Macbeth: Act Five, Scene Eight
Disclaimer: I am currently constructing a time machine which will allow me to travel back in time and become Shakespeare. Except for the minor detail of being a woman. Damn. Perhaps I should become JKRowling instead?
Thanks for 1732 reviews still goes to everyone who's been waiting patiently for so long.
A/N: Nearly at the end, everyone - this chapter, the epilogue, and then it's all over. This is a particularly short chapter as well, mainly because my original chapter planning went awry when I started writing these parts (as it often does), which meant I had to mush what was originally two chapters together and separate it into three. The natural chapter divisions gave me two long chapters and a third shorter chapter. This being the short one.
But who cares about length, because this is finally, finally going to be the chapter where at least some of all the worries you've been having for the past weeks and months get resolved. Therefore without further ado… onto the chapter.
Enjoy!
They sat on the floor of their tiny alcove, the three of them gathered around the cauldrons; chopping, mixing, stirring, reading and rereading the instructions, the neat, precise writing of the book and Draco's hurried scrawl, ink smudged over the parchment.
It wouldn't be much longer, now. A few more ingredients for one, a few more minutes simmering for the other, stir them a few times more and they were done. Life and death resolved in liquid form.
They didn't talk. Distantly, through the shield, Hermione could hear the quiet chatter of the actors, the lines spoken on stage, some of the lords getting their turn to speak, but the only close sounds were their own breathing, the burning of the fire and the bubbling of the cauldrons.
Hermione didn't know if she wanted to speak, or if she preferred the silence. She wanted to speak to Draco; Draco, who was so tightly drawn, as though someone had sliced all the curves of his skin away and left nothing but harsh, angular lines in their place. Draco who carried the pain of murder, marking him indelibly for those who knew where to look. Draco who she loved, if she were honest, though she was never sure how: not in the usual meaning of the word, not a fairy-tale romance. Nothing about this was remotely like a fairytale; it was more like a horror story.
He hated her, in some ways; he still thought she wasn't human, was some inferior creature, and that hurt more than she would have expected. And what kind of love grew from that? But there was a connection, somehow; she cared about him, she worried about him, a care and a worry greater than that she would feel for someone else in the same position, with the same horrors smothering them. If love was the state in which someone else's happiness was vital to her own, then she loved Draco, strange and broken as it may be.
And she wanted to speak to him, yes; wanted to help. But a silence had fallen over them and Hermione didn't know if she could break it, any more than she could have broken a silence onstage when the script didn't give her permission to speak.
Perhaps it was simply that there was nothing that could be said. No words she could say would fit this place, could match the fate that lat thickly over them. Oh, perhaps Shakespeare could have written her some lines, but he'd only written the play, not the actors, not real life.
Except the play was becoming real, wasn't it? That was what Draco believed. It might as well be true.
She stirred the cauldron, counting in her head, watching the colour change. And then, a voice.
'Harry?' someone was calling. 'Harry, are you back here?'
Footsteps, coming closer; any minute their cauldrons would be discovered. Hermione glanced up; met Harry's eyes. 'Go,' she whispered – it was unnecessary, of course, she couldn't be heard through the shield, but the silence still lay thickly over them. 'Just keep whoever it is away. We can finish the potions on our own.'
Harry nodded, glanced between Hermione and Draco. 'Right. Good luck,' he said, a little awkwardly; then, more firmly, 'Hermione, you know-'
'Harry?' came the voice again.
'Just go,' Hermione insisted – the footsteps were coming closer – and Harry nodded. Briefly squeezing her hand, he scrambled out of the alcove.
'Harry, there you are! I've been looking all over, please, can we just go through our scene again? I'm terrified, I'm going to forget my words…' There was the sound of shuffling papers; a script? It had to be whoever was playing Malcolm.
'Er, I was doing something…' Harry began.
'Doing what?' came the voice, curious, and footsteps started towards the alcove again.
'Nothing much,' Harry cut in quickly. Hermione heard him sigh. 'Come on, then, let's go through this scene.
Their footsteps faded together. Stage fright? Forgotten lines? It seemed so far away, so impossible, such a silly thing to worry about in the pool of flickering light cast by the cauldron flames. They had a cauldron each to tend, now, and the potions were rapidly coming to completion. Hers was looking as the book described, exactly; whether Draco's was right or not she could only guess at. Hermione almost wished the potions took longer to make. Longer before that horrible moment arrived, the moment when Draco took the potions. The moment when they'd find out if their potions had worked, if Voldemort's plan would fail or whether they'd be powerless to stop his attack. The moment when she found out whether Draco would live or die.
He would die in front of her, and the thought was suddenly terrifying. To see him dying, to see the second potion failing and knowing there was nothing she could do to stop it. The Hogwarts wards were strongest at their centre; weakest at the edges. Where Voldemort approached they wouldn't be fatal; they would simply stop the Death Eaters from entering – as long as this plan worked. Here, in the Great Hall, they would attack anyone who wasn't supposed to be here; they would attack Draco as soon as the particles that marked him as a student vanished from his blood.
How would he die? Would it hurt? Would it be quick? She found her hand shaking as she poured the final ingredient into her cauldron. If she had to watch him die, slowly, if it was agonising… Could she watch that? Worse, would she have to choose between killing him swiftly and watching him suffer? The thought made her recoil; she couldn't imagine having to make it. Yet she might be forced to, and far, far too soon.
There was an explosion; and for a long, long moment Hermione thought this was it, they'd been too late, Voldemort was attacking and thee was nothing she could do, before she realised that all it meant, the only thing, was that the witches' scene was beginning. Draco needed to be onstage in about five minutes. The thought was laughable.
'All it needs is your blood,' Draco said suddenly. His voice was soft; not a whisper, but low and subdued. Empty.
Hermione nodded. 'Does it matter how much?' she asked, and he shook his head. He was kneeling on the floor, bead bowed and watching the surface of the potion; Hermione thought it looked almost submissive. Not to her; to whatever imagined fate he thought he was facing.
'Seca,' she muttered, bringing her wand to her palm; a tiny cut appeared in the flesh, stinging, but she barely noticed it. Carefully, she held her hand over the cauldron, watching the blood drip into the liquid. This was it.
It started, ever so slowly, to pick up the colour, turning first to a red so dark it was almost black, than starting to lighten. 'It needs a minute,' Draco said blandly. 'Cool it with a baboon's blood, then the charm is firm and good,' he said vaguely, than looked up sharply at her.
'A baboon?' she asked, feeling the familiar deep-seated pain. He'd never believe she was anything more than some kind of strange, mutant animal, would he? Never believe she was human.
'It's in the script,' was his only reply. He reached out, closed her hand around the wound and pushed it back to her. 'That's enough. Wait.'
She rested her hand on her lap, watching the blood start to clot, watching the colour curling and thickening through the potion, reddening. Draco's hand lay open, mirroring hers, and she wondered if he'd had the same scar on his palm, earlier that evening. He'd have healed it. She should heal this, but part of her didn't want to, not yet; this wasn't over yet.
She glanced up at Draco; his eyes were fixed on the potion. Far away, the witches were chanting; distant, menacing words, words that mimicked so cruelly their own actions, words that seemed to twist themselves into everything they were doing, controlling them in this one moment as the play had controlled the murders, the madness; mimicking and mocking everything that had happened.
'Are you frightened?' she asked suddenly.
'What do you think?' he asked, incredulous, sarcastic, but she could hear the terror shaking through his words. He closed his eyes, breathed in as though the air had stuck in his throat, as though fear had frozen his limbs and then spread to the very air he was trying to breathe. 'Yes. I don't want to die. And there's nothing I can do to stop it, nothing, whatever happens I'm going to die, Hermione, and…'
'It's okay,' she whispered, trying to find the words to say. How could she say he wasn't going to die? He might. And he wouldn't believe her, anyway, if she told him he wouldn't; the play was controlling them, dictating everything they did, and as far as Draco in his narrow, madness-bounded world could see there was no way to escape that.
'I'm here,' she said, and then, half-ironically, quoted: 'But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we'll not fail.'
'Stop it!' he shouted, a sudden, violent outburst that had Hermione flinching back, and then, quieter but trembling, 'Stop it, don't quote from it, don't bring it up, I'm going to die because of it, you can't be trapped by it too, please, Hermione, you've got to stay free of it.' He was being serious, deadly serious.
'Free of it?' she asked.
'Don't let it control you too,' he whispered, and then reached across the cauldron for her hand and clung to it. 'Not you as well. Promise me.'
And though she didn't know exactly what he meant, she nodded. 'I promise,' she said.
He nodded, let go of her hand. 'It's ready.'
The potion was blood red, and though the fire was still burning away underneath the cauldron it had stopped bubbling while they'd spoken; the surface was calm and placid. 'Does it look right?' she asked.
'Yes,' Draco said, 'but that doesn't mean it is.'
She nodded, turning away from his gaze. They didn't have anything to drink out of; she took the battered piece of parchment, which had served first as letter, then as instructions – problem and solution together – and tore it neatly in half. 'Calix,' she muttered, tapping each piece, transfiguring them into two small wooden bowls.
Carefully she dipped one into each cauldron, filling each to the brim with potion. Draco watched, but she couldn't bring herself to look him in the eyes. Wordlessly, she handed him the first bowl. The one which would remove all protection from his blood, the one which would leave the wards free to attack him. Onstage, the witches' chant was getting louder.
He took it, held it for a moment, then slowly, ever so slowly, he raised it to his lips and drank.
There was a fraction of a second's grace, their eyes meeting, and then he screamed, and oh, it had worked, it had worked, and fate was bearing down upon them.
'Draco!' she shouted, scrambling to get to him with the antidote, the cure; the first cauldron went flying but she didn't care, blood-red potion spilling from the bowl and that she did care about, because he had to survive, he had to, but how could he when the play was controlling everything, set against him? She pressed the bowl to his lips, wide and taut in a scream – and oh, she was thankful for the shield – and poured as much of the potion into his mouth as she could. He couldn't swallow, the pain too much for rational thought; every muscle tense with the scream, with the horrible, horrible pain, and she filled a second bowl and helped him drink it, other arm holding him upright, but he didn't stop, he didn't stop.
It wasn't working.
This was it, this was it; the play taking its toll, claiming its victim, killing him, because that was what happened in the play; Macbeth died and so Draco must die and this was it, this was it, she could do nothing but watch…
It couldn't end like this! And she remembered what Draco had made her promise, only before, she wouldn't let the play control her, wouldn't be trapped by it, would stay free from its influence, and that meant not believing that everything that happened was controlled by the play; she clung to his shoulders, shaking him. 'You can't die!' she shouted desperately, trying to drown out his scream; her eyes were filling with tears, his face blurring and fading before her; she blinked them away. 'It's not controlling you! It's just a play, it's imaginary, it can't affect you, it can't control real life! You're not going to die because a stupid play says you do, it's not real, it's not real and this is!'
She tugged him closer to her, impulsive, hardly knowing what she was doing, holding him tightly, pressing a kiss to his forehead, and slowly, magically, he stopped screaming. He lay gasping for air, Hermione the only thing keeping him upright, face covered with sweat and pale and spattered with the potion but breathing, breathing, and not dead at all.
She felt like laughing, or like crying, but she couldn't do either; could do nothing but sit and breathe. She held onto him tightly, as though letting him go would let fate steal him away from her, and he made no move to do anything other than rest there in her arms.
And then the witches neared the end of their potion, and Draco staggered to his feet, assuring her that he was alright, because he had to be onstage.
The idea was laughable, after all they'd been through. But the show, after all, had to go on.
AN: Epilogue up in a couple of days, everyone. In the meantime – get reviewing! And there's only one question I can ask – what did you think?