Macbeth: Act Five, Scene Six
Disclaimer: Contrary to popular belief, I am not dead. This should immediately give you the clue that I am not Shakespeare. (I'm not J.K.Rowling, either.)
Thanks for 1608 reviews goes to everyone who's been waiting patiently for so long. I'm not going to type out all the names because it'd probably take me a week to do it, and you've waited far too long already.
A/N: Reasons why it took me so long to write this include, but are not limited to: writer's block, the school play, university applications, university open days/scholarship exams/interviews, coursework, school in general, January exams, betas also having too much stress and not enough time, turning 18, the birth of my new nephew Sam, minor car accidents, falling down stairs and hitting obscure parts of my skull, and the chickenpox.
It's been quite chaotic, as you might imagine, and I am even now avoiding revision to update. Having exams starting shortly. The good news is, though, that all the rest of Macbeth is written and will be updated very soon – they're just being betaed. Counting the epilogue, this is the preantepenultimate chapter, or, the third from last. I promise the others will be up soon.
Considering how long it's been already, I won't say anything more about what's been happening to me in the meantime, I'll just let you get on with the fic. Nice long chapter, too. Enjoy!
They stepped into the relative safety of the wings, Draco's hand tightening on hers. The fake blood was unpleasantly sticky where it clung between their skin.
'I can't do this…' Draco began in a whisper. His voice was so quiet she could hardly hear it: if she hadn't felt his breath ghosting over her skin, she'd have thought it was her imagination. 'I… Hermione…'
'It's okay,' she whispered, wondering if Harry was watching them, waiting for them in the shadows, and then realised that she didn't care. Draco would be furious with her, and she doubted Harry would approve of them standing so close, but right now all that mattered was surviving that night, stopping Voldemort. Everything else came later. She reached out to take Draco's other hand, holding it tightly in her grasp. She couldn't have stopped herself if she'd wanted to. 'We'll find an answer, we'll stop him. Don't be scared.'
Draco closed his eyes, wrapped his fingers around hers as though drawing strength through her skin. There was a moment when it felt like nothing existed but the two of them and the place where their hands were joined – and, as always, the cloying blood on his skin, her skin – and then the Porter started speaking. Draco seemed to straighten; his eyes opened and focussed on a point over her shoulder. Without looking, Hermione knew what had caught his eye.
She glanced over her shoulder to see Harry, half-wreathed in shadows, watching the two of them suspiciously. Almost flushing, thankful for the darkness, she reluctantly pulled her hands out of Draco's, the blood trying to stick their skin together. She reached for her wand, half-turning to Harry. The silence of the backstage was eerie.
'Parmasoniti,' she whispered. A very faint shimmer in the air surrounded the three of them, barely visible even in the darkness backstage; a soundproof shield so they could talk without being overheard by the audience. Harry stood just inside the barrier; Draco was as far away from him as he could get. She stood between them, beside Draco but turned towards Harry, glancing between them.
Draco was going to be furious. Whatever her reasons had been, whether or not she was right or wrong – and she knew she had the best of reasons, knew she was right – it was still betrayal. Betrayal to one of his enemies. And he was going to be angry. How angry? She didn't know. How long would it take him to forgive her? If he did forgive her. The thought of what might happen if he didn't rushed through her, a wave of fear thick and strong enough to be nausea. For a moment, she wanted his forgiveness more than she wanted to stop Voldemort.
Draco folded his arms. 'Sod off, Potter,' he said, eyes fixed on Harry.
There was silence, broken by the muted sound of the Porter's speech and the distant, innocent sound of laughter. It echoed eerily around the walls, out of place in the darkness. Hermione found herself unable to look Draco in the eyes; she glanced down at the floor instead, away from him. If he didn't forgive her…
Draco looked back and forth between them, his eyes flickering from her to Harry and back again. He realised. Turning sharply on her, he caught her arm and demanded, 'What did you tell him?'
'You're getting blood on my sleeve,' she whispered, completely irrationally; all she could think for a moment was that she wanted this not to be happening, she wanted him not to be angry, or to postpone his anger for even a day, an hour. Anything as long as it wasn't happening now.
He didn't let go. He stared at her, fingers closing on her forearm in a kind of demand – so different from the desperate, needing way he'd held her hand just moments before – and when she finally did force herself to look him in the eye, she saw only cold, tight rage in the tense lines of his face, and she knew that he wouldn't listen to reason.
'I… I told him what he needed to know,' she said, quietly but firmly, unconsciously standing straighter. She could hear the Porter speaking from the stage, and she knew that however much she wanted to explain and argue and even plead with him to understand, she couldn't afford the time. Not when Voldemort was drawing closer with every second. That knowledge hung over them, dark and inevitable, drawing closer and tighter about them with every breath; she could never forget it.
'What did you tell him?' Draco repeated, never moving his eyes from hers, his voice harsh and rough, and for a moment she could see a little of the old Malfoy in him. The Malfoy she could once have pictured killing and murdering and torturing without a qualm. No, there was nothing of that in him; she knew that, absolutely nothing. He simply wasn't like that.
'What I needed to know.' Harry stepped forward, echoing Hermione; she gave him a quick glance of relief and saw him glancing suspiciously between the two of them before fixing his eyes on Draco. 'And how do I know you're telling the truth?'
'It's nothing to do with you, Potter,' Draco spat. His eyes didn't move from Hermione's face as he spoke, as if unwilling to acknowledge Harry's presence; but it had the unnerving effect of making Hermione feel that the poison in Draco's voice was directed at her. It might as well have been. Uncertainly, she reached her hand up to cover Draco's where it dug almost painfully into her arm; the moment her skin touched his he jerked his hand away from her as though he'd been scalded, dropping his arms stiffly to his side.
'Draco…' Hermione began, hesitantly. She wanted to apologise, she wanted to make him understand; but logic was no match for emotion. Being right didn't change the simple, hard fact of betrayal. She'd done it because Harry could help them, because stopping Voldemort had to be the most important thing. Saving the lives of everyone in Hogwarts that evening. Saving Draco. But she couldn't find the words to speak; she couldn't even reach out a hand to apologise without words. He wouldn't have let her touch him. Numbly, she turned her head and spoke to Harry instead; Harry was easier, less angry. 'You can trust him. Draco… trust me, if you can't trust him.'
'Because you're so trustworthy,' Draco said caustically, and Hermione winced. His hands were both empty, loosely clenched into fists; if he'd been holding his wand she'd have thought he'd cast a curse on her. She would almost have preferred it.
'We don't have much time,' she said, and she could hear her voice cracking slightly in desperation. 'We… he's going to attack soon, we don't have time for this.' She fixed her eyes firmly on Draco, and said 'You can be angry later.' He didn't react.
There was silence for a moment; she held Draco's stare, knowing she had to look him in the eye even if she wanted to look away. His eyes were empty and hard where before they'd been full and bright with anger, and Hermione was just becoming aware that she had no idea what was happening beneath them when Harry stepped forwards. She didn't even notice him coming nearer until she felt a warm hand on her shoulder.
'I trust her.' Harry said, firmly. He wasn't looking at Hermione; he was staring at Draco, his expression almost challenging, and Hermione felt a sudden rush of gratitude. Even now, even with so much at stake, those simple words suddenly meant so much; they meant she wasn't alone.
Draco glanced briefly at Harry with a look of hatred that bordered on contempt; then he closed his eyes. The only sign of any anger or hatred in him was the stiffness in his shoulders, taut and tensed, and his fingers tightening into a fist. When he began to speak, his voice was perfectly level, perfectly dead.
'He's discovered a way to get through the Hogwarts wards. The Dark Lord and all the Death Eaters,' he began. She felt Harry stiffen behind her. 'The wards can recognise Death Eaters; they won't let them in. Not normally. But anyone who lives inside the wards – like me – absorbs some of the ward's magic into their blood. My blood.'
He paused, closing his eyes; she could see him struggling but couldn't move. Not when he was angry – and she knew that this smooth coldness meant he was angry, meant he was furious beyond shouting and rage. And Harry was there, too.
'It wears away slowly after a few months,' Draco continued, as though he'd never paused, 'but it's constantly replenished while someone's staying here. The wards let in anyone with that magic in their blood.'
Harry's hand tightened on her shoulder. 'It's almost my cue,' he whispered in her ear, as though not wanting to interrupt what Draco was saying. He was frowning already, very slight creases on his forehead betraying his worry. His scar stood out brightly in the semi-darkness.
'Wait as long as possible,' she whispered back, giving his hand a quick, thankful squeeze where it rested on her shoulder. Draco hadn't paused, either not noticing or not caring. His voice, as he spoke, was growing slowly less cold, less even and measured, a little of the fear and terror that Voldemort inspired creeping back.
'He found a potion. It creates a link between the blood of the maker and that of the drinker. Anyone who drinks it gets all the magical properties of the maker's blood. Of my blood.'
'Like the magic. The ability to get past the wards,' Hermione said, curling her arms around herself. The wings felt cold.
'I thought of taking poison,' Draco continued, and his voice was far, far too casual for what he was implying, 'but it wouldn't work, they thought of that already, the link only works on things that were in my blood when the potion was made. Nothing that's added later.'
Harry squeezed her shoulder. 'I have to go,' he whispered, and Hermione could hear the Porter nearing the end of his speech onstage, knew he couldn't stay a second longer. Still, he paused, hand tight and warm and real on her shoulder, just long enough to whisper, 'Be careful, Hermione,' he said, and she glanced up to see his face, colourful in the candlelight, eyes fixed on Draco. She nodded, and he slipped away, leaving them alone.
Draco fell silent as soon as Harry left; Hermione could see him breathing, chest moving too deeply and too heavily, as though something was trying to strangle him. Without opening his eyes, he said. 'You told him.'
'Yes,' she replied, simply, watching his face. There was no point denying it, because it was true, and no point explaining why she'd done it because he already knew why. Only one thing remained, and that was the simple fact that, whatever her reasons, she had betrayed him. She wouldn't let herself look away from his impossibly empty expression. Even if he hated her, even if he never forgave her…
Her mind said it was worth it to stop Voldemort. To save the hundreds of lives at stake. But there was a part of her, a part that she forced herself to ignore, a part that said nothing was worth it, that nothing was worth losing him…
'You need to wash that blood off,' she whispered, glancing down briefly at her own hands, at the bloody smear on her forearm where his hand had touched. Draco didn't move. Pulling her wand from her pocket, she took care of herself with a quick 'Scourgify!' but paused before doing the same for Draco. There was another way. She didn't have to use magic.
She had to move quickly; their cue was coming soon, and Hermione forced herself to act. Pulling the letter out of her pocket – the letter, the scribbled note which had turned the play into a nightmare – she tapped it once with her wand and muttered, 'Calix. Frigida.'
The paper was transfigured into a small wooden bowl; a stream of cool water from the tip of her wand trickled into it. Nervously tucking the wand back into her pocket, one ear always listening to the speech from onstage, she stepped forward. Draco's eyes were still closed, as though he lacked the energy to open them; she took hold of his unresisting hand and dipped it into the water, twining hers around it.
Draco's eyes flew open; she saw a moment's surprise in them before his face returned to blankness, eyes fixed on hers. She tried telling herself that was a good thing, that she wanted him to be in control of himself. It didn't help much.
'A little water clears us of this deed,' she said, smoothing her hand over his in the water, feeling the sticky, cloying blood coming away. After a moment, he closed his eyes again, held out his other hand to be dipped into the water. If he hadn't been half-insane, if she hadn't betrayed him, if the play hadn't been rushing inexorably towards Act Five and Voldemort's attack, it might have been almost peaceful.
Onstage, Harry was laughing. 'I believe drink gave thee the lie last night,' he said, and that meant it was nearly his cue. 'Draco?' she asked. 'You have to go. Are you…?'
'Yes,' he said shortly, his shoulders straightening as he raised his chin. Hermione didn't know what he was saying yes to: she'd been about to ask if he was okay, but he could have been expecting anything.
He turned away from her as she paused to put the bowl down, uneasily silent, and she wanted to reach out to him, wanted to do anything to stop him walking away from her because it felt too much like hatred, too much like rejection. When she did speak he was too far away to touch. 'Wait!' she called after him. 'Are… are you angry with me?'
He paused at that, but didn't turn around. 'It doesn't matter,' he replied, his voice completely level. He might have been discussing the weather, or a particularly uninteresting lesson. 'I need your help whether I'm angry or not, don't I?'
'It will matter, after we stop Voldemort. It'll matter tomorrow,' Hermione replied, and found herself shivering a little; here, in the dark, hushed wings of a cursed play, it was hard not to be superstitious about names.
Draco paused before answering, still not looking back at her. 'If there is a tomorrow,' he replied, so quietly she could hardly hear it, before heading towards the stage.
'Look to the lady!' called Banquo; and that was her cue to faint. She crumpled to the floor, eyes closing, feeling the sick lurch in her stomach for the split second when she thought they wouldn't catch her before there were hands at her shoulders, lowering her carefully to the floor. She kept her eyes closed, half-worrying that the audience would hear her heart beating.
She hated the fainting part. In a moment, the fifth-year boys would carry her offstage, and she always worried that they'd drop her. They'd only done so once in rehearsals, thankfully, but she always felt the same nervous twist in her stomach at the thought of it.
Oddly enough, tonight she felt rather reassured by the feeling. As though a silly, trivial, normal worry like this was a relief compared to the relentless terror of Voldemort.
In what felt like no time at all, she was being carried off, staying limp until the light that filtered through her eyelids vanished and she knew she was offstage. The boys carrying her set her down with a quiet thud and a hastily muffled laugh; Hermione looked up at them with mild reproach as she got to her feet. They shouldn't be making noise in the wings. One of them ducked his head in apology, the other – a Hufflepuff, she thought, with sandy hair and a mischievous grin – stuck his tongue out at her cheekily, before grabbing his friend's arm and hurrying off backstage.
If they didn't stop Voldemort, those boys would probably die.
Shivering, Hermione folded her arms around herself and ducked further into the protective darkness, standing in the shadows, so she could hear the speakers but not see them. 'Let us meet,' Banquo was saying, 'and question this most bloody piece of work to know it further. Fears and scruples shake us,' he continued, and Hermione shook her head and turned her face away from the light, forcing herself to ignore what was being said. She'd end up like Draco, seeing fate in every word of the play.
And wasn't this play meant to be cursed? She'd never been particularly superstitious, but it was hard not to be. Somewhere nearby, Voldemort and his Death Eaters were gathering, waiting, biding their time – and she didn't even know when they would come. They could attack at any moment, and with every second that passed she expected the next one to bring the sound of screaming. Only she, Draco and Harry knew what was going to happen; if they left the Great Hall to try and stop the attack, the spies in the audience would realise and signal for the attack to begin. If they left to tell anyone who could help, the same would happen. They had to do it themselves, and they had to do it, somehow, without stopping the play, without doing anything to alert Voldemort's spies.
And she didn't have a plan. She didn't even have a vague idea of what they could do. The only thing that they could have used, trapped as they were backstage, was the blood link between Draco and the Death Eaters, and Voldemort had already stopped them using that. Unless Harry or Draco had come up with something, the situation looked hopeless.
Footsteps from the stage distracted her; she glanced up to see a troupe of miscellaneous lords filing off the stage, sharing grins of amusement and the occasional shove with each other as they headed backstage. She didn't recognise any of them except Banquo – Justin Finch-Fletchley – who gave her a cheerful smile as he went past, the candlelight that filtered in from the stage making him look ghostly pale.
Harry was beside her before Draco was. 'Hermione?' he whispered, and her hand immediately went to her pocket, pulling her wand out and putting up the soundproof barrier that let them talk. He continued in a normal tone, 'Has anything happened? Are you okay?'
'No and yes,' she replied. 'I've been trying to think…'
'I can't think of anything,' Harry admitted, his eyes meeting hers for a moment, quietly afraid; she looked away, feeling sick.
'Neither can I,' she said. 'There's nothing… we have to do something, but I just can't think…'
A footstep alerted her to Draco's presence; he must have exited at the opposite side and come round, because he was further away from the door than she was, covered thickly in shadows so she couldn't see his face.
'Draco?' she called. 'Are you…?'
He stepped forwards, shards of light falling onto his tightly drawn face; the air shimmered slightly, like a heat-haze as he stepped into the region of the soundproofing spell. 'What are we going to do?' he asked simply, looking at a point somewhere over her shoulder, not into her eyes, and ignoring Harry completely.
'I…' Hermione began, paused, not sure how to tell him that she didn't know what to do. She couldn't stop Voldemort and she couldn't help him. 'We don't know,' she found herself saying, simply, quietly.
'Do you have any ideas?' Harry asked from beside her; she saw Draco's hand tighten into a fist and knew Harry had said something wrong.
'No,' he said scathingly, and it might have been a trick of the candlelight but his lips seemed to grow thinner. 'Don't you think, Potter, that if I'd had an idea I might have mentioned it before now?'
'You could have thought of something on stage,' Harry pointed out, almost sulkily.
Draco gave a scornful laugh, leaning against the opposite wall and crossing his arms. He looked arrogant, sarcastic; only Hermione, who knew what to look for, would have seen the tight set to his pale jaw, the way he turned his head away, the flicker of his eyes, that betrayed his fear. 'Not likely. Do you think I'd be letting you try to help if I could think of something? If I had any other choice?'
Hermione felt, rather than saw, Harry tensing next to her. She stepped in. 'If we work together we might be able to come up with something,' she said pointedly, glancing between them. 'We can't do anything to the Death Eaters. If we leave, the spies will know something's going on and they'll start the attack. But there has to be a way to get word to Dumbledore without the spies noticing.'
Draco gave a derisive snort. 'Dumbledore,' he muttered. 'What good will that do?'
Hermione snapped. 'If you'd gone to Dumbledore before tonight, we might not be in this situation.'
Almost as soon as she'd said it she regretted it; they didn't have time to argue. Harry would have to go soon and they had to think, their only hope was in thinking, and if they fought with each other instead of figuring out what to do then there really was no hope.
'We'd be in exactly the same situation but we wouldn't know about it,' Draco replied roughly. He was looking at her now, his eyes narrowed and alight with a sharp anger.
'There's nothing else we can do,' she said, forcing herself to stay calm. 'I've thought about everything. We can't get out to them because of the spies, and even if we could it'd practically be suicide. The only way we could have affected them is the blood link that potion created, but if it only counts the things in your blood when it was made there's nothing we can do with it. The only thing we can do is tell someone who might be able to help. Like Dumbledore.'
'You seem to have a bit of a thing for telling people who 'might be able to help', don't you?' Draco said caustically, with a pointed glance at Harry – and Hermione thought about Snape, who Draco didn't even knew she'd told – but Harry wasn't paying attention.
'What if…' he began, speaking slowly, and there was a tone in his voice that sent a spark of hope through her, 'what if… Well, we can't add anything to his blood, because the link only counts things that are already there, right?'
Hermione nodded, frowning, trying to see where he was leading.
Harry was starting to grin. 'We can't add anything. But… would it be possible to take something away from his blood…?'
'The particles,' Hermione breathed. 'The particles the wards use to recognise people… if we take them out of Draco's blood…'
'Malfoy's blood is linked to the Death Eater's blood,' Harry said triumphantly. 'If we take them out of his blood, they'll be gone from the Death Eaters' blood, the wards won't be fooled into thinking they belong here and they won't be able to get in!'
'And it'd work, I know how to do it,' Hermione said, half-laughing as the remembered; it all seemed so easy, so suddenly, it almost felt like fate. The very first book she'd read about the magical world, before she even set foot inside the Hogwarts wards… 'It was mentioned in Hogwarts; A History,' she said, and Harry was unable to help laughing. 'There's a potion or a spell or something that removes them and it gave a reference, we could do it…' She turned to Draco, suddenly feverish in her excitement. 'We can do it! Draco, we can stop them!'
Draco was still leaning against the wall, arms folded tightly across his chest, head tipped forward so he was looking at a point roughly around her knees, his hair falling like a pale shroud around his face. 'It'll kill me.'
His voice was impossibly level, impossibly blank. Her excitement vanished abruptly, a change as sudden and total as stepping from the black shadows into bright and glaring candlelight, becoming a different person entirely. He was right; the wards would attack anyone who tried to enter them, and the closer they got to Hogwarts the more severe it became. In the Great Hall itself, what chance did he stand?
He couldn't die. She couldn't let him die; it was unthinkable, a thoughtless panic that rose up inside her, running blindly through her body, no, no, no. He'd kept saying he was going to die; she'd never believed him, never even let herself think about it.
One life. Just one life, against the lives of a thousand people; if he died, they could stop Voldemort, and everyone in the audience would live. Either they died, or Draco died. It wasn't a choice anyone should be forced to make. But she couldn't let a thousand people die to save one person. Not even if it was Draco. She tried to look at him, though she didn't know what she could say – we have to, I'm sorry, I don't want to do this but there isn't any other way…
No. No. There was a way. A way to save him, a way he didn't have to die; the thought grew in her mind, the idea, they could save him, and the very failsafe Voldemort had built into his potion to stop them would be his downfall. It would work. It had to work.
'Draco,' she said breathlessly, mind racing, 'do you still remember the potion? The one you had to make, the one to make the link between your blood and theirs?'
'Why?' he asked, shaking his head and looking blankly at nothing. 'I'm going to die, Hermione. By Macduff's suggestion,' he said, nodding to Harry. 'Killed by Macduff, just like the play. Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane…' he muttered, with a strange, wild kind of half-laugh. 'Is the Forbidden Forest moving?'
'Don't,' Hermione implored him, stepping forward – he'd felt so far away, but he wasn't, not really – and clutching his hand. 'Do you remember how to make it?'
He shrugged, staring at a meaningless patch of floor. 'Probably,' he said.
'Teach me to make it,' Hermione demanded. After a moment, Draco glanced up at her, his eyes blank. At first she thought he was just confused, but there was a lifelessness in them, an emptiness, as though he didn't care anymore. As though he'd given up. Her plan burnt more desperately inside her, more fiercely, when she saw that; she had to make him understand that he didn't have to die, he wasn't going to die. He couldn't die.
'Teach me to make it,' she said again. 'We can Accio the ingredients, make them backstage. Both potions.' She was excited now, the glorious feeling of hope rushing through her, the simple, beautiful knowledge of how to do this, how to stop Voldemort and save Draco; it wasn't cursed, it wasn't fated, because she could save him.
'The first potion removes all the particles of magic from your blood,' she said, firmly. 'And since they're included in the link, it removes all the particles from the Death Eaters' blood too. But then you drink the second potion. With the particles from my blood in.' Her hand straightened against his, palm to palm, fingers matched together. 'They'll make you safe, but they won't pass to the Death Eaters, because the link ignores anything new added to your blood. You're not going to die.'
Draco's eyes closed and opened again, almost mechanically; for a sudden eerie moment Hermione was reminded of a doll she'd had when she was a child, one with glassy, empty eyes which were weighted to rock open or closed as it was moved. 'It won't work,' said Draco.
Hermione shook her head. 'It will work, it's got to work. What's wrong with it? Whatever it is…'
'Nothing will work,' Draco said, very, very quietly, and raised a hand to touch her face. His skin was cold against hers. 'Nothing will work. I'm doomed. Whatever happens I'm going to die.'
Hermione raised her free hand to his, holding it against her face. 'You aren't,' she said, unconvincingly, then again, more firmly, 'You aren't going to die. Not because of some… some silly play, or a bunch of coincidences. That doesn't mean anything.'
Behind her, Harry took a hesitant step forward; she'd forgotten all about him. She flushed, suddenly aware of just how close she was standing to Draco, just how near to hers his lips were…
Harry put his hand on her shoulder. 'I've got to go, I'm due on in a minute. It'll work.' She could just see him, out of the corner of her eye, his eyes flickering up to frown at Draco. 'We don't have much time; we can make the potions in one of the dressing rooms.'
She nodded, feeling Draco's skin slip against her own, and then Harry was gone into the cloaking shadows that surrounded them. For a moment, she couldn't move, couldn't do anything but stare at Draco, stare at those blank and empty eyes. He blinked hard, and she could see a kind of light spilling into them like quicksilver.
He shook his head, dropping his hand from her cheek – but their palms were still together. 'Maybe I deserve it,' he whispered harshly. 'Hermione, I don't want to die.'
'You won't die,' she promised, but he didn't listen, closing his eyes and whispering something like a mantra, so fast that it was a few seconds before she could make out what he was saying.
'Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day…'
'Draco, stop it. You're not going to die. There's no… no fate or anything. The only way you're going to die is if we don't make the potion properly,' Hermione said, and swallowed at the thought of it. That wouldn't happen. Couldn't.
He didn't even hear her. '…the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more …'
'Stop it!' she half-shouted. 'Don't even… don't think about it, Draco, you…'
'…full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,' he finished, with a sudden deep gasp of air as though he'd been drowning, and his eyes flew open. 'Hermione… Hermione… I'm sorry, I didn't mean to die, I didn't mean to kill you, I didn't mean any of it, I never wanted this, but I have supp'd full with horrors…'
'Calm down,' she whispered, reaching out and stroking the side of his face before she even realised what she was doing; brushing a few strands of his hair out of his eyes. 'Calm down. It'll all be okay. I promise.' She couldn't promise that, though; she couldn't promise anything. Voldemort could attack early, and who could say that Draco remembered the potion correctly? They'd all had to try and learn potions from making them once, but this was more important than a test; this was Draco's life.
'We need to go and get changed for the next scene,' she said – Harry had reminded her when he mentioned the dressing rooms. Draco was breathing quickly, irregular, but he seemed to be calming under her touch. 'And you can write down the potion you made, and we can figure out what to do next. It'll all be okay.'
Draco shook his head silently, shivering, clearly disbelieving. Still, he followed her, his hand still touching hers, towards the dressing rooms.
AN: Two more chapters and an epilogue to go! I promise to get them up as soon as I can. Cross my heart and hope to die.
I won't, for once, try and prompt you to review with random questions. I feel too guilty already to be doing that. Next chapter, though…