Updated April 25, 2004



Author's Note: Well, not too much to say except thank you very much to those who reviewed the last chapter. I was hoping you would like it. This next is a bit different, but I hope you like it anyway.





chapter 41: HESITATION - times of uncertainty



Hermione ducked through the portrait hole, turning as she did so to shut it quietly behind her. Turning again, she prepared to head down to her hellishly early morning detention, but stopped.

And stopped.

The whole world seemed to stop as her thoughts froze in her head and her breath stilled in her lungs.

Suddenly the world came back to her, jarring and swift, and Hermione flung herself to the side, retching, one hand on the wall the only thing keeping her upright.

Shuddering as the last bits of non-existant food left the confines of her stomach, Hermione drew in several deep breaths before turning again to face the scene spread grotesquely before the entrance to the Gryffindor common room. Blaise Zabini lay sprawled across the wall, apparently pinned there by the very same spell that had gotten him stuck during his fight with Hermione the day before. This time, though, all humor in the situation was lost, and the anger that had before shielded Hermione from feeling at all sorry at his predicament was absent.

So much blood. There was just so much blood. His naked limbs were flung out to the sides, strewn seemingly at random. His skin, where it was visible, was so white that the thought that he might still be alive seemed ludicrous. Hermione didn't see any bruises, but the amount of blood splashed lewdly across his skin could hardly come from anything less than a severe beating.

The analytical part of her mind told Hermione that it was a good thing she had been assigned detention so early in the morning. Had a group of younger students been the ones to discover this scene, the panic that would have swept the school would have been live and uncontrollable. Still shaking, Hermione drew another deep breath and stepped closer. Better to give a full report to Dumbledore than to go rushing into his office with little more to say than that a dead body had been hung on the wall and there was lots of blood. Looking closer, she had to bite down hard on her lip to keep from crying out. She had been wrong. It wasn't a beating. The wounds were all far too clean. It had to have been a knife. Who would do such a thing? Hermione frowned. It was hard to be sure, but the larger wounds looked cauterized, possibly to stop bleeding. But why would they do that? Violence had obviously been the aim here.

Hermione's breath caught as a realization struck her, and her skin went clammy and cold. Could Zabini still be alive? Could he still be alive and she had just been standing here gawking? He was so pale, so still, and there was so much blood, but she should have checked first, anyway. What had she been thinking? Reaching a hand up swiftly, Hermione put her fingers to his throat, searching for a pulse. She was struck that his skin was cold, but still warm enough to hint at life. Her fear deepened and she cursed herself for a fool. There, just barely perceptible. Blaise's heart was moving blood weak and unsteady through his veins.

With confirmation that he lived, a million thoughts and facts raced through Hermione's mind at once. She didn't dare to run and get a teacher first. Who knew how tenuous his grasp on life was at this point. He had lost so much blood. He would need more and Hermione's research on the blood root for Ron immediately came to mind, but she couldn't do anything about that right now. If she could get him to Madame Pomfrey, the nurse should well be able to take care of that. Also, how long he had been out here? His skin really was quite cold and if he stayed cold too long, he could fall beyond the point of anyone being able to help him. At least this was something Hermione could take care of. Warming spells had never been a problem for her. Lifting her wand, she spoke the spell twice, hoping that that would reinforce it and warm him up more quickly.

The main problem was getting him to Madame Pomfrey, though. Normally she would have just used a levitation charm and it would have been easy enough, but she wasn't sure how to deal with the fact that he was stuck up on the wall. Yesterday, it had taken Professor McGonagal many tries before she was able to manage to get Zabini down, and even then Hermione suspected that a combination of factors had gone into the final solution. Hermione didn't have the time or knowledge to try to do the same here.

She started shaking harder, a terror that she wouldn't be able to do it, wouldn't be able to get help in time and he would die spread throughout her body, rattling her limbs. She would fail. Failure was bad enough, but for it to cost someone their life as well, the thought alone nearly overpowered her. Clenching her fists at her sides, Hermione forced herself to calm down, forced herself to breathe evenly. Panicking now would solve nothing. She had made it out of threatening situations before, she could do it again.

What did she know of the problem?: Zabini had to get the infirmary. The easiest way to do something like that was levitation. But he was stuck to the wall. However, stuck to the wall was actually misleading. A closer definition of the situation was that, for Blaise Zabini, gravity had been redirected into the nearest wall. He was really lying on the wall. With a satisfying click, it fell into place. Hermione would levitate him "above" the wall, and would just have to be careful to always stay close to a wall so that she didn't "drop" him.

Once this all came clear, Hermione was ready for action, all morning drowsiness and the effects of shock forgotten. Lifting her wand, she spoke a variation of the spell every first-year was expected to master, and lifted Zabini as gently as she could "up" from the wall so that he hovered about two feet away from it. Then she set off, setting as direct a course for the hospital wing as she could that stayed away from too much open space.

She had only one difficulty where, when she needed to turn right, she realized that Blaize was hovering above the left wall and would somehow need to cross the hallway. She finally managed it, though, when she realized that if she could just levitate him high enough, the nearest wall would become the opposite wall and Zabini's "gravity" would switch to that. It only worked too well and she almost slammed him into the next wall before she caught him. Her heart thudded painfully in her chest at the near-miss, knowing only too well that such an impact might have proven fatal.

Tightening her grip on her nerves, Hermione hurried on. She would not let this boy die. On a normal day she just wanted to smash his ugly, Slytherin face in, but she was damned if she'd let him have the satisfaction of dying while under her care. Somehow, she thought he would have found it a decent trade-off, just for the satisfaction of her failure.

Rounding a corner, Hermione let out a startled gasp as she almost ran full on into Harry coming the other way and carrying his broom.







Draco groaned. The sun was hitting his face at the wrong angle and his pillow wasn't nearly as comfortable as it usually was. For several disconcerting moments, Draco Malfoy was extremely confused. Then the events of the night came back to him and he groaned again as he realized that he must of fallen asleep while studying with Ron in the library. Letting his eyes flutter open, he squinted against the bright light, barely making out the unruly, red mop of Ron's hair sticking up on the other side of a stack of books.

Draco vaguely wondered what time it was, and if he and Ron were going to be late for Potions, but then decided that it must still be fairly early. Madame Pince would have had no qualms about kicking them out of the library if she had come back to find them still there, and drooling on her precious books no less.

Attempting to sit up, Draco winced as his neck protested mightily to the treatment. That had to have been the least comfortable position possible to sleep in. It even felt like part of his scalp had gone numb, and he felt a headache coming on. Not feeling up to standing just yet, Draco decided on throwing his pencil at Ron to wake him up. The boy twitched as it bounced off his head, but otherwise remained unmoving.

"Oy, Weasel. Wake up." Draco's voice came out dry and crackly, definitely a morning voice, but the words still seemed to do the trick. Ron lifted his head, squinting and scowling. From the look on his face, his neck didn't feel any better than did Draco's.

"Malfoy? What time is it?" Ron ended his question in a yawn, so the last two words sort of blended together into one long vowel.

Time? Now that Ron mentioned it, Draco did have a watch. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled it out and stared at it for a long time in puzzlement. Quarter to four? Draco frowned. That couldn't be right.

"S'Wrong one," Ron volunteered in another yawn, before launching himself into a full-body stretch that had Draco wondering how he didn't just snap in half. He stared at Ron blearily for a minute, before realizing what he had meant and shoving the watch Dumbledore had given him back into his pocket. Pulling out his real watch, he rubbed at his eyes before looking down to see that it was a quarter to seven. Ugh. Madame Pince would be coming pretty soon, and they both needed to go get ready for their classes.

Draco was just about to suggest that they clean up the books and get ready to go when he heard a snicker from the other side of the table. He looked over to see Ron staring at him with ill-concealed humor, his mouth twisting in a pathetic attempt not to smile. "What's wrong with you now?" Draco wasn't in a good mood. It wasn't even bloody seven o'clock, he'd slept in the library, and now Weasley was laughing at Something. Draco scowled.

Ron just looked back at him innocently, raising his eyebrows and tapping his forehead significantly.

Draco was in no mood for charades. "What? You just realized you have a gerbil running loose inside your skull?" Why did Ron have to act so goofy all the time?

Ron started snickering again, probably in response to the mental image Draco had presented. Finally getting himself under control, he straightened in his chair and said as seriously as he could, "No, you prat. Your forehead says," Ron screwed up his face and squinted at Draco, "loo'ohss et foe echee'ick a 'sblow boold et." Ron grinned proudly after this prouncement. Draco just raised an eyebrow, still too groggy to really process what Ron had just said. After a moment of no response from Draco, Ron finally explained. "Ink. On. Your. Forehead. Malfoy. Of course, the letters are backwards so the book probably says something else."

Blinking several times as he processed this information, Draco put a hand to his forehead and looked down at the book spread open in front of him to see that yes, in fact, one section in the middle of the page was a bit blurry. "Fuck," he muttered, squinting down at the book to see what the words that had been so wonderfully transferred to his head actually said. "'The blood holds a piece of the soul.' Does that make any sense to you, Weasely?"

"Totally indecipherable," was all Ron said, not sounding like he really cared.

Noting the page number, Draco flipped the book shut and read the title. 'Dark Magic Through the Ages.' Sounded like it had some potential at least. Too bad he'd been mostly incoherent when he'd gotten around to looking at it last night. Before he fell asleep in the book. And got inkprint on his face. Damn It. Things like that simply shouldn't happen to a Malfoy. Scowling, he scrubbed at his head with his fingers, hoping against hope that it would rid him of the annoying writing. "Any better," he asked dejectedly, too tired to get out a proper sneer. He looked up at Ron to see him just smiling bemusedly.

"No," he said slowly, "Now it just looks like a drunk wrote on your forehead." Ron grinned. Draco did not appreciate the comparison. Then the frightening expression of a bright idea flashed across Ron's face. "But let me try something," he said, pulling out his wand. Draco watched warily as the wand was leveled at his head. "Valitudine Erroris." Draco winced, expecting to feel something, but there was no sensation and nothing seemed to happen.

"Well, did it work?" he asked, finally.

Ron put down his wand, looking tired. "No." Then Ron cocked his head to one side, looking at Draco intently and Draco began to feel uncomfortable under the scrutiny. "Were your eyes always green?"

"Green?" Draco couldn't imagine what Ron was talking about. "Of course not. Only my grandmother has green eyes. All Malfoys' eyes are blue."

"Well, they're green now."

"You're telling me that that stupid glamour left the ink splotch visible on my forehead, but turned my eyes green. Why the bloody hell would it do that? It's not like people with green eyes are healthier than people with blue eyes. It never did anything to your eyes."

Ron just shrugged.

"Well, take it off," Draco snapped. "If you, of all people, noticed that my eyes changed color, I'm sure someone else will."

"Yes, me of all people," Ron grumbled, clearly not pleased with Draco's comment. Still, he lifted his wand and banished the glamour.

Draco looked down at his watch to see that it was now five to seven. They really needed to get going. "Quick, help me put the books back," he said, snatching a stack off the table and hurrying over to the book shelves.

"Why do we have to put them away?" Ron whined, following behind Draco with his own stack. "Why can't we just let the house elves do it?"

Turning to give Ron an impatient glare, Draco saw that the red-head looked to be just shoving the books in where ever they would fit. "Do you really want anyone to know what we've been looking for?" he asked with an exaggerated sneer. He decided not to say anything about the random shelving. They really didn't have much time. At his words, Ron just wrinkled his nose and continued stuffing the books onto the shelf.

Returning to the table, Draco found that there were only a couple more books left, scattered across it, including the one he had managed to fall asleep in. Well, that one had looked promising. He certainly didn't want to leave it to Ron's haphazard shelving. He'd never see it again. Pulling out his bookbag, he quickly slipped it inside. When he looked up again, he found Ron standing there looking at him with a quirked eyebrow, before he bent to scoop the rest of the books off the table.

"What, not going to lecture me on morals, Weasley?"

Ron just snorted as he headed off toward the bookshelves. "Yeah. As if I haven't pinched a book or two in my time." Draco wasn't sure what to think of that statement, as he'd never thought of books as being the sort of thing Weasley might steal. He decided to ignore it. Casting an eye critically over their table, he supposed it looked normal enough.

Then Ron was back, grabbing up his bookbag, and they were heading toward the doors of the library. Draco paused just outside, unsure of what to do next. He settled on the time. "Yeah, well, it's seven o'clock now. We should probably be off."

As soon as he said the time, Ron got a panicked look on his face. "Already! Bloody Hell! I've got to shower before breakfast." In a flailing of arms and legs and robes Ron dashed quickly past Draco and down the hall. Draco just looked bemusedly after him as the pounding of footsteps faded away. He put a hand to his cheek where it tingled, the memory of the hasty kiss Ron had planted there lingering.