Chapter Thirteen:
Threadbare by As Seas Exhale
January 9th, 2000
"Pinky!" Malfoy bellows and with a crack the same little house elf from New Years, this time in a blue dress, pops into the room.
"Master Draco." She bows, her enormous ears flopping forward.
"Anything Granger needs, get it for her." Hermione looks at him with her mouth open in horror.
"He needs a healer! Malfoy, he needs more than what I know."
"Don't you think I've tried that?! Don't you think I've taken him to St. Mungo's? Called a private healer to come?" he shouts at full volume, eyes wide with fear. Pinky cowers at the foot of the bed and it takes everything in Hermione not to do the same.
She bites her lip, turning away from him and sitting on the edge of the bed. She stares at Theodore once more, looking at his bloody stump of an arm and racing through everything she's read on wounds.
Before the war, while they were hunting Horcruxes, Hermione would read anything she could on treating injuries. She was terrified of anything that could happen to them. When she wasn't reading about healing, she was practising counter curses and hexes anything they could use for protection.
"I'm really sorry Theodore…" She reaches over to touch his arm, trying to get a better look under the bandages, when a dreadful noise rips from his chest. His hand is on her throat in a second, squeezing the air from her as he pushes forward.
Hermione panics, clawing at his hand, and in an instant Malfoy pulls his wand out getting between the two of them.
"Stupefy!" Theodore goes stiff before falling back into the bed, his right hand stuck in a claw. Hermione falls to the ground, wiping at her face with the backs of her hands, not wanting to let him see her cry.
She steadies her breathing, focusing on the blood stains on the green carpet and counting, centering herself.
"He was tortured, wasn't he?" she whispers, she can feel Malfoy standing beside her, his frame towering over her as he stares.
"We all were."
"All of you?"
"Anyone associated with the Death Eaters…" Blaise's pale face comes to the forefront of her mind.
"But Blaise was never affiliated with the Death Eaters?"
"They wouldn't listen!"
"Tell me what happened, please tell me what happened." She's begging from the floor, her heart breaking at the pain in his voice. She wonders if this is what he looked like before Harry attacked him in the bathroom. Wonders if he's cried himself to sleep in this very room. Wonders when the sadness becomes anger.
She wonders if he has nightmares just like her.
"Help Theo first," is all he says before backing up, visibly refusing to answer any more questions.
Hermione stands and approaches the bed once more, watching Theodore's eyes. He looks like a racehorse, chomping at the bit, ready to lash out. Taking the stump of his arm in her hands, she unwraps it gingerly.
There's a low growl, deep in his throat and Hermione ignores it.
He's been maimed. The bottom of his humerus is visible, white against the red of his own blood. She takes a sharp inhale of breath, looking at the tattered black skin hanging where his elbow should be. That wounded animal noise escapes his lips once more as Hermione lifts his arm carefully.
"Pinky? Is that what your name is?" she asks, the house elf averting her eyes and coming to stand in front of Hermione. "Can you get me clean towels, a bucket, lots of hot water and fresh wrappings?" With a nod she's gone in a pop.
Hermione places what's left of Theodore's arm down before standing and moving to touch her face. She stops just short, not wanting to have someone else's blood in her eyes.
"What are you going to do?" Malfoy whispers and for the first time Hermione can see sorrow on his face.
"I'm going to clean the wound to hopefully stop the infection that's spreading. Then I'm going to close it." She knows she looks serious because when Malfoy looks away his mouth forms a hard line.
"The Aurors have been obsessed with Theo and I. Trying to catch us doing something wrong, something illegal. After my trial, Gawain followed me out of the Wizengamot, he pinned me in the hallway and told me I would rot in Azkaban for everything I did." She can't stop looking at him, the way his face moves when he talks, the way his hands fidget as he divulges this secret to her.
"You were acquitted…weren't you?" She tries to keep her voice soft. Hermione wants to reach out, to touch him.
"It doesn't matter, I still tried to murder one of the most beloved wizards of our time. My father is serving a life sentence for his affiliations with Voldemort, Theo's is as well…" His eyes drift once more, looking at Theodore. "We both took the mark…we both know the consequences…" Her head whips back at Malfoy.
"The Mark! Malfoy, what arm was Theodore's Dark Mark on?"
"His left, obviously." She wants to be right, she wants to be right so badly. In her mind, Gawain and the Aurors did it to save them.
"Your Mark, does it ever burn? Now that Voldemort is dead, does your mark burn or itch?" He rolls his eyes, raking his hands through his hair and falling into one of the overstuffed armchairs in front of the book case.
"That doesn't mean anything…" He groans, scrubbing his face in frustration.
"What if they—"
"Granger, for someone so smart you can be really fucking stupid you know that?" She closes her mouth, not knowing if that was a compliment or an insult.
"What do you—"
"I mean they cut Theo's arm off after torturing us for days because they think we're going to start another revolt. Can't have another Dark wizard coming to power so they're going to maim and disfigure anyone who bears the Dark Mark."
"When did they—"
"Monday. When I saw you in the cafeteria." He saw me looking at him…
"They made you—"
"Drag him out of the fucking ministry alone. Yes."
There's another pop and Pinky looks triumphant, balancing everything within a bucket. Malfoy looks at her with distaste as Pinky hands the supplies to Hermione.
"Master Draco will get the water from his bathroom," she says sternly. Malfoy leans down, taking the bucket and disappearing into the bathroom.
Hermione sits on the bed once more, laying out a towel under Theodore's stump, placing the rolls of bandages next to her for easy access. Malfoy returns with a bucket of scalding water, pulling a chair over from a writing desk, he sits next to her with the bucket at his feet.
"Pinky, do you have any blood replenishing potion? Or some household First Aid kits will have wound cleaning potion, if there's one of those will you bring it to me?" With a nod she's gone.
"I have to cut the diseased skin off…I'm going to clean what I can but I'll need you to tie this tightly here." She hands Malfoy a linen bandage and motions towards Theodore's bicep.
Standing, Malfoy starts to untuck his shirt, fiddling with his belt and she makes a choked sound.
"I promise you, my belt will make a better tourniquet than that piece of linen." He leans over her and she gets a heady whiff of his cologne as he tightens his belt around Theodore's arm.
"Right. That works well." She dips a towel into the water and it burns but she doesn't let it show. Instead she soaks all the dried blood away from the wound, exposing the rest of the black flesh.
After a while she falls into a rhythm, cutting, dabbing, wrapping. Pinky returns with the potions and Hermione sends her away in search of a curved needle and some sort of thread.
She remembers seeing the medical books her parents kept on one of their many bookshelves. Relics from when they were in school together. Hermione would sit for hours and flip through them, memorising all the bones in the body. She would flex her own hand and watch as the tendons and muscles pushed and pulled, naming them all as they worked.
She wanted to be a doctor, wanted to make a difference, and in some far off distant universe maybe she was a doctor.
Malfoy is silent next to her, wordlessly handing her things as she asks, his eyes trained on Theodore's stump as she finishes closing the wound.
Hermione wraps it in dittany soaked bandages, carefully tying them off with just enough pressure.
"I'm ready for you to wake him up now." She looks at Malfoy, his eyes still staring at the bandages. He's hunched over, elbows on his knees and he looks small. He looks like he's thinking something over before he stands, strategically placing himself between her and the stunned bear.
As soon as the spell escapes Malfoy's lips, Theodore is up and writhing. From agony or anger she will never know.
"He needs to take a blood replenishing potion!" she shouts over his wails. Pinky found quite a few different potions deep within the cellars of Malfoy Manor and for that Hermione is grateful.
Malfoy takes the dark red vial, tilting Theodore's head back with a strong grip and dropping the liquid down his throat. He writhes around once more, the colour slowly returning to his pale face, like a flower blooming.
She hands him another and steps back as Malfoy drops Sleeping Draught down his throat. Within seconds the writhing stops. There's silence, nothing but Theodore's steady and even breathing.
Hermione waits, worried that if she moves she will scare him, that she will wake the anger within him once more.
"I can leave you some instructions. You'll have to change Theodore's bandages—"
"Theo. No one calls him Theodore." Even as ever, he retreats behind his eyes.
"You'll have to change Theo's bandages in the morning, apply more essence of Dittany and clean the wound thoroughly. I would suggest knocking him out, at least for the next few days. Continue to give him blood replenishing potions as needed," she says, lips forming a hard line.
He does nothing but nod before showing her out of the room. Down the staircase and through the manor. He takes her a different way, avoiding the wing that holds the room she was tortured in. But the way she sees it, she was tortured tonight as well, given a glimpse of what could be her near future.
Every part of her is now terrified that she will be dragged back here in the middle of the night to clean and dress Malfoy's bloody stump.
