Magnanimous Chapter 7 – Suffocating

Disclaimer: It all belongs to JK, except for plot…

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Authors Note: Chapter seven is here at last. And think, only one more week before the Chapter Where All Is Explained. Well, not all, but certainly a lot.

I also have an important announcement to make, concerning future fanfiction projects… Due to the plot bunnies that have nibbled my earlobes off over the weekend, I'm planning a new book-length fanfiction. It's probable title will be Fallen, and it should begin coming out sometime around the end of Magnanimous – obviously I can't say when yet. Magnanimous will be finished, and updates shouldn't become erratic, as I intend to make it my priority to get Magnanimous finished.

I'll hope to see you all as readers of the new fic (which will be D/Hr!)

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy this chapter and all the rest.

~*~

Ron was sick of silence.

They had trudged onwards across the grassy grounds for about half an hour since the bridge's collapse, without incident. In all that time there had been not a single word spoken, no sound but the constant rhythmic thuds of their feet hitting the ground. They kept falling into a kind of rhythm, which Harry, when he noticed, always broke by walking faster, away from Ron.

It was depressing, to say the least.

Ron sighed inaudibly to himself, dragging his feet miserably through the grass. Harry hated him, and it was all his fault. He wondered cynically if Harry would ever forgive him at all. Probably not, he concluded pessimistically.

Silence.

After the chasm, Ron kept glancing up every few metres to see if there was anything on the horizon. He hadn't seen anything but a faint shimmer in the air, vague and formless like a heat haze. Probably another hex, though he hadn't a clue what it was. And there seemed no way to go around it, so the only feasible option was to plough resolutely through it…

And they weren't going to do anything as radical as actually talk about it, after all. Heavens forbid.

Silence.

The haze was coming closer. Ron wondered idly if Harry had even seen it, or whether he was oblivious to its very existence. Either way, it wouldn't change anything.

Time passed slowly in this way for a few minutes, as the two boys came closer and closer to the shimmering in the air that heralded their next challenge. There was no way around it, Ron realised as he looked around; they could only go straight through.

Silence.

And now it was in front of them, a fiercely flickering patch of air, the thickness impossible to estimate. Harry paused at its edge, peered at the space in front of his eyes. Ron's tried to examine it as well, but his eyes strayed onto Harry of their own accord. He turned them away sadly and unwillingly, as though he would be punished for merely looking at his friend's face.

Ron opened his mouth, realised he had nothing to say, and shut it again.

They didn't know what this spell was. They had no clue what it would do to them. It could kill them. It could torture them unspeakably. It could do some unimaginably horrific Dark thing to them, something so incredibly unspeakable that only someone utterly soulless like Voldemort could have come up with it…

But they were Gryffindors, after all.

Taking a deep breath and a fleeting glance at the side of Harry's head, Ron steeled himself for some kind of incredible pain and stepped into the haze.

It felt like being underwater. It was difficult to move; the air felt heavy and difficult to breathe, but apart from that he was fine. He heard Harry step in after him, making a dull thud, which reverberated around the shimmering area like the ripples of a stone dropped into water.

Ron pushed on through the haze. It was quite hard to see; everything seemed darker somehow, and distorted by the shimmering. He couldn't hear Harry's footsteps behind him, although when he looked around he was there. The air weighed heavier on him than at first, thicker and harder to breathe… how much further?

And then, he breathed in again and found there was nothing there.

White-hot panic spread through his body, followed by a surge of adrenalin. He gulped, trying desperately to suck in air, any air, just a drop of it, before beginning to run. But the haze was thickening, blinding him, choking him, and if he looked round he could just see Harry, also running in the same painfully slow way, before the air thickened to whiteness and trapped Ron on his own. And it was weaving around him, warm and welcoming on his skin, like a fatal whisper in his ear that called him to sleep, to sleep, an eternal oblivion…

He would have cried out; but there was nothing in his lungs to cry with, and no sound inside the haze of the spell. He ran on, feet thudding noiselessly into the ground.  Nothing was visible now, not even his own self, the spell blinding him completely. Harry, where was Harry… He had to be there, running just behind…

But Ron could no longer run. The burning of his lungs was obscured by the call of the spell, the darkness looming before him, calling him down, down into the end, into eternal nothingness. How could he resist it? Come, come rest, come sleep, sleep forever, eternal and perfect sleep…

Eyelids already drooping, he had all but given in to the spell. He stumbled forwards, as much by momentum as anything else, beginning to crumple to the floor, faint from lack of oxygen, but he couldn't feel that anymore, and all that mattered was the sleep, death, so simple, so painless, all he had to do was give in…

And then the fresh air was upon his face, and his lungs burned as though on fire, and he gasped in the sweet, sweet air.

Darkness receded from the corners of his vision as oxygen flooded his bloodstream once more. Ron sank to his knees, breathing deeply, rejoicing in the air he breathed. Safe at last, he sank to the floor and with only a heartbeat's space to hope desperately that Harry had survived, he gave into the remnants of the spell. He didn't fall into death, not now, but instead into a deep and dreamless sleep.

~*~

Hermione awoke with a dull headache throbbing behind her eyes. She was lying on something cold and hard, a harsh stone texture imprinting itself on her cheek. Moaning slightly, she tried to move back into sleep, back to her warm dreams. What had been happening again? Something about a journey… someone else, a boy… and what then?

A spoon clattered metallically against a bowl, chasing the tattered threads of the dream out of her mind, to be forgotten completely. Irritably, she opened her eyes.

The room she was in was tiny. The smooth white walls were featureless except for a sealed door at one end and a barred window at the other, allowing fresh air and light into the cell. The floor that had jutted so cruelly into her face appeared to be stone, but it was pure white, blending seamlessly with the walls.

Draco Malfoy was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, supporting a bowl in one hand and eating from a spoon with the other. Her movement caught his eye, and his grey eyes flitted towards her.

'Morning.' He remarked with complete casuality. 'There's a bowl for you too.'

He nodded towards a simple bowl that lay by the door, with a spoon beside it. Shuffling over, still rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Hermione could see what appeared to be porridge, faintly steaming in the white porcelain bowl. Feeling suddenly hungry as the delicious smell caught her nose, she picked it up, sat herself down and began to eat.

The meal passed in silence, and it was an ideal opportunity for Hermione to reflect on their predicament. They didn't seem to be in any immediate danger… at least not until Voldemort came for them. Which was sort of a good thing, she supposed.

But then… there was Harry and Ron. Her stomach twisted sickeningly, and she felt a sudden urge to beat down the door, to pull out the bars, to tear at the walls with her fingernails… She had to help them. If she sat here and thought about it and thought about it, unable to help, she'd go mad. Harry and Ron were her friends, her best friends. She couldn't let them die.

She couldn't.

Taking a savage mouthful of tasteless porridge, she forced her thoughts away from them. Wandless and imprisoned, she could do nothing but drive herself insane…

Biting her lip, her eyes fall on her cellmate, Draco. Now there was something to think about. He was acting so… so strangely. She'd never thought of him as anything other than an annoyance, someone who made her life a misery, someone to be hated and occasionally feared. A Death-Eater to be. A Slytherin. A prejudiced Pureblood.

But now… It was as if she'd realised that all this, all the opinions and judgements and thoughts she'd held about him, was only a thin, thin layer on the top which obscured something… else. Something deeper, something… more.

Draco had done things which, simply, didn't make sense. He had helped them. He had gone against Voldemort's wishes. He had said some things… some strange things… She remembered their argument before, when she'd said something, gone too far, and his eyes had flashed like molten steel…

And all this was part of that deeper Draco, who she didn't know and didn't understand.

Hermione realised that she'd been scrutinising him for the past minute, as though the answer to her thoughts would appear on his forehead, and looked away. But her eyes quickly found their way up to his face again, stayed there, frowned.

Draco's face was very little different from its usual blank mask. But the tiny, tiny differences – a tightening here, a lowering here, miniscule creases between his immaculate eyebrows – made the transformation from surface emptiness to inner thoughts.

He looked… thoughtful, pensive. And not only that. Worried? Afraid? She couldn't tell.

'What's wrong?' she asked without thinking, and instantly regretted it. His eyes flashed up to her, instantly clouding over defensively, blank again.

'Nothing.' He said shortly. She nodded, and turned back to her food.

'You just… looked a bit worried, that's all.'

'Well I'm not.' He said sarcastically. 'I'm locked up in Voldemort's tower having pretty much betrayed him to you lot, knowing full well that he hates nothing worse than a traitor, oh, and my father's supposed to be visiting in an hour or so, so I don't expect to be alive much longer. What could I possibly have to worry about?

Hermione had involuntarily shrunk away from him during the outburst of anger-tinted sarcasm. But the questions and the curiosity that had been playing at her mind since last night were too much for her, and she was nothing if not a Gryffindor.

'Why… why did you do it then? Why did you tell us… help us?

'That is none of your business.'

They fell silent again. Hermione glanced away, took a few more gulps of her fast-cooling meal. But her eyes were drawn magnetically back to Draco again, who once more sat with his back to the wall, bowl in his lap, eating slowly, his mind wandering.

Her questions, if anything, were burning more fiercely. Why? They demanded. Why is Draco doing this… His evasiveness, if anything, was even more enticing. It meant there was some real reason, something he didn't want to tell her… And while she couldn't and wouldn't force him to tell her, that didn't make the intense curiosity fade.

What to say, what to say…

'So, you said your father's coming?'

His face froze again. 'Yes.' He replied stiffly. 'That guard told me when he brought the meals. And if you think I'm saying anything more than that…'

'I wasn't expecting you to.' She interjected hastily. 'But… you think he'll be angry?' Hermione asked. She was prodding, opening possible avenues of conversation, trying to get him to respond.

'Why? Scared, are you?' His face took on a glimmer of his old malice, and Hermione was surprised to find herself glad that it was there. He seemed less melancholy, more like the familiar old Draco.

She attempted to look nervous. 'A little… I guess.' If she pretended to be asking on those grounds, she might get more information.

Draco's face went suddenly hard, his muscles tense, and his grey eyes mistily distant. 'Oh, yes.' He said at last. 'He'll be angry.'

Without quite knowing why, Hermione shivered.

~*~

He was running. Always running, down the same set of dark corridors that twisted and turned on themselves, twining like snakes. He didn't know why he was running, didn't think about it. All he knew was that he must run… Running towards something – someone – but also running away.

The corridors were lined with doors, huge imposing doors set in unnaturally dark wood, so dark it was almost jet-black, matching the corridor perfectly. Sometimes, one would be ajar; if it was, he had to open it. If it was ajar, it might be what he was running towards, and if it was, he could wake up and escape.

They always held different things, the doors; different memories, plucked from his head to mock him and fill him with fear. Open one, and he was back in the graveyard, watching Cedric die, time and time again, being tied to a gravestone and expecting to die… Open another, and he was a child again, before he even knew he was a wizard, being chased by Dudley's gang, running away, because if they got their hands on him… Open another, and he was nowhere at all, but through the nothingness echoed his parent's last moments.

And then, there was the thing behind the last door, the thing that woke him up, let him escape…

Open that door, and he was standing in the room with the archway, and the veil hanging there, and the battle raging all around. Here alone of all other places he was more than a ghost; he could act, move around, and the scene changed. But whatever he did, the end was always the same: Bellatrix, with her face alight with the fires of Hell, casting the spell, the spell that knocked Sirius backwards, through the veil, into death…

And there, ahead of him, a single door on the long black corridor stood ajar, a thin beam of sickly white light spilling into the corridor. With the clammy feeling of dread creeping up his body, he slowed his walk, approaching the door. As he reached for the doorknob, he felt a strange wave of cold spread over him Unusual, there had never been a temperature in these dreams before…

In a heartbeat's time, the nightmare had twisted sickeningly, as he realised that the cold clamminess that was creeping up his body was no dream…

… and bolted awake in time to see a supple black mass, like a black shroud, glide gracefully up his torso. Harry's eyes widened to see the creature, straight out of Defence Against The Dark Arts textbooks – a Lethifold. He had time for one short, panicked scream before the creature flowed over his mouth, sealing him inside itself, suffocating him.

There was no air. Harry tried desperately to gasp in a lungful, but the jet-blackness clung lightly to his face, preventing even a molecule from reaching his desperate lungs, already burning for oxygen. He struggled in vain, cursing himself for not keeping his wand near him… he could have fought it off…

He remembered the spell they had run through, moments before, the one that almost suffocated them. Ironic, that he'd die in the same way so soon after escaping it once… He knew he was going to die. There was no way he could fight it off, not without his wand. He was as good as dead, though he kept on kicking and struggling with oxygen-starved muscles already protesting, the darkness clinging like cobwebs to his lungs, black flickering at the edges of his mind, spreading…

And then, a miracle. The clammy darkness receded; fell back, uncovering his face. All his vision was filled with bright white light, shining in his eyes, and he could breathe again… For the second time in as many hours, he gulped in great lungfuls of air, thankful to be able to breathe.

The whiteness passed overhead; revealing the star-spattered sky, then swing around again to leap back over him, attacking the Lethifold. He felt it slither hastily down his legs, flowing like a dark shadow across the ground.

Shakily, he sat up, and the world fell into place.

The white creature which had saved him was Ron's Patronus – in the form of a lioness, half-grown, not quite an adult. He remembered how Ron had been irritated at having 'a girl Patronus' until Hermione had pointed out that the female lions were the ones who did all the hunting while the males lazed around doing nothing.

But he stopped that line of thought.

Ron himself was half-sitting, half-kneeling a few metres away, his face as white as his fading Patronus. 'Are you alright?' he demanded fearfully.

Harry swallowed. 'Fine.' he said, looking forcefully in the other direction. Ron… Everytime he looked at Ron, he remembered those words he'd said, the hateful, hurtful accusations…

… when Sirius died it was because you were thick enough to race off into danger based on a dream…you still raced off without bloody thinking…you utter idiot!…

He could no longer look at Ron without those words whispering, echoing through his mind, stabbing him forcibly like a dagger in his heart. And he couldn't remember those words without hate and anger spiralling up through his chest…

'Al… alright.' Ron replied softly. He was upset. Harry knew he was upset. And while part of him whispered that, maybe, he should put that incident behind him and thank him for saving his life, another part spat anger and hatred, gleeful that Ron was suffering a little of the pain that Harry had felt, getting some perverse form of justice.

And that part won. Harry let it win, because he was angry.

'Come on.' He spat, clambering to his feet once more. 'I'm not going back to sleep here.'

Ron nodded mutely, standing up and following as Harry led onwards. Had he bothered to look, he might have seen the glittering tear that trickled down Ron's cheek, before he dashed it away.

~*~

A/N: One of the things I've noticed about his fic is that people take different sides with the characters, especially with Harry and Ron. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing… Why not review and tell me?

Note the over-obvious attempt at plugging the reviewing. Well, that is what this A/N is for, anyway… Begging for reviews. So please? Pretty please? Review?

Are you going to make me get down on my knees and grovel?

Please?