Previously: Fred and George looked over at Hermione, who had thus far kept quiet. "Anyone asked you yet, Mione?"
"Well, now that you ask, someone has."
"No way!" Ron exclaimed.
"Who was it?" said Fred excitedly.
She looked down slightly, pretending to blush. "Oh, I don't know if I can say. He might want to keep it quiet, you know. But I said yes, of course. It should be a lovely time."
In the days leading up to the break and the Yule Ball, Hermione found herself spending more and more time with her fellow Gryffindors. It was very comforting, to sit in the common room with so many friendly faces. People were in high spirits, and it reflected in how they treated one another. She did have to turn Neville down, when he got up the courage to ask her to the dance.
She advised him to invite Luna, for the girl wouldn't be able to go without him escorting her. She had no doubts that Ginny would worm her way in – Ginny was feisty like that, always willing to fight to be included.
Victor had taken to sitting with her at the library, and although he hadn't asked her a single question about the second task, she could tell he was already researching sea creatures. Hermione wondered if Karkaroff had straight up told him about the egg, and that was how he'd figured it out almost immediately after the first task.
They never sat together for too long, however, because he had a habit of disappearing whenever his posse showed up. It was nice of him, considering the flack Hermione had received after the ball, last time around. She briefly wondered if it was worth telling everyone before and getting it over with.
On the other hand, that would mean facing it now, and people may still get up in arms after the ball anyway. No, it was much better to make sure the boys got themselves sorted with a bit more elegance than last time, and hopefully Ron wouldn't blow up at her as he was prone to. She had been noticing he was less combative recently, perhaps because she disengaged from their arguments as quickly as possible, or because some sort of maturity had entered his thick skull.
She rather doubted it was the latter, honestly. Even when she had briefly dated him after the "final" battle, he was incredibly antagonistic, always defending his opinions even when he realized they were wrong. It was just a fact, Ron was stubborn and short-sighted. She was honestly happy that this Ron had no misconceptions of her interest at this point in time. So for now, she was sitting in a delicate balance of peace with her fellow Gryffindors.
Unfortunately, Hermione couldn't sit back and relax in Gryffindor tower the whole time. No, she had a task to complete.
Draco, even five days after he fully returned to his younger body, was still experiencing a whole lot of pain. She had spent almost four hours in the Room of Requirement with him, just trying to figure out what exactly was wrong.
"I just don't get it." She said for the millionth time. "There's nothing in my diagnosis charms that even remotely seems like it would cause you pain." She didn't voice it again, but she wondered if the pain was in his mind, instead of his body. It just didn't make sense.
"We've gone over this, Hermione. It's not a normal pain, and it's definitely not psychosomatic, thank you very much. I can still function, so let's just find something that works better to treat it. With any luck, it'll fade with time."
"Oh but we can't rely on it simply fading, and I just can't leave you in pain like this. There has to be a solution." She wrung her hands nervously, tuttering over him as he sat on the same comfy chair he had in his future study. "I know you don't want to involve him, but-"
"We are not going to Snape!" Draco snapped, brows drawn together in pain. "He's already noticed that something's wrong with me, he looks at me in class like I'm acting uncharacteristically, and goddammit, Hermione, I might be. Someone erased my memories, remember?"
She scowled. It was difficult, sure, but having Draco back would be better in the long run. If only they could solve the pain-
"If it doesn't go away in two days, we're going to Snape. We can make him take an unbreakable vow, he's proved himself willing to accept precautions."
"What do you mean, Mione? What precautions did you take?"
Hermione grinned mischeviously. "Do you remember that potion I was working on, back in 2000?"
"Which one?" Draco asked drolly. "There were only about twenty, if I recall."
"Fair enough." She grinned at him. It felt good to be able to connect with Draco again, and reminisce about the past despite their current challenges. They were a team, they would always be a team. And with Draco back, she knew she could really do this.
"Do you remember the mind-shielding potion I was making? That would protect from legilimency and veritaserum?"
"The one we planned on using for any spies we could get to infiltrate the ranks, you mean?"
"Yes, that's the one." Hermione nodded, sinking into a chair next to Draco. "Well, I told Snape that we used it pretty much all the time in the future, for all of our agents – and it wasn't lying, really, I did plan to use it, but, well, I made a batch and stabilized the brew, the arithmancy equations all added up, and he, erm, took it."
Draco looked flabbergasted. "My godfather took a potion of unknown origin, just to hear your story? Severus Snape? Are you sure we're talking about the same person?"
"The very same." She said cheerfully, a bit proud of herself. "He didn't seem very happy about it, and I'm very glad that we didn't end up erasing the memory, which was a problem with the first trials – you know, the one on that death eater we captured, what was her name?"
"Merula Svinkle." Draco supplied.
"Well yes, we discussed my entire story and then I told him to take the potion, to protect my secret. Honestly, it wouldn't have mattered if he really did lose his memories – I eliminated the side effects – but he still would've been suspicious of me, because I didn't account for just how much of a paranoid bastard he is."
Draco let out a bark of laughter. "Never underestimate how paranoid he can be. He's the one who taught me most of my habits. But all the same, Mione, that doesn't keep him from acting on anything he learned. It doesn't keep him from making my life extremely difficult, either.
"And if he thinks I only have partial memories, like I did before you brought me back, well then that's almost worse. He'll expect me to be a downright bastard, and try to limit my actions whenever possible so I don't cause you problems." He seemed as though he was only just realizing these things as he said them, and his face lit with the dark realization.
"All the more reason to tell him, Draco. Don't you think he would help you too, if he knew?"
Draco scoffed. "Severus will only help Severus, Hermione. If he thinks our plan will fail, he'll switch over immediately."
"I disagree." And she did. She knew more about Severus than Draco thought. She knew that he was a more honorable man than even he gave himself credit for, and she knew he would be willing to make sacrifices for the cause he believed in, or for the people he loved. And Draco definitely fell under that – hell, he made a second vow to Narcissa, just to protect Draco. All that while upholding his spy status and continuing to fight for what was right. No, Snape was more trustworthy than he thought.
"It doesn't matter if you disagree. I'm not doing it." He huffed, and then hunched over as a spasm of pain hit you.
"Oh Draco, are you alright?" She gasped, and quickly cast, "Carissio!"
Almost immediately, Draco relaxed from his bent-over position. "Merlin, Hermione, what did you just cast on me?"
"Oh, just a little muscle relaxing spell. It's meant to be used when you've got a Charlie horse, or a tension headache. I just overpowered it a bit."
"A bit? I feel amazing! Why the bloody hell didn't you do that earlier?"
"I can't, Draco. You know a charm would lose it's potency over time. If you're really stuck with pain like this, you'll have to find a better long term solution and save that for emergencies. If we just cast it over and over, you'd eventually become immune."
"How long does one spell last?" He asked, rubbing the back of his neck.
Hermione bit her lip. Her copy of Advanced Charms Theory, Book Eight, which was intended for students pursuing a charms mastery, gave very strict guidelines for medicinal charms. Generally, one could cast a charm once every day for ten days, before needing to take a break of ten days for the body to, for lack of a better word, forget the effects of the charm. If cast more than once a day, or more than ten days, the wizard's magic would start rejecting the charm.
It was kind of how a virus would build up immunity to a certain medication, Hermione thought. The virus would be partially fought off by the drugs, but certain mutations might stay alive. Then those would multiply, and soon enough the only cells alive were the ones that could fight off the medicine. Just how the body had to accept the magic of the spell, whatever was causing problems would eventually learn to reject it.
She explained this to Draco, who was less than impressed by her explanation. "I suppose an easier way to define it would be as a sort of hourglass." She asked the Room of Requirement for a big brass hourglass, which it supplied happily. "The carissio charm basically sets the hourglass upside-down, with your pain now floating in this top part-" she gestured to the hourglass with her wand, and the grains of sand flew upward, unnaturally stuck to the top of the glass.
"-And it holds it there by filling it with magic," she filled the bottom with white pebbles, representing her spell, "so by the time the sand falls back down, it can't hurt your muscles on the bottom."
"And how does this degrade over time?"
"Well, every day, you get a little less potency. By the tenth day, you might only have a little layer of magic on the bottom before the sand falls down. Your magic has just started to reject the external magic because it's been over-exposed."
Draco looked impatient by her explanation, and ran a hand through his hair. "Alright, well I'm going to use it for now. I haven't felt this good since I had all my limbs!"
He looked over at her, trying to get a laugh out of her, but she frowned instead. She was thinking back to when she came back, wondering why she didn't have quite the same shock he did with suddenly having more fingers than she was used to. She looked down at her right hand, flexing the fingers thoughtfully. Draco had become much more disfigured than she, perhaps that was why?
But no, if he was only feeling this way because of the dysmorphia that came with regaining limbs, she would've felt it too. Then perhaps it was because his real mind laid dormant while his younger self ran amok, unintentionally grabbing his memories? Although that didn't make sense either, for he would have been in pain long before now.
"Hang on," she said suddenly. Draco's eyes came up to meet hers, and she realized she had become unresponsive for the last few moments. "So when I got here, I was in a six-day coma."
Draco stared back at her, utter bewilderment plastered on his face. "Yes, and?"
"Well, I was in a coma for six days. You've been back for five days, but you were already sort of back before. Maybe our memories integrating with our past-selves caused some sort of disturbance, that I slept through-"
Draco cut in excitedly, "But I didn't sleep through because I was already partially in my younger self's mind! Hermione, you're brilliant!" He looked quite pleased with this. "Run the equations, let's see how likely chronic pain would be-"
"Alongside the re-immersion of your consciousness via subconscious manipulation-" Hermione jumped in again.
"-and the two varying timelines with my earlier visions! Oh Hermione, this could be it!" He smiled charmingly at her, for once seeming to forget his pain. "Listen. You know far more Arithmancy than anyone else, besides maybe Septima, so I'm going to leave this to you. But let me know what conclusions you find. I'm afraid you've given me some new hope, and it's making it even harder to accept that we may be wrong."
Hermione narrowed her eyes at him. She saw the resignation already starting to creep back into his eyes, which were again colored with pain. "If we're wrong about this, it doesn't matter. We'll still solve it, Draco. I promise."
And she would, that was certain. Even now, she was plotting all the different ways to solve Draco's problem, from running the Arithmancy equations to researching potions and charms. For now, Draco was casting a pretty steady muscle relaxing charm, and so all she needed to do was figure it out before ten days were up. Fortunately, it was almost winter break, so they would have plenty of time to work on it.
AN: Happy fourth of July to all of my American friends (which is most of my readers, I believe!) My family has been on vacation this week, and they've been giving me some flack for writing instead of enjoying the sunshine. But it's worth it to give you guys the next chapter! Hope you enjoyed :)