Please see the end of the chapter for trigger warnings.
Breath Mints / Battle Scars
XLVIII
February 23rd, 1999
Their eyes barely have the chance to meet before the world catches up with them — a flash, fleeting and wrought with hopelessness — and then hands clasp his shoulders and his gaze jerks aside, quick and gun-shy. The hands are pale, fingers long and elegant. Gentle.
Narcissa.
Hermione's still clutched in his grasp, half-dangling from his shaking arms as she speaks to him.
"Draco. Draco." Her voice is firm, and yet Hermione can somehow find the tenderness in it. "She'll be in shock. Get her to her feet. Give her air. We have very little time."
Hermione's eyes sway back to Draco, and her body gives an instinctive, involuntary jerk in his hold. She has seen him cry before. And yet, this —
"Mother…" he bleats, a stutter of breath through trembling lips, desperate and helpless. "I — h-help. Help — help me." His fingers flex against Hermione's arms, releasing and then gripping again every few seconds. Like he's not so certain she's there. Solid. In his grasp.
"Do as I say," Narcissa commands in a low voice. "Help her up."
A brief choking sound is his only response before he's nodding, tears carving wet tracks down his cheeks. His face doesn't wrinkle, she realizes. He cries flatly. Openly. As though he couldn't stop it if he wanted to.
"Draco," his mother whispers.
He grips firmly, and the backs of her legs lift from the marble, blood rushing down from her head as the soles of her shoes find pressure against the floor. She sways, and both sets of hands are there to steady her.
She manages one full, even blink. Her foot knocks against something stiff. Heavy.
Dawlish.
"Now step back," says Narcissa. "Step back. Let her breathe. Here — here." Hermione sees her stretch her arm out insistently. "Give me that. Go and see to Theo."
In the next moment, familiar, textured wood is pressed against Hermione's limp fingers. Vine. Ten and three-quarter inches. Dragon heartstring.
"Miss Granger," Narcissa says, swimming into focus in front of her. Her gaze is calm and unwavering. "Take your wand."
"I…w-what?" she stutters, tongue like lead in her mouth. Her legs are far from stable.
Narcissa just says it again. "Take your wand. This is not over." She takes Hermione's hand in her cold fingers and forces it to close around the base. "You have been through this before, yes?" No pity in her voice. Only urgency. Certainty. "You know it will pass. You know how to move forward."
The image of Shell Cottage swims behind Hermione's eyelids when she blinks next.
"Force it," Narcissa demands, and she opens her eyes again. "Recover. Now. Make yourself. Dawlish has at least two dozen more men downstairs. They are coming — they'll be here in moments — and even with you, we're outnumbered."
Hermione's thumb slides along the wooden grooves she knows like her own skin.
"Are you ready?"
She swallows, flexing her toes — ensuring her grip on the floor. With her next blink, the fog in her vision clears.
"Are you ready?" Narcissa repeats, taking her other wrist in hand and giving her a jolt.
Hermione clutches her wand tight. Nods once.
"Good."
Narcissa steps back, and she finds she can take in the state of the room for the first time, even with the blood still singing in her veins.
The Aurors that went after Pansy are scattered across the dark marble floor, stunned or dead — Hermione isn't sure. Their bodies are sprawled every which way, and Theo, on his feet despite what looks to be immense pain, is struggling to navigate the many tangled arms and legs. He crouches down twice, stealing wands.
"Draco," he calls out, tossing one of them across the room. Hermione's eyes follow it like a fired shot, finding Draco just as he pulls it from the air. His eyes are straight down, locked on the floor a few meters in front of his feet. Unfocused, and yet not like before.
"Draco," she manages in a hoarse voice.
His whole body tenses up at the sound. He doesn't look.
An itch starts, centered in her chest — a low thrum of panic that builds fast and sure.
"Draco," she forces out, louder now.
But there's a shout from the hall leading up to the dining room, and his gaze shifts there instead as he sinks into a defensive position, stolen wand out.
Hermione is slow to echo the movement, trying to look away and clear her head. Trying to catch up. Focus.
Countless footsteps grow closer, voices growing louder, and the last thing she comprehends before all hell breaks loose is Pansy.
Disheveled and blood-spattered, she's placed herself in front of Theo — far forward enough that perhaps he won't see it as such. But Hermione sees her for what she is. A wall. A divide. A promise to be the final word in keeping him from harm.
Seeing it triples the ache in her chest, and just before Dawlish's Aurors storm the room, Hermione's eyes flit back to Draco. She should do the same. She — she wants nothing more, not one thing more in this world than to spare him. From any of it. All of it.
She takes one shaking step in his direction, and spells start to fly.
Narcissa was right.
Her wand — somehow it's what she needed to yank herself from the haze of mind-numbing pain. Fight or flight. Her instincts have a clear favorite, and as she raises her wand everything else falls away.
It's just color and light.
She stuns the first Auror who crosses her line of sight without uttering a word, somehow both satisfied and urged on by the sound of his body hitting the floor.
The next two fall just as easily, but the fourth catches her in the elbow with a stinging jinx, and she wastes precious moments switching her wand to her left arm.
She expects to be stunned, at the very least, in that stretch of seconds. But upon next glance, wand out firmly once more, she finds the Auror undeniably dead — crumpled into himself.
Her eyes snap to Draco, a blur as he skims past her, not stopping. Every spell he casts is green.
Hermione has to force herself to remain in the moment, twisting to help Narcissa fight free of a full-body bind. But even as she disarms and stuns an Auror who tries to attack from the side, she wonders at it.
At what it takes. What it must feel like to reach a level where there are no holds barred. No hesitations. Where all that's left is to kill.
She's never killed anyone. Never cast the curse, no matter how many times its awkward syllables have whispered curiously across her tongue.
And for all of two seconds, as she rights herself at Narcissa's side and turns to assess the battle, she thinks perhaps she may never reach that level.
But then she sees a spark of red strike Draco in the back.
A cut cry leaps from his mouth as he falls, the torture curse rippling across his limbs as the Auror draws nearer. Pansy is locked in a stunning duel to his left, Theo reduced to physical combat on his right. Narcissa is still working at the remnants of her binds.
There is no one but her to help him.
And seeing his face, torn and twisted in agony, his shaking fingers grasping desperately at nothing — she suddenly knows a great deal more than she did moments ago.
"Crucio," she casts and does not blink, watching the Auror go stiff before he collapses and starts to writhe. She feels the power of it radiating from her wand. A pull like a magnet, captivating, indescribable.
She takes a few steps, closing their distance and standing over him, all the while allowing the curse to linger. He screams and bucks and begs for death, and the words are at her lips — moments, milliseconds from fighting free—
"No!"
A hand shackles her wrist, so familiar in texture and weight, and Draco drags her arm to the side, throwing off her aim as he pulls himself up from the floor.
"No," he snaps again, meeting her eyes for once — and there, there's that fury she was waiting for. Livid and electric.
He doesn't look at the Auror behind him on the ground. Doesn't break from her gaze as he casts the killing curse in her stead. The man's screaming dies off sharply.
"Don't you dare," Draco says, pinning her with his eyes — refusing to free her wrist. His tears from minutes before aren't quite dry on his face, and yet there's more anger in his expression than she thinks she's ever seen. "Don't ever."
Hermione opens and shuts her mouth once — twice — at a loss, staring wide-eyed up into his ragged face. And then a moment later he's gone. Back into the fray.
She can still feel the pressure of his grip fading from her wrist.
Less than five of Dawlish's Aurors remain, and when at last she can make herself move again, she makes quick work of the one trying to scale the mantle for higher ground. He falls hard on his back, frozen.
Narcissa fells another with a powerful Incarcerous, and as Hermione watches the Auror struggle against the ropes, she's thinking they might actually manage this. Against all odds.
She diverts her attention to the remaining few, rushing forth to help Theo, busy sparring with an Auror who's quite quick with his hexes. When it's two against one, he's easier to contain — but there's a reason he's one of the last standing. His skills are beyond theirs. Years of training under his belt, evident in his stance, his spellwork, the way he holds his wand.
All too soon, Hermione overcompensates — steps awkwardly as she deflects a knockback jinx — and the Auror's Levicorpus hits her square in the chest. She's catapulted back at least a dozen feet, landing hard on unforgiving marble. The breath gets forced from her lungs, and it takes her too many seconds just to manage to sit up.
From there, gasping and clutching at her chest, she watches it happen.
Theo falters under the full force of the Auror's skill, staggering back as he blocks, blocks again — dodges. He's losing. Failing fast. And Hermione witnesses the exact moment that should equal his end — the fraction of a second in which he can't manage to block in time.
But Pansy comes out of nowhere.
The killing curse explodes from the tip of her wand as she throws herself between them — and in that same instant, the spell that's meant for Theo strikes her instead. A flash of furious violet.
Hermione has never read about it. Never heard the syllables uttered until now. But she knows enough of Latin to feel her stomach drop.
"Respirae sanguinae!" the man had shouted. His last words before she took his life.
Breathe blood.
Pansy staggers and sways, looking almost confused in the dull silence that follows. Hermione scrambles to her feet. Theo calls out her name. Her black hair flutters out as she tilts her head in his direction — and a moment later a spurt of dark crimson explodes from her lips.
She buckles. Her wand clatters to the floor, and shortly after she follows it down.
By the time Hermione reaches them — no concept of the battlefield around them, no knowing if they've won or lost, if it's even over — Theo already has her in his arms. She sinks to her knees beside them, wordless, watching the even-keeled boy she's known these many years completely fall apart.
"Pans — Pans, you're okay. Y-You're…you're okay. Come on." He cradles her to him, eyes wet and disbelieving as he strokes bloody fingers through her dark hair. "I've got you. I've got you. No. No, no. You're okay. You'll see. You're okay."
The curse is merciless. She coughs up seemingly infinite quantities of blood, gasping for breath in between — blood from internal organs, from burst veins. There's no way of knowing. Theo's shirt is soaked with it in an instant, the way he holds her to his chest. Hermione sees her shaking fingers clutching at his sleeves, desperate.
Theo looks to Hermione, then, and she's not ready. "This — she's — you can fix this. You can fix this. She's alright."
Helpless — useless — Hermione feels her lip tremble as she stares back at him. Tears blur her vision, flying off her cheeks as she shakes her head. She knows the look of a fatal curse. It's going to take her. And quickly. "I…I can't. There's — Theo, there's nothing—"
"No. No," he snaps, looking away. He's stroking her face now, numb to the blood she drools onto his hand. "She's alright. She's okay. Pansy, sweetheart — look at me."
He doesn't need to say it. Her dark eyes, lovely even now, never leave his face. Not when Hermione reaches out, unable to swallow back a whimper as she takes one of her hands. Not when Draco's shadow falls over them. He's panting, exhausted from battle. "Fuck…Pansy, no," he breathes as he realizes the gravity of it, voice low — barely a whisper.
Theo still hears him.
"Don't," he growls, furious. "She's fine! She's — she's fine. You're fine. Pans — Pans, tell them. Tell them you're fine. You'll be alright."
Pansy's soft chokes have become staggered. Few and far between as her chest shudders, eyes wide and unblinking. She's pale as death. There's hardly any blood left in her.
"Pansy. Pansy, no." The defiant hope in Theo's voice is dying. "Please. I'm here. Stay with me. I'm right here."
Draco takes one of Theo's shoulders in hand, even as Theo tries to shake it off. He meets Hermione's eyes — just once — over the hunched form of his friend, and the wall between them momentarily breaks to make way for a shared grief.
Pansy coughs once more. Manages to close her bloodstained lips, throat bobbing compulsively as she swallows.
"You…" she whispers to Theo, voice in shreds. "You l-look nice…in blue."
His broken expression fractures further, confused and scattered. He's not wearing blue. "…What, sweetheart?"
People become delirious, near the end. Hermione hates that she knows that.
"S-So…so handsome in blue…"
Theo chokes back a sob, tears falling from his lashes to the crown of her head. "Thank you."
She's slipping away fast. Has moments left, maybe. Hermione can see it.
And in a moment of weakness — of desperation — she leans forward, putting her lips at Pansy's ear. Speaking to her and and only her.
"You saved him," she whispers. "You kept your promise." And she gives Pansy's hand a squeeze before leaning back, blinking away tears.
But it is truly something to see Pansy smile through it all — a sudden, gentle smile, unlike any expression Hermione's seen on her face before. She tilts her head with the last of her strength to meet her eyes. And her bloody teeth, her gaunt face — they seem to fade to background noise in the midst of it. In that moment, she is beautiful and nothing else.
She looks once more to Theo, then — her chosen last sight. Peace floods through her features. Her smile lingers a moment longer. And then she sags in his arms, chest sinking, eyes falling shut. A final breath leaves her lips. Soft. Unfettered.
And she's gone.
Hermione looks away. Has to. Anywhere else.
But the sound Theo makes will stay with her for the rest of her days.
TW: character death, blood