Disclaimer: Hogwarts etc belongs to JKR.

"Look in the doubt we've wallowed
Look at the leaders we've followed
Look at the lies we've swallowed
And I don't want to hear no more"

Guns 'N Roses – Civil War

Raphael sighed.

With another glance at the boy he unrolled his bag of tools on thin air at the foot of the bed. This was going to take a while.

He wasn't to be mistaken as a healer. He had not set foot in so much as a first aid class since the day he was born and, as it stood, he did not intend to. No, Raphael was of another stock entirely. Son of an insane catholic nun raped by a powerful warlock some time during the Grindewald War, he had been brought up an illegitimate heir to a dwindling fortune. He'd attended Drumstrang nearly half a century ago (though he looked no older than twenty-seven) and a few decades on he had discovered he had quite a knack for unravelling magical puzzles, so to speak. He enrolled as a curse breaker and had been doing his job exceedingly well in St Mungo's for seventeen years now, but it took no more than a glance to tell him he was going to have his work cut out with this one.

"Quartz scalpel," he mumbled to himself, scanning rows of neatly aligned and razor sharp implements, drumming his fingers on the nearest bedpost. "Quartz, quartz, quartz."

His patient stirred vaguely, eying him with blank grey eyes.

"So, one of Who-Know-Who's lot, eh?" the mage offered conversationally, a flick of the wrist having the boy's details line up on neatly written parchments in the air before him. "Malfoy, is it? They don't seem to know much about you."

The boy blinked owlishly. The parchments returned themselves to their folder.

"Interesting bunch of scars you've got here," he commented, prodding the black oozing one with his wand. It bubbled angrily. "Give me a few secs and I'll get rid of that," he gestured vaguely, "Just gotta find that quartz… ah. Here it is. Hold still. You won't feel a thing."

At the other side of the ward Harriet spun around, the enraged, pained scream echoing off the walls.

"Sorry 'bout that," Raphael apologised, wiping the blade clean. The oozing had subsided. "I'll go fetch you some morphine or something later." He found talking made his job far easier.

It was almost dark.

The rain had subsided and a strange fog had drifted in off the Thames, giving the city a sinister, Dickensian feel in the twilight.

Healer O'Brien glared out of the window.

It just didn't make sense. The girl had fallen asleep eventually, having drained her drugged hot chocolate, and she now sat shivering in the corner of the blue armchair, occasionally mumbling the boy's name with a pained expression on her scarred face. It was supposed to be a dreamless sleep.

There was no doubting her identity anymore; everyone recognised her. The ward had always been notoriously difficult to gain entry to, guarded by a myriad of spells, but now the security was even tighter. Not even staff could get in without the direct consent of Healer O'Brien in fear that somehow news of their two most recent patients would get out.

At that thought Marianne dropped her head into her hands. At some point someone was going to have to let the Ministry know, even if it was just to get backup to cordon off the ward. And if the Ministry knew then Harry Potter would know. And that wasn't something she wanted to have to deal with at the moment.

She knew the boy (it was so difficult to think of any of them as more than children) vaguely, having been on call during many of the battles he'd ploughed through. She'd healed him as she healed everyone, without discrimination. He was hailed as their saviour and it was so, so strange, because he really was so nice and normal when you talked to him.

She'd been the one to tell him the first time round.

When Hermione Granger's body was brought in she had had to stand and watch Ron Weasley punch through an inch of solid oak, watch him shatter into a thousand pieces before dragging himself back together to be there for his friend. And it was so strange. Because Harry Potter took it all with a blank face and polite thank you's for 'everything they'd done'. He even tried to smile and left as though he'd dealt with it fully, back straight and eyes dry, and that absence of a reaction scared her more than any fits of misery.

She stood up from her chair. She wasn't sure she was ready to go through that again, the boy had been through so much the thought of crushing what little he'd built up was devastating. Something would have to be done, but right now it could wait until morning. She had to go and check on Raphael anyway.

She found him a few minutes later, right where she'd left him, at Malfoy's bedside. The mage stood chewing his lip, concentration etched on his features.

Healer O'Brien's eyes widened when she saw the boy. He had been stripped down to his underwear and almost every inch of flesh was glowing with angular runes.

"Ah, Marianne. I was just about to call for you," said Rafael, looking up, "I need some phoenix tears and a bit of powdered mandrake." That said he seemed to fall back into the strange trance he had been in on her entry. She'd never understood this curse breaking business, but everyone insisted that Raphael was the best there was, even Dmitri, his unwilling partner, so who was she to argue.

She sent Harriet off to get the items.

"What are you doing, Raphael?"

The man blinked, he wasn't used to being questioned. But then again, he reasoned, he'd known Marianne a long time. "Trying to instigate a link," He answered, "I can't repair any more until I know what caused them."

"Legilimency?"

He paused, "As such. Only he'd need to be conscious for that. It overlaps a bit into necromancy." At her widened eyes he hurried on to explain, "Like how you can draw out the last spell from a wand, there are ways to draw out the last memory from a corpse. Only he's not a corpse, so I should be able to go back a few days, maybe even weeks. Mental probing, more difficult to block than legilimency, I did try that but the dark magic in the wounds disturbed the spells. The only reason this method is working at all is that his aura's practically given up."

"It's faded?" she asked, alarmed.

He nodded. "Nearly all of it."

They stood in silence for a moment.

"How's the girl?" he asked eventually.

"Dreamless sleep."

"Ah."

There was another silence.

"Well, I best be getting on," he said, nodding to the prone figure on the bed. "Those curses don't break themselves."

Marianne smiled tiredly. "Yeah, I'll see you later, shout if you need anything."

"Will do."

She sighed a heavy sigh. Behind the curtain there was a scream. She heard Raphael swear.

It was going to be a long night.

Draco didn't know where he was. It felt as though he was floating on some form as black fog, there were voices but he couldn't understand what they were saying and he didn't think they were talking to him. His eyes were open and he could see people come and go. But there was no recognition. It was all very strange.

He'd thought he was in the Hospital Wing at Hogwarts. He really, really had. He'd woken up, seen a familiar face (for his life he could not remember who), his ribs had ached and the sheets were white. There had been the sound of rain outside and a middle-aged woman with a wand leaning over him. He had hurt a bit less after that.

However, despite the fact he hadn't remembered fully, he was certain that this couldn't be Hogwarts. Thoughts trickled back but they were jumbled and he kept seeing the same face over and over again. Mudblood his mind hissed and he couldn't remember why.

Hogwarts was closed. And it was his fault.

He blinked slowly.

And then it came back. Two years swimming suddenly into focus as the man hovering in foreground mumbled words in Latin.

Draco screamed.

He hadn't been sure what made him do it.

He'd been in hiding for months and months, living behind a mask and running from the only people who could help him. Snape had run with him but it never felt right. This wasn't him. He should have been back in the Manor, or back at Hogwarts, well dressed, well fed, respected. Instead he was living from day to day in the back rooms of whatever allies Snape made contact with first.

He hadn't had a real shower for days. He stank. He hair was filthy and greasy and the layer of grime coating his skin bothered him greatly. He felt like a medieval peasant. It was disgusting.

They'd returned to London in the autumn and remained hiding until Christmas. He didn't even know if his mother was still alive. He was scared.

They lay low until reports spread that they'd died. And then they returned to service. And that was worse than any length of time living in squalor without hot water.

The fear returned tenfold, his wand was tainted with spells he'd wanted to cast all his life, but now the reality was almost too much for him. The words bought bile to his throat and the falling bodies made him wish he was able to cry in peace. There was only one thing he could find left to be thankful for and that was that Harry Potter had not been sighted since the closing of Hogwarts.

He'd admit it now. He was utterly terrified of the thought of the-Boy-Who-Lived. He had nightmares. He had day-mares. He had visions of his own death spelled out as justice and retribution and other painful words that no longer seemed able to relate to mercy. He'd pushed the Gryffindor too far for that. And he knew it.

The war had become a War, with prisoners and political speeches and corpses in the gutter. It wasn't right but there was no other option. Spring came and went and then there was news in the Death Eaters that someone was targeting something that worried the Dark Lord, but no one knew who and no one knew what. Harry Potter they whispered and it struck Draco how strange it was that they were all so scared. The boy was just that. A boy. He wanted to shout it at them, but then he'd remember the dreams he had and how Potter's eyes glowed like Avada Kedavra in the night. He was afraid too.

And then he heard it.

A prisoner. She had tried to kill Nagini. No one knew why but they knew the Dark Lord had never been that angry. And emergency meeting and they were led to an underground tunnel with cages lining the walls. Inside one of them a figure slept.

Draco's heart stopped.

He had taken guard duty. He didn't know why. He was silenced, masked and stood in the corner of the room with nothing to do but watch her.

He watched as he tried singing. He watched her as she weakened with thirst and hunger, watched her as the drugs in her drink took hold and her perception slipped. He watched her fight and scream with herself, clawing and the bars and crying and crying and crying. She yelled for Potter and he didn't come. And for some reason that gave Draco a sick sense of satisfaction.

They were doing tests on her. On little Hermione Granger. He didn't know what and he didn't know why but he knew the Dark Lord was trying something that had never been tried before. Words like resurrection and soul-stealing stuck in his mind and he began to know they had been right. He was a slave to a madman.

The tests had continued and she went further from reality. Her eyes glowed in the dark and when she passed out from dehydration they came and carved runes into her. They stole her memories, throwing them into a pensive and swirling them. Laughing at he love of Hogwarts, at her arguments with him and her fights for Potter. They laughed and he felt himself grow angry. But there was nothing he could do. And he knew it. So he let them in and locked the door after they left.

She had fallen to pieces after that. They'd come to her the next day and he thought she almost recognised him, behind his mask as they stood in a circle about their Lord. She had been told she was to 'make payment' for her crime. She had spat in the Dark Lord's face. Draco was almost proud of her stupidity. Crucio. She had screamed but he was used to the sound. They told her they were going to take her soul. Bit by bit. She would help the Dark Lord build up what he'd lost to Harry Potter and she would be responsible for the boy's downfall when his nemesis grew more powerful than ever before.

She was going to win them the war.

She'd cried at this. But there was nothing he could do.

Harry left the hospital with little thought spared for the nervous healer. He had walked quietly through the streets of London, savouring the peaceful buzz of traffic. A woman knocked into him and she ran for a bus and he smiled to himself as he didn't leap for his wand. The reflexes were wearing off.

It had been four months since Voldemort had been defeated and Harry was beginning to realise that things could go back to normal. He had lunch at the Burrow every fortnight, he played quidditch with Ron and Ginny every Friday, he was holding talks with McGonagall over the re-opening of Hogwarts, and it looked as though he'd be able to take his final year a few years late. Him and Ginny were wavering on the brink of a relationship and Mrs Weasley left strategically placed bridal magazines all over the Burrow whenever he was due to visit. Ron was even beginning to date other girls, a year after Hermione's death and he'd realised it was time he moved on.

Things were healing, he thought to himself. And it was about time, too.

Stirring in the starched linen sheets the boy's brow creased.

Raphael lowered his wand and watched as his hands clenched and unclenched. The boy's mouth opened a fraction and out of it a hollow voice scratched.

"Hermione…" he had croaked.

The curse breaker stared.

If you've read it please review it.

AN: I doubt you'll read this, but thank you debarie for correcting my spelling.