off.
Kevin tilted his head. "I genuinely don't know. It's Dore's word against nothing. I'm not going to test it by standing in front of a Killing Curse."
"Why don't you try them?"
He slid his bracelet off. Hermione did the same. They passed them across — Harry took Hermione's, the one with the pale pink stone, and Ron took Kevin's.
Harry turned it over in his hands, then fed a careful thread of magic into it.
Nothing happened. Not a flicker.
"Is Hermione's broken?"
"It was working fine five minutes ago," Hermione said, frowning.
Ron tried the same on his end. Same result — silence.
Kevin rubbed the back of his neck, thinking. "One pair at a time, maybe. Only active for whoever they've bonded to."
It made a grim sort of sense. If you could pass them around freely, you'd build an immortal relay team — half the group resting while the other half fought, cycling through deaths and resurrections. The thing would be catastrophically broken.
It also explained his parents. They hadn't just handed the bracelets to someone else and walked away. The bond didn't transfer like that. They'd faced the Death Eaters without it.
Harry and Ron returned the bracelets. Both lit up the moment they settled back into Kevin's and Hermione's hands.
Ron's expression went briefly deflated. Then Harry spoke again.
"Kevin." He was watching him carefully. "How does Dore know any of this?"
It was a fair question. Everything about the bracelet — the origins, the mechanics, the way it interacted with Voldemort's soul-scarring curse — had come from Dore. A boy Kevin had never spoken to properly before tonight.
"My guess?" Kevin said. "Dore isn't a student. Not really. He was placed at Hogwarts."
"By Dumbledore," Hermione finished.
"That's my read."
Only Hermione had known about his suspicions before. Harry and Ron had always taken Dore at face value — a transfer from Durmstrang, a little strange, nothing more.
Kevin walked them back through it: the early conversation with Dumbledore, the deliberately cryptic comment about Dore being descended from an old friend, the way the headmaster had offered nothing further. Then the later encounter in the Forbidden Forest — too much knowledge, too precisely timed, too composed for any ordinary student.
None of it was conclusive. But all of it pointed the same direction.
"If Dumbledore vouched for him," Harry said, after a moment, "then he's probably alright."
The others seemed to land on the same conclusion. Whatever Dore was hiding, the headmaster had decided he was worth trusting. For now, that was enough.