Chapter Seven
Draco wrapped his arms around his chest, hunching against the steady rain and gusting wind. The boat rocked in the water, the ocean's brine collecting on his shoes and cloak, and Draco knew that good sense would be to make for the mainland.
But he was beyond good sense. He had crossed that thin line into insanity the moment he agreed to come to Barra Head and decided to stay there after he'd gotten to know its only resident. A chill crawled over his skin as the moon rose, wielding its power even from behind thick clouds. A mournful howl echoed over the waves, and Draco saw, between flashes of distant lightning, a dark shadow begin to race around the island. Running in circles, going nowhere.
He felt its pain. His time on the island was limited, and though he could lecture Hermione on tempered hope and measured progress easily enough, it was harder to convince himself. Each failure dragged him deeper into research fatigue. If his mind slipped into familiar patterns, he might lose his edge, and research without innovation was like a Hippogriff with clipped wings: impressive but useless.
Fortunately, Snape had prepared him for this, emphasizing the importance of questioning assumptions, no matter how unlikely. In Hermione's case, there was plenty to doubt — the nature of her immunity, the mechanism of the Wolfsbane potion, the interaction of the virus and the moon...
A thought struck him, and he raised his eyes to the east-southeast, where the moon had started its climb into the night sky.
His and Hermione's shared attempts had so far focused on interrupting one of the viral pathways triggered by interaction of moonlight and the virus. But what if he tried to stop the moonlight from reaching the virus? Belby had tried this approach, of course, and had dismissed it as a lost cause. But Draco was better than Belby – more intelligent, more thorough, and certainly more motivated.
If he could find a way to protect the virus, to shield it from the moon's effects, he could prevent Hermione's transformation. If he could reflect the light back, or find a substance that would absorb it…
A substance like Datura.
Moonflowers.
He nearly shot to his feet, and the abrupt motion caused the tiny boat to heave. Draco gripped the bench beneath him and, when the boat steadied, withdrew his wand. He tapped it once on the craft's stern, turning it away from Barra Head and motoring it toward the Scottish mainland.
There was no time to waste. Datura, which only bloomed at night, were most potent when harvested when the full moon reached its zenith.
He had to get to Hogwarts.
Draco hung the freshly picked moonflowers upside down by his hearth to dry as he shrunk all the spare cauldrons he could find. He brushed aside a tower of correspondence and old Daily Prophets but paused when he saw Hermione's face staring up at him from the front page of the most recent copy. It was her mugshot, taken the morning after her rampage through St. Mungo's, almost immediately after she had learned of the harm the beast had caused. She was drawn and pale, and her eyes were dead. She looked capable of the murders she had committed, though Draco knew she had simply not yet processed what had happened.
A wave of simmering anger swept through his chest when his eyes skipped to the photo's accompanying headline.
Werewolf of London: Where Is Hermione Granger?
Astoria Greengrass, London 20 July 2013.
Fifteen years ago, Hermione Granger, famed war heroine and Muggle-born friend of Harry Potter, transformed into a werewolf and slaughtered twenty-three innocent people, including one nine-year-old child, at St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. The Wizengamot sentenced Granger to a life of exile for her heinous crimes, a judgment she has been serving ever since.
Or has she?
Sources close to the Ministry allege that Granger has not, in fact, been exiled from the United Kingdom. Though the sources did not specify where Granger currently resides, they are confident that she remains a citizen to this day.
The Minister for Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt, who also serves as Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, was a close friend of Granger's at the time of her trial, yet failed to recuse himself from her judgment or sentencing. (Minister Shacklebolt declined to comment on Granger's whereabouts or his own potential interference in her sentencing.)
An investigation into Granger's transformation found that it resulted from a natural immunity to Wolfsbane potion. When asked if an alternative to Wolfsbane potion had yet been discovered, Lucie Miere, Head Potioneer for St. Mungo's said, "St. Mungo's has allocated significant resources to Potion discoveries for all diseases, including Wolfsbane-immune lycanthropy. As of now, we have not yet had any success in a non-Wolfsbane treatment for the immune lycanthrope population."
Has our government allowed a dangerous werewolf to live among us for fifteen years?
Will Minister Shacklebolt be held accountable by the wizarding citizenry of the United Kingdom?
Where is Hermione Granger, and who else has she hurt?
Draco stalked through the castle until he reached Pansy's personal chambers. He pounded on the door, and he heard hushed voices break off mid-conversation. Quiet feet padded across the room.
"Can we help you?" Pansy said, cracking the door and giving Draco a supercilious look.
He ignored her and shoved past to confront Astoria, who reclined on the couch in a silk robe, drinking wine and looking nonplussed.
"Where did you get your information?"
She set down her glass and swung her feet onto the floor. "A good journalist protects her sources."
"You're not a journalist," he said derisively. "You're a muckraker, no better than that Skeeter woman."
Astoria's blue eyes narrowed, and she rose sinuously from her seat. "I seem to remember you working well with Rita in our fourth year."
"That was different. I was young and naive —"
"And you didn't have anything to hide," she finished with a smirk. "How is she doing on Barra Head, Draco?"
Panic sent his heart skidding to a halt.
"I know that's where you've been for the past two months, trying to cure her. I assume it's not going well, since you're here on a full moon. Tell me, how fast did Shacklebolt sign the permits once Potter put them through? Did he even read them, or were he and Potter so desperate to get their golden girl back on the mainland that they were merely rubber stamped?"
Draco spoke through clenched teeth. "What do you want?"
She moved closer to him, cupping his cheek with her hand, and rose onto hertiptoes to whisper into his ear. "You know what I want."
Draco studied her eyes, which were as cold and calculating as her touch. "You can't blackmail me into being with you."
She raised a blonde eyebrow. "Oh? So far, my quill has been aimed at Shacklebolt and Granger. I've kept you out of it. But that can change. It can get so much worse for you, Draco. It can get so much worse for all of you."
"It will anyway, I imagine. You posted that story two days ago — how long had you been working on it? And how many other articles do you have ready to go to press?" He scoffed. "You never expected me to accept your terms."
Astoria lifted a shoulder in a careless shrug, as if his decision hadn't mattered either way. "It was unlikely, but I had to try."
He looked at Pansy. "And you're okay with this?"
She shifted her weight. "I've always loved to see you squirm," she said, hedging, "but Astoria, don't you think you may be going a little far?"
"I'd be doing our society a justice by exposing the Ministry's lies and corruption."
"It's not just them you'd be exposing," Draco snapped. "Hermione's been through enough without you dredging up the past."
Astoria's eyes widened, and Draco realized his mistake.
"Hermione." Astoria's composure dissolved into an ugly sneer. "On a first-name basis, are you? And how else have you familiarized yourself, I wonder? How else have you disgraced your family and your blood? She's a Mudblood, a murderer, and a monster, and you —"
Draco's silent hex deflected off the shield Pansy cast between them, blasting apart a half-empty bottle in an explosion of green glass and red wine. Astoria flinched, then leveled a cruel smile at him.
"I hope your goodbye was a sweet one, Draco. Because once I'm through, she'll never want to see you again."
Draco sprinted through the school's corridors, ingredient satchel banging against his hip at each footfall. The moment he cleared the Anti-Apparition boundary, he spun on his heel. The smell of the salty ocean air made filled him with hope. Barra Head was just a short boat ride away.
He tossed his satchel into the boat and gripped one side to run it into the surf but lurched backwards when the boat didn't budge. Kingsley gripped the stern with a restraining hand and an uncompromising expression. Behind him stood Harry, who looked out at the water.
"You never saw me," Draco offered, his entire body tense, eyes darting between the two men. "The boat was gone when you arrived."
"Can't do that, Malfoy," Kingsley said, his voice a rumble. "We're in enough trouble as is."
Draco drew his wand and aimed it at the Minister. "You gave me permission to go."
"And now I'm rescinding it. Magical Law Enforcement will arrest you the minute you set foot on that island, and you will be charged with criminal trespassing."
"Lower your wand, Malfoy."
Draco shifted his aim to Harry. "I promised her, Potter. I promised her I'd come back."
"We'll write her a letter, explain everything. She'll understand."
"No letters."
"But Kingsley —"
"Bullshite!"
Kingsley's voice rose above their protests. "Greengrass's next article has already been submitted to the Prophet. It will run in the morning, and there's nothing I can do to stop it. Ministry advocates have prohibited all incoming and outgoing communication with the island until they have a better understanding of our legal footing and what information Greengrass has. There's nothing we can do for her tonight, so for Merlin's sake, Malfoy, lower your wand and go home. I'll let you know when something changes. Potter, we'll talk more soon."
Kingsley Disapparated, and Draco lowered his wand.
"How did this get out?" he asked with a growl.
Harry shook his head. "I don't know yet. We kept this close. Kingsley, Ginny and me, and some paper pusher down in Legal."
Draco ran a hand through his hair and stared longingly out at the ocean, where on a barren molar of rock and scrub grass, a beast ran in circles. In a few hours, a woman would wake, naked and alone and looking for him. When she didn't find him, she would pick herself up and close herself off, all the lies she had convinced herself were true over the past fifteen years starkly reinforced by his broken promise.
Potter stood next to him on the shoreline. "How is she?"
"Getting better."
"But?"
"She's afraid. She doesn't think she belongs in this world anymore."
Harry sighed. "She's always been good at self-sacrifice."
"Would it kill her to be bad at something, for once?" Draco grumbled.
Harry huffed a laugh and turned to Draco with an appraising look. "I thought Ginny was mad when she suggested we ask for your help, but you might be just what Hermione needed. Go figure." He took his glasses off and put them in his shirt pocket, preparing to Disapparate. "I'll be in touch, Malfoy."
Every two days, a new article hit the Prophet's front page, unveiling Hermione's story bit by bit. First, Astoria dredged up Hermione's personal history and role in the war, questioning her reputation as both a heroine and symbol of a reformed society. Then, with excruciating detail, Astoria documented her disastrous fall to a murderous half-breed. She speculated on Hermione's mental state, theorizing that the isolation had made her even more unstable and suggesting, to the rabid support of anti-werewolf activists, that reintegration into society would be impossible and dangerous.
An entire week was devoted to corruption within the Ministry: how Hermione's "exile" was hardly exile at all, and the role Kingsley and Harry had played in her sentencing. An emotional interview with the murdered boy's mother, Emmeline Potts, intensified Astoria's miscarriage of justice angle and drummed up more public support from victim's rights groups across wizarding society.
Draco was brought in soon after. Astoria took great pains to remind the public of his own colorful past and his current role in shaping the lives of young, innocent, and impressionable children. He sent the resulting influx of Howlers zooming to Pansy's quarters and was pleased to see, during their infrequent run-ins on the Hogwarts grounds, that she sported several singed fingers.
Astoria also discussed the on-going attempts to find an alternative treatment for lycanthropy, even recruiting Belby himself to swear it couldn't be done. In a scathing interview, Belby insisted that Draco's work was futile and, indeed, an assignment to be pitied. That only someone whose work brought no value to the wizarding world would be given it, and only someone who knew that to be true would take it.
Draco thought that, after attacking his reputation and career, there could be no further avenue left to insult. But in her third article about him, Astoria made good on her promise to ruin him.
She hinted that Draco himself was the source of her information.
She never stated it in a way that a reader unfamiliar with the specifics of Hermione's exile would understand, but her profile of everyday life on Barra Head held details so minute that they could not be guessed at; they had to have come from a primary source, someone who had been to the island, who had seen it with their own eyes. Astoria knew about the agreement with the Muggles to maintain the lighthouse, the layout and inner appearance of the residence, and the restrictions of the wards. She knew details about Hermione's health and daily habits. She knew about the dirt track worn around the island's circumference.
As the final piece of her exposé, after she had laid the groundwork for the danger Hermione posed, the Ministry's complicity, and Draco's impractical task, after she had stoked the public's fears into a wild blaze, Astoria provided a new target in a remarkable three-word publication: Barra Head Island.
An exodus of reporters, opponents, supporters, and curious onlookers flooded the choppy North Atlantic, surrounding Hermione's small island. They brought signs and wrote messages in the air that, good or bad, would last for hours. They yelled with magically magnified voices, used long-range lenses to try to snap pictures of her, and filled bottles with quill and parchment in attempts to reach her for a quote. Kingsley deployed a Magical Law Enforcement patrol to ensure no one attempted to breach the island, but as they had no authority over the surrounding water, they could do nothing to prevent people from gathering.
Though it was tempting to follow the news, to take a magnifying glass to every printed photo for even a glimpse of her, Draco ignored it all. He kept his nose in his cauldron and burned his copies of the Prophet. The August full moon was fast approaching, and he had work to do.
Draco stood in the shadows of a large tree and stared out at the green and red lights bobbing across the water. Dozens upon dozens of boats had launched into the North Atlantic – some privately owned, some rented, some chartered tours – to see the spectacle of a werewolf transformation from the safety of the water. His fingers itched with the desire to curse every single one of them.
A faint pop drew him from the shadows, and Harry appeared next to the rickety rowboat.
"About time."
"Kingsley held me up. I think he knows." He tapped his wand twice against the boat's hull. "That should get the boat through the Ministry's protection wards, but once you set foot on that island, they'll be after you."
"I know."
Harry nodded toward Draco's satchel. "Will it work?"
Draco brushed his fingers across the satchel's soft leather, forever stained with the ocean's salt water, and thought he could feel the magic of his Datura potion. "It'd better."
Together, they pushed the boat into the water.
"Good luck," Harry said, and Draco raised a parting hand before tapping his wand on the boat's stern and motoring through the ocean's chop.
The island loomed larger. Several boats drifted close to the island, some with floodlights and opportunistic photographers perched on their bows. Draco hexed the ones in range, feeling a grim satisfaction as their lights exploded in a shower of sparks.
He took the long way around the island, dodging the Ministry's lone patrol boat and pulling onto the rocky shore at the dilapidated jetty on the island's northwest side. He slung his satchel over his shoulder and checked his watch. Five minutes until moonrise. He didn't think about how quickly he could make the climb up the steep north slope or what he would find when he did. He just leapt from the boat and began to sprint, desperate to reach her before Magical Law Enforcement reached him.
He crested the rise and saw her leaning against the lighthouse and staring at the sky.
"Hermione!"
She opened her eyes and turned around, the hem of her bathrobe swishing around her calves. She looked at him as if he were a ghost and backed away in fear.
"You can't be here!" she shouted, her voice shaking. "It's almost time, you can't!"
He skidded to a stop before her and shoved the vial into her hands. It glittered like moonlight across the ocean, pearlescent and shining.
"Drink it! Now!"
Draco spun and drew his wand as several cracks broke her stunned silence. Magical Law Enforcement had arrived.
"Wand down, hands up!" an officer with the nametag reading "Nune" shouted.
"You're too late!" Draco shouted. "Moonrise!"
Their eyes turned to the east, where the incandescent moon had eclipsed the horizon. The five officers exploded into action. Three Disapparated, while Nune and the officer to his right lunged forward, hands clamping around Draco's arms and hauling him backwards.
He struggled against them, rapt eyes focused on Hermione alone. The empty vial fell from her limp fingers, and she shuddered. A tremor caused her skin to ripple like water disturbed by a skipped stone, and then she collapsed. Her body jerked spasmodically: she was seizing.
Draco wrenched himself away from his captors and sprinted to her, falling to his knees by her side. When he rolled her over, she was still.
"No!" He moaned. "No, no, no… Ennervate. Ennervate!"
She woke with a choked gasp and the hideous crack of breaking bones. Draco fell backwards and scuttled away, watching in horror as the beast took hold, as her skin ripped and reformed around her wiry, elongated limbs. The pupils of her unnatural amber eyes tightened into pinpricks of black as they focused on him.
Draco's heart thundered against his ribcage, fear and failure equal actors in his paralysis. The beast rose onto its haunches, its lips pulling back over its fangs.
"GET DOWN!"
Twin jets of red light seared the air over his head and connected with the beast's chest. It flew backward, landing in a sprawl.
"Let's go!" said Nune with a growl, hefting Draco to his feet. Tight bindings pulled his arms behind his back, securing them at his wrists, and a short length of chain bound him between the ankles.
He let himself be dragged away, feeling boneless as he stared at the werewolf's motionless form.
The other officer approached the werewolf, wand carefully aimed.
"Is it out, Reed?" Nune shouted.
"Don't know… I can't — Shite!" Reed stumbled backward and broke into a stumbling run, his face a mask of terror. "Go! Go!"
The werewolf leapt toward the retreating officer and would have landed had Nune not sent a powerful hex sailing at its chest, knocking it off course. The werewolf landed on its feet, raking deep gouges into the earth as it slid to a stop at the edge of the cliff.
Reed Disapparated, and the beast staggered forward, its chest heaving as its eyes settled on Draco and Nune.
"I've got you now," Nune muttered, and before Draco could move, a burst of bright green light erupted from his wand. The beast dropped the moment it was hit, as still as a stone, and Draco felt something within him break as he was Disapparated from Barra Head.