She sits in at a table [Flickers of guilt kindle regret]. The chandelier drips diamonds of light onto her skin [For all that was left unsaid or undone]. She has a book cracked open, the spine flexible from overuse [There are days when you wake up happy]. A low level of panic skitters across Hermione [Again inside the fullness of life]. If she squints, the landscape looked familiar: the ministry library, the Hogwarts library [Suddenly with no warning]. But then the furniture morphs, the shelves shimmer, the light fractures [You are ambushed by grief]. It reminds her of the painting with the melting clocks, all that color, dripping away [It becomes hard to trust yourself].

She starts to flip through the pages in front of her [the definition of insanity] . So much red, everywhere [is performing the same actions over and over again]. Some pages are ripped [yet expecting a different result].

She's staring at a photograph. Draco's on a table, arms strapped down, eyes wide and afraid: the scalpel lifts [Like a slender fish, it waits, at the ready, then, go! It darts, followed by a fine wake of red]. So much blood [The flesh parts, falling away to yellow globules of fat]. He starts to scream; the page vibrates [Beneath the fat lies the fascia, the tough fibrous sheet encasing the muscles. It must be sliced and the red beef of the muscles separated]. His legs kick out; she feels her abdomen tighten as his is peeled back [the indolent coils of the intestine].

She turns the page and sees her father's body [Deeper still]. Hemorrhaging blood [The peritoneum, pink and gleaming and membranous]. A canyon opened in his abdomen [bulges into the wound]. His eyes are open [it is grasped with forceps, and opened], the whites latticed by veins [The cavity of the abdomen]. His pupils bore into hers [Such a primitive place]. Is this what you wanted? Are you happy now, Hermione?

She jerks up. Her nightgown sticks to her back and she inhales, greedy for air. Her heart hammers a violent concert. When she tries to wrap the sheet around herself tighter, her fingers tremble and she has to stick them under her thighs, press her forehead into her knees.

She checks her wand: 4:15 AM. She won't sleep again, so she wraps her dressing robe around herself and walks into the kitchen, squints at the harsh assault of light. She's staring at the rim of bubbles on her coffee when Ron walks in, already dressed.

"Sorry," she says. "Did I wake you?"

He laughs. "Jet lag." And then. "You look awful, Hermione."

"I can't sleep."

They keep doing this, meeting in the kitchen, almost every single night since he's been here. She's grateful he's offered to stay with her while Draco's at the hospital, even though Harry and Ginny probably suggested it. They don't trust her to be alone. She's picking her battles very carefully.

"Nightmares?"

She flushes; she hates that she told him what the dreams are about. She hates that she's an adult but her mind still terrorizes itself.

He pulls out a chair and she winces at the violent screech of the action. "We don't have to–"

"Then let's please not–"

"But you have to tell him–"

"–too soon–"

"Hermione"–he takes her hand in his–"you have to tell Draco who the donor is."

His fingers feel moist and warm in a way that makes her want to snatch her palm back.

"Once you know something," she says, "you can't ever unknow it."

The clock in the hallway chimes. She stares at her thumb; blood seeps from where she's gnawed off the skin of her cuticle.

"He's going to ask eventually. Hasn't he wondered about your father?"

"He knows Dad...passed. I just haven't told him how yet."

What would Draco say, she wondered, if he knew what – who– he harbored inside of him now.

They've moved Draco from the ICU to a transplant ward, in a private room she knows they can't afford anymore. She imagines Theo or the Malfoys will pay for it, and that knowledge both soothes and pains her. She cannot afford her own pride anymore.

His room is a carousel of faces: doctors, nurses, family, friends. She hasn't had much time alone with him, but a week into his recovery, she enters the room and finds it devoid of its usual inhabitants, just Draco. It's early, too early for visiting hours, but she's realized the security in the hospital is lackluster and rarely will anyone stop her if she's able to get past the nurse's desk. He's reading a book–a short story collection by Chekhov–when she walks in, and he gives her a small, tired smile, earmarking the novel without breaking eye contact.

"Have you been up long?"

He shakes his head. "An hour, maybe."

"I'm sorry. I would have come earlier, but visit–"

He shakes his head. "They did some tests, earlier." His smile is tight and perfunctory. "I'm glad you weren't here to see them."

She sometimes plays this game with herself: if Draco hadn't almost died for her, would he tell her about the tests? If Draco still trusted her, would he have more to say with her? What is Draco thinking about, right now?

There's a part of her, an ugly, unrelenting part, that wonders if Draco is showing her such kindness only because she's lost her father. Would he still look at her this way if he knew the truth? She's squinting at him, trying to solve the answer to the last question, when he lets out a huff of laughter. "I'm fine," he says. "You'll go cross-eyed if you keep staring at me like that."

"Sorry, I just–"

"It's okay." He pats the mattress, and she makes her way over. Usually, when others are around, she sits in a chair by his bed. The intimacy of this moment makes her chest tight. "My parents are asking for an early discharge. At the end of next week."

"That's...soon." Much too soon, from what she understands.

He shrugs. "Tabitha will be there." His shoulders tense and his eyes dart towards her face, waiting for her reaction. They haven't talked about this yet, the ways in which they've deluded one another: the trip to France, the firm, the money, the healer. It's too soon. There will be more time, she thinks, in the future.

She nods. "Are you sure you'll feel ready to leave?"

He glances up before he speaks, fingers twitching against the blankets. "I think I could recover faster if we leveraged some magical methods."

"Right." Her throat is closing up, and she knows she'll have to feign an excuse soon, a reason to leave the room. "I understand."

She carries this fear inside of her: there's an intersection between the natural and the magical that corrupts; she's seen this happen. She trusts neither her intuition nor her fears.

She's tried to articulate this concern to the Malfoys. Why wouldn't we use magical means to expedite his healing? Lucius hissed in response. Your own inadequacies are not a reflection of magic at large. She has no counterargument for this.

So, instead, she worries, tracking every jump of Draco's heart rate on the monitor, scrutinizing the variations in his blood pressure. He has a clear tube attached to his chest that snakes under the rails of his bed. A milky substance flows through it, and every time he scratches the area she wants to tell him stop .

"Miss Granger," Lucius drawls out, interrupting her thoughts. "I presume you've heard of Draco's early discharge? I hope you'll be so kind as to pack some things for him, for when he moves to the manor." And then, as an afterthought, he adds, "And, of course, your own things as well."

Draco slides his hand into hers, a quick pulse of his fingers; she exhales and forces herself to nod at Lucius.

Later, in the hallway, she stands by the Malfoys as they wait for the elevator. The red numbers increase as the elevator ascends. It surprises her, slightly, that the Malfoys are comfortable getting into a muggle elevator–it makes her wonder about the ways in which they've had to acclimate during Draco's hospital visit, if it was a painful process for them, to see how similar some things are between the two worlds.

"I haven't told him yet," she says, breaking the silence. She fists the fabric of her sleeve into her palm. "I haven't told him about who the donor is."

Lucius' cane taps against the floor. . When she turns towards him, he's staring at the elevator, eyebrows furrowed. Narcissa squeezes the crook of his arm but says nothing.

"It's too soon," Hermione continues. "I don't want him to think about that yet."

The red digits slide, 4 turns to 5. Hermione inhales. "He should focus on recovering."

With a ding, the brass doors open. Lucius steps forward without response, but Narcissa lingers behind a beat, turning towards Hermione as she says, very softly, "Thank you."

Hermione loses track of the days: time morphs, spidering across her. She blinks, and her hair is greasy again, her dark circles deeper, sunken in. "You could go in later today," Ron says to her this morning. "Draco will be fine. He'll have people with him. You could get some extra sleep."

She declines. She likes to spend the mornings with Draco, to be the first one there before the Malfoys come, before Pansy, Theo, and Blaise arrive. Daphne and Astoria Greengrass visit at one point, and she hates how ashamed she feels next to them, with their coiffed hair, the soft lilt of their voices, cooing: Oh, you poor thing, Draco. And a muggle hospital, really?

She's home right now, just for an hour or two. Her luggage sits by the bed, next to a suitcase brimming with Draco's clothes. Ron hands her folded sweaters as they sit side-by-side in the closet and decide on what, exactly, Draco would want to wear while at the manor. She doesn't think of it as his home; she doesn't want to give the Malfoys that much.

"Are you sure you can do this? Move...there?"

"How long are you on sabbatical for?" Hermione places Draco's socks underneath a layer of his sweaters, and she doesn't look at Ron while she asks. She wants the utility of silence without resorting to it; she's become very skilled at diverting a conversation from its target.

"As long as you need me to be."

Hermione feels a rush of affection for him, for the allowances he grants her. He must be angry, just as angry as Harry is, but he hasn't said anything. It's hard to reconcile the unflappable man he is now with the quick-tempered boy he was. The war changed him, and then the ministry trained him, but sometimes she wishes he would just yell at her. It would be a kindness, a demonstration that not all things had changed.

"Will Ginny be stopping by today?" she asks.

"Yes. She says she'll bring dinner."

"Have you spoken to Harry?"

"A few times." Ron hands her an Oxford, but he doesn't look at her.

"He's still angry, isn't he?"

For a few seconds, the only sound is Ron rustling through the shelves. She watches the ripples in his sweater as he moves. He stills, back towards her, arms outstretched as he places both hands on a wooden ledge in the closet. His neck is bowed. She can't see from her vantage point, but she imagines his eyes are closed, chin pressed into his chest. "We're all angry, Hermione."

She's wrong. This is worse. She shouldn't have said anything. Her chest aches, a hive of bees underneath her sternum. She freezes, shuts her eyes. There's the sound of shifting fabric and then Ron touches her shoulder. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean–"

Shaking her head, she grips Draco's cashmere sweater so hard she thinks she'll leave a hole. "I know I made a mess of things." She's dripping, like a faucet, and she wipes her sleeve underneath her nose as her voice fractures. "I made awful decisions, Ronald, but I tried. I really tried to fix things. I–"

Ron shushes her, rubbing his hands across her shoulders. It reminds her of her father, of crawling into his hospital bed, how his voice brushed against the peach fuzz of her cheek. She's crying so hard she can't breathe. Y ou can't delay your emotions forever, Susan had told her once. She feels disgusting, crying in her ex-boyfriend's arms while they sit in the closet she shares with her injured husband.

"I don't know what to do," she whispers, and it feels liberating to admit, for once, the truth.

Ron places his hand on her forehead, sweeps down, pushing her hair back from the wet slick of her cheeks. "I know," he says.

Hermione's thumb bleeds, smearing a red ribbon across the styrofoam cup. It's Thursday, the day before Draco is to be discharged. There's a levity in his hospital room. Even Lucius smiles once or twice, but Hermione's anxiety roils around her stomach, pressing its contents against her throat. She digs her nail into the skin around her thumb every time someone mentions manor.

A nurse is here to explain instructions for his recovery. "Who will be the primary caregiver for Mr. Malfoy?"

Her hand shoots up, but when she looks around, she sees everyone's hands are up.

The nurse smiles. "Well, Mr. Malfoy, you're quite the lucky man, aren't you?" She moves towards him, reaching for the blanket tucked against him "The stoma really is the hardest part"–she starts to push up his gown and suddenly she's tripping on the linoleum, pushed backwards; her sneakers screech as she gasps and Draco barks, "Don't touch me."

Everyone stares. "Draco," Hermione says. "Please–"

The nurse stands in the corner, brows furrowed. There's a slight tremble in her fingers, but no one tries to comfort her.

"Get out." His voice is very low and very quiet, and when no one answers, he fists the sheets in his fingers and yells, "Leave."

"Draco." Narcissa moves towards him and a vein pulses in his jaw as he says, again, with such force Narcissa stops in her tracks, "Get the fuck out, right now."

In the hallway, Hermione hears Theo whisper What just happened? A new nurse has to be summoned, the situation explained. Pansy tries to look through the window of the door, to see what prompted such a violent reaction, and Hermione's voice is much stronger than she feels when she says, "Dont, Pansy. Just give him some privacy."

Later, as they're leaving the hospital, Ron asks, "What's a stoma?" and Hermione shakes her head. She doesn't have the vocabulary for this.

The manor differs from how she remembers it to be. But memories are faulty. Hermione knows, for instance, that memory recall is never a perfect 1:1 retrieval. There are biases from the start. Objectivity is illusory. The process of recalling a memory is iterative, you pull the memory forth and must stabilize it again, leaving it at the mercy of further distortions.

Whenever she passes the drawing room of the manor, sees the purple wallpaper, the crystals dangling from a new chandelier, Hermione repeats this mantra to herself: Bellatrix tortured her here, carved Mudblood into her skin, but through remembering this, she has made it worse, infused it with remastered horror. If she can not think about it, the memory itself will begin to fade, drifting away until only its edges are visible. She can do this for Draco. She can force herself not to remember.

Draco's propped against a mound of forest-green pillows. She's sitting on the edge of his bed and Narcissa and Lucius stand in front of him. They look like a diagram of a hospital visit, the mis-en-scene of recovery: the patient, the wife, the parents. He looks young against the four-poster bed; a Slytherin tapestry hangs above him. She's holding his hand, but his fingers fidget, like he wants to pull away. She hates that she wonders what girls have lain in this bed with him here.

"When is the healer coming tomorrow?" he asks.

Narcissa runs her fingers across his fringe. "Early, you should get some rest."

"Poppy can show Miss. Granger to her room." Lucius says, turning to leave. Draco releases her fingers.

"You cannot be serious, Father."

"Isn't your bed a little small for two? Surely, Ms. Granger prioritizes her comfort as well?"

"I don't mind–" Hermione says.

"Surely, Ms. Granger would want you to have adequate rest as well, as part of your convalescence."

At this, Hermione's mouth shuts. She's backed in a corner. This isn't even her fight.

"Surely, Father, you recognize that arguing with you only raises my blood pressure. That is hardly conducive to my care."

There's a beat. Lucius exhales. Narcissa sighs. Together, they leave.

"Thank you," Hermione says, but Draco has his eyes closed, head tilted up, a furrow between his brows.

The manor halls echo. It makes her wonder what Draco's childhood was like, what secrets he was acquainted with at too-young an age. Sound is constantly bouncing around the walls; there's a strange sense of stillness even though there's rarely true silence: the beat of steps, the crack of apparating house elves, the whisper of voices.

Draco, your mother and I would be amenable to removing the freeze on your trust, if you would consider...moving back, permanently.

I'm sensing this generous offer also has stipulations.

I'm sure you think Miss. Granger–

Hermione presses herself against the wall near Lucius' study. She evens her breathing, tries to stay very still and quiet.

Hermione–

–but there many other eligible women–

For fuck's sake–

Don't curse, darling– Narcissa's voice.

There's an ebb in the conversation, and she wonders if she's been caught, if the sound of her breathing ricocheted into the room.

You can't be serious.

Draco, you have choices –

Enough, father. She's my wife, not a codicil.

Hermione rubs a hand on her chest. Her knees feel gelatinous. The voices die down to unintelligible whispers. She has become an interloper to her own life, but Draco is trying; that has to be enough.

Lucius arcs his wand, passing the salt to Narcissa, who thanks him and then tilts it in Hermione's direction, who shakes her head. Hermione drags her knife across her cut of steak, and Lucius sighs when the metal scrapes against her plate. "Sorry," she says, but no one answers.

Upstairs, Draco is in his room, with Tabitha. He hasn't transitioned to eating solid foods yet. Soon, Tabitha has said, but you shouldn't rush recovery . It is, Hermione thinks, the most sensible thing anyone around here has said.

Dinner finishes like it started, in silence, and Hermione makes her way to Draco's room. She takes her time, loitering in the hallways, admiring the portraits lining them until they sneer at her and whisper Mudblood . She hopes to avoid Tabitha when she finally arrives at his room, but as she nears the door, she hears the volley of voices.

Just close it, Draco says. Just close the fucking thing.

Mr. Malfoy, if we close the stoma too early, you could become septic. Your viscera needs to heal .

You told me this wasn't permanent. You said you would get rid of it.

It isn't permanent, but it's a safety measure, while your–

I don't care. What kind of healer are you if you're okay with keeping me disfigured? It's unsanitary.

Outside his door, Hermione leans against the wall, tries to breathe through the panic in her chest. She can't push away the images of septic , all the inflammation, the rush of white blood cells, the blush of fever. Inside of Draco, an uprising.

Tabitha leaves the room in a huff, shaking her head and muttering under her breath. She nods at Hermione, who pauses for a beat before she enters the room. Draco's sitting up in bed, the blanket pulled up to his chest. If she squints, she can see the outline of the ostomy bag, but he's never let her see it. Every morning, in the early dawn, she hears him getting dressed in the dark, light sparking from his wand as he summons his clothes. The lengths of concealment they both undertake; the ways in which they continue to hide from each other.

"Draco," she says. She twists her hands together, swallows around the lump in her throat. "The stoma isn't forever, but you shouldn't–"

He keeps his gaze fixed on the wall across from him. His voice is sharp and cold, like steel, and he fists the duvets as he answers. "Hermione," he says, "don't."

"He's still weak, Harry," she whispers. "I need some more time." She's bent over the hearth, hair dangerously close to the fire outlining Harry's face.

"You don't have any more time." Embers jump from the logs, obscuring Harry's expression, but even through the sparks she can see the hard line of his mouth. "You were supposed to let Cadric know right after he woke up."

"I was busy. What do you suppose I should have done?"

"Do you really want to know what I think you should have done? Do you want me to list out all the things you shouldn't have done?"

Harry closes his eyes. "Sorry," he says. "I–"

"You can't bring Cadric here," she says. "Draco's not healed enough to handle an interrogation."

"My hands are tied, Hermione. You made a deal–"

" You made a deal."

"I did that for you, to keep you from–for Merlin's sake, Hermione. Do you still not realize the extent of what you've done? I've been cleaning up your mess all month. Do you know what the Daily Prophet wanted to print?" He exhales with such force sparks flare and leap onto her jeans.

She slaps her palm down on her thigh, snuffing out the embers, pretending the heat is what makes her eyes sting.

"Well, I apologize that our friendship is such a burden." Her response is childish, but still better than what she wants to say where have you been? This is the first time he's even floo-ed since–

"This is much larger than you now, Hermione. There are consequences to what you–"

"You think I don't know that? You think I don't live with my consequences?"

"I think you need to take responsibility for your actions."

They stare at one another. Hermione digs her nails into her palm. Harry blinks, his mouth see-sawing open and closed. Finally, he says,"Tell Draco to be prepared on Tuesday. I'll be there, with Cadric." With a whoosh he's gone, leaving Hermione to stare the flames.

She can tell he's not asleep from his twitching fingers, but the way he tries to force his breathing into a rhythm means he must be feigning sleep. She's laying less than a foot away from him, but he feels far away and unknowable, a phantom of a dream. Maybe he can sense that she wants to talk about something. Maybe he's just as desperate to avoid it.

"Draco," she says, her voice thin and soft. When he doesn't answer, she skims her fingers across his shoulder, waiting until he opens his eyes.

"Were you sleeping?" she asks, and her ears burn at her idiocy.

She expects a barbed retort, something speckled with sarcasm–maybe that's why she asked such a stupid question. Instead, he sounds resigned as he asks, "What's wrong?"

"I have to tell you something." A swath of moonlight leaks into the room, illuminating the vials of potions lined up neatly on his dresser. She focuses on the jewel-toned vials as she speaks. "Cadric is coming tomorrow."

"Who?"

"The scientist, from–" she wants to say, before your accident, but she can't get the words out and ends up with "before."

"You'll have to be more specific, Hermione." Irritation now flecks his voice.

"He's the one I got the research from, for the potion. The one I"–she swallows–"obliviated."

"What ?" Draco shifts, drawing his leg out from under the covers. She forgot; he doesn't know this yet. "Is he pressing charges?"

"No." Her mouth feels dry and sour. "It's a long story, but he wants to speak to you."

"About?"

"He wants to know about the plant, what you were able to find."

Draco digs his pointer and middle finger into his forehead, closing his eyes, like he's in pain. "Can't this wait until later? I didn't find anything. I can barely remember most of the trip."

"I–" Her shame crawls up, tunneling into her abdomen, climbing the ladder of her ribs, sliding along the curve of her neck until it's in her mouth, choking the words out. She's supposed to be taking care of him, but she has to ask him to do this one last thing for her. She doesn't need anyone to take care of her, she always says, but everyone in her life is left cleaning up her messes. "He said he would drop the charges if I returned the research and if you...if he had the chance to speak to you, when you woke up."

Silence. There's a small, perverse part of her that hopes he says no, that he leaves her to her consequences, but she knows he would never do that to her. She's always known this about him, that there are limits to the cruelty he practices; he's always known his boundaries. It's one of the reasons she loves him. Sometimes, she's not sure she recognizes her own limits.

"Okay," he finally says. "I'll tell him what happened."

"Thank you," she says, and she reaches for him, but her fingers graze thin air. He's already turned away.

"We'll have guests visiting tomorrow," Draco says.

Narcissa shifts in the loveseat, placing the teacup delicately back on its plate. "Friends?"

Hermione looks down, watches the sugar cube disintegrate in her tea, like snowfall.

"Old friends," Draco says, after a pause. "We'll be in the conservatory, and I'd appreciate some privacy." His words are firm, but his tone is light.

Narcissa nods, and when she reaches over to touch his shoulder, he doesn't pull back.

Hermione floats in the tub, surrounded by bubbles that slide over her body, coating her in the scent of roses. The ceiling of Draco's bathroom is charmed to show the night sky, and she's staring at the curve of his constellation as her fingers prune.

Today: March 27, her father's birthday. She hadn't remembered until her wand buzzed with the notification: call Dad. Why hadn't she gotten rid of that reminder? There's a deluge of tasks that she's pushed off: her parents' funerals, their wills, their house. She doesn't let herself think about this during the day, but here, suspended in the water, the thoughts rush through her.

If this were a book, she thinks, no one would believe the plot. A laugh bubbles out of her, and then she can't stop and there's salt in her nose and a watery film in her eyes and she has to dip her head under the water and bite down on her fist.

She tracks his movements in the bathroom, noting the way he has to pause after brushing his teeth, the slight inhale as he presses his palm over his abdomen. Hunching over hurts him, but he won't take any more pain potions.

"I–"

His glare reflects through the mirror; he hates when she frets over him.

She busies herself with brushing her own teeth, and after she spits the foam in the sink, she looks in the mirror to find his scrutiny.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Panic drills into her. Who told him about the organ donation? He hasn't spent much time with his friends. He's been avoiding everyone. Was it Narcissa? Lucius? Would they want to hurt their own son that way?

"You have to tell me exactly what I should say to Cadric to avoid making this worse."

Oh, oh. Relief snakes up her spine, makes her relax her shoulders in a way that must seem at odds with the subject matter. This, she can handle. His disappointment on this subject, she can navigate. She's picking her battles very carefully.

She turns to face him, cocking her hip against the counter. "You should tell him the truth," she says. "You didn't find the plant, right?"

His eyebrows furrow, and he sticks the toothbrush into the holder with force. "Right," he says. "I failed at that."

She's said the wrong thing. He starts to walk away and she's desperate not to end the night like this. "Draco," she says. He's silhouetted against the door, grasping the casing of the frame. His neck is tilted to the right, face half turned towards her. She can sense his impatience from the rigid grip of his fingers. She licks her lips. "Goodnight," she says. He nods, and then, as he leaves, she says, very quietly, "I love you," and she doesn't expect him to hear or respond, but a part of her hopes that he knows what she means, that he's always known what she lacked the bravery to say.

There's tea in front of them, courtesy of Poppy. Biscuits too, the rectangle chocolate ones that remind her of summer camping trips. Cadric has two on his plate. Crumbs cling to the wiry hairs of his mustache and Hermione feels nauseous as they waterfall down his shirt when he speaks.

"Hermione, I see your husband has recovered."

"Recovering," she murmurs and regrets it immediately when Draco's shoulders tense.

"Well, regardless, I believe we have some unfinished business, no?"

She looks to Harry, who looks away.

Cadric leans forward. "Mr. Malfoy," he says, extending his arm. "It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Cadric."

Draco doesn't move, and after a beat, Cadric drops his hand. "I'll keep this short, but all I really want to know is: did you manage to at least see what the plant looks like? I heard you failed to retrieve–"

"That's not what I said."

Cadric turns to her. "So he did retrieve it?"

"No, no. I just mean, I never used the word fail."

He stares at her like she's an insect buzzing near his shoulder. "Right, well, forgive my semantics, but Mr. Malfoy, let's focus on the task at hand. Did you? Did you see it?"

Draco exhales. "No."

"Did you follow the map? The one I included in my research?"

"Yes, but...I didn't find it."

Two dashes of color have appeared on Cadric's cheeks. "I spent years tracking the plant. I had it marked perfectly. You must have done it wrong, followed a wrong lead–"

"Cadric"–Harry starts to rise from his seat–"he clearly doesn't–"

"Then what is the point? What was the point of all this?" Cadric inhales, and then bites down, the veins in his neck distending. "At least, tell me what the trip was like, Mr. Malfoy. You can, at least, give me that?"

Draco shifts; his sweater is loose and baggy, a stark contrast to the fitted cashmeres he usually wears. He's altered everything she packed for him, a sartorial choice she knows is more about concealment than style. "I don't remember much," he finally says. "The weather was erratic. Rain and then sleet before bursts of sun that left me overheated. The visibility during the day was–"

"This is lovely, Mr. Malfoy, but surely you did more than suffer the weather during your trip?"

Draco's nostrils flare, and he pushes his teacup away. "It was disorienting, the forests. The deeper in I went, the–it wasn't just the thick vegetation. There was something... dark about the forest, like a force or–"

"Magic," Cadric breathes. His eyes are wide, mouth parted in interest. "There's supposedly a barrier deep in the forest, a kind of protection for the Astragalus remedium. Blood magic." Cadric's speaks with rabid intensity, and his mouth curls as he continues. "I've read about it. A way to protect such a powerful plant, but there's no record of who did it."

"I kept getting lost. I would walk down a path, but pass the same trees each time. I marked them. I was walking in circle, but I couldn't–"

"Spellwork," Cadric shouts, leaning forward. "It must have been a spell, some type of concealment charm, for disorientation, to keep the plant's location hidden–"

"I never found it," Draco says, his voice rising as well. "I just walked in circles and circles, growing more and more disoriented. And then, I–" he stops, licks his lips, eyebrows furrowing as he looks down at the table. "And then I was bleeding, on the ground."

"You idiot. You were already there. You were so close to the plant. Didn't you recognize that it must have been a spell? Didn't you think something was off–"

"It wasn't–I don't remember...If I had more time to prepare–" Draco inhales.

Her fingers tingle, an ache building in her chest. "Enough," Hermione said. "That's enough. You need to leave now." The certainty in her voice is a surprise. Where has it been all this time?

"But–"

"Draco told you what he knows." She reaches for Draco's hand, and he doesn't pull away, but his fingers are limp in hers. "There's nothing else to say."

For a few beats, no one says anything. Suddenly, Cadric shifts, leaning in close to Hermione. "You ruined it." His eyes are wide, the pupils dilated. "You stole my work, and look what happened. All my years of research wasted like that. Your husband almost died, and it was all a failure–"

"Cadric, you're finished." Harry grasps the other man's shoulders, but Cadric twists away violently, the buckle of his jacket hitting the side table. "You got the chance to speak with him. It's done."

"You've ruined everything. Look what you've done–"

The air rushes out of her. She digs her nails into the loveseat. The world tilts, vertigo engulfing her. There's a series of staccato shouts, the whoosh of the floo. She can't breathe. She's hunched over, cradling her forehead in her palms.

She feels the pressure of Draco's palm on her back. It pains her to think he's worrying about her right now when he must be in pain. "Draco," she says. His movements still, but he keeps his hand on her shoulder. She licks her lips, presses her tongue against her molars. Her cheek is smashed against her fingers, and the words come out muffled. "I need to tell you something."

AN: In Hermione's nightmare, there are selections quoted from three sources.

A poem: "For Grief," by John O'Donohue

A quote: "The definition of insanity" has been attributed to Albert Einstein, though it's most likely a misattribution. I don't think the "true" speaker has been identified.

An essay: "The Knife" by Richard Selzer. This is a genius piece of work and a must-read for anyone interested in narrative medicine (or bodies!).