Macbeth: Act Four, Scene Two

Disclaimer: Nope, I don't own Harry Potter yet, although I am plotting to murder JK Rowling and take over her throne… oops, I mean books.

Thanks for 604 reviews goes to: PsYcHoJo, yourGUN-myhead, Pheonix, brettley, Cassandra Raven, Noubliz, Silver Moonset, Go10, Catelina, willowfairy, mrswyrr, Plaidly Lush, Keindra, Munching Munchkin Managem, KawaiiRyu, aicila, Stoneage Woman, Flexi Lexi, Nikki, Crystal Dragonfly, draconas, Dustbunnie (x2), Falcon Wing, WWJD4mE2LiVe, citcat299, RedWitch1, Janie Granger, Sam8, Silvestria, Flavagurl, Opalfire, sugar n spice 522, Tayz, Miko-Hime, Lisi, Madam Midnight, luckdragon, heavengurl899 (x2), dand-e-lion, SycoCallie, amerie, samhaincat, Poojies, Mjade-1, BouncingDelta88 (x3), Indygodusk, ToOtHpIcK, La Suede, Trixie7, DracoDraconis (x5), spinach, DragonSpirit7037.

A/N: I managed to survive the fortnight without being ripped to shreds! Though I did set the contents of my rubbish bin alight yesterday by accident. My parents still don't know about it, though my room has a certain eau de burning newspaper. If they did find out, they couldn't say anything anyway, as my mother has twice set fire to the bed. While she was in it. Lung damage is not the only way to kill yourself with a cigarette!

Moving on to less morbid things: my three favourite suggestions for what we Pottermaniacs should come out of included: the Astronomy Tower, the Department of Mysteries and the Forbidden Forest. Or my own idea: the Cupboard under the Stairs! You know it makes sense.

Anyway, no more delays: onto the chapter with all due speed. Enjoy!

'Harry!'

They had heard, quiet but chillingly clear, a faint gasp of alarm; Harry was curled up on the sofa, eyes screwed tightly shut, his scar burning red. Hermione was by his side faster than she could think, as was Ron, and then Harry snapped awake. His eyes were wide and he heaved in deep breaths as if he couldn't get enough air, one hand pressed tightly to his scar. 'Snape!'

Hermione took a deep breath, feeling as though she'd just been punched in the stomach. 'Come on, calm down,' she said, trying to stay calm herself, taking hold of Harry's wrist. 'It's okay now, the vision's over, you're safe.'

Harry shook his head. 'No, no,' he muttered, face eerily white in contrast to the blood-red scar on his forehead. He took one last deep breath and pulled himself together. 'I'm fine. I'm fine.'

'That's the spirit,' Ron said, grinning nervously and slipping onto the sofa beside Harry, watching him worriedly. They were close to the fire, which was burning with a hot ruddy-gold light, but Harry was still shivering. 'Did you… did you have…'

Ron bit his lip; Hermione finished the sentence. 'What did you see?' she asked quietly. She couldn't help but remember what happened last time Harry had a vision, and shuddered; Harry must have felt it because he pulled his wrist out of her hand and stared at the fire.

'Nothing,' he said firmly. 'I didn't… I didn't see anything.'

Ron frowned. 'But… your scar…'

'I didn't see anything!' Harry snarled, jerking away from Ron. 'Nothing. Nothing at all.'

Ron gave Hermione a perplexed frown; Harry carried on staring stubbornly at the fire, the flickering light making his expression look even more eerie. His arms folded tightly; he seemed to be trying to take up as little space as possible.

If he had seen something, it meant that something important was happening with Voldemort. A memory flashed through her mind, of Draco, only a few hours ago. 'There's a meeting tonight… It's too soon. He never holds them this close together.' Had Harry seen the meeting? Had something important happened?

Or, of course, the meeting could be to set up a trap for Harry to fall into; it could be a false vision meant to mislead him…

Deciding to take a risk, Hermione tried, 'You said Snape… when you woke up…'

Harry started violently at the sound of Snape's name, but didn't say a word. Hermione continued. 'Was it something about him?'

'I didn't see anything!' Harry repeated; this time it was more of a desperate plea. He pulled his knees up onto the sofa and tucked them under his chin, arms wrapped around his legs.

'Harry…'

Harry put his forehead on his knees, so they couldn't see his face, and was silent. Ron gave Hermione a desperate look, as if asking her what to do, but she didn't know. She hated that feeling, that helplessness: the answer to this was not something you could find in books. They couldn't tell whether whatever Harry had seen was real or not, and she didn't know how to get him to tell them, or how to make him feel better, or how to stop him shivering.

Dumbledore. That was something she could focus on. They should go and tell Dumbledore: he might be able to tell…

'It's a trap,' Harry whispered, pain in his voice 'It's a trap, Voldemort just wants me to go and get killed, or for me to tell Dumbledore and send the Order into a trap, or…

'Harry,' Hermione repeated gently, taking his hand in an attempt to soothe him, 'you don't know. It could be real.'

There was no sound from Harry for a moment, then he lifted his head, resting his chin on his knees and giving them each a short glance before staring at the fire and saying, very quickly, 'I saw a Death Eater meeting.'

Hermione shivered. Had he seen Malfoy? The Death Eaters wore masks and hoods, but if Malfoy's hood had fallen down, he had impossibly distinctive hair, Harry would have recognised it. Or Voldemort could have called him by name. And what if he was in danger? She squeezed his hand tightly, which he seemed to take as an invitation to go on.

'I saw… there was an initiation, some new member, and then Voldemort started talking about their… their successes. And then how things had gone wrong sometimes, and then he said there was a spy…'

He stopped talking with an odd choking sound, but Hermione could guess the rest. 'Snape,' she whispered, and sat frozen for a minute before hastily getting to her feet. 'Come on.'

'Where?' Ron asked. 'And… what did he do to Snape? Did he…'

The meaning was obvious. 'Torture. Yes,' Harry whispered. 'I woke up before I saw what…'

There was a horrible pause before Hermione spoke. 'We should go to Dumbledore's office,' she said gently. Harry's head snapped up immediately.

'What?' he asked. 'No. We're not going. We're not.'

'But Snape…' Ron said, confused. 'We can't just leave him to die!'

Harry shook his head furiously. 'Voldemort's sent me false visions before, he can do so again,' he said, fiercely. 'I'm not going. Not getting more people killed. No.'

'But you've had real visions before,' Hermione said. 'Like Mr Weasley and the snake. If you hadn't told someone then…'

'My dad would have died,' Ron finished solemnly, after a second of silence, in which Harry stared very hard at the red and gold pattern on the sofa. 'We should at least tell Dumbledore.'

'I'm not even meant to be having these visions,' Harry said quietly, looking down at the floor. 'That was the point of the Occlumency. Just… Just pretend it never happened.'

'It's not like we're running off on our own this time,' Hermione pointed out, coming back to kneel beside him, trying to persuade him. 'This is important. Dumbledore would want to know. He might even be able to check if Snape really is in danger…'

'No.' Harry repeated. 'I'm not… I don't want another… another death on my conscience.' He sucked in a deep breath, as though that had been hard to say, and pressed his face into his knees. 'If I tell Dumbledore and he goes off into a trap with the Order and people get killed then it's my fault. I can't – I won't let that happen again.'

What Harry said was a possibility, but perhaps it was one that they had to risk. Snape could be dying, and Dumbledore might be able to find out whether he was, whether it was a false vision. It was a better hope, a better chance, than staying here and waiting.

'And if you don't go and tell Dumbledore, and we go down for breakfast tomorrow and find out that Snape's dead?' Hermione asked; Harry flinched visibly, not meeting her eyes.

'I don't now what to do,' he said, his pain and confusion evident in his voice. 'I can't tell Dumbledore because then it might be a trap and I'll put the Order in danger, so I have to stay silent. But I can't stay silent, because it might be real and then Snape will die, so I have to tell Dumbledore, but I can't tell Dumbledore because-'

'I've just realised something,' Ron interrupted, his face rapidly paling. 'Harry, Voldemort – in your vision, he accused Snape of being a spy, right?' Harry nodded silently. 'So even if it is a false vision, it must mean that he knows. He knows Snape's a spy… and if he knows that, he isn't likely to leave Snape alone,' he concluded.

Harry looked up sharply. 'I…' He screwed his eyes shut, and Hermione knew he was fighting himself. 'We'll go to Dumbledore. Snape's in danger whether it's true or not. I'll… I'll get my Invisibility Cloak.'

There was a hand holding hers. That was the first thing she noticed, upon waking from a deliciously peaceful darkness: a hand, cold as death and a little thin, as though it were all bone and no flesh, and clinging on to her hand a little too tightly. But she smiled anyway, and turned her head towards it without opening her eyes, resting on the smooth pillow. It felt like part of the dream.

'Hermione.'

The voice wasn't a dream; it was low, a harsh whisper with an undertone of pure fear; like someone who has seen all his demons at once, all the monsters that hide in the shadows, and Hermione was awake.

Her eyes opened. 'Draco?' she asked, incredulously, then remembered that she was in the dormitory at some impossible hour – it was well past midnight – and continued in a whisper. 'Draco, what are you doing here?'

He was kneeling on the floor beside her bed, clinging – there was no other word for it – clinging to her hand as though he were afraid of losing it, looking up at her. His face was impossibly white in the dimly-lit dormitory, as though someone had painted a picture of him in black ink and brought it to life; black and white and no shades of grey.

'I have supped full with horrors,' he whispered, meeting her confused gaze with an unblinking one, wide eyed. Shivering. 'I have done the deed, a deed of dreadful note. These deeds must not be thought after these ways; so, it will make us mad. Mad,' he repeated, looking at her, desperation in his eyes.

Hermione sat up and reached for her wand with her free hand: she couldn't risk Lavender and Parvati waking up and hearing this. 'Impedimentum Sonito', she muttered, twice, pointing first at Lavender's bed and then Parvati's. Draco sat back, his hand still tightly in hers, still shaking, and rested his head on her blanket, closing his eyes.

Hermione put down her wand and reached out towards, him, stopping for a second just short of touching him, then letting her fingers stroke, lightly, along the side of his face. They came away slightly sticky, slightly warm. Blood.

Her fingers flinched. She'd heard what had happened at the meeting: she'd been there when Harry hastily recounted the vision to an increasingly worried Dumbledore. And she'd known Draco was there, and she'd been worried for him, and hoped he was okay, but she hadn't expected this.

'What… what happened?' she heard herself asking, voice shaking slightly. 'What did you do?'

He looked up at her, shaking his head vehemently. 'No,' he whispered. 'I am afraid to think what I have done. Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?' he asked, raising the hand with which he held hers so tightly, and in the moonlight she could see that it was streaked and stained with blood.

She almost screamed: it felt like something out of a horror novel, out of a nightmare, except that this was real and happening and here and now, and Draco had… She knew what he had done, what he had been made to do, as clearly as she knew her own name, but surely something must keep it from happening in real life, keep it confined to the realm of the imaginary, the terrifying…

'He made you torture Snape,' Hermione said, each word feeling like a thick and blood-covered weight on her tongue, and Draco hissed, curling himself tighter into a ball, eyes closed. She reached out, less tentatively this time, to touch his hair. 'Oh, Draco…'

'Murders have been performed too terrible for the ear,' he whispered, half a whine, then looked up at her, tightening his hold on her hand slightly. 'Be innocent of the knowledge.'

'I know already,' she whispered back. 'Listen to me, Draco. Snape's fine. He's in the Hospital wing right now with Madam Pomfrey: she says he's going to be fine. The Order rescued him in time.'

They'd gone to Dumbledore's office; he'd been sitting there, awake, with some odd silver disc in his hand glowing a bright red. They'd found out later that meant Snape was being tortured. With Harry's vision, and the disc as evidence, Dumbledore had lost no time in getting the Order together and getting Snape back. The three of them had waited in the common room, incredibly tired but unwilling to sleep, until Professor McGonagall came and told them that Snape was alive and in Madam Pomfrey's care.

Draco shook his head. 'I killed him,' he whispered. 'You didn't see it, Hermione, this most bloody piece of work…'

'He's not dead. He's going to be fine,' she repeated, trying to sound soothing when she was closer to terrified. 'Madam Pomfrey says so. And what happened isn't your fault, you didn't have a choice.'

He looked up at her, the corners of his lips twisted into some frightening, pitiable parody of a smile. 'There's always a choice. Potter wouldn't have… have killed him. You wouldn't.'

'You aren't Harry. You aren't me,' Hermione said firmly. 'And you didn't have a choice. Draco…'

'There's always a choice,' he repeated, looking at her sharply, eyes as silver and sharp as mercury, because too much mercury could make you go mad. 'Always a choice, and I chose to torture him, I chose it, I…' He held up a shaking hand, red blood staining white skin, and laughed, a little hysterically. 'Steeped in the colours of their trade, see? Unmannerly breached with gore. The colours of my trade, because I am…' His voice, thin and weak, gave out, leaving him staring at his hands, his skin, in utter horror. Hermione reached out and caught his shoulder, and he glanced up at her with a shaking smile on his face.

'His secret murders sticking on his hands,' he whispered, his voice choked. 'My murders, the people I've tortured, the things I've stood there and watched because I was too afraid to do anything about them, sticking to my hands, the blood never comes off and they won't stop screaming…'

'Draco!' She was frightened, now; he was going to fall apart on her bedroom floor, and that would be the end of any sanity he had left, and that would be the end of Draco. 'Listen to me. Snape's not dead. He's alive, and he's fine, and you can probably visit him tomorrow but you have to stay sane, please, Draco, don't go mad…'

'It's not just Snape,' Draco murmured. 'Do you think I haven't done that before? He knows what it does to me,' he whispered, looking up at her, his eyes desperate. 'He knows. He likes… likes choosing me… making me… it…'

Draco shook his head, dipping his head so his face was cast into shadow, and Hermione didn't know what to say. What could she say? Nothing could make it any better; nothing could help.

'You should get that cloak off,' she eventually said into the eerie silence. 'It's-'

'Covered in blood,' Draco finished, with something that could have been a laugh and could have been a sob. He fumbled with the clasp one-handed; the other one still clinging to Hermione's. After watching him struggle for a few seconds she reached out, clumsy with her left hand, and between them they managed to get it undone. He threw it to the floor, leaving him dressed in a plain black robe.

'That's better,' Hermione muttered, picking up her wand with her free hand and muttering 'Scourgify!' at the cloak. Draco, watching her, shook his head.

'The blood doesn't come off. I told you. It never comes off. Never.' He whispered, drawing closer to the bed, away from the cloak.

'Of course it comes off,' Hermione replied soothingly, putting her wand back down and picking up the cloak, holding it out to him. It was, indeed, perfectly clean. 'See? No more blood. It's all in your head.'

'That's the worst place for it to be,' he replied, eying the cloak warily, as though it were some vicious monster made from shadow and black cloth and memories. 'O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!'

She dropped the cloak. He turned his head away from it, shaking, and she reached for his shoulder again, trying to soothe him. 'Hush. You're safe now, he can't make you do anything here.'

He buried his face in her blanket as though trying to hide. 'I can't escape my mind. I can't escape…' he said, voice muffled.

She was at a loss; how could you argue against madness, a madness that saw only washed-away blood and nowhere to run to, nowhere safe? She stroked his back, and then, an impulse, said 'Come up here.'

He glanced up, allowing the tiniest glittering shred of an eye to be seen. 'Come on,' she repeated, and tugged on his shoulder, and he slowly clambered onto the bed.

He was shivering, still, though it had been five minutes since he'd woken her and who knew how long since he'd actually come in, and when she touched the hand that hadn't been holding hers it was as cold as death. 'You're freezing,' she said, frowning, and gathered up her blanket, attempting to wrap it around him where he knelt on the bed, which was difficult with only one hand. He still hadn't let go of it.

While she struggled, Draco stared at her blankly as if he didn't understand what she was doing, making no move to help or stop her but simply watching as she tugged the heavy thing around him, over his shoulders like a mantle, until he was wrapped in the gold and red Gryffindor blanket. He looked impossibly out of place, the bloodstained, guilty Death Eater wrapped in Gryffindor colours, soft and warm. Then he clutched the end of the blanket with his free hand. 'Thanks,' was all he said, not looking at her.

Hermione watched him for a minute, feeling oddly embarrassed to be doing so. She shouldn't be seeing him like this. Not when he was weak, not when he was half insane and forced to fly or crawl to his enemy for help and the warmth of a blanket. To someone who he thought was an animal, not even human. That thought hurt her now more than it ever had before, like a stab straight through the heart with a sword sharp enough to cut moonbeams.

But he had come to her. It wasn't entirely surprising. Who else knew he was insane, who else would help him? The Slytherins would be mocking or disdainful, and everyone else would fear him or hate him and turn him away. For the first time, she fully realised that Draco had no one else to turn to. No one but her.

She gave his hand a gentle squeeze, and he raised his head – he hadn't moved for five minutes. He looked her in the eye, briefly, as if trying to work out what she was thinking, before his eyes dropped to the place where their joined hands rested.

'What hands are here?' he asked in a whisper. 'Ha! They pluck out mine eyes.' They were still smeared with blood; long streaks of it, vanishing into the sleeves of his robe. Hermione didn't want to think about how they got there, about what he could have done to get them there.

She had to stay calm, though, for his sake. 'Do you want me to Scourgify them for you?' she asked. He glanced up at her sharply, then shook his head.

'Go get some water, and wash this filthy witness from your hand,' he said firmly, staring at his hand, then gave a trembling laugh 'Water won't work. It never does. It never goes away, the blood, it never goes away. Blood is thicker than water.'

'Of course you can wash it away,' she said. 'Blood comes off. Do you… do you want water?' Water made sense, in the bizarre Macbeth-inspired world of Draco's insanity. He didn't say anything in response, but he reached out his hand from the blanket and rubbed his two hands together, without letting go out of her hand, as though he were clumsily trying to wash them. Like Lady Macbeth, sleepwalking…

With her free hand, she dragged out one of her pillows from behind her and then picked up her wand. 'Calix,' she said, and the pillow morphed perfectly into a small wooden bowl, which she pointed her wand at again, and a muttered 'Frigida' provided a stream of cool water from the end of her wand.

'Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?' Draco asked, watching her. He was still rubbing his hands together, hampered by the fact that he wouldn't let go of her hand.

'Yes,' Hermione told him, her voice quiet. 'The blood, at least, will come off.' She gently lifted the hand to which he was clinging – his hands went with it - and dipped it in the bowl, feeling the sudden shock of icy water, the meagre warmth of Draco's hands. The water began to grow murky with blood.

'See? It's coming off,' she told him. He was staring at his hands as if in horror. 'It's fine. It's all alright.' She paused for a moment, looking at him as he sat utterly motionless, barely even breathing. 'There's still some on your face,' she said, a little uncertainly. 'Do you… do you mind if I…?'

He shook his head, the motion only just perceptible, but permission none the less. Tentatively, she scooped up a little water from the bowl and brought it towards his face, gently smoothing the blood from his skin. It felt… smooth, surprisingly, and cold.

'You're freezing,' she muttered without thinking, as she gently trailed her fingertips across his forehead to the next bloodsmear; he closed his eyes as a single drop of water rolled down his skin, colourless on white, and over his eyelid to rest, tentatively, trapped in his eyelash.

'There,' she said, a moment later, pulling her fingers away from his skin sharply. Her voice was too high, somehow. 'Clean. And your… your hands are, too. It does come off.'

He opened his eyes at that, sharply, and raised his free hand out of the bowl, examining it critically before scowling. 'Yet here's a spot,' he said firmly. 'What, will these hands n'er be clean?'

'They are clean,' Hermione told him, catching the hand he was examining with her own. 'See? No blood.'

He shook his head. 'A little water clears us of this deed. That's what you said. But nothing gets rid of the blood. It's still there.'

'Draco, don't-' she began, but he cut her off.

'You don't understand. You haven't… you've never… the blood doesn't come off. It never does. Does it look like it has, to you? That's a lie. All things foul would wear the brows of grace, and so a murderer's bloodstained hand must look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't. The blood's still there, that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart, Hermione, that can't be washed away. Not with water. Not with water. Hermione…'

And she knew he was right, because while his skin on the outside was a white as a unicorn's, on the inside… On the inside she could only imagine. He looked up at her then, his eyes like broken mirrors – or, if the eyes were the window to the soul, then perhaps it was himself which was broken, shattered, in a million pieces with edges like daggers.

She moved the bowl to her table with one hand, careful not to spill, then crawled up next to him and carefully, tentatively, wrapped her free arm around him, pulling him close to her, still firmly holding his free hand. He didn't say anything, but after a minute he awkwardly lent his head against her shoulder, and adjusted the Gryffindor blanket around himself more comfortably, and closed his eyes.

Hermione gave his hair a gentle stroke with her free hand, and ever so slowly he started to lean more and more of his weight on her, his body slowly relaxing, tense muscles slackening and – she was glad to see – getting slowly warmer. His breathing softened and slowed until finally, after an hour or an eternity of sitting and watching him, Hermione realised he was asleep.

She couldn't send him away, not now, not after all this, and he looked so peaceful in his sleep that she couldn't bear to wake him. Carefully, she tipped him over until he was lying flat on the bed, his head on the pillow, then she slipped away from him, tugging her hand out of his, and slid out of the bed. She couldn't let Lavender and Parvati find out; that was imperative.

The water went down the sink, and she turned the bowl back into a pillow. Draco's cloak and broomstick – that must be how he'd got in – went into her trunk, and she removed the silence wards from her roommate's beds. Those would have been hard to explain. Finally, she set a useful spell on her wand that would cause her to wake at six o'clock – she needed enough time to get Draco out without anyone seeing – and climbed back into bed, pulling the hangings shut.

A sudden wave of exhaustion caught hold of her as she saw Draco, fast asleep and tangled in her blanket. He looked peaceful, though she doubted he was. He wasn't innocent, and he looked that as he slept, too.

Beautiful she might be able to agree on, she thought with a smile, and carefully pushed a wisp of wayward hair behind his ear.

It was an icy night; Hermione managed to untangle just enough of the blanket to cover her, before resting her head on the pillow and closing her eyes. She had just enough time to find his hand again under the blankets and take hold of it before exhaustion and worry pulled her into the warm, deep blackness of sleep.

A/N: 'Impedimentum Sonito' means 'barrier to noise', 'Calix' means 'bowl, and 'Frigida' means 'cold water'. (It was also used in Act Two, Scene Two.)

For those of you who have read the play and like playing find-the-Macbeth-quotes, there are no fewer than 21 in the final scene. If anyone finds them all I will be amazed. Some of them are famous or quite obvious; others are more subtle.

This week's question: I've been noticing lately that Macbeth has a far smaller readership than Fallen, even though (in my humble opinion) it's the better story. I think it might be because it involves Shakespeare – quite a few reviewers have said that they were reluctant to read it at first because of that. Do you agree? Have you read the play, and if not, do you/did you find the fic at all daunting? Has anyone read the play because of the fic? Basically – what's your opinion?

Review!