Madam Fleur Weasley uncorked a vial of wolfsbane balm, warming it between her fingers, making ready to dab it on the angry, all-but-deadly wound Bellatrix Lestrange's blade had left in Hermione Granger's throat.
She had read about this potion but never handled it in real life. It was precious and rare, and Fleur had known when she sent Bill to the Order in London to look for some that they would never find it in time. But they had to be able to tell Ron they had tried everything. Ron, who had carried Hermione from the beach, his eyes red with tears, his voice hoarse with calling for help. Fleur hadn't known the wound was cursed when she assured Ron that Hermione would be alright and reminded him that Harry was, at that moment, weeping on the beach, honoring the remains of the brave little elf. Anyway, treating Hermione meant taking off her dirty, glass-filled clothing, and Ron agreed he had better not see her undressed today unless it couldn't be helped. And it could be.
Fleur wasn't thinking about Ron now. She was completely absorbed in Hermione and the strange young man she was clinging to as if he was a healing charm himself. Fleur knew he was one of THE Malfoys, but she had forgotten his first name already. She did, however, remember what he'd said about pain and the life-saving potion he'd brought.
"Your lover is right," Fleur crooned to Hermione as she leaned closer to better see the injury. "This potion will hurt you quite a lot. Hold him tightly, and cry your tears into him."
Hermione couldn't look any more terrified as she buried her face in Draco Malfoy's shoulder, one hand in his, the other clamped to the nape of his neck.
Draco was kneeling beside the bed, sighing as he folded his free arm around her waist. He was holding her again after two months of separation. The circumstances were horrible but he savoured the feel of her in his arms all the same. She was thinner than when he used to bring her good things to eat every night, but it was nothing they couldn't reverse if he started taking care of her again. And he was desperate to be caring for her again, beginning now.
Pressed into the crook of his neck, her face was cold and damp, her body in shock. He both heard and felt a rush of air past his skin, her shallow breaths deepening for a moment as she breathed in his scent. He was struck by this sweetness, and also moved with relief. Hermione still felt something for him in spite of his absence and the attention Weasley had no doubt been paying her all this time. Draco took heart and gathered her closer, her side held flush to his chest, her trembling shaking through him.
Fleur smoothed Hermione's hair away from the wound, her clear blue eyes meeting Draco's over the crown of Hermione's head. He answered with a silent nod, his impatience to begin the countercurse growing. They were ready to get on with it.
Breath held, Fleur eased the slick, clear balm to the broken skin.
Hermione convulsed in Draco's arms, both of them shocked as a sickening hiss steamed from the wound. Fleur flinched away. The balm burned as its magic worked, silvery light shooting through the nerves beneath Hermione's flesh, forking away from the cursed cut like bolts of lightning. Each hiss and flash and pang neutralized the curse, but at an awful physical price.
The wound was still sparking as Fleur stood up from the bed. She was frowning, carefully wiping the rest of the potent balm from her fingertip and vanishing the tissue. Draco gave her a scared, questioning look. Was this right?
Against his collar bone, Hermione began to whimper, flagging in her fight to keep back a sob.
"Cry, cherie," Fleur said, patting her knee through the blanket. "I said for you to cry."
All at once the room was full of the sound of her weeping.
Fleur's shoulders rounded, relieved to hear the full, deep breaths Hermione was now able to take. Her strength was returning. The curse was reversed and the danger was past.
Draco bent to see the red but now closed wound on her neck. It would leave a scar hidden beneath her hair, but it would not take her life.
Fleur nodded at him again as she turned to leave. It was a shame Ron couldn't keep this girl – a girl Fleur knew to have been in love with him since she'd met them. But it was also all Ron's fault for leaving her alone. It would be difficult for the entire family to lose this girl, and that made it saddest of all. "Take a moment alone together," she told them for now. "I will be back soon. If Ron or Harry find you here, run."
"Attendez un peu," Draco called, asking her to wait. "Thank you for listening to me, and letting me in."
Fleur gave a weak smile. "You honored me with my own language in a country where so few will try," she said. "I will always listen carefully to the language of my heart."
The door closed behind her, Hermione's cries were quieter but still resounding through the garrett. The wound's curse and countercurse were related to lycanthropy, and maybe that was why her sobs sounded vaguely howlish. Draco rolled her off her back and onto her side, facing him where he knelt beside the bed. He rubbed her back from her shoulder to her waist, his palm gliding over the nightdress Fleur had got her into before he arrived. It was white and trimmed in frills, almost as fancy as her Yule Ball gown from fourth year. She was lost in it, like a beautiful invalid in a gothic Muggle novel.
"Yes, good girl," he said. "Go on and cry on the worst day of your life."
She shook in his arms, brave as ever, but not afraid to show him her suffering, smart as always, but letting her mind rest. For once, she was feeling rather than planning, reacting rather than performing. Maybe no one had ever known this tiny, hurting Hermione in the ridiculously romantic nightdress but him.
He pressed a chaste but heartfelt kiss to the top of her head. "I'm sorry," he said as she cried. "So infinitely sorry."
It wasn't enough. He wanted to tell her that everything would be alright now, and that he'd never leave her again. He wanted to tell her he was in love with her and that nothing else mattered. But for the moment, he said nothing more, just rocked her and pressed his lips to her hair, his eyes clenched closed to keep his own tears from forming.
The peak of the countercurse had passed and she was no longer howling, her shaking subsiding, her breath better controlled. At last, she loosened her grip on him and tipped her face out of his shoulder, blinking through wet lashes to see him.
Their eyes fixed on each other for a quiet, cautious moment. She raised a hand to touch the healing cut a flying shard of chandelier crystal had left on his cheek.
He took her fingers, holding them to his mouth without properly kissing them.
"It's not the worst day of my life," she said. "Not when you came for me."
Sighing, wary of hurting any injuries he couldn't see, Draco pulled her gently into his chest again. "You perfect thing. There's no need to be so sweet to me," he said.
"But you're hurt," she said. "Your face…You could have been…" A shudder ran through her, like she might start crying again.
"It's fine," he said, his voice low and calm. "I deserve far worse."
She hummed the way she often did before making an argument, but she couldn't manage the effort to begin one now. "The potion – I'm still woozy," she said. "And I'm going about this all wrong."
Draco was half smiling, her fingers still held to his lips. "Well, you're definitely woozy. It's not like you to be wrong, and even less like you to say you're wrong."
With a small smile, she closed her eyes. Her body, which had been rigid with pain, was softening, melting into him. "I imagined it most every night. Meeting you again. In my mind, it was never like this."
Draco's cheeks flushed. "Whynot? Did you hit me in your imagination?" he said.
She frowned. "No, not after I hit Ronald when he came back to us. He ruined it for me."
Draco breathed a laugh. "Did you toss your hair and stick your nose in the air when imaginary me explained that Snape broke the link between you and the Deluminator, and then my mother confiscated it altogether? Because that imaginary me would have been telling the truth about why I couldn't come back."
She hummed again, as if she had questions. Like, how did he find her just now? How was he going to get back? But then all she had the strength to say was, "Not sure."
Draco brushed her hair from her forehead. "Get some sleep, Granger. I can make my excuses and we can act out whatever reunion drama you want when your wooziness passes."
This time, her hum was more of a whimper. "But it's too cold to sleep," she said, shivering in spite of the massive white nightdress. "Where's your cloak? The warm, posh Norwegian one that smells so nice."
He tucked the blanket over her shoulder. "Sorry. It's March. That cloak is out of season right now."
She lifted the edge of the blanket and tugged at his hand, as if to yank him off of his knees. "We'll have to use this instead then. Come on."
Did she know she was inviting him to risk getting into bed with her while Weasley and Potter were skulking around nearby?
"Come on, Malfoy," she said, trying hard to sound stern.
It was too adorable and, Weasleys or not, he slipped beneath the covers with her. She pulled the blanket over their heads. "There," she said, the entire length of her settling against him.
He had meant to stay taut and poised to spring free from her and out of bed if anyone came in. But in her loose, languid, still slightly potioned state, her limbs entangled with his so fluidly, so thoroughly that he let her enfold him.
Her arm was slung around his neck again. "Now. This is getting closer to how I imagined it," she said.
Draco cleared his throat, his voice husky. She felt heavenly, close and sweet, affectionate beyond his wildest expectations after everything that had happened. But maybe she was too potion addled for this. Maybe he was taking advantage of her, making everything worse.
"You're prettier than I remembered," she said, her head tucked under his chin inside their blanket tent.
He wondered if she realized she'd said it out loud. "No, not pretty," she went on. "Exquisite. That's what I call you, isn't it."
He palmed the back of her head. "You're lovely too," he said.
She huffed. "Maybe for someone cursed almost to death. Can you believe this gown Fleur's got me in? As if I couldn't tell she was dressing me for the grave – "
"No," Draco tsk-ed.
"She was," Hermione persisted. "She was using the time we were waiting for Bill to come back to buff my fingernails. You see?"
She waved her hand in front of his face, her nails indeed half buffed, glossy pink.
He gave a low laugh and caught her hand again, pressing it to his heart. The wooziness was leaving her voice. She was coming back to him, and he would do nothing to risk scaring her off.
She sat back, her eyes open and clear. "In my imagination, no matter how I found you, I was always kissing you by now."
He let out his breath. "You don't have to. I hardly – "
"Enough self-punishment. I don't want that," she said, properly bossy and sure, completely herself again, exactly as he wanted her.
He was still careful. "And you do want me to kiss you?"
Side by side on the pillow, she inched her face closer to his. "How could I not want you to kiss me? I'd have to be cursed into being a different person entirely to no longer want you to kiss me."
Her nose was touching the end of his but he held back, swallowing hard.
All at once, her expression changed, she was leaning away again. She freed their heads from the blanket tent, withdrawing her arm from his neck. "Unless," she stammered. "Unless you just came back to give me the potion, like any decent human being. And that's all you wanted. And you don't – "
He couldn't let her finish, sweeping up and into her lips with his own, bringing them together, intent on ending any suspicions she had that he wasn't more mad for her than ever. She made that sound he loved, the high note in her throat, like part of a secret song only for him. Her mouth was just as sweet as he remembered, and though he'd been dreaming of devouring it, he waited, his lips gentle, fitted snugly into hers, but in a light caress, inviting but not demanding that she return his pressure.
With hardly a pause, she did answer him, her mouth opening, her hand feeling for him, curling around the back of his head and into his hair. The movement drew him closer, the white fabric swishing between his arms as they wound around her. Dressed this way, without layers of coats and jumpers, her body was closer to his than it had ever been. His hands were open on her back, palms and fingers pressed flat.
It was enough to set him raving his own confessions, his mouth against her lips as he spoke in a whisper, his voice heavy with the loneliness and frustration he'd suffered without her. "I missed you, missed everything about you. Your mouth, your lectures, your tea, your hands, your voice, your bony knees, your annoying good sense, your laugh…"
Her cold skin was getting warmer, or maybe it was his own radiant heat moving through her. He raved on. "I tried apparating at random to all the most desolate places in Britain," he said, "stumbling around in the wilderness calling your name into the dark, desperate for any sign of you…"
She was speechless, answering every word with deep, open kisses pressed to his chin, jawline, throat as he spoke. His pulse was pounding as he dived to kiss her mouth again, hot and intense, the very kiss he'd been imagining on his nighttime walks through the manor garden and the countryside.
Her breath hitched in a way that might have been a wince of pain. She was injured after all, and he tried to de-escalate. Hurt or not, she wouldn't have it. As he eased away she raised her torso to follow, lying across his. His voice was sounding now, in nothing like pain, his senses overcome with being taken by her this way.
There was no one like her. And somehow she wanted him.
The wooden bedframe creaked beneath them and Draco remembered what Fleur had said about Weasley and Potter being in the area. He rolled them away from the noise, into the centre of the bed. It gave him the upper position, and control enough to break the kiss and speak to her.
"I should tell you something." He lowered his head, speaking against the tawny skin of her shoulder, bared when the nightdress shifted. It was a part of her he'd never touched before, the skin satiny smooth against his mouth. "And as a gentleman, I should tell you that, this close, your delicate nightdress doesn't leave much to the imagination."
She shrugged her bared shoulder. "I'm not bothered," she said.
He propped himself on one elbow, out of kissing range. "What I'm saying is, I can't keep going like this. Not here."
She was pulling him down to kiss his throat anyway.
"Granger," he said, his breath shuddering out of him. "Fleur Delacour said she's coming right back, and if she finds your clothes slipping off – "
"Weasley," Hermione interrupted.
Draco gave a spectacular grimace. "Well, that's one sure way to cool me down."
"No, she's not Fleur Delacour anymore," Hermione laughed. "She's Fleur Weasley, Ron's eldest brother's wife. His sister-in-law."
He was grimacing again. "A woman like that married a Weasley? In my experience, they come to their senses in time to prevent becoming Weasleys themselves."
"She married BILL Weasley," Hermione said, as if it explained everything. "He's not like Ron and the others. Rather dashing, actually. You're sure to hate him for it."
Draco was sputtering. "Hate him? You mean I'm – "
"Going to stay here long enough to meet with everyone and make some plans?" she finished. "Yes, of course you are. We need to discuss what happens next. I won't let you just wander away."
Draco groaned and let his elbow collapse, his mouth falling against the unwounded side of her neck, his voice vibrating through her.
She laughed at him, patting his back. "Oh, it won't be that bad," she said.
"It will be. It will be Weasley pummeling me with his bare fists while Potter and this brother Phil hold me down," he said through more groaning.
She clucked her tongue and tousled his hair. "It's Bill. And you came here to save my life. Fleur can convince them of that. And frankly, you and Harry worked fairly well together at your house just now – "
"We did not," he said.
"You did," she insisted, kissing his cheekbone. "You refused to identify him until they'd worked it out themselves, and I saw that look between the two of you. Harry knows what you did. Not to mention fetching Griphook to stop my interrogation."
"You give me too much credit. If a load of other things hadn't happened exactly as they did, and when they did – well, things would have been different," he said.
"Of course they would have," she said. "But that doesn't mean you weren't part of what had to happen."
Draco said nothing, his face still buried in her well-covered shoulder. He sighed and raised his head. "I still say we just leave together," he tried, half-joking.
She smirked. "And where would we go?"
He found her hand and laced their fingers. "Lunenburg, obviously."
"I just made up the Lunenburg Sound Academy for Gifted Witches," she said. "It's not a real place. You know that."
"I do," he said. "The school is fake but the town is real. It's on the other side of the Atlantic, a little seaside place in a peaceful country. Perfect for hiding. We could find a cottage there and settle down and – I don't know, start a real academy for gifted witches."
She kissed his hand as it held hers. "You know we need to stay here. And not just for Harry. There's your parents…"
He cringed. "They will need to produce me for the Dark Lord again, and soon," he admitted.
She nodded and moved as if she was about to get out of bed and convene the dreaded meeting between Draco with the rest of the Order members in the cottage.
But he held her in place a moment longer. "I am going to take you away someday," he said, his forehead pressed to hers, speaking in his low, intense, confessional voice again. "It might be in war, or it might not. But I am not getting over you, and that means that eventually, I am going to come to you to stay."
Beneath him, she was tilting her chin, reaching up to kiss him.
And then the door was thrown open hard enough to crack the plaster wall behind it.
"Absolutely not." It was Ron, striding into the room, Fleur tugging at his sleeve, Harry and Bill rushing up behind him.
"Calm yourself, Ron," Fleur was telling him. "I told you. If he hadn't come, she would be dead."
"Yeah? So why does he look like he's trying to suffocate her now?" he said, speaking to Fleur but glaring at Draco. He wasn't scrambling to get out of the bed but he was sitting up and turning to face the crowd in the doorway.
Hermione was out of bed, taking a fighting stance. She meant to be fierce but seemed more in need of rescue than ever, standing in the centre of the garret in the bridal nightdress that was Fleur's size, not hers, and sliding off one shoulder again. "Ronald Weasley, you have no right to come in here making decrees about me. Absolute or otherwise."
His face flushed even redder than it already was. "Fine, I accept that," he roared. "I've had months now to get used to the idea that you won't have me back after what I did." His voice wavered and broke as he said it. "But him – he has no right to even look at you after what he let his family do today. He did nothing to stop it. Just sat there getting off on it."
Draco's voice was rising but Hermione raised a hand to silence him. "It's alright, Draco. And Ron, you have no idea what he's done for me," she said.
He sneered. "Too right I don't. When – how did this happen? And with him, of all people? No, spare me the gory details."
"I will not," she said. She extended her hand in Draco's direction, inviting him to stand and join her. He took it, stepping around the bed, her arm coming to rest across the back of his waist. "Draco comforted me on the nights I sat outside in the cold crying over you after you left me in spite of my begging you to stay. He brought food for me and kept bringing it even after he knew I was sharing it with Harry. And just now he left his parents and defied You-know-who to bring me a countercurse. He helped us at his house today, just not in a way that would attract a lot of attention and get us all killed. He was subtle and smart enough to help us survive. Tell him, Harry."
As always, the whole room turned to see what Harry Potter had to say about an impossible situation. The weight of it landed heavily on him, and he scuffed to a chair by the window and sat down hard on it, his head drooping into his hands. It out kept the still unfathomable sight of Malfoy and Hermione together, and also Ron's wide, hurt eyes begging him to put an end to this, as if it was within Harry's power to do so.
He drew a deep breath. "If there's anything to be learned in Ron's leaving, it's that we need to stay together and not fight amongst ourselves."
The room stayed quiet, Hermione nodding, Draco waiting with his eyebrows raised, Ron quivering with dread, Bill's hand patting his shoulder.
"Malfoy gave me the wands," Harry admitted. "He didn't fight me for them, he pushed the wands into my hands so we could leave on our own power. He didn't just refuse to identify us. He sent us away. And I have to thank him for that."
Hermione gave a little gasp, hearing about it for the first time.
Draco heaved a sigh. "You're welcome, Potter."
Hermione shook her head. "You see? The fact is, our best chance of success in this mission is to accept all the help we can get."
Ron still scoffed.
From over his shoulder, Bill hummed. "Think about it, Ronnie. We could make this one into our own little Snape, like back in the old days when he was working both sides."
"Snape?" Ron said. "Yeah, right. Look how well that turned out in the end."
"But it's not the end yet, not even for Snape. There's still some promise left in him," Bill said. "What do you think, Harry? What do we do with this sneaky kid and his bad connections?"
Harry lifted his head from his hands. "I've just been speaking with the goblin, actually. Griphook says it was Snape who got the sword from Bellatrix Lestrange's vault. Which means he also sent it to us when we needed it. I don't claim to understand anything Snape's done in the past year," he said, gulping past the lump in his throat that always rose when the night in the astronomy tower was mentioned. "But sending us the sword – we were desperate for that. It truly helped."
"What about you?" Ron snarled at Draco. "Hiding behind the good, forgiving natures of Harry and Hermione. Yeah, I know what they're like better than anyone. Haven't you got anything to say for yourself?"
"You don't have to answer him, Draco," Hermione said, pulling the collar of the nightdress up over her shoulder again.
"But I will," Draco said. "I'm not sure what I can offer any of you, least of all Hermione. But I'd like to try to help all the same."
Bill nudged Ron. "I'm for it. At least on a trial basis. Fleur?"
"Mais bien sûr," she answered in Draco's favour.
Harry sighed. "We know Hermione's vote. So that's it, Ron. You're outvoted no matter what I say. For now, Malfoy stays."