Draco and Hermione really might have remained in one another's arms, kneeling on the cold, hard stone for hours had not Snape crossed the landing just then, heading quickly for the school's massive front door, bending low over the floating stretcher beside him and murmuring constantly to its occupant, who was wholly unresponsive.
Hermione raised her head from where it lay against Draco's shoulder and immediately stiffened, her eyes going wide. She stared in horrified silence for a second, then cried, "HARRY!" and, disentangling herself from Draco, scrambled to her feet. Draco leapt up after her, steadying her as she swayed dizzily, but then she shook him off and half-ran, half-stumbled over to the stretcher.
"Oh no, Harry," she breathed, "Harry, no. No." She caught his hand between both of hers. "What happened? Professor, what HAPPENED?"
Snape, however, was in no mood to waste time on explanations.
"Potter needs to get to the hospital wing, Miss Granger," he said curtly, "and so do you, for that matter. Please stand aside; time is of the essence to Harry's survival. I trust that you will follow me up to hospital, with Draco's assistance if necessary."
Hermione, in shock, her eyes huge and locked on Harry's face, still did not move.
"Stand aside, girl, if you value your friend's life!" Snape cried, more harshly than he had intended- but Potter was DYING here; he could sense this was true. With a wave of his hand, he caused the great double doors to the school to crash inward and, as Hermione stepped shakily backward, out of his way, swept hurriedly through them, Harry floating, near lifeless, beside him.
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She had lost Ron. The thought that she might now lose Harry as well was too much. Her legs gave out and she sat down hard on the landing.
"Hermione!"
Draco was there in an instant, still on his knees, wrapping strong arms around her from behind.
"You heard professor Snape. Let's get you up to the infirmary. You're-" he faltered, swallowed hard- "you're not well. Can you stand?" She didn't reply. Instead, she let her head fall back against his shoulder with a deep, shuddery sigh. Her eyes were still open, but glazed over with shock.
"Draco," she said, sounding dazed and mildly surprised, "I hurt. Everywhere. And I can't lose Harry. Ron's dead because of me and if Harry- if-" her eyes fell shut, and she gave a tiny moan. "Oww, I hurt so bad."
Each word was like a stab to Draco's heart. She wasn't even making sense, but one thing was perfectly clear; she was in horrific pain, both physical and emotional. He squeezed his eyes tight shut against the threatening tears; he had to be strong for Hermione, and for the work that was still ahead of him; he hadn't forgotten about his mission to retrieve Ron. Breaking down now would not help anyone. "Come on, love," he murmured gently; "we've gotta get you upstairs."
He stood and pulled her up with him, his arms still locked around her from behind. Once they were both on their feet, he turned her gently to face him. "Hey bookworm," he said softly, "can you walk? Or should I carry you?"
She blinked and her eyes cleared a bit; she seemed to come back to herself somewhat. "I- I think I can walk," she said hesitantly, "but Draco? Don't let go."
"Never." His voice was emphatic. "I'm never going to let you go again."
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She only made it halfway up the marble stairs before losing consciousness again; suddenly, silently beginning to crumple, her eyes rolling back as she slumped bonelessly against Draco, who fortunately had, true to his promise, kept one arm firmly about her and so was able to prevent her from falling completely by first tightening his grasp, pulling her hard against his body, and then scooping her easily into his arms right from her half-standing position.
"Hold on, love," he whispered, and ran up the stairs toward the infirmary.
He reached the long ward and deposited Hermione on a bed, unnoticed in all the fuss that was surrounding Harry at the moment. Madam Pomfrey was rushing about in a state as close to panic as the brisk little mediwitch ever got; Snape, glowering fiercely, was, astonishingly enough, refusing to leave Harry's side, and McGonagall and Dumbledore had just arrived on the scene, McGonagall firing off questions rapidly at Snape, who was snarling at her, as Dumbledore bent close over Harry, studying him with a grim expression on his face. So far none of the adults seemed to have registered Draco's presence in the ward at all, which was how he wanted to keep it; the odds were very good that if they discovered him there, they would prevent him from going back for Ron. Or they would try, at any rate. Nothing was going to stop him from seeing this last mission through, both because he had promised Harry and because he knew how much it would mean to Hermione, even though she currently was in no state to tell him so. He knew. She already blamed herself for Ron's death- she had said as much out on the landing- so imagine the agonies she would suffer if his body were not recovered. She didn't need that pain; she had enough to be going along with, thank you.
When he pulled away from her, removing the warmth of his body, she shivered, and he noticed that her forehead was now beaded with perspiration. Oh God, he thought despairingly, it's the fever- that elf said she was sick and now her fever's back- or more likely, it never rightly left. God, I don't want to leave her like this.
But he had to.
He shook out the blanket that lay folded at the foot of the bed and covered her shivering body with it, then bent and kissed her forehead.
"Be okay, bookworm," he murmured; "for me. I can't live without you, so just rest and- and be okay. Please."
And straightening up, he turned to go.
"Draco."
He whipped back around at the sound of his whispered name. Hermione was looking up at him, her pale face creased in a frown. She attempted, weakly, to push herself into a sitting position, but winced and fell back against the pillow. Draco could see in her fever-bright eyes that she was in a world of hurt.
That knowledge hurt him too, right down to the core.
But he hid this from her, being, as he was, adept at hiding any and all emotion, should he choose to do so. Smiling wanly, he sank back down onto the edge of the bed and clasped her nearer hand in his.
"Hey love," he said quietly. "There's something important that I have to do right now- but I'll be back as soon as I can. You can count on that."
He saw fear kindle in the wide, dark eyes he loved so very much. God, he hated seeing her look like this.
"Don't go," she said.
He leaned closer, until their noses nearly touched. "I want nothing more than to stay with you," he replied, "but even so, I have to go. Hermione- I have to get Ron. He was left back at the manor. We should never have left him in the first place- it was just bloody wrong. But you were…we had to get you back here fast, we were desperate, it was all that mattered at the time. Now though- I've gotta go back for him. It's the only right thing to do. There's no choice. Please say you understand."
"Ron," she whispered, stricken; "oh, God." Twin tears spilled from her eyes; Draco wiped them away before they could streak down the sides of her face and get lost in her tangled hair.
"You understand?"
"Yes." Her voice was barely audible. "But Draco, I'm scared. I've got a bad feeling about this."
"I'll be careful and quick. I'll come right back to you, love. I promise. All the demons in hell couldn't keep me away. I'm not gonna lose you again."
"I wish you didn't have to go."
"But you realize that Ron must be recovered?"
"Yes."
Her eyes were slipping slowly shut. He realized that she was fighting hard to stay awake- to stay with him. It was time to go- to let her rest and to get his mission over and done with so he could return to her and never leave her again. He bent and kissed her lightly on the lips by way of farewell.
Instantly her eyes flew wide, sudden terror standing out in their dark depths. She sucked in a sharp breath and flattened herself back against the pillow as if trying to escape him.
"Hey- bookworm, what's wrong?" he asked- surprised, puzzled and hurt. She had reacted in much the same way when he had first Ennervated her, back at the manor. What the hell was going on? She had seemed to accept his explanation about the breakup- hell, she had accepted his proposal of marriage- so what was causing her flinch away from him like this? Why was it that, whenever he caught her off guard, she seemed to be, well, afraid of him?
He would have dearly liked to know, but Hermione wasn't talking. A veritable flood of tears seemed to have been unleashed from her eyes and, without another word, she turned her back on him, curling herself into a tight little ball on her side, and sobbed brokenheartedly.
Draco stood up. "I love you, Hermione," he said. "You have no idea how much. I'll be back just as soon as I can, and then you are going to tell me what's going on. I'm not going to stand by and watch you let whatever it is tear you up inside."
With that he turned, grabbed a folded blanket off the foot of the bed next to Hermione's, and headed, somewhat stealthily, for the door. Reaching it, miraculously unhindered by any of the adults in the room, who were still completely engrossed in trying to save Harry's life, he ducked through it- then stopped. Just as no one had realized that he had been in the ward, no one was aware now that Hermione was there- and though her condition did not rival Harry's in seriousness, still she did need attention; she did need help.
Pulling out his wand, he pointed it at the ceiling over Hermione's bed and muttered a short spell. A bright green distress flare shot from the end of the wand to hang in the air over where Hermione lay crying. A shout from McGonagall told him that he had been successful in alerting the room's other occupants to Hermione's presence. That was all he needed to know. He whirled about and took off down the corridor at a dead run.
He fled through hallways, down the marble stairs, and out the school's front doors, calling upon all his reserves of speed. He had no doubt that once the teachers in the infirmary put two and two together, they would realize he was making a break for it, and he would be followed. On the front landing, he cast about desperately for the egg cup; he had dropped it upon arriving from Malfoy Manor with Harry and Hermione, and it had no doubt rolled away somewhere. Please God, let me find it quickly, he prayed frantically. He remembered that he had landed at the edge of the steps, and Hermione halfway down them. Was it possible that the egg cup had rolled down the steps and into the grass? He virtually flung himself down them, moving so fast that he skidded in something slick on the bottom step- holy shit, he realized, horrified; Potter's blood- and landed on his hands and knees, already searching, searching for that gleam of white ceramic- THERE!
It lay in the thick green grass that bordered the gravel path upon which he was now kneeling; the path that led from the foot of the steps down into to the grounds. He snatched it up and thrust it into his pocket, then shot back to his feet, ignoring the pain in his skinned knees. It was a very small pain compared to some he had experienced in the past. He half turned, making ready to run again, and then-
The school's front doors crashed open and Snape stood there, on the landing, breathing hard, his dark eyes fixed on Draco.
Draco turned back to face him, adrenaline surging, breath coming in shallow, rapid pants, disheveled silver hair hanging in his eyes, poised for flight.
He took a step backward, then another. "There's something I have to do, professor," he said flatly, "and I'm not going to let you stop me."
Then, before Snape could even reply, he turned and ran- more then ran, he virtually flew- down the path toward the edge of the Hogwarts grounds, where he could apparate to the manor. He heard Snape shout his name and was vaguely aware that the older man was racing after him- but Snape lacked Draco's speed-born-of-desperation, and his voluminous professor's robes hampered and slowed him. Draco passed under the grand stone archway that designated the beginning- and end- of the school's grounds-
and vanished mid-stride.
Snape's frantic, last-ditch effort to halt him, a hastily fired Impedimenta spell, streaked through the air where Draco's solid body had been a fraction of a second before. Having hit nothing tangible, it quickly dissipated.
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Draco arrived some feet from the iron gateway of manor's grounds, his body still in motion since he had apparated while running. He stumbled forward and fell, once again, to his knees. He stayed kneeling on the ground for a long moment, bracing himself with his hands, his breath coming in ragged gasps, heart pounding against his rib cage, waiting for the massive adrenaline rush to pass.
Finally, he got slowly to his feet, still panting and feeling slightly shaky all over. He looked through the gate at the imposing manor beyond- his one-time home- took a deep breath, and walked through it. Once on the other side of the gate, he leaned back against it and murmured a complicated spell his father had taught him; a spell that would scramble the manor's apparition coordinates for several hours, in order to throw off pursuit. Only he, his father, and his mother knew how to cast- and remove- the spell. Snape would have to realize where he had gone; now he didn't have to worry about being followed. This done, he pulled out his wand, laid it flat on the palm of his hand, and closed his eyes. Pale brow furrowed in concentration, he worked at pulling up the most vivid images he could- of Ron.
Images that were highly charged with emotion, so they shone clear and bright in his mind. Images of the red-haired boy who had been his bitter enemy for so many years, and had just lately, briefly, been his friend- friend yes, but rival still.
There was Ron in second year, right after Draco had first called Hermione (the girl he would now kill or die for without hesitation) a mudblood- trying, in his impulsive and childish rage, to curse Draco with a broken wand, which had backfired. There was Ron hunkering down next to a blood-soaked, barely conscious Draco as Harry and Hermione had taken on Voldemort, asking, "how you holding up, Malfoy?" There he was aiming his killing curse squarely at Voldemort's groin- the moment in which Draco had first begun to actually respect him. There was Ron shaking hands with him at the top of the marble staircase right before Draco's resorting, both of them clad in white pajamas; Ron had just told him that if he ever hurt Hermione, he would rip off his balls and feed them to him. Draco had believed him. Ron earlier this year, as the Gryffindor Quiditch Keeper, triumphant as he thwarted yet another Slytherin goal- Draco had seen this upside-down, as he tumbled toward the ground thanks to a particularly vicious Slytherin bludger, just before everything went black. The rage in Ron's dark blue eyes when Draco had dared to speak harshly to Hermione as she lay cradled in the redhead's arms after fainting; his voice low and dangerous as he had said, "she doesn't need this right now, Malfoy; back the fuck off." Ron laughing after he had once again trounced Harry in one of their chess marathons, then turning to Draco and saying, "let's see what you've got, Malfoy." And finally Ron as he had been just earlier that day; full of life and purpose when he had questioned the house elf and realized what Draco himself, in his distraught state, had not; that they had the means of going to Hermione's rescue right there before them, thanks to the little creature. If Ron had known in that instant- known absolutely and without the shadow of a doubt- that going after her would result in his own death while preventing hers, he still would have done so. Of this Draco was sure.
Once he had Ron fixed firmly in his mind thanks to these myriad powerful memories, almost as vivid, almost as solid, as though he had been standing right there in front of him, he opened his eyes and whispered to his wand, "point me."
The wand did not hesitate to give him a clear direction. Now all he had to do was follow it to Ron.
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Draco dropped into a crouch beside Ron's still, lifeless form. He lay just as he had fallen, his eyes closed by a sobbing Harry before he had rushed to Draco's aid. The closed eyes did not mask the mild expression of surprise on Ron's face; not fear or horror, no; just surprise- a look that said, well bugger me, I never expected it to turn out like this.
"Aw, Weasley," Draco said, laying a hand, in an astonishingly tender gesture, on Ron's cool forehead, "you deserved better than this, mate. Christ, but you deserved better."
Gently, he moved Ron's outflung arms to lay them across his chest, then prepared to levitate Ron out of the mansion and back to a point beyond the gate where he could portkey to Hogwarts with him. Suddenly, however, he stopped, head cocked to the side, thinking hard. He had remembered something; Harry's invisibility cloak. He had dropped it on the floor of his bedroom and then forgotten all about it at the sight of Hermione half-dead, suspended from the canopy of his bed. That had truly been a sight to drive all other thoughts from his mind; a sight that he suspected would haunt his dreams for the rest of his life. As for the cloak, presumably it still lay right where he had let it fall.
He knew that the cloak was the only thing Harry owned that had once belonged to one of his parents, and how much that meant to his friend.
It was just upstairs.
He remembered the promise he had made to Hermione; that he would return as quickly as he could. And so he would- but not before completing this one final task. He had left Harry's most prized possession behind; he had to get it back. It was not negotiable. Besides, it should take all of ten minutes more.
And anyway, it would make it easier to get Ron back to the school, because Draco knew he could remotely activate the portkey from right there within the manor, as long as it was being used to transport only inanimate objects. And Ron was now an inanimate object. This lapse in the manor's portkey security wards had been deliberately engineered by his father, specifically for cases when a dark arts object, or even a body, had demanded quick removal from the grounds. It was fitting, Draco thought, that this time it should be used for the purpose of recovering a body, rather than disposing of it.
After he had the cloak, he himself could apparate back.
So he slipped the egg-cup into one of Ron's cold hands, carefully closing the fingers about it. Standing, he shook out the blanket he had brought from the infirmary for just this purpose and covered Ron with it from head to toe. Aiming his wand at where he guessed the porktey was beneath the blanket, he muttered the spell that would remotely activate it.
Sure enough, Ron's blanket-shrouded form vanished in a brief flash of blue light. Draco only hoped that Snape would still be outside the school and would therefore discover Ron quickly once he appeared on the landing. It would be horrible if some hapless first-year were to stumble upon him- but not as horrible as leaving him here would have been.
As for Draco, he would recover the cloak, then make his way back out of the manor, past the iron gate that signified the boundary of Malfoy land, and apparate back to Hogwarts. The short walk he would then have to make from the edge of the school grounds up to the castle itself would be a small price to pay for the peace of mind that would come from the knowledge that he had sent Ron's body safely on ahead and would be bearing, when he returned, Potter's precious cloak. Even if Potter were dead by the time he arrived back, which he realized with a cold, clenched feeling in his gut was a distinct possibility, the right thing to do was still the right thing to do- and he would rest easier knowing he had done it.
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Scooping up the invisibility cloak from where it lay, a silver pool of fabric just inside his bedroom door, Draco turned quickly to leave. He had lingered in his room just long enough to rinse Harry's blood from his chest in the adjoining bathroom and Accio himself a soft black shirt from his wardrobe- but now he wanted nothing more than to get the hell away from this room, where so much of his childhood had been spent but which now made his stomach turn over with queasy revulsion. Any fond memories he may have associated with this place in the past, such as poring over the well-loved books which even now sat stacked on his desk or diving from his balcony into the crystal waters of the pool below, had been erased by the fact that his cherished Hermione had been tortured nearly to death- no, screw nearly; she HAD been tortured to death- right here.
He never wanted to see this room again as long as he lived.
And yet-
Before he could make the hasty retreat he had planned, something caught at the corner of his eye- something he had missed on his way hastily to and from the bathroom- something unfamiliar in a room full of familiar things. He turned slowly back toward it and, even from across the sizeable room, recognized it immediately for what it was.
A penseive.
The bed was flanked by two massive green marble fireplaces; the penseive sat upon the mantelpiece of the further one.
Slowly, almost reluctantly, and completely against his better judgment, he crossed over to it and stood, staring at its lazily swirling contents with a dull, horrified fascination. He had never kept a penseive, and so he concluded, correctly, that this one had been used by his father during the days in which he had held Hermione captive in this room.
Which meant, of course, that he had to look.
Never mind that just the sight of the penseive filled him with sick dread and a strong desire to shatter it on the floor and run; run and not look back. If this thing could show him what had happened to Hermione over the past three days to reduce her to the state in which he had found her, then he HAD to look.
He swallowed hard- his throat was suddenly painfully dry- then reached up with hands that he noticed, with some distant surprise, were shaking slightly, and brought the penseive down from the mantle. He carried it across the room and placed it carefully on his desk. Planting his hands firmly on either side of the shallow bowl full of his father's swirling, milky white memories, he leaned close over it.
He closed his eyes for a moment, not ready to fall into the penseive just yet. He took a deep, steadying breath first, bracing himself.
He knew perfectly well that what he was about to see would be bad.
But he did not- COULD not- begin to imagine just how bad.
He opened his eyes.
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(A/N: Hey, all! 300 reviews- thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou! That is so totally awesome. Even though I don't individually respond to each review, I cherish them all!)