A/N: This would've been up earlier, but fanfiction wouldn't let me...
Chapter 25: The Unexpected
There was a slow moan, and it filled the emptiness of the room. Hermione's frame snapped upright, and Draco's mirrored hers. Professor McGonagall's jaw hung slack, and as one, the three of them knelt by the potion's master. There was another pained moan, and Hermione jumped up. This, at least, was an unexpected stroke of luck. If you could call it luck. Snape would probably hate her for life after this.
Alive, alive, alive, the thoughts sounded in her head as she dashed out of the room. She could not have run faster if a dragon was breathing fire behind her as she sprinted to the Hospital Wing. He has to stay alive, she thought desperately. Wait until I have Madam Pomfrey! Draco gave a mental nod, though the thought had not been meant for him intentionally, and her aching throat and heaving lungs were spurned to a greater speed.
Hermione crashed into the door at the Hospital Wing, and it took all the effort she could muster to open the door, to make herself take those last steps. Every limb in her body felt like it was on fire, and she knocked wearily at the nurse's door. It pulled open under her fist, and she tottered in front of it, exhausted from her sprint. "Please…Professor Snape…in Dumbledore's office. Stabbed in…stomach. Hurry," she expelled in a rasp.
Madam Pomfrey's eyes widened, but this was what she was trained for. "How deep? How long ago?"
"Ten minutes, maybe. Deep," Hermione said hoarsely. Madam Pomfrey pushed things into her arms and bustled around her office. It was surprisingly quick, and then she took everything out of Hermione's arms and flooed somewhere else, leaving Hermione alone in the deserted, moonlit room.
The floor was welcoming as she slumped down onto it in a corner, staring blankly at the wall. "Oh my gosh." Her voice was high, and scratchy. She still panted from her run. Hogwarts was a castle after all, and no one, apparently, had thought it a good idea to put the headmaster's office anywhere near the Hospital Wing. Hermione ached in several places from where she'd fallen. She didn't even remember falling.
The door whined a warning as it opened. She didn't even bother to look up from the dark corner of the infirmary. It was all right. Draco knew she was there. He drooped onto the floor next to her, an act so slow that it tired her. "They think he's going to make it. She took one look at Dumbledore and was furious. Her lips were pursed just like McGonagall's when she got to work on Snape."
"Draco," Hermione whispered. He shifted and pulled, and with some squirming, she was safely tucked in his arms. Her body ached, and Draco just held her close. They breathed together, and held each other, and both of them slowly calmed down. It was a cold, dark corner, and she could feel his hatred. A small whine emerged from behind her closed lips and the emotion was gone. Tentatively, she reached after Draco to find his mind walled off completely. Hermione sighed.
On the cold, hard floor of the Hospital Wing, in a corner so dark that not even the moonlight could find them, Draco and Hermione fell asleep.
A sharp tut tut-ing woke up the young couple. Madam Pomfrey was standing over them, and Hermione felt all of her bruises as she stood. Her lips were pursed, as Draco had said, in a fair imitation of Professor McGonagall. "You two should change and get to class," the witch said coldly. They slunk out of the room.
It was a good thing that they had not been awoken until after breakfast had started. Very few memories had to be cleared on their way to the Room of Requirement. No one could know that Hermione had any part in Dumbledore's death, and the blood all over her clothes would incite more rumor than was healthy.
They walked into their room and didn't even bother to walk behind screens to change. Draco put the bloody dagger onto the nightstand with a shudder and his wand followed it. They each gathered their clothing and turned their backs to change. It was too much effort to bother being paranoid and hiding behind screens. Right now, they were both too tired to worry about the other peeking.
Draco coughed when he was done, but did not turn around to her. He pulled on his robe and roughly smoothed back his hair while she finished dressing, then snatched his wand up from the small table as they left.
Ginny was just as shocked as everyone else when at breakfast Professor Dumbledore's death was announced. She scanned the high table for Orlando to find that he wasn't there. Did he know? What did this mean? Dumbledore, dead? Impossible. And, yet, judging by the furious looks on the teachers' faces, it had to be. Snape was missing too.
Ron had seemed to notice this as well. "You don't think…?" he murmured to Harry. Harry's green eyes shimmered behind his glasses, but Ginny was surprised that he managed to keep a straight face.
"I do think," Harry growled. "I can't believe it, though." Ron shook his head in agreement, and Ginny stood up from the table. This had to be a joke. She had to find Orlando, he would know. She made her way up to his room and her hands shook as she knocked sharply on his door.
A bedraggled, sleepy Orlando pulled the door open. "Yes?" he snapped, and then looked abashed. "Sorry," he apologized. "My nerves are a little shaky right now."
Ginny skirted around the open door so that he could close it and opened her mouth to tell him when she stopped dead. The teachers had known. They'd all been going crazy the past two weeks. They all had known that Dumbledore would die. Or they were all supposed to pretend he had died and were so dissatisfied with this that they got angry.
"Are you okay?" Orlando said. She examined the purple under his eyes.
"I'm fine," she said coolly. "But what about you? Sleeping well? Sleeping at all? Nervous about something?" she prodded. Her temper was flaring, and she tried, belatedly, to smother it. No use. "How about Dumbledore's death? You knew about it, and didn't tell me," she accused.
The older man stiffened on the way to the kitchen to make tea. "So it's happened, then?" he asked. His voice shook, and Ginny frowned.
"What do you mean, happened? What is going on? Why has Professor Dumbledore faked his own death?" she asked shrilly.
"It's not faked," Orlando deadpanned. "Unless he contrived to trick us all. No. Two weeks ago he came to us and told us all that he was going to be killed—willingly—by someone and that this would only strengthen our efforts to knock the Dark Lord off of his throne. None of us believed him, but he would not be swayed…"
Ginny listened to his explanation, and her mind refused to understand it. She stood there, gaping at the back of her beloved friend, and could not for a minute comprehend what he was saying.
Harry and Ron sat there in silence after Ginny left. They longed for somewhere to talk to each other without being overheard. Just then Hermione and Malfoy walked in, hand in hand. They looked wild, as if they hadn't slept all night. Hermione's shortened hair lay mostly smooth, but a few pieces stuck out oddly, which, oddly, made it seem more feral than if it had all been frizzy and distended.
Malfoy looked to be in even worse shape. His hair, normally slicked back perfectly, was only roughly pulled back. He looked just as undomesticated as Hermione, and had the overprotective air of a loyal watchdog, snarling at anyone who so much as looked at her. For the girl herself, she walked as if in a dream and her gaze was blank and locked straight ahead except for occasional glances at Malfoy. Grateful glances.
They displaced the whole Slytherin table in an effort to sit between Crabbe and Goyle. The thug-like boys held a cautious conversation with the blond, and then nodded eagerly, cracking their knuckles. Hermione had her head on the table, and Malfoy ate sparingly with one arm. Harry suspected that the other was wrapped around the girl next to him.
Then the mail came, and disaster struck.
London Attacked!
So the headline of the Daily Prophet screamed. There was a picture of the Dark Mark floating above a macabre image of a devastated street in London. The houses were decimated, nothing but deep piles of ashes on the ground. No trace of bodies found…the article reported. Still looking… Harry caught snippets of the article before everyone went crazy.
A chaos so deep then ensued that the professors would not have been able to control everyone if the doors to the Great Hall had not been locked. When, or how, was still uncertain, but try as they may, the students could not open them. Frightened older students grew angry and frustrated, and spells ricocheted off of walls and pillars and dishes. The younger children screamed and cried and huddled in packs under the table.
It was many hours before the unfathomable pandemonium died down. In the meantime, while some students calmed down after a time, other students fired up. Generally docile fourth years grew fed up with all the arguing and hexing and impromptu dueling going on and stopped protecting the first, second, and third years, stepping out into the crowds and trying to break up the quarrelling upper levels. Thus, more violence followed.
The younger students padded softly amongst the older ones as they assisted Madam Pomfrey. They handed out a paste for burns and other general-aid items. If anyone needed something specific they would have to hand their wand over to Hagrid (the most imposing of the teachers) and move on to Madam Pomfrey, who stood behind the high table.
Harry had tried not to join into the ruckus, but had been unable to help himself after an hour. Ron had caved in a bit over thirty minutes, joining the crowd with a frustrated growl and a hex on his lips. Now he rolled onto his side, almost into some vomit. Grimacing, he sat up, cradling a pounding head. Harry had no idea what had hit him.
Hermione trotted over, somehow looking perky. She had cuts all over her body, a black eye, and her clothing was stained with food and blood. Her hair was long again, down to her knees and smoothed into a soft waviness with the sheer weight of it. Even stranger was the bright half-green, half-silver of it, which was also speckled with blotches of dark blue. Her robe had been burnt and hung only a bit lower than her shirt on one side, and past her knees on the other, and her skirt underneath was scorched.
"You all right, Harry?" she asked with a wide grin. "You look like you got out of the worst of it." He was too worried to look down at himself, but allowed her to pull him to his feet.
Malfoy walked casually up behind them, looking like he'd slept through the whole thing. His shirt and pants were clean, if a bit rumpled, and his hair was slightly more slicked back than it had been earlier. He looked Hermione over with a grim smile and said, "You should get cleaned up."
"I see you already have," she retorted. Draco smirked at her back as she turned back to Harry and ushered him over to the high table to get fixed up. She left him, and came back a bit later with Ron, who looked like he'd been badly beaten. There had been quite a few students who abandoned their wands and had begun brawling. Apparently Ron was one of them.
Crabbe and Goyle retrieved their wands from Hagrid and walked back to Hermione and Malfoy. The four of them walked away to a far corner of the hall. There was a grunt in front of him, and Harry handed his wand over to Hagrid so that Madam Pomfrey could fix him up.
Hermione calmly let Draco fix her hair and cut it to mid-back. He changed it back to its normal color as much as possible (it was a bit lighter than her usual color). There was nothing to be done about her robe, so she just took it off as he had done. However, she had not managed to keep her clothing underneath clean, so she still looked messy, with her scorched skirt and stained shirt.
"Good enough," she yowled when Draco began examining her black eye. "Unless you know a spell off the top of your head for healing one of these, you can leave it!"
"I'm sure Madam Pomfrey could fix you," Draco suggested. Hermione glanced at the line and shook her head. She has too many to deal with already.
"Thank you," she said, turning to Crabbe and Goyle, "For shielding most of the blows. I'm sure I'd look a lot worse if not for you two." The boys looked abashed, and then pleased. Crabbe gave her a slow smile, and she returned it readily. Draco's thoughts sniggered in her mind as he realized something, why would anyone cast a cheering charm in the middle of a fight?
Hermione smirked back at Draco and shrugged. Honestly, I have no idea.
I wonder who it was really meant for...?
It was surprising to realize that it was only ten in the morning. It felt like the fray had taken much longer than that. Slowly, the students settled down on benches covered in a multitude of unpleasant things. By eleven o'clock, the hall was silent. The students all sat at their tables, too drained to do anything but breathe. Only the younger students had breath to speak, and they were too worried about setting off the school again to do so.
Professor McGonagall stood. "You all should be ashamed of yourselves. London was attacked, and Professor Dumbledore is dead, but that doesn't allow you all to behave like animals.
"However. We do understand that you needed to dispel your emotions some way, which is the only reason we allowed this to happen. It would have been stopped if anything got too violent." Hermione smirked. Yeah, as if they could have stopped that if they tried. Draco silently agreed. "This will not be allowed as an excuse again. Any more fighting will result in drastic measures.
"As current headmistress of Hogwarts, I am appointing Professor Wood as head of Gryffindor house." She glanced down the table to where the professor should have been seated. "Uh…he's not here right now, but I'm sure he'll accept his duties…? Anyway, I'll talk to him later about this. Right now, everyone is to attend their classes like normal. NO ONE has an excuse to be out of class right now. UNDERSTOOD?"
Right then, Professor McGonagall, with her strict bun and gleaming eyes, looked just as scary as Voldemort. Students sat there agape, and slowly everyone nodded their comprehension. "Good," said the new headmistress, sitting down behind the table. After a minute, when no one had moved, she barked, "Why are you all just sitting around?"
Predictably, there was a scramble to get to the door and out of the Great Hall as soon as possible. Amazingly, everyone was very mellow after the outbreak in the great hall. After classes, almost everyone sat docilely in their common rooms, frantically writing letters home. There was no more fighting that day. Or the next. Or the one after that.
A few nights after the event, Hermione made her way alone to Dumbledore's old office. The shadows were eerie, and the portraits all glared at her. Her nerves jangled uncomfortably, and she shielded her mind from Draco. She had to do this one alone.
Dumbledore's portrait lay on the desk in front of her, untouched. His pensieve and a narrow paintbrush lay beside them. With shaking hands, she reached for the brush and dipped it into the swirling silver thoughts in the pensieve. She ran the brush over the portrait and was about to dip it again before she noticed a corner of paper under the pensieve.
Hermione carefully balanced the brush across the bowl and lifted it to slide the paper out from underneath. It was labeled to her. She carefully tucked it into her robe and continued to paint the portrait.
It was after the weekend that everything began to turn sour. Classes, which had been fine on Friday, were a nightmare for Hermione and Draco. Rumors spread faster than ever about the two of them. Professors singled them out, and were magnanimous with detentions for the two of them. Even Professor Flitwick was cold toward them. At night they cuddled in each other's arms, too paranoid to sleep, and too exhausted to stay awake.
On February the 13th, which was a Friday, Hermione and Draco left the school. They packed up their belongings and went to see Harry and Ron one last time. "You're sure you know how to get there?" Harry checked for the umpteenth time.
"Yes, Harry. We know." The young man grimaced at the plural and then eyed the blond next to Hermione suspiciously. "Now, calm down. And do your schoolwork. If you slack off, I will be very disappointed with you," she warned. Ron frowned—she sounded like his mother.
"All right then," Ron said, when Harry said nothing.
"Here," Harry added somewhat sullenly as he took a step back from them and pulled something from the pocket of his robe. "Take this. Ron and I have one. All you need to do is say something into it, and it'll vibrate. One of us will pick it up, and then we can talk to you, no matter where you are. They were…" Harry didn't finish that sentence, but handed her a little mirror.
Sirius, she thought, and her eyes mirrored Harry's sadness. "Bye," he said quietly. Hermione quashed the impulse to hug them both and tell them she'd be all right.
"Bye," she told them both equally quietly and turned around. Draco nodded slightly at them and shrugged his heavy coat into place before following after her.
The air outside was blustery, and Hogsmeade Station was empty. The wind whistled around the pillars shrilly, and the two teenagers snuggled up behind the dubious shelter of one of the tall columns.
Dawn splattered across the stormy sky as they watched. Hermione, squished between the thick concrete and Draco, shivered and buried her head in Draco's jacket. She twisted to the side to watch the sunrise, which was truly a work of art. For once, she was grateful for her thick, unruly hair, because it kept the cold off of her ears.
Right now, people are asleep in their beds… Hermione thought wistfully. I wish we were too, Draco finished for her. But they all hate us. It's going to be all right, though. The sigh he breathed moved her hair and allowed a draft to whisk across her ear. Shivering, she wrapped her arms around his waist and pulled him as close to her as he could be.
I'm cold…
"Still?" Draco said out loud. "You've got four layers on, and you're still cold?" Hermione nodded, and her teeth rattled together uncomfortably. To make matters worse, Draco stepped away from her, allowing her to be buffeted by the cold wind, and pulled off his coat. He handed it out to her with raised eyebrows. She tried to smile, but knew that it was a thin at best. The coat was warm and heavy as she pulled it on. It went down to her knees, and she gave a wan grin at this and Draco came back to sandwich her between himself and the pillar.
It began to snow.
The train pulled up at the station at long last, and Hermione and Draco staggered to it. Draco's lips had a blue tint to them, and his ears and cheeks were flushed. She probably looked even worse. With a final chill down her spine, she boarded the train behind Draco, giving one last longing look up the trail towards Hogwarts.
My home, she thought with a pang.
Draco slid his hand inside the heavy jacket Hermione wore and placed a tentative hand on her hip. She sighed with reluctance and followed him fully into the relatively empty train. They chose a compartment, and snuggled up together on the seat in an attempt to regain their warmth. Hermione cast a few spells to seal their heat in the compartment. In about fifteen minutes, the teenagers were stripping off layers upon layers of clothing.
Hermione lessened the spells, and they sat in the now-comfortable temperature of the compartment in tee shirts and jeans. "I miss Hogwarts already," she whined.
Draco grunted, and it may have been an attempt to cover a laugh. His thoughts revealed nothing to Hermione, and she looked up at him. "I know you do," was all he said, kissing her forehead.
"I…I never thought my schooling would end like this," she murmured after a while. "I would've been top of our class," she whispered.
Draco tightened his grip around her, and it was comforting beyond measure. She sighed….
Draco shook Hermione awake. "I think this is our stop," he told her. She blinked sleep from her eyes and scrambled off his lap to look out the window. It was too snowy to tell if this was true. Hermione glanced at her watch. The time seemed about right.
"Okay, then." They stepped off the train and into the cold world outside. Hermione looked around, getting her bearings and then set off in what she was sure was the right direction. After nearly ten minutes of walking, she stopped and looked up at the house in front of her.
"Number 12, Grimmauld Place," she said loudly so Draco could hear over the blustering storm. She couldn't help but smile a little. "Let's go."
Hand in hand, they walked to the door.
All these reckless nights, have left me spinning out of control.
Is there not a cure for sorrow?
All these faded lights, have made me search for something more.
—Mae, "Painless"
Spastic Asian: I thought about having Snape die there, but he may be useful later on in the story, so I decided to keep him. But, yes, if he had died there it would have been immensely cliché indeed. snorts Walking onto a blade has happened a bit too often. And Snape is cool enough that he deserves a more interesting end.
And S&M is sadomasochism….you can look it up….
brunetteheartsredheadsandskittles: I actually did not forget about the Dark Mark when she was showing people her back. If you're thinking about when she was showing it to Ginny/Orlando, then that was why she pulled up her pants before lifting her shirt. Though I did not say specifically that that was the reason for her pulling up her pants, I did say she pulled them up. And if you're thinking about when she was in the hospital wing because of her injuries...well, you can change people's clothing without seeing their back, ans so that's what I'm saying happened there.
