Chapter 10
Fugue
Hermione stood still, her gloved fingertips lightly touching the black iron surface of her desk as to brace herself. Its gleaming top, which never failed to remind her of an operating table and that for once wasn't hidden underneath dozens of parchments covered in scribbled notes, reflected her pale face leaning over it, oddly plain and shapeless in the artificial light that erased all notion of perspective inside the Chamber.
"Miss Granger!"
Hermione raised her head haggardly and met Monkstanley's icy eyes looking down at her from behind his metallic spectacles. His dry, sharp voice sounded like it was coming from afar, drowned out by the thundering of her blood that rushed in irregular waves from her chest and up her neck to her startled brain. Monkstanley bristled impatiently, his long fingers twitching at his side as though he was refraining from snapping them under her nose.
"Is that all, Miss Granger?" he repeated, jerking his head toward the trestle tables against the far wall of the Chamber, where a couple of Unspeakables were carefully encasing the selected manuscripts into flat, silver boxes under the supervision of a grim Curse-Breaker.
It was strange to see them busy themselves, their robes billowing around their ankles, their boots stomping on the floor, the metallic cases colliding with the iron surface of the tables, without ever making the faintest of sounds unless they spoke. She had never managed to get used to the deprivation of her senses inside the Archives Chamber.
Hermione focused her gaze back on Monkstanley's face and nodded stiffly. Her fingers were swimming in tacky sweat inside her dragon-hide gloves. Looking her over with a last annoyed glance, Monkstanley turned his back to her and walked over to the Unspeakables, leaving her standing by her desk bathed in the sterile light of the Chamber. She watched him examine the silver boxes, ticking off the books and manuscripts on the Index – a long scroll of snowy white parchment covered with columns of titles, names and dates. When she was sure he wasn't paying her any attention, she quickly swiped her hand over the desk, her gloved fingertips catching the small book that lay there.
When they had entered the Chamber some ten minutes earlier, Monkstanley and the Unspeakables had found her standing over that same book, staring blankly at its unremarkable front cover. It was over an hour before lunch, but he had come to tell her she could take her Friday afternoon and that she wouldn't be needed before a week. The Department was closing for "internal restructuring" he had said and had gestured for the others to start gathering the manuscripts she had set aside, but she had barely listened to him.
Hermione discretely edged toward the row of tables she had picked the book from and slipped it back on its previous spot. Her fingertips remained hovering over it for a fleeting moment as her gaze was inexorably glued to it once more. There was nothing particular about it; just a small, thick book of medieval origin with a faded black leather binding. It did not even have a title or an author inscribed on its cover, and that must have been why she hadn't immediately recognized it although she had been carrying its twin in her bag for almost a year. Said twin had had a title – 'Secrets of the Darkest Art' by Owle Bullock – but was now a heap of ashes scattered to the wind, burnt with most of the contents of her beaded handbag she had never even attempted to fully unpack.
Before realizing she was holding its second volume, she had opened the copy that now lay on the trestle table before her without much expectation. It had taken her a moment to comprehend the seemingly senseless markings written in a minute scrawl on every inch of free paper, allowing no space for the margins. There were Egyptian hieroglyphs, Celtic Runes and early variants of Greek and Latin woven into a text mainly written in Middle English. At first sight, it was an absurd mix that had no head nor tail: retellings of Antique myths and rituals – Muggle and Wizarding – followed Alchemy instructions, and more or less accurate historical fragments were laced with quotes in various languages: Paracelsus, Pliny the Elder, Hippocrates, Celsus…
The book exhaled the same aura its burnt twin once had and that made her skin crawl and stirred a compulsive need to wash her hands even though she was wearing gloves. On a closer look, this copy was more battered, and the taut leather had crackled around one of the corners, revealing the filling of the binding – layers and layers of some thin material, hard and brown. Mummified. Hermione swallowed the bile rising in her throat and withdrew her hand. It was trembling uncontrollably but luckily Monkstanley hadn't noticed it, and she didn't care enough to attempt hiding it.
"You are dismissed, Miss Granger."
She didn't need telling twice. In a few strides, she was at her desk, tearing off her gloves and scooping up her coat, scarf and bag. She was amazed by her own ability to walk straight and with apparent composure as she crossed the Chamber and left without a word. She stood still as the walls of the Antechamber rotated in a blur of black marble streaked with eerie blue torchlight, feeling as though she was floating, and then stopped before the Auror standing guard outside the circular room, letting him run his Probity Probe along the seams of her clothes.
It took Hermione a few confusing seconds to realize he had stopped moving, having finished his mandatory search, and was giving her a funny look as she stared absentmindedly into his face. Giving him an embarrassed nod, she started up the long corridor, forcing herself to adopt a measured pace. It was all useless; no Probity Probe could keep her from carrying out with her every bit of information she learned at the Department of Mysteries. It was all in her brain, etched there forever even when she wished she had never known it. The heels of her boots clattered against the tiled floor, echoes bouncing off the black marble walls of the hallway like ripples on water.
Clack, clack. Clack, clack. Clack, clack. Death Eaters... Clack, clack. Clack, clack. Death Eaters, Death Eaters...
The dark passageway opening on her left and leading to the Courtrooms and Execution rooms one level below passed by at the periphery of her vision. The brighter square of the lifts lobby loomed at the end of the corridor, a few more patches of darkness delimited by the torchlight ahead.
Clack, clack. Death Eaters, Death Eaters…
The irony of it all was almost hilarious. Clutching her lower ribs, Hermione broke into a run.
She bolted across the landing to a door opposite the golden grilles of the lifts. The panel banged loudly against the wall as she hurled herself through the doorway and rushed to the nearest cubicle.
Death Eaters.
Hermione fell to her knees and vomited into the toilet. The last time she had been this sick was after Rowle's execution… The memory sent another wave of convulsions through her body. She hiccoughed, her hands clawing at the cold tiles of the walls on either side, but could only dry heave.
I disgust you. Malfoy's broken voice rang in her head, standing out in the maelstrom of racing thoughts.
Hermione braced her elbows on the tiled wall and rested her forehead on her hands, closing her eyes and breathing deeply through her parted lips. When the churning in her insides receded, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and rose to her feet shakily, stepping out of the cubicle. She was surprised to meet her own reflection in the dull mirror above the sink. She examined her face as she washed her hands and rinsed her mouth, feeling as though she was looking at a stranger; her features were pale and taut, and utterly inexpressive. Good.
Hermione left the washroom and strode to the lifts, slipping her arms into the sleeves of her coat as she went. She took her wand out of her bag and transferred it to a pocket of her coat, keeping her fingers wrapped around it as she entered an empty lift and leaned against the far wall. It all made sense now. The puzzle was slowly piecing itself together in her head. She remembered the long period of exile mentioned in Herpo the Foul's biography, when he had vanished in an unknown direction for several years before coming back more powerful than ever. It must have been when he had realized his mistake.
The creation of the Horcrux did not make him stronger. Diminished and unstable, stuck in a still mortal body, he had gone to find a cure to the doom he had brought upon himself when he had decided to cheat Death. And at a time when Ancient Greece had raised itself to the position of the heart and the head of the civilized world, ruthlessly condemning the savage ways of its neighbors, only a mind as twisted as Herpo's could have turned on the taboo not an eye full of horror but of fascination. Where did he go? To the Scythians to the North? Or the Issedones to the East? Or was it the epileptics in the bloody arenas of Rome who showed him the way?
Hermione followed distractedly the flow of visitors and employees out of the cabin and into the Atrium. She was only vaguely aware of rounding the Fountain of Magical Brethren and passing the Memorial Wall as she headed to the Apparition area. The necessity to focus brought her back to reality as she stepped over the golden lines running on the floor. Taking her wand out of her pocket, Hermione turned on the spot, her mind trained on the façade of Flourish and Blotts; she needed to walk, to feel her body move for the fear and adrenaline to wear off. She needed to regain full control over herself before she faced him.
The hustle and bustle of the Atrium disappeared to be replaced with the abnormally quiet atmosphere of the nearly deserted avenue. Hermione squinted against the cold wind blowing in her face, looking around to get her bearings. She could see a few buildings down the road the top of the brick wall that hid the entrance to Diagon Alley. Hermione started down the winding avenue with purposeful steps, forgetting to apologize to the witch she had startled when materializing next to her. The world around her was quickly fading away despite all of her efforts to silence her own thoughts.
It is not human to apply one's lips even to the wounds of wild beasts…
Hermione absentmindedly tapped her wand against the slightly dislodged brick that opened the archway giving to the back of the Leaky Cauldron and crossed the half-empty pub, exiting into the Muggle world.
The blood of a unicorn can keep one alive even if they are an inch away from death…
She remembered very well the revulsion mixed with terror she and Ron had felt in their first year when Harry had told them Voldemort was in the Black Forest, drinking unicorn blood. There was something abominable about it that would have appalled them even if they hadn't been children.
… But at a terrible price… They will have but a half-life, a cursed life, from the moment the blood touches their lips...
And what was the price for betraying your own kind?
A wretched cure bearable only because their affliction is even more wretched…
Hermione stopped and stared at the chipped, white paint peeling off the door in front of her. She was winded. Somehow, she had made her way home through Muggle London and climbed the four floors of stairs to her apartment without noticing it. The storm of thoughts raging in her head suddenly cleared, leaving her in the silence of the dark landing. The muffled clanking of kitchen utensils was drifting from an apartment on the floor below. No sound was coming from the other side of the door before her. She wished he was in her room so she could have a few more moments to brace herself, but she knew it wouldn't change anything. She was grateful Nathaniel was at the Burrow. And when he would be back, Malfoy wouldn't be there anymore.
Her fingers gripped her wand tight and pulled it out of the pocket of her coat. He said he wanted to disappear. She would be glad to accede to his demand.
/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\
Draco made a few steps across the living room and stopped before one of the windows, gazing blankly at the wreaths of gray mist slowly dissolving over the rooftops as bleak morning light permeated the thin clouds. He stuck a hand in the pocket of his pajama trousers and took a gulp from the rest of the cold coffee at the bottom of his cup. Granger's mug was still on the kitchen counter, and the pan he had used to brew the coffee stood on the edge of the sink. It was the first morning he managed not to burn the milk, and only the bitter, invigorating aroma of coffee hung in the air. It made Granger smile. The coffee, that is. Her getting up in the morning woke him anyway; he could as well do something to spare himself her dirty looks.
Draco turned away from the window and dragged himself to the couch. Granger had been in a hurry; her bedding was still spread over the sofa, a corner of her light blue, flower-print bed sheet hanging to the floor. Her misshapen pillow, pushed against an armrest, still had the impression of her head, and her comforter was tossed across the couch. Draco set his empty cup down on the coffee table and flung himself onto her wrinkled covers in the middle of the sofa, digging the tips of his bare feet into the soft carpet. Leaning his head back, he stared at the ceiling.
He now knew every little crack in the cheap, white paint covering it. The clock on the wall of the kitchen ticked louder, as always when the small hand completed a full circle around the dial. Almost eleven... Despite the strong coffee he had been sipping throughout the morning, he felt sluggish. The inactivity drained him. It wasn't even boredom. His mind, stuck between two extremes – a careless void and a newly recovered sharpness – was being sucked back into the loop of pointless existing whenever silence gnawed at him. At least eight more hours before Granger's return… He could make her some more coffee… A task before the end of the day…
He is sinking, sinking into something warm that wraps around him and engulfs his senses… He likes the feeling. It sparks something in his core, a heat that tugs and spreads under his navel. Merlin, he craves it… It has been so long… He is not even sure anymore he knows what it feels like – human touch. He remembers the hardness of the wall against his back and the clumsy, inexperienced fingers of the girl battling with his belt buckle, her short, almost panicked breathing panting in the darkness of the empty classroom… And it hangs right there, at the edge of his memory, at the edge of his numbed senses…
And then she is here, within his reach yet faceless, but the warmth radiating from her against the whole length of his body is already overwhelming enough and feels too good to be true. His legs are wrapped around one of hers and the crook of her hip is between his thighs… He strains toward the softness, yearning for that moment his skin will meet hers… A brush would be enough to wake his senses from their torpor, a few strokes of her hand would be sufficient to feed him in his need… He exhales against her body, and her curves send back his breath with a whiff of jasmine…
Click!
Draco opened his eyes. The scent of jasmine mixed with another, sweeter one was filling his nostrils. Half of his face was buried in a flattened pillow, and he could feel a damp patch under the left corner of his mouth. He had slumped sideways from his sitting position, over the mess of Granger's makeshift bed. Her twisted comforter was tucked beneath his body and between his legs. The heat was still there, nested in his lower stomach, sharper and nagging now that he was awake. It felt almost foreign compared with the numbness that had long overtaken his body; it had been a matter of survival to learn not to notice the ever-present pain, cold, and weariness…
The lock of the entrance door clicked again.
Draco's heart leaped in his throat. Down the entrance corridor, someone was turning the doorknob. He propped himself up on his elbows, his own heartbeat almost too loud for him to catch the quiet shuffling of someone moving on the doorstep. It couldn't be Granger… She always apparated in the middle of the room… But it was already too late. He held his breath, his eyes trained on the doorway of the living room as the light steps drew nearer. Granger's figure appeared on the threshold of the room. A few stray curls of her impossible hair were falling on either side of her face, and the wind had loosened her scarf from around her neck and colored her cheeks. She stood still, her arms hanging at her sides. The bag dangling from one of her hands dropped to the floor with a soft thud.
She didn't say anything and just stood there, taking small, almost imperceptible breaths that made her chest rise rapidly. The rush of blood still thundering in his ears, Draco opened his mouth angrily but the words remained stuck in his throat. She was looking at him. A cold, emotionless stare he didn't recognize and that bore to his very core. He frowned, pushing himself upright and shifting as he was uncomfortably aware of his embarrassing lower half.
"Granger, what the –"
He slowly took in the twitching of her upper lip and the grayish tinge of her cheeks beneath her fading blush. It was when he noticed the wand she held at her side, her knuckles white from clutching it, that it hit him.
She knew.
He remained rooted to the spot, slouched ridiculously in the middle of the sofa, waiting for a word, a gesture of her that would confirm it. A part of him had been dreading this moment since the beginning; another half-expected she had known it all along, having surely done her research during the war… A wild hope shot through him: it could be something entirely else… He rose to his feet with deliberately slow movements, the comforter sliding off his lap and to the floor.
"Granger…" he breathed.
Her left eyelid had a spasmodic twitch; her eyes that had momentarily lost their focus snapped up to his, blazing. Terror flickered through her gaze, but she didn't recoil. His brain froze, becoming a useless, panicked mass. He had told her… He did tell her! Surely she remembered…
"Granger –" he croaked out.
He couldn't breathe. Granger leveled her wand at his chest.
"No…"
He was panicked to hear his voice break.
"Yes," she said quietly, and he recognized the look on her face: utter, unforgiving loathing. "You disgust me."
A flash of white light erupted from the tip of her wand, and he felt himself being blasted backwards. He landed on his back and slid across the floor to the other side of the room, the back of his head hitting hard against the wooden floorboards. The blow knocked all breath out of his lungs and his ears rang, and when the pain finally reached his brain, he writhed helplessly, black dots dancing before his eyes. He felt Granger's steps reverberate through the floorboards under his skull as she approached him.
Next moment, another hex sent him rolling sideways until he hit the wall next to her bedroom door and lay on his stomach. The pain shooting from his elbows and the back of his head paralyzed him. He tasted blood… He had bitten his tongue. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Granger's boots stop a few steps away from him. He managed to lift himself up and turned his head to look at her; her wand was aimed at his face, and her eyes were glinting with the same cold, murderous fury. The veins on her neck were pulsing in rhythm with her heartbeat. Draco pressed his back against the wall, his own heart thumping wildly, his gaze shifting between the wand pointed at him and her taut face.
"Granger…" he sputtered. "I didn't… I told you… I told you, Granger! I didn't do it! I didn't go through it all! I told you… I told you it takes another kind of magic…"
For an instant, he doubted she had even heard him. Then, her wand hand trembled and the rage twisting her features wavered to be replaced with horror as she came back to her senses. Slowly, she lowered her wand, her wide eyes locked on his.
"Where are you coming from?" she whispered.
A shudder ran through his body. He couldn't hold it back any longer… He screwed his eyes shut as the flashes of memories it had taken him all of his strength to suppress from his consciousness but that still haunted him in his sleep came crashing down on him like a tidal wave.
The flickering glow of the black fire along the windowless stone walls… A fear so ugly it threatened to consume him… 'Flesh of the enemy forcibly taken…' The heavy thud of a body collapsing onto the polished surface of the long table… Blood. Blood everywhere… 'Dinner is served, Nagini…' They were feasting together…
He felt himself slide down the wall until his forehead touched the floor. He was blinded, unable to move… His stomach contracted violently. In that moment, he didn't even care he was crouching at Granger's feet like an animal. He fucking deserved it… He should have offed himself... Now he deserved it all…
"Malfoy!"
Granger's voice sounded somewhere on his left. Was she sobbing? He blinked, breathing heavily. At the periphery of his vision, he could see Granger squatting down next to him. Her wand lay discarded on the floor a few steps away.
"Draco…"
Her hand reached out to him tentatively; he flinched away.
"No," he hissed.
"Malfoy, I'm –"
They heard it at the same time – the tenuous, high-pitched ringing that announced somebody was apparating into the apartment.
"Get in the bedroom!" exclaimed Granger, jumping to her feet.
He wasn't sure his legs could support him but he was only two steps away from the door. He scrambled to his feet, leaping inside the room the moment the ringing stopped abruptly. Before the door swung shut behind him, he glimpsed Granger snatch her wand from the floor and flick it hastily to vanish her blanket and her bed sheets from the sofa.
/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\
The door to her room had barely slammed shut that the characteristic pop of Apparition sounded in the middle of the living room. Hermione was taken aback to see Kingsley, his dark purple robes swishing around his ankles as he materialized out of thin air and turned on the spot, searching for her.
"Good afternoon, Hermione," he said pleasantly. "I was hoping you would be home already."
Hermione hurried to step away from her bedroom door and schooled her features as he moved forward to shake her hand.
"I just got back, actually," she muttered, quickly slipping out of her coat and tearing her scarf from around her neck as though she had indeed arrived mere moments earlier.
She tilted her face away as she went to put the clothes on a bar stool and blinked furiously to clear her stinging eyes. She bit hard the insides of her cheeks before turning back to Kingsley; her heart was beating so forcefully, fluttering somewhere in between her collarbones, that she wondered if he could hear it from where he stood.
"What are you doing here?" she frowned, steeling herself to keep her gaze from flickering to her bedroom door and to control the trembling that threatened to seize the corners of her mouth.
"I believe I promised you an explanation," said Kingsley. If he had noticed anything, he politely ignored it. "Unfortunately, the Ministry is not the best place to talk about these things at the moment, and I thought it best not to send you an owl for the same reasons."
It took Hermione a moment to understand what he was talking about; her whole world had shrunk to revolve around the sense of dread that possessed her since her morning in the Archives Chamber, and the Tuesday events had completely left her mind. Her brows shot up as she was suddenly brought back to reality. Shacklebolt crossed the living room and took a seat in an armchair. Quickly recollecting herself, Hermione went to stand before him and crossed her arms; it was Molly who had told her Andromeda had come to pick up Teddy on Wednesday afternoon and was back home. Not knowing the details, Mrs. Weasley had only expressed her concern about Andromeda's stay at St Mungo's, and Hermione was left in the dark for the rest of the week. Her mind teeming with questions, she waited for Kingsley to start talking with her lips pursed into a tight line but he only gave her a tired kind of smile.
"I wouldn't mind a cup of tea," he said, gathering the folds of his ample robes around his legs.
Watching him out of the corner of her eye, Hermione went to the kitchen and took two cups from a cupboard, waving her wand to fill them with boiling water and not bothering with the electric kettle. She dropped two teabags into the cups and levitated them with a sugar bowl to the coffee table next to Kingsley.
"Is she alright?" she asked impatiently as he dropped three sugar lumps into his brewing tea and stirred it thoughtfully.
"Andromeda is alright," nodded Kingsley with a smile. "As we've already guessed, she was obliviated."
"Why?"
"Well, I had to call an old friend who used to work there and is now retired so he could examine her and partly alleviate the spell without me needing to have a warrant… I also trust him not to publicize the matter. He has some trust issues with the authorities, you see…" The corners of Kingsley's mouth twitched upwards. "The bottom line is that she was summoned to the Ministry – to the Department of Mysteries, precisely – for a test."
"A test?" repeated Hermione.
She had lowered herself onto the sofa while he spoke and was now sitting on the very edge of it, listening to him with attention. Kingsley glanced at her over the rim of his teacup.
"I believe you've already been inside the Death Chamber," he said, setting down his cup and looking at her pointedly. "What can you tell me about it?"
"Not much," she muttered, recalling her brief passage there at the end of their fifth year. "Although it is the least secretive Chamber of the whole Department, so I was able to do some research at the Hogwarts library afterward. Though most of it is hearsay, really…" she added with some disdain.
A crease appeared between her eyebrows as she recited every bit of information she could fish from the depths of her memory.
"The reason is that the Chamber actually contains a historical artifact – the Veil… It is believed the Chamber and the whole Ministry were built around it, but it's not true. Their origin is unknown, but the archway and its granite base have been moved several times throughout the centuries, belonging to various governing bodies before the Ministry was founded in London in 1707. It has had two known practical uses over time. For centuries, it had been used to carry out death sentences without much thought being given to its nature. In the eighteenth century, after the discovery of the Azkaban fortress and before it became a prison in 1718, it is said the Ministry used the Veil for experiments on the first criminals sentenced to the Dementor's Kiss. It had been established people could hear the voices of their deceased loved ones through the Veil. Assuming it was a portal between the world of the dead and ours, the Ministry wanted to know what happened to a soul that had been sucked out by a Dementor…"
Hermione shuddered unwittingly and took a sip of her now lukewarm tea.
"It appeared that, not immediately but eventually, the voices of the victims could be heard from the other side, which means the Dementors do not destroy the soul but release it after some time... As far as the public knows, the Veil hasn't been used ever since"
She trailed off and looked up at Kingsley, who was considering her with a mildly impressed expression. He leaned against the back of his armchair, turning his cup between his fingers.
"Have you ever encountered the name of Morgan le Fay during your research?" he asked.
"Morgana?" said Hermione with surprise, the historically inaccurate portrait of the witch featured on Chocolate Frog cards popping in her mind. "No…" As Kingsley watched her expectantly, she continued, wondering where it was all leading them. "Although we studied her with Professor Binns. Morgana is one of the only Wizarding figures to be present in both muggle and wizarding myths, along with Merlin. Mainly because they lived before the Wizarding community decided to go underground for good. Some Muggle legends depict her not as a witch but as a fairy or an angel who accompanied dead heroes to their final resting place – Avalon. In History of Magic, she is known as a practitioner of the Dark Arts and Merlin's enemy. Avalon is told to be the island where she lived, hidden the same way Azkaban was."
She cast Shacklebolt an impatient look.
"These are all tales for children! Avalon has never been found, even when the magic concealing it should have worn off after Morgana's death. It doesn't exist. What does it have to do with anything?"
"Every myth has its share of truth. And in this case, both Muggles and wizards were onto something. Except Avalon is not a place," said Kingsley.
Hermione watched him pull a scroll of parchment from an inside pocket of his robes and hold it out to her. She took it hesitantly, noting the remains of a broken, black wax seal with the letters DoM on it. She was irritated to find herself before yet another page of scribbled Runes when she unrolled it. Shacklebolt waved dismissively when she began deciphering the ones at the top and pointed to a series of symbols that came up over and over through the whole text.
"Emain Ablach," read Hermione. "Avalon…"
She gave him a bewildered look.
"What is it?"
"A transcription of the last distinguishable Runes engraved on the archway in the Death Chamber."
"The Veil is Avalon?" breathed Hermione.
"The Veil was created by Morgana," nodded Kingsley, watching her attentively.
Hermione's gaze traveled between his face and the parchment in her hands.
"How did you get that?" she asked suspiciously, brushing the pad of her thumb over the wax seal. "It wasn't supposed to leave the Department of Mysteries…"
Shacklebolt remained silent. Hermione shook her head, realizing that even if he answered her, it didn't matter.
"Why are we talking about this? What is the link with Andromeda?"
She suddenly remembered the conversation between Monkstanley and Fawley she had overheard two weeks before as they exited the Death Chamber.
"I wasn't expecting you to point this out, but as you said earlier, the souls of those sentenced to the Dementor's Kiss can't be heard before a certain period of time from the other side of the Veil," said Kingsley, looking at her intently. "As you know, Lester Selwyn, Narcissa Malfoy, and Bellatrix Lestrange died in circumstances unrelated to the Dementor's Kiss… Mildred Selwyn and Andromeda Tonks are their last living relatives."
And suddenly it all clicked into place inside her head. Hermione couldn't help but shoot a panicked look toward the closed door of her bedroom. They couldn't have this conversation now. They couldn't have it here… But there was nothing to do; she couldn't attempt casting a Silencing Charm without being noticed. Her wide eyes came back to Kingsley.
The Ministry knew.
"I'm sure you heard the rumors, Hermione," said Shacklebolt in a low voice. "And I'm sure you know it's more than rumors. You saw the last execution."
She had no reason to play coy. As far as she could tell, Shacklebolt didn't know about Malfoy. But even if his presence had nothing to do with her sheltering a Death Eater on the run, she had yet to determine why they were having this conversation, which she was sure had everything to do with the reason she had gotten her position at the Department of Mysteries in the first place. She cleared her throat, trying to adopt the horrified look of someone who had just had their worst suspicions confirmed.
"That's why the Ruling Committee stopped the trials and opened a new inquiry. You wanted to check if the rumors were true."
Shacklebolt inclined his head.
"Do you know…" Hermione drew a sharp breath. She didn't need faking her trouble; her heart was hammering inside her chest and her hands had gone cold. "Do you know where they are?" she whispered.
"The interrogations didn't give the Aurors anything apart allowing them to draw a list of all the involved prisoners that are still alive," answered Kingsley, shaking his head.
"So what is going to happen now?" breathed Hermione.
She was keeping her voice barely above a whisper, but she knew it was too late.
"Hermione, you have to understand that even I don't have access to full information." A crease had appeared between Kingsley's eyebrows and there was a look of urgency on his grave face. "Fawley is working with a team of Unspeakables and a handful of high-ranked Aurors who had to take an Unbreakable Vow, essentially making them Unspeakables as well. What I do know is that Fawley issued an order of transfer of prisoners from Azkaban to a temporary detention facility on the mainland, an hour after the decision to suspend the activities of the Department of Mysteries was taken."
Hermione felt the room spin around her.
"I am your access to full information," she stated coldly, looking Shacklebolt straight in the eye.
"I can't ask that much from you," he said calmly. "I doubt even someone within the Department could have access to full information unless it is their field of work. However, I do want you to keep your eyes open and your ears strained. Constant vigilance," he smiled sadly, and Hermione clenched her teeth.
"Why do you want the details?" she gritted out. "You don't think they only want to locate the Horcruxes?"
Shacklebolt considered her with attention.
"Oh, I think they do," he said sternly. "The Department of Mysteries has been experimenting on a great many things over the centuries. But some forms of magic are so rare there's simply nothing to experiment on. I believe this just changed."
Hermione sat frozen. Her heart plummeted inside her chest and pounded somewhere in the region of her stomach.
"But we are not in 1718 anymore," continued Kingsley in a low voice. "Some practices are no longer acceptable. If my assumptions have any basis, the Wizarding community will need proof."
Hermione let out a mirthless laugh.
"And you are going to serve it to them on a silver platter," she snapped sarcastically.
Kingsley set down his cup and stood up, readjusting his cloak around his shoulders and slipping the parchment he had shown her back inside a pocket. He walked over to the nearest window and gazed outside, his hands clasped behind his back. Pallid rays of sunlight were timidly piercing the canopy of clouds, creating puddles of light on the rooftops.
"You are not far from the Leaky Cauldron," he said thoughtfully. "I think I'm going to take a walk and have lunch there. The four walls of my office are starting to look way too familiar."
He turned around to face her with a warm smile.
"If you would show me the way out…"
Hermione saw no way she could refuse. She nodded reluctantly and rose to her feet, eyeing with a dull sense of foreboding her bedroom door as she headed to the entrance hallway. She let Kingsley exit first on the dim, narrow landing and carefully shut the door of the apartment behind them, discretely casting a Locking Charm. The descent seemed excruciatingly slow, and once Kingsley was out the door and she watched him walk away down the street in the direction of the main avenues, Hermione whirled around and bolted up the stairs.
She knew it the moment she set her foot in the apartment. A gush of icy air welcomed her when she opened the door and howled in the doorway. She let the panel slam shut behind her and rushed down the corridor, skidding to a halt on the threshold of the living room. Her gaze flew to her bedroom door before resting on the window behind the sofa; they were both wide open. Her heart sank.
Malfoy was gone.
/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\
The iron squeaked and rattled under her feet as she ran down the old fire-escape ladder, holding onto the handrail with both hands. Hermione could feel the whole structure shake with metallic noises every time she jumped over two steps at the bottom of a flight of stairs, pausing on every landing to cast a look up and down the street below. But Malfoy had already disappeared. Hermione stopped abruptly; a flight of steps was missing between the rickety metallic grille of the last landing and the ground, replaced by a narrow folding ladder rust had long rendered unusable. Malfoy must have jumped.
Hermione grimaced, eyeing the space below. She suddenly regretted not taking the stairs in her desire to gain some time. It wasn't really high, but a wrong move could certainly result in a twisted ankle. Making sure her wand was safely tucked in the pocket of her skirt, Hermione squatted down and swung her legs over the edge of the platform, letting herself slide off it until she was hanging in the void, her hands gripping the edge of the metallic grille. She let go, landing hard in a crouched position on the asphalt below, the shock reverberating painfully up her shins.
Taking a wild guess, she started down the street in the direction of the big avenues. Malfoy would probably want to use the crowd to his advantage to vanish. Cursing her pencil skirt, she sprinted as fast she could, the icy air burning her throat with every gasping intake of breath. Something other than effort constricted her windpipe... Hermione skidded to a halt at the corner of the street, jumping to the side as she almost ran into a big lady carrying half a dozen shopping bags. The moving crowd blocked her path like a river. Winded, Hermione climbed the first steps of a high stoop on her right and stood on the tips of her toes, looking up and down the avenue over the heads of the passers-by.
She was starting to grow desperate when she caught a flash of unmistakable white-blond hair in the middle of the human tide. The idiot hadn't thought about pulling on the hood of her Oxford sweater he had apparently appropriated for good. He was walking fast, his shoulders hunched and his arms wrapped around himself against the cold, wending through the crowd of strolling shoppers and hurried employees gone out for lunch. Hermione leaped down the steps and dove into the crowd, elbowing her way in his wake. She slowed down at a few paces' distance, her eyes trained on his back despite the passers-by stepping between them every now and then. She couldn't resort to magic, and Malfoy would have no difficulties to throw her off if she tried to physically drag him back.
But he was moving closer to the walls now, and Hermione discretely edged to the side, slipping her hand into her pocket and picking up her pace. They were passing an empty dead end when she lunged forward, hurling all of her weight against his side and shoving him into the narrow side street. Malfoy hissed when she jabbed her wand into his ribs, backing him up against a dirty door under a deep porch. The semblance of sunlight that had been shining some half-an-hour earlier was gone, and the dead end was shrouded in shadows, the windowless sides of the houses towering over them. A large waste container standing between them and the avenue further blocked them from view.
"Get off me, Granger!" growled Malfoy furiously.
His right hand grabbed the front of her shirt and he pushed her hard, sending her stumbling backwards. Quickly steadying herself, Hermione closed the distance between them again and pressed the tip of her wand into the side of his neck. Malfoy stilled, breathing heavily and glaring down at her. Hermione slowly ran her gaze over him; his hair had been tossed to the side by the wind, the muscles in his jaw were twitching nervously. And in the depths of his dilated pupils fixed on her face, she saw not anger but panic.
"What are you doing?" she asked coldly.
"Fuck you, Granger!" seethed Malfoy.
His hand shot up again and curled around her wrist, twisting her arm away.
"You are not going to hex me with all these Muggles nearby," he sneered, attempting to push past her.
Next moment, he was being tossed back against the door with a flick of her wand.
"I asked you a question," said Hermione calmly, her wand aimed at his chest. "What are you doing?"
Malfoy glowered at her, his upper lip curling.
"I'm disappearing," he hissed. "I'm not going to sit and wait for them to make me into an experimental subject."
"What the hell are you talking about?" snapped Hermione. "They don't have any idea of where you are!"
"You are their lap dog, Granger," he spat. "If you think they are not watching you while you stick your nose in their business, you are fucking naïve! They won't be long to find me! You said I wasn't your prisoner, Granger, so sod off!"
"You are going to ruin your only chance and run away?" said Hermione quietly, frowning. "Don't be a coward, Malfoy."
For a moment, he just stared at her, his lips slightly parted, and then his features suddenly contorted with rage.
"Don't you act like you fucking care, Granger," he growled in a low voice.
Hermione couldn't keep herself from recoiling as he straightened to his full height.
"Don't you pull your self-righteous, holier-than-thou shit on me. You think you are saving your little Squib? You think you are saving me? You are just as much of a coward as your Saint Potter! The truth is you can't stand to be alone with yourself and think about the fact you couldn't save Weasley… So you pick up all the desperate cases you can find to give yourself some purpose… I'm not your fucking assignment, Granger!" he roared suddenly. "You can't fix me! Don't you see? I'm not sick! I'm not anything… So fuck you, Granger! Fuck y –"
SMACK!
The slap resounded between the stone walls of the houses, drowned out by the rumbling of the cars and the hubbub of the crowd drifting from the main street. Malfoy reeled back, his hand over his left cheek. Without looking at him, Hermione slowly pocketed her wand. She felt bile burning in her throat. She suddenly felt very cold, standing in the icy wind without her coat. She looked up at Malfoy; he was collapsed against the wall, livid and staring at her with a mix of shock, anger, and something else she couldn't quite place.
"It's not up to me to convince you your life is worth something," she said evenly, looking him dead in the eye. "If you want to spend the rest of it running away and die in a gutter only to stay stuck in your own personal hell, go on. Your choice. I already have far enough on my plate, so it would be a relief, really."
Malfoy was listening to her silently, motionless. A drop fell from overhead on his left eyelid and he blinked.
"I'm not asking you to come back. I'm not asking you to fight. But I'm asking you to choose. You are alive and you have a choice, Malfoy. People fought for it. People died for it. And it's an insult to every one of them to screw up your only chance without even pausing to think about it."
Hermione wiped away a cold raindrop that had crashed on her forehead. She felt another one trickle down her neck and under the collar of her shirt.
"It's not over, Malfoy. We won the war, but he won something more. He won when they took your father to Azkaban. He won when your mother died. He wins every day you are in this state. I'm not fighting for you, Malfoy. I don't want to fight for someone who is not willing to fight for themselves. So you have to choose now. Because otherwise, you can as well jump off a bridge into the Thames."
With a last look at his frozen face, Hermione turned on her heels and marched out of the side-street. She slowly made her way back up the avenue, her arms drawn around herself as she started shivering. More cold drops were falling from the sky now, soaking the fabric of her shirt over her shoulders and her back. The wispy clouds were thickening and turning a deep gray, making the middle of the afternoon look like evening. She accelerated her pace, turning into her street and leaving the busy avenue behind her without a glance back. She didn't shudder when the footsteps trailing behind her finally caught up and something soft and heavy was quickly draped over her shoulders. The hoodie was slightly damp but still warm with Malfoy's body heat.
Hermione pulled it closer around herself, hurrying to finally reach the stoop of the house as the atmosphere was suddenly filled with the sound of thousands of drops lashing against the slate rooftops, the windowpanes and the asphalt of the road. She fumbled with the keys that resisted her frozen fingers and pushed the heavy front door with her shoulder, holding it open just a few seconds longer than was necessary for her to slip inside. She sensed his presence a few steps behind her back as they climbed the stairs without a word.
The wind had thrown open the unlocked door of her apartment, and it was swinging back and forth on its hinges in the cold draught gushing through the doorway and coming from the gaping window of the main room. Hermione kicked off her boots and went into the living room, flicking her wand at the windowpane that slammed shut before running it over her damp clothes to dry them. A moment later, the sound of the entrance door being closed came from down the corridor. Her face shut, Hermione turned around.
Malfoy was standing on the threshold of the room, his head slightly bowed and his arms hanging limply at his sides, staring unblinkingly at some spot on the floor. He had taken off his shoes, and she could see he had mismatched the socks he had pulled on hastily before fleeing – one of them gray and the other black. The upper half of his shirt was drenched and clung to his skin, even paler from the cold and standing out against the blackness of the fabric. A drop slid down his nose and hung on its tip. Another fell from a strand of white-blond hair sticking to his temple. Hermione's hard expression slowly shifted as she looked him over in silence.
"Sit," she said simply.
Malfoy lowered himself into an armchair without looking at her, his elbows on his knees and his shoulders hunched. Hermione rounded the sofa and stepped over one of his feet, perching on the edge of the coffee table between his legs. He flinched violently when her fingers wrapped around his head and tried to recoil but she held his head down firmly, threading her fingertips through his damp hair the time to find the bump that had started to swell at the back of his skull. She pressed the tip of her wand against it, quickly muttering a spell under her breath, and then waved it at his clothes to dry them the same way she had done with hers. Malfoy's head shot up, and he stared at her with a bewildered look upon his face. Hermione drew away and held his gaze.
"I'm sorry," she said softly. "I had stopped thinking."
He blinked and looked away, the muscles in his jaw tensing. There was a moment of silence, only interrupted by the loud tapping of the drizzle against the windows.
"Malfoy…"
"Don't."
His eyes snapped back to hers.
"Don't ask me to do this, Granger," he hissed, a scowl twisting his features.
"You have to –"
He stood up so brusquely it made her jump.
"I don't have to do anything. It's over. I've buried it," he spat harshly, turning his back to her and walking over to the window.
Hermione slowly rose to her feet and tugged on the hem of her skirt. She had torn her tights at the back of one of her calves, probably while jumping off the fire-escape ladder. She sighed and watched Malfoy's stiff back, her gaze pausing on his clenched fists at his sides. She didn't want to hear it. She didn't want to know any of it…
"You might have buried it but now it's rotting," she said quietly.
She moved forward, stopping a few steps behind him.
"Malfoy…"
Slowly, very slowly, Malfoy turned around to face her. She looked up into his stony face, searching for a crack and finding it at the bottom of his eyes.
"You have to talk," whispered Hermione.
A/N:
Some people have freed themselves from epilepsy by drinking the still warm blood of a gladiator who has had his throat cut – a wretched cure bearable only because their affliction was even more wretched (Celsus, On Medicine 3.23).
Epileptics even drink the blood of gladiators, from living cups, as it were. It is an appalling sight to see wild animals drink the blood of gladiators in the arena, and yet those who suffer from epilepsy think it the most effective cure for their disease, to absorb a person's warm blood while he is still breathing and to draw out his actual living soul straight from his wounds, even though it is not human to apply one's lips even to the wounds of wild beasts. Others seek a cure through eating the leg marrow and brains of infants (Pliny, Natural History 28.4).
The Scythians and the Issedones – peoples living to the north and east of the Black Sea and in Central Asia during Antiquity – were known for being cannibals.