Introducing CONCEPT ART:
Warning: I am bad at it. Anything I manage to produce will likely pale in comparison to whatever you can picture with your own mind. However, I present it nonetheless. I make random works here and there as I practice so you can guess around one each chapter but I will no guarantee it. I am a much better author than artist.
Related works this chapter: Rowana's cell: Blueprint's of Hermione Granger's workshop.
Deviant Art: omnenomnom www. deviantart omnenomnom (remove spaces)
"I think we can drop the pretense then?" Hermione questioned as they arrived back at her loft. The room cheered as he stepped onto the rug, brightening and welcoming him back. He may actually miss it.
"But it was so fun knowing something you didn't." Draco responded, moving to lounge on his couch. The ugly thing had really grown on him and he wondered if Granger would be willing to part with it. Transfigured furniture never really captured the same feel of the original.
"Please, you weren't exactly subversive. I knew it had something to do with bones." He rolled his eyes and settled in. It was likely to be a long day.
"You had no clue. I doubt you will even be able to actually do anything useful."
"Why won't you just let me help? Too desperate for my weekly attention?" Hermione smiled as she leaned on her work table. He wondered if she knew how much that smile looked like a smirk.
"I am the best thing that has ever happened to you." Draco shot back tucking his arms behind his head as he didn't have a care in the world. "If I had told you earlier you would have kept me here for a year as your errand boy and maybe by the grace of your Gryffindor sense of fairness given me the cure before kicking me to the curb."
"You are so dramatic." She responded with a huff. "I gave you what I thought would cover it on your second day here. I hardly expected you back, let alone would try to force you to stay. Hell, if you would have just told me we could have gotten you out of here faster."
He told himself very firmly that he wasn't hurt by that and continued to stare at her ceiling. There were 12 vertical beams, 24 horizontal beams, 4 joists, and one bats' nest that Crookshanks fervently tried to reach on a daily basis.
"Go on then." She prodded with a small sipping noise.
"It's his arm obviously." Draco found himself starting. "The healers don't know what's wrong with it. It was broken during the Battle of Hogwarts by a nasty blasting curse and didn't heal right. Now he's in constant pain as his muscles pull on it. It breaks under the slightest pressure."
"You vanished and regrew the bone?" It was the first thing the healers had tried.
"It grew back the same way. They looked for some kind of curse as a cause but found nothing."
"And none of the potions you've found rifling through my library have worked?"
"No."
"You mentioned brittlebones treatment?"
"Helped manage the pressure part of the pain but worse than a standard pain potion."
"What was the closest you got?"
"Your skele-gro. I remade it and he was able to use his arm without breaking it but the pain increased to unmanageable levels."
He heard a quill scratch away in the silence. It would be just like her to take notes. It had been such a long two days. He had failed as a friend and son. Hell he'd even admitted to failing as a student. He knew by that second month she would have given him the cure if she knew. She was a good person like that. He wasn't.
"Well…" He glanced over at the witch. Her untamed roan hair framed her face. Her eyes had taken on a glimmer of curiosity and sparkled as the flames reflected in them. The quill she had been chewing on left a thick black smudge on the side of her face. She looked feral, improper, wild. It was such a nice change of pace from the strict confines of his life.
"I honestly can't think of a single reason none of those solutions wouldn't have worked." He tried to keep the crushing disappointment from sneaking on his face. Conflicting emotions settled poorly with him with anger usually being the end result. He figured he owed it to her to stamp out that urge.
"I figured you were going to do the thing?" He breathed, settling on melancholy instead.
"What thing?" She responded tilting her head. The quill feather bounced in response, catching one of the impossible to source drafts that blew through the workshop no matter how many charms he put up.
"That thing you did in school. Where you would just blink your eyes and wave your wand and everything would be okay. Evilness would be defeated and Gryffindor would win the house cup."
"Like magic?" She questioned with a sad smile continuing to stare at the paper without writing.
"Exactly like magic." He responded quietly. "Come on, Granger. You know everything. After all you are the brightest witch of our age and kept those two idiots alive for seven years."
"It doesn't work that way. It's never worked that way." She responded. "The only reason any of us are here at all is just good old fashioned dumb luck. Nothing I did."
"And there's none of that luck left for the three Sytherin boys who all made the mistake to trust the wrong person?"
"I didn't say that-"
"Can it Granger. We knew it was bound to happen. When we started this pathetic little family we had guessed it was a lost cause. But what else were we going to do? Theo's dad was dead. Blaise's mother is about as maternal as a pit viper. My parents were a shit show…." He trailed off.
"Were you there?"
"Where?"
"When the injury happened." She clarified.
"Timeturners won't work." He shuddered at the return to the idea.
"I know. I just… if you were there you'll have the memory…" She faded off, clearly debating something in her head. With a nod she came to a solid decision. "I'm willing to bet there is something you aren't telling me. Something important."
"I've told you everything."He huffed, almost offended he was withholding vital information.
"Everything you remember. Memory is a funny thing though. It tends to drop off the unimportant details, even if they are important."
"A pensive won't work. I didn't draw the memory when it was fresh." When he tried to draw up the memory last year he was greeted with a bowl of fuzz. Only the most basic of details present and half remembered.
"I wasn't thinking of a penesive." She glanced meaningfully at him. When he realized what she was suggesting he was resigned to find he wasn't the least bit horrified.
"You want access to my memories." He stated simply. "You want to do the dragon thing."
"It could help. I don't see why-"
"It was during the Battle of Hogwarts." He finished quickly watching her grimace. "I don't think you really want to relive that; I don't either."
"I didn't realize any Slytherin's stuck around."
"Most didn't." He smirked. "He was in a broom closet at the time of evacuation with a Ravenclaw."
"Cad." She chuckled.
"He fought with you all anyway. I saw him in the first part when we were looking for you three." He still could picture the rage in Blaise's eyes as he met them in the corridor, stepping aside. As Crabbe blew past him Blaise just watched them leave, his demeanor heavy with judgment. "Can't believe no one noticed."
"We didn't actually do reports until the end… which means he was gone by then."
"Right. He had been running around with the young Creevy boy, trying to keep him alive. Christ what was that kid even doing there... Grayback found them. By the time he was able to chase off the werewolf…"
"So he was injured?" She quickly brushed over the reminder saving him the discomfort.
"He was tired but fine. He made himself scarce until the second wave. At which point he found me."
"And that's where your memory starts."
"Yeah." The cauldron was empty and thus the rare silence in her workshop was absolute. It was surprisingly cold, not a feeling he associated with Hermione's home.
"I really need that memory, Draco. I know it will be painful, but if I can see the curse there may be another way…"
He thought for a minute trying to focus on how awful it would feel to relive that memory. To be stuck in that moment of time unable to do a damn thing to stop it. But he would do it, just like he always did. He was forever chasing after redemption he didn't deserve.
"Go ahead." He whispered. It was quiet enough she didn't even jump. She simply rose, gliding over to him on soft feet. As she settled in front of him pulling out her wand he met her eyes.
"Just don't…." He wanted to ask her not to think less of him for it. To scream at him and rage in that familiar fashion that made the room flush with cinnamon and sparks but still be friends at the end. Then again, he didn't really deserve to be asking anyone anything. "Nevermind."
She nodded and closed her eyes to focus her magic. He quickly tore down the near permanent barriers he had the habit of keeping up. They fell into nothingness as he waited for the usual slime of someone entering his head space. He felt her warmth seep into him so comfortingly it made his heart ache. It felt like home, like acceptance. Like forgiveness. He hated it.
Not a moment later he was back on that cold stone floor in the castle of his youth. He was on his knees pleading to Theo's father. He could feel the sharp rock of a blasted away paving stone digging into his palm. His other hand was drifting towards his wand, ready to make a last stand that he would inevitably fail.
"I am on your side. Honest!" He made the dive for his wand just as a curse flew over his shoulder, dropping the Death Eater he had grown up under. He stared in confusion at the empty air behind him. Suddenly a thick pain blossomed in his gut as his breath left his body.
He glanced around trying to see who had hit him. Just as he was regaining his ability to breathe footsteps sounded ahead of him. Faceless masks appeared processing the scene before them Draco saw the exact moment they decided he needed to die.
The following few minutes were pathetic. He was a child, weak. He was diving through columns screaming. Vague approximations of shields went up before being crashed through with green and red bolts. He knew he was going to die. He felt in his very bones.
He had fallen. Just an ordinary fall over the same risen flagstone he had tripped over twice a week every year on his way to herbology. It was somehow fitting. He stared at the dark robes as the wand focused on him from across the courtyard. He was out of magic and didn't have time to move. He felt the blood drain from his face. He knew it was the end.
The current Draco knew it was coming but he was still surprised when a dark shape jumped from a nearby window, landing with a cushioned thump. Blaise threw off a devastating Depulso charm from his rosewood wand just before the blasting curse hit his right arm. Blaise dropped as the pursuing Death Eaters were sucked into a spinning vortex of nothingness.
For a moment all Draco could see was blood. Blaise's left hand pressed to the stump of mangled tissue and bone as the warm ruby liquid spilled on the cobblestones. He was barely conscious, taking deep labored breaths.
"You weren't worth it Malfoy."
"Why did you do it? You should have let me die." His own voice cracked painfully. They were words he asked himself to this very day. "Why?'
"There is a villain in everyone's story. I didn't want to be one in mine." The boy's dark skin had faded to an ashy gray, he was going to die. There was no way around it, Draco had to do something. His hand shook as he held up his wand, glowing the faint blue of a healing spell.
Draco forced his current consciousness to the top, unable to stand the hope on his own face as bone and skin knit itself together smoothing into a perfectly smooth surface. Not perfect but it was good enough. Or at least he thought so at the time.
"Don't move." Activating his emergency portkey he slid his family ring onto Blaise's good hand. The ring gathered up magic from the surrounding area, swirling around them. It could only take one of them. Blaise's eyes rose in understanding, he looked ready to argue before he twisted away into nothingness leaving Draco in an empty courtyard.
The memory faded with a thick veil of smoke as he felt himself pull back to reality. His body shook in deep stuttering breaths as if he had physically relived every moment of the cursed fate. Even his magic had all but left him, achingly cold and empty. He kept his eyes closed, unwilling to meet hers. To see the disgust at the years of pain he had caused the only person who actually stood up for what was right and still saw him as worthy of saving.
"It was us." She whispered above him. He risked a glance, figuring he deserved it anyway. He stilled as he was met with honey brown eyes rimmed with molten glass. "The people who stunned the Death Eater. The ones who hit you and left you there. It was our fault."
"No." He said sadly. The first few months he had tried to blame what he thought had been a wild curse. It would have been so easy to blame some faceless wizard who didn't carefully deflect a shot. But no, he knew that wasn't true either. It was always Potter. Potter and his band of nitwits. They saved him only to condemn the only good Slytherin in their year. His voice was thick with guilt when he responded. "If the first hex didn't take out Nott, I would have died anyway."
"That was Theo?" She questioned, pulling back in horror. He could see her brain trying to mesh the friendly boy with the dark curse slinging monster.
"No, his father. He was old and injured. The curse was enough to finish him off." He cut off the response with a shake wave of his hand. "Don't apologize. Theo and his father were never… close. Theo took after his mother, not something Nott Senior approved of."
"None of that was your fault, Draco. Without you to heal him Blaise would have... You saved him."
"He gave up his wand hand to save a snivelling prat who was in over his head without a kind word to say to anything or anyone. The world nearly lost a great wizard that night and it wasn't me." They sat in silence for what felt like forever. Draco's body was absolutely numb by this point, stuck somewhere between the past and present.
"How good are you at healing spells?" Hermione asked as she retreated back to her side of the couch. Draco considered it a win he hadn't been forcibly ejected.
"Currently? Halfway to passable. Back then… I am surprised he survived."
"Didn't the healers fix it after the battle?" She questioned.
"No." He responded cursing his younger self. "He was at Malfoy manor when the raids hit trying to mop up the escaped Death Eaters. I had come back to let them in the wards and barely got him out to a spare property before we all went on trial. He had no magic while his hand was healing. The house elves kept him as well as they could but he couldn't pass over the wards without one of us. When I finally got him into Saint Mungo's a month later there was nothing they could do. They said it had already healed and to let it grow. But… it never got better."
She was staring at him blankly, her eyes empty of anything but information intake. She felt almost like a talking statute. Close to human, but not quite right.
"Did you do anything to the bone? When you healed it. I didn't feel anything."
"I don't know." He answered honestly. "I had just used a general charm I had run across in a book once. It was supposed to be for deep flesh wounds. I hadn't used it before."
"Did you ever get x-rays?" Hermione questioned as she moved over to her desk and began to furiously scrubble notes.
"The bone photography muggles do?" Draco questioned standing up himself.
"I am surprised you know what that is." She raised an eyebrow but didn't pause her writing.
"We've been desperate. Blaise spent a month with a cast on last summer."
"Cast only help broken bones stay immobile. They don't actually heal." She muttered. "The bone would have been healed by then, likely in a very messy way. Probably with poor alignment and shards drifting in the skin."
"I couldn't tell you. We went to a muggle surgery but after hours of waiting when he was explaining to the healer that it was an old injury that still hurt we were all but thrown out of there and called some choice names." He suggested quietly as her quill came to a dead stop. A smile blooming on her face like summer rain.
"You have it don't you." The hope ached in his voice but he couldn't stomach pushing it down.
"I think I might."
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Three hours later she was still pouring over her books like a mad woman. This is what she lived for. This is what felt normal. She stirred and mulled the sunflower petals in the cauldron with the powdered dragon scales. The sharp grit crushing the delicate petals in a splash of sunny pigment.
"I don't understand. It hadn't worked before." Draco commented from beside her where he prepped the skele-gro base. It had always been the answer, just only part of it.
"You missed a key part of the process. We'll need to vanish the bone. Are you any good at that?" The sunflower provided the extra boost to the structure he had likely been missing and would help make up for the missing parts.
"Yes but it just regrows with the same injury." She stepped towards him to pour the bright green liquid into her cauldron. As soon as he backed away she set to stirring it in stiff up and down motions. The full moon would provide an excellent power source so instead of lighting the flame under the cauldron she peeled open the skylight. It's not like Blaise would know it would turn his bones opalescent.
"Can you do small pieces? Like shards?" She kept her voice quiet and bland after he spilled some salamander's blood. She had called him dense and he cowed like an old mare. It was wholly unlike the Draco Malfoy she knew and she honestly couldn't stand it. He fetched her toad skins without a comment. She would have to deal with the misplaced guilt later, right now she had a full night of brewing.
"I've done knuckles before." Draco stated lightly. " Anything smaller than that I would probably need to see it first."
"We can make that happen." She had never found an actual spell that allowed for x-rays. After all, why bother looking at the bone when you can just vanish and regrow it. Instead through some careful manipulation of one of the health clinics in India she was able to purchase a portable x-ray for the building. Granted it was for horses but it was better than nothing. She would have to send out a message later.
"Your problem was that the bone sat and healed on its own; and in that process, healed wrong. By the time you tried to vanish and regrow it, it regrew following the template of the 'healed' bone." Draco paused from his clean up for a moment.
"And the body sees nothing wrong with scar tissue." Draco finished with a glassy look toward the moon. It was an objectively simple solution. The muggles had been doing it for ages of course. But when you had magic wounds never existed long enough to heal wrong. Well unless you didn't have access to a healer.
"Correct. I won't lie, this is going to hurt him pretty badly. We should probably put him down for a day or two."
"He will want to be awake during it."
"We'll have to re-break it." Hermione ignored his flinch. "Slowly. Maybe more than once. Then we will have to move it around and pull on it. Stretching out his skin and muscles. Probably for a good bit. It will be extremely painful. It may take a long time."
"I can let him know."
"You really should insist-"
"I am not really in a position to demand anything from him actually." She sighed as he vanished the last of the liquid. He was tired, that was painfully clear. Every move was motivated by determination alone. She was sure sleeping on a couch hadn't helped much. Of course she slept fine but he was a bit softer than an amalgamation of wood and leather. At least this whole mess had overshadowed her love-struck behavior last night that she remembered with certain clarity. Minor blessings and all that.
"Get some sleep." She chided softly as she sped up her stirring when the potion began to boil. I will watch this."
"You'll be up all night." He commented, not meeting her eyes. He looked meek and pathetic. She didn't have much patience for either of those traits. If he wanted to self punish that was his issue but he could do it when he wasn't going to be rooting around in someone else's body.
"Drop the martyr act Draco. The other shoe is not going to drop. '' She growled and focused on the potion. "I need you competent for tomorrow."
"But I-" He sighed and met her glare before she looked down into the potion. She would swear there was something about wizards that set them up with a masochistic complex. She had enough of that during her 7th year. "I'll just take a quick nap. Wake me up in two hours and we can swap."
"Sure." She lied as he made his way over to his couch. It was a very cozy couch but no substitution for a bed. "Draco, go crash in my bed. If you are only going to have a couple of hours rest it should at least be of decent quality."
He jumped as the sound of the ladder to her loft clacked against the floor in the library. Crookshanks, hearing his signal appeared from the bathroom and sprang up into the bed with a spryness that a cat of his age shouldn't possess.
"I know I am irresistible but do contain yourself until we have finished the potion." He joked cautiously. Hermione relaxed at the small return to normalcy. "I am willing to pay my dues after it works. At great personal cost I may add."
"Ew." She forced her face into a comically over exaggerated look of disgust. "If I vomit into this potion we will have to start all over."
"You're pretty." Draco's voice drifted into a high feminine pitch. "You're so much stronger than Ron or Harry."
She openly cringed, scrunching up her face. She kept her eyes trained firmly down hoping her cheeks had already been flushed from the heat of the potion. Then she remembered there was no heat since there was no fire."No I said your magic was. I am pretty sure Ron would and could clobber you."
"Who needs fist when you have magic. Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." Draco shrugged. "Well do try to keep your sticking charms at the cauldron. I don't know if I have the strength to fight off your desperate advances."
She let all the exhaustion drip into her voice, drawing out the reactions to over the top proportions. "I will have to contain myself. I don't know how, considering you sickly paste skin and cold, dead eyes are so dark and brooding. I have always loved a charity case."
"And I have always loved witches with Hero complexes. Easier to cut things off when they end up dead in a lair somewhere." He responded, blocking her stinging hex, fully expecting it.
"Prat."
"Swot." He nodded before drifting over to sleep in her bed, with her cat, while she stayed up all night brewing a potion for Blaise Zabini. Her life had gotten more strange than usual and for a moment she felt like she was back in school brewing in a toilet.
And so she brewed the rest of the night and into the morning. Casting a quick silencing charm on his wand before it would wake him. By 5 am she wondered briefly if her pillow would smell like rosemary and lavender. By six she had decided it wouldn't be that bad if it did.
World Building with Om
Muddled Memories:
Pensive memories need to be withdrawn fresh or they will fade over time as the wizards memory of the event would fade normally to only the key information with the rest of the details being filled in unreliably. Exceptions to this are memories that have been tampered with.
BrittleBones:
Basically arthritis. It would help a bit in reducing the inflammation around the injury but would not actually contribute to fixing it.
Related works this chapter: Rowana's cell: Blueprint's of Hermione Granger's workshop.
Deviant Art: omnenomnom www. deviantart omnenomnom (remove spaces)