Macbeth: Act Five, Scene Seven

Disclaimer: I am still neither Shakespeare or J.K. Rowling. Not that I was expecting to wake up and find that I'd turned into one of them.

Thanks for 1683 reviews still goes to everyone who's been waiting patiently for so long.

A/N: Next chapter! And not too long a wait for it, as promised. This chapter's another quite long one. The next and final proper chapter is a short one, but I hope to put up the epilogue the day after. And then it'll all be over.

The update will be as quick as I can manage it through the terrors of revision for my A-levels (which are the real-life equivalent of NEWTs). And yes, they are just as nastily exhausting as the wizarding version. And after A-levels I'll be off to university – specifically, Aberystwyth, which is a lovely little place on the coast of Wales. I doubt any of you will be surprised to hear that I'm studying English Literature and Creative Writing.

So this fic and my life in secondary school are coming to an end at the same time. Quite fitting, as I got the idea on a school trip – and studied Macbeth for GCSE (real-life equivalent of OWLs.)

Anyway, without further ado about nothing, I present the chapter. Enjoy.

'Have you got everything?'

She'd left Draco behind onstage to play at plotting murder – and please let him not go mad, please let these potions work, please, please don't let him die – and raced past the changing rooms, past the whispering cast, past the waiting props to the very back of backstage, a little alcove, almost closed off, where Harry was frantically summoning potions ingredients through the tiny door at the back of the stage. Still, she set up a hasty sound-proofing barrier as she stepped inside. There was no risk of the audience hearing, but she didn't want anything they said spreading around backstage.

'Everything for the removal potion,' Harry replied, gesturing to the floor beside him; a tiny cauldron, filled with ingredients which overflowed onto the rough wooden floor, and beside it, two books: Hogwarts, A History, open at the pages describing the wards, and the book it had to briefly, so vitally referred to: The Biography of Cain Mortensen by Louise Marley, splayed open at the description of the potion which would remove Draco's only defence against the Hogwarts wards.

Hermione nodded, pulling a piece of parchment out of the pocket of her queen costume and opening it, smoothing out the creases as she read over the words. While they'd been changing, in the hurried, hasty seconds before they'd had to go out on stage again, Draco had written down the potion he'd made a few scant hours ago for Voldemort; the one which had linked his blood and his defences to that of the Death Eaters, and the one which would hopefully allow Hermione to do the same for him.

Hopefully. As long as Draco had remembered how to make it correctly. As long as he hadn't missed out some vital ingredient, changed an instruction, forgotten a name or a quantity… The parchment seemed so light and fragile in her hands; Draco's shaken scrawl so hasty, such a small thing to govern life or death.

Harry pulled it from her hand; she looked up, startled, and met his eyes. 'I'll get these things,' he said firmly. 'You start on the other potion.'

She nodded, pushing her worries to the back of her mind and sitting down on the floor, pulling the instructions towards her. If she'd been faced with a potion like this in class, she'd have been confident; now, when so much rode on her abilities – Draco's life, the lives of everyone in this Hall tonight, even the future of the wizarding world – she wasn't sure.

Hermione set about reading the instructions, quickly but thoroughly, making sure she understood them, before lighting a tiny fire – one that wouldn't burn the floor – beneath her cauldron and setting to work. Beside her, Harry was still patiently summoning ingredients for the second potion. She listened out for what she could only distantly hear; the on-stage dialogue. Draco was just starting to speak to the murderers. They were already in Act Three.

Three minutes and twenty seven seconds later, Harry turned away from the door, arms full of ingredients. She knew the exact time because she had to let the ginger root simmer for five minutes exactly, and she was timing it; otherwise she'd have had no idea. Time didn't seem to mean very much here. Time was measured in scenes, not minutes; in lines, not seconds, and each one brought the future closer; Voldemort and the Death Eaters descending upon Hogwarts like Birnam wood coming to Dunsinane; or Draco taking potions, possibly dying, possibly living, and not knowing was worst of all…

'You're worried about him,' Harry remarked suddenly, setting up his cauldron, and Hermione knew he was talking about Draco.

'Who?' she asked, pretending not to know, but she felt her face flush as she stirred the cauldron, and it wasn't the heat of the fire. This wasn't the time. Harry could ask her all the awkward questions he liked afterwards, when it was all over – if they were still alive – but not now.

'Malfoy,' was the expected reply. Harry lit the fire under his cauldron, then glanced up sharply, expectant. Hermione forced herself not to look away; it wasn't as though she had anything to be ashamed of, she told herself.

'Of course I am,' she said, checking the time. 'He's the one who's risking his life in these potions.'

Harry shrugged. 'Yeah. But…' This time when he looked at her, he was a little suspicious, and confused even more, and perhaps –it might have been the firelight, or it might have been Hermione's imagination – a little hurt.

'We've been working together for a while,' Hermione said casually, brushing a bit of stray hair away from her face. 'Rehearsals, practicing lines… if I've stopped seeing him as an enemy, it's hardly surprising.'

'It's not that you've stopped seeing him as an enemy,' Harry said slowly, adding berries to his potion. 'It's what you've started seeing him as.'

A rash of heat prickled over the back of her neck. 'Harry,' she began, feeling exasperation and fear and something else which she couldn't name creep into her voice, but he was quicker.

'Not that I mind,' he said firmly, looking at her with an earnest, determined expression that was so simply, indefinably Harry it almost startled her. 'Because if you want to fancy Malfoy, I've no idea why you would want to, but if you do, then it's your decision, but I'm just worried about you. And don't deny it,' he finished. 'You do.'

'I wasn't going to deny it,' Hermione said, momentarily busying herself by adding the next ingredient to her cauldron. 'There's nothing going on, Harry,' she added at last, conveniently ignoring certain kisses which had taken place. 'Nothing's happening, nothing's ever going to happen. I'm Muggleborn, remember?' She had to bite her lip, turning her head down to the cauldron, to hide the stab of pain that thought brought her. She didn't want to worry Harry, after all.

'I know,' Harry said, frowning strangely at her. 'Still… be careful, okay?'

'He's not as bad as you think he is,' Hermione said firmly, watching the mayweed melt into her potion.

'He's a Death Eater.' Harry said firmly.

'He didn't choose to be,' Hermione replied. 'He's going mad, Harry. Mad because he's being forced to kill people.' It was Harry's turn to look away, pretending to be examining the contents of his cauldron. The half-light of the fires flickered off his hair, mimicking the candlelight onstage.

'Maybe,' he said. 'Still. Is it any wonder I'm worried?'

'Don't be,' she said, with a brief half-smile, and then she had to focus on her potion, because it was a tricky part and so many lives were in her hands. She listened to the lines going past, out on the stage, and then left the potion simmering under Harry's eye and hurried out to the stage to be Lady Macbeth once again.

From reality to the play to reality again, and every switch between stage and backstage made everything run together and blur at the edges. She almost felt like Lady Macbeth as she hurried, Draco's hand clasped tightly in her own, back to where Harry was carefully tending the potions. A determined woman dragging her weak-willed partner to prepare a carefully-constructed plan; as if Draco's mad imaginings were coming true, as though the play and reality were merging, and she'd forgotten to leave the character behind on stage where she belonged.

Or, Hermione told herself firmly, the stress was making her imagine things, too. Simply because Draco found patterns between life and the play didn't mean they were there. Just coincidence.

She was feeling almost normal, almost Hermione again, when they reached the tiny alcove where Harry was carefully adding the chopped tangleroot to a cauldron. He glanced up as they arrived; Draco dropped Hermione's hand, though not before Harry noticed.

He didn't say anything about it. 'The Knarl spines need slicing,' he said. 'It's all going fine, as far as I can tell.'

'You slice them,' Draco snapped, stepping forward and seizing the remaining clump of chopped tangleroot from the floor. 'I hope even you can manage not to mess that up, though I honestly wouldn't be surprised if you did, Potter.'

'Draco,' Hermione said sharply, reaching out to catch his sleeve, but before she could speak, or even register fully how forced that insult had sounded, Harry was speaking.

'I did pass my Potions OWL, Malfoy,' he began fiercely, the firelight or anger making his cheeks flush red. 'I'm more than capable of chopping up a couple of Knarl quills. I've been making both these potions on my own for the past five minutes, so don't-'

'I've never seen you make a potion perfectly in my life, Potter,' Draco spat, shredding sickly-green leaves into the cauldron, 'so excuse me if I relegate you to the menial tasks.'

'I don't-' Harry began fiercely, but Draco hadn't finished.

'And yes, I do mean perfectly, Potter. This isn't some silly little assignment, you don't just drop a few marks for adding things in the wrong order, this is my life.'

'I know that, you idiot, I-'

'We don't have time for this,' Hermione cut in quickly, before the boys' argument got too out of hand. 'Harry, take care of the removal potion, I'll chop the Knarl quills.'

'No,' said Draco. 'You watch the removal potion. I don't trust him with it.' he looked up sharply, dropping the last of the tangleroot in; his eyes met hers, pale and colourless except for the firelight dancing in them. It looked unnatural. 'I shouldn't trust you either.'

There was nothing she could say to that. 'Alright,' she said, glancing up quickly at Harry; his mouth was set in a thin line, his anger evident, but arguing would only take time, and time was one commodity they didn't have.

Harry set to chopping the Knarl quills; Hermione tended her potion, and Draco tended his. There was a tension in the air, as though there wasn't already enough of it; the choking fear of Voldemort's impending attack; the apprehensive edge to the air created by the collective stage fright of every member of the cast. And this; the sick, coiling tension of animosity, of Harry feeling hurt and confused, of Draco's trust being broken, of Hermione's own guilt, and the way they didn't speak more than they had to even as they raced to save the hundreds of lives that watched, completely unaware of what was happening.

Hermione could hear the speeches form onstage, marking out time, the casual, unsuspecting way Banquo remarked on the weather – 'It will be rain tonight,' he said, with no idea of what was about to happen.

'Let it come down,' cried the First Murderer, and then there came the shouts, and the crashing sound of the stage fight. Hermione shivered, and turned back to the potion.

Acting was the hardest part. However much she'd memorised her lines and practiced her cues she hadn't prepared for this; she'd been ready for stage fright and forgotten lines and the thousand and one other things that could go wrong, but she hadn't prepared for the thought that the lives of her audience depended on her acting ability; that if she let slip the fear and worry and panic she was feeling, if she looked suspicious, Voldemort's spies could alert their master and the Death Eaters would attack.

And the relentless passage of the play had swept them straight into the banquet scene, where the Ghost of Banquo appeared to Macbeth, where Draco, so short a time ago, had nearly, very nearly lost control. Where he'd nearly been found out.

Draco was at the head of the table, looking impressively regal; the soft golden candlelight caught the embroidery on his robes, making the fabric glow. He hadn't faltered so far, but Hermione was having difficulty keeping her gaze away from him, trying not to look for the signs which meant he was slipping. 'Here we had now our country's honour roof'd, were the gracious person of our Banquo present,' he said, 'who I may rather challenge for unkindness than pity for mischance!'

The irony, of course, being that Macbeth had just had Banquo killed. Hermione kept her fake smile on her face, regally regarding the assembled lords and keeping her gaze firmly away from her husband. She had to keep her acting perfect. If she did, then perhaps Draco could. She knew that was illogical – however much strain she was under, Draco was under far more, and if he was going to crack he would do so regardless of how well she acted – but she made herself ignore that.

'Please't your highness,' one of the lords was saying, 'to grace us with your royal company.'

Acting, she was powerless; she could do nothing to deviate from the script, from the plot, from the actions and motions she was set. She could do nothing to warn the audience, she could do nothing to help Draco; she was trapped in the play, with no means of escaping it until the scene ended and mercifully let them slip into the dark silence of backstage. Acting well or badly was the only thing she could do. Logic didn't come into it.

'The table's full,' Draco complained. He hadn't yet noticed the Ghost, sitting silent and transparent at the end of the table, but the whole audience would be watching it.

The lord sitting beside the ghost, carefully ignoring its existence, gestured to the seat beside him. 'Here is a place reserved, sir.'

'Where?'

'Here, my good lord.' And now she could look at Draco, because the play allowed Lady Macbeth to look at her husband, her expression mildly confused and a little annoyed. And so she could watch Draco's face change – but it was alright, it was meant to change, he was meant to go mad here, only she hoped as strongly and as fiercely as she could hope that it would remain acting. 'What is't that moves your highness?' the lord continued, as Draco's face changed, horror that Hermione knew wasn't wholly pretence carving itself into his face, into his eyes.

'Which of you have done this?' he demanded, voice rough.

More confusion, now; she frowned. 'What, my good lord?' someone else asked, but she was focussed on Draco, now she could look at him, digging her fingernails into her palm under the table where it couldn't be seen.

'Thou cans't not say I did it!' Draco shouted, pointing with a shaking hand towards the seat, towards the Ghost, towards the embodiment of all his guilt, the source of all his madness; his murders. 'Never shake they gory locks at me!'

The Ghost grinned, an eerie expression; there were gasps from the audience as it slowly shook the blood-clotted hair from side to side.

'Gentlemen, rise,' said one of the lords, 'his highness is not well.'

And that was the cue for Lady Macbeth to rise, protecting her husband as Hermione had protected Draco, saying it was an illness rather than insanity. 'Sit, worthy friends; my lord is often thus, and has been from his youth,' she said, continuing with her best fake smile as the lords dubiously sat down, glancing at their transfixed king. 'Feed, and regard him not,' she concluded, and the instant they had returned to their meals, she rounded on Draco. 'Are you a man?' she spat.

'Ay,' he replied. 'And a bold one, that dare look on that which might appal the devil.'

She could look into his eyes now, while she spoke her lines in a bitter mixture of fury and fear, and while she could see fear and madness in them she had seen real insanity enough times to know he was still acting. She didn't know what he saw in her eyes, as he glanced back and forth between them and the Ghost, but she hoped he took some kind of comfort. It was a long scene.

'When all's done, you look but on a stool!' she finished, disgusted with her husband's action; but he began again, shouting at the Ghost, and Hermione watched.

'If thou canst nod, speak too!' he was shouting. 'If charnel-houses and our graves must send those that we bury back, our monuments shall be the maws of kites!'

The candles flared briefly, high and blood-red, and in that second the Ghost vanished. 'What, quite unmanned in folly!' Hermione said, the lords all staring openly at her insane husband.

'If I stand here, I saw him,' he said firmly, speaking to her, ignoring the rest of the room, reaching out and taking hold of her wrists. His skin against hers was a little clammy, and still sticky from the fake blood.

'Fie, for shame!' Hermione hissed, but Draco went on.

'Blood hath been shed ere now, I' the olden time, ere human statute purged the gentle weal,' he began, and his dark tone of voice so perfectly matched the one at that fateful rehearsal when he'd so nearly cracked, so nearly been found out, that she could almost imagine she was back there, still practicing, blissfully ignorant of Voldemort's plans. 'Ay, and since too, murders have been performed too terrible for the ear.'

He raised a hand, gently stroked the side of her face. She looked into his eyes, wishing she could surreptitiously squeeze the hand that still held her wrist. She could do it, perhaps – none of the audience knew it hadn't been practiced that way, that it wasn't what they'd rehearsed – but she couldn't bring herself to do something outside the pattern, the rules they'd been prescribed. It felt like superstition, one as silly as thinking the play was cursed, but she couldn't bring herself to break it.

And perhaps Macbeth was cursed.

'The times have been that, when the brains were out, the man would die, and there an end,' Draco continued, eyes never moving from her face, intense and focussed. 'But now they rise again, with twenty mortal murders on their crowns, and push us from our stools,' and then he stepped away from her, half-fell into his seat, raising his hands to his face. 'This is more strange than such a murder is.'

'My worthy lord,' she said, having to force the necessary exasperation into her tone – and though she thought about resting a hand on his shoulder, she didn't – 'your noble friends do lack you.'

I do forget,' Draco said wearily, and paused a moment; he looked old, then, and she wasn't sure whether it was a trick of the candlelight or whether it was the strain, the madness, etching themselves into his skin. He stood. 'Do not muse at me, my most worthy friends,' he said, addressing the lords gathered at the table. 'I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing to those who know me.'

And then he stopped, in the middle of a speech, and Hermione froze beside him; his head was bowed, and only she could see how tightly his fingers gripped the table, as though the world were falling away from him and he were clinging to the only solid thing left, and then just when she thought he was going to crack he continued. He hadn't even paused for a second. 'Come, love and health to all; then I'll sit down.'

She hadn't even begun to get her nerves back together – making sure, at all times, to keep the mask on her face; the faked hostess smile – when Draco was speaking to her. 'Come, give me some wine, fill full.'

She filled his goblet from the flagon on the table. Fruit juice, with some kind of magic or colouring added to make it the perfect shade of blood red. Symbolic. She thought about how much blood Draco must have seen; she could barely pour the liquid straight, had to concentrate to keep it from spilling as she passed it to him.

'I drink to the general joy o' the whole table,' Draco went on, raising the glass. She could look at him; his expression was set perfectly, the king proposing a toast to an absent friend, but Hermione knew him better than that, and knew what to look for; the tension in his shoulders, the way his hand gripped the goblet hard enough to crack it if it had been glass, the tightness in his jaw. 'And to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss; would he were here! to all, and him, we thirst, and all to all.'

'Our duties, and the pledge.' The Lords intoned, and then Hermione had to dig her nails into her palm again, carefully concealed beneath the table, because otherwise her fear would have shown; otherwise she'd have cried out; this was the place where the Ghost of Banquo appeared again, the place where Draco had almost lost it, in the rehearsal, almost been found out.

In the corner of her eye, she saw the magical apparition flicker into existence again, and however much she wanted to look at it she couldn't, because only Macbeth was supposed to be able to see it. And she couldn't look at Draco, not until he cried out…

'Avaunt!' he shrieked, flinging his goblet at the Ghost; the blood red wine spun through the air, spattering the stage. Panic was creeping into his tone; the same panic she'd heard so many times before, too many times; the horror of his murders, the fear of Voldemort, and it was too much, surely this was too much for Draco to hide, how could he stay sane through this?

'And quit my sight! let the earth hide thee!' he went on; Hermione, forcing herself to stare in anger and horror at her husband's madness – though the horror wasn't all acted – knew that this had to be it, this had to be the end; it couldn't be a question of whether or not he cracked; it was a question of when. Draco was advancing towards the Ghost, fury and fear and terror flushing his face. 'Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold; thou hast no speculation in those eyes which thou dost glare with!'

It was her line. 'Think of this, good peers,' she said, hearing her voice shaking, too fast and too high – that was okay, she could get away with that as acting, it could be in character – 'but as a thing of custom; 'tis no other, only it spoils the pleasure of the time.'

Draco, at the other end of the stage, was ranting; seeming hardly to hear her lines, seeming hardly to notice the others around him; his eyes were fixed on the Ghost. 'What man dare, I dare,' he began, voice low and trembling. Hermione listened, watching from behind Lady Macbeth's face; strangely, she felt a sudden moment of calm. She should be terrified. Draco was going to crack, any moment now, and bring Voldemort and his Death Eaters down on the Great Hall, but it was almost as if knowing this took away the uncertainty, the tension; there was nothing she could do to change the course of events, so why should she panic?

'Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves shall never tremble,' Draco was saying, voice tight, almost cringing away from the Ghost even as he tried to confront it, 'or be alive again, and dare me to the desert with thy sword; if trembling I inhabit then, protest me the baby of a girl.'

He was close enough to the Ghost to touch it, now; all the Ghost did was continue to watch him, expressionless and bloody and accusing. Murderer. And Draco did nothing; simply stared at the apparition on the stool, eyes showing nothing but the reflections of candlelight, distant, falling into his memories, his horrors, his own private ghosts, the blood on his hands that could never be washed off, his Banquos. This was it.

And then Draco moved, shifting imperceptibly; still tense, still terrified, still trapped and imprisoned and sickened by his memories but somehow defiant, and in a cracking, shaking voice he cried, 'Hence, horrible shadow! Unreal mockery, hence!'

And the Ghost was gone.

For a long, dramatic second, he stood still; eyes not moving from the place it had been – and Hermione didn't know whether he was still acting, at this point; whether he was still playing a part or whether he was Draco, going mad and doing it in Macbeth's words because they fit so cruelly. But he had managed it; he had faced the ghost and not gone mad, and maybe, maybe he had enough strength left to get him through his scene.

'Why, so: being gone, I am a man again,' he said, voice low and emotionless and empty. The lords were muttering amongst themselves, alarmed. ' Pray you, sit still,' he added, without looking at them, without changing his tone.

That was her cue to stand. 'You have displaced the mirth,' she began, carefully meting out anger in her tone, 'broke the good meeting, with most admired disorder.'

'Can such things be,' Draco asked, 'and overcome us like a summer's cloud without our special wonder?' He looked towards her, at last; their eyes met across the tables. Lit by candlelight, they seemed unnatural, somehow. The colours were all wrong, and the flickering light made them look almost too alive. Mocking. She could see madness in his eyes, but couldn't tell whether it was an act or whether it was reality.

The lords were in chaos. 'You make me strange even to the disposition that I owe, when now I think you can behold such sights, and keep the natural ruby of your cheeks, when mine is blanched with fear.'

'What sights, my lord?' one of the lords asked.

Draco's head whipped round to face him, and for a moment Hermione almost thought he was going to start answering; talking about death and murder and Voldemort. She cut in quickly with her lines. 'I pray you, speak not,' she said, 'he grows worse and worse; question enrages him. At once, good night: stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once.'

The lords, with confusion and suspicious looks, began to file out. 'Good night; and better health attend his majesty!' said one of them.

'A kind good night to all,' and then it was just herself and Draco and the empty tables. Draco hadn't moved; still standing by the spot where Banquo's Ghost had sat, staring once again at the stool. 'It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood,' he began; she watched him speak, searching for any signs that he was about to crack. They were through the worst, past the ghosts and murders for this scene at least, but he could still crack; he had to be so close to the limits of what he could endure, what he could manage to hide. He'd been hiding for far too long.

'What is the night?' he asked, and Hermione felt oddly relieved; oddly, because how could she feel something like relief when Draco could very well die soon, if their potions didn't work; him or their audience members.

'Almost at odds with morning, which is which,' she replied, starting to walk towards Draco, walking past the ruined banquet tables, spattered with wine that may as well have been blood. A few lines of dialogue passed without her really noticing them; talk about Macduff, necessary to move the plot along, but what she was really interested in was Draco, who hadn't cracked, after all.

She wasn't supposed to touch him yet, that wasn't how they'd practiced it, but then, who would know? She took his hand in her own as she reached his side, feeling the coldness of his skin against hers. Even his hand was tense, coiled, rigid. She smoothed a finger over the skin.

'For mine own good, all causes shall give way,' he was saying; and that didn't match reality, no at all, because Draco was going to risk his life for that of thousands. Put that way, it sounded dramatic, heroic; it wasn't really. Not like in stories; and she'd been friends with Harry too long to believe in the fairytale version. Draco was risking his life because the murders drove him mad and the thought of that was worse than death; because he believed that he was fated or destined or some such rubbish to die as Macbeth did in the play. And other reasons, probably.

Her line, and here she was meant to touch him, bringing up a gentle hand to his face. 'You lack the season of all natures, sleep,' she said, sounding gentle, sounding kind; for once she didn't really have to act.

'Come, we'll to sleep,' he agreed. 'My strange and self-abuse is the initiate fear that wants hard use,' and then he caught at her hands, staring at her, not with madness and insanity but with weariness, exhaustion; a deep sense of horror and despair.

'We are yet but young in deed,' he said, and led her gently, slowly, offstage, into the welcoming darkness. As soon as they were hidden he started shaking as though in shock or trauma, eyes desperate, hair falling loosely around his face and catching against his skin. 'Hermione,' he whispered, so quietly she could hardly hear it, let alone the audience; 'Hermione, I can't do this, I can't keep doing this, please Hermione, I can't…'

She reached out and tugged him into her arms. 'It's okay,' she whispered back. 'It'll all be over soon.'

Which it would be, one way or another.

AN: And next time, I promise, I won't leave you hanging on for what happens next. It's all downhill from here! Which, of course, brings me to the all-important question, and something a few of you have been speculating on already – what do you think's going to happen?

If you have no idea, or don't want to suggest, then here's something else I'm interested in: ebtwisty9 emailed me regarding song lyrics that fitted the fic (specifically the first bit of Pink Floyd, The Trial, if anyone's interested.) Anyone else heard a song (or a poem, or similar) and thought of Macbeth?

Answer one, the other, or both. Review!