Sixth Year, Part 10, 1997
It took Harry three days following the incident in the lavatory - by which point he was fully convinced that she was indeed going to survive - to question her. He'd brought her his notes and her class assignments, and when he found her sitting up in bed, he went for it.
"What the bloody hell were you doing in there with Malfoy, Hermione?"
She grimaced. "I followed him in there. I was trying to talk to him."
"That didn't look like talking. It looked like he was trying to kill you and then me."
Hermione rolled her eyes. "He would have worn himself out trying to blast through my shield. I could have dropped him easily."
"So why didn't you?"
"Are you kidding me?"
"What?"
"You're asking why I didn't curse or hex Malfoy? Because it's MALFOY, Harry. He lives to make your life miserable, and you're convinced he's a Death Eater. Why would I engage in a fight with him that could easily get me kicked out of school and make even more of an enemy out of him?"
"So you just stood there and let him fire at you?"
"I had a shield up, Harry. He didn't hit me with anything."
He looked dubious. "Nothing? Not one thing?"
She shook her head. "Nothing."
"Wow. Hermione, that's impressive. You need to teach me how to do that!"
"I will, but you cannot use anything else from that book, Harry. You could have killed someone!"
"I know, I know. You've been telling me this for days, and I've got detention with Snape for the rest of the bloody term too, which is utterly unfair considering what Malfoy did. He tried to use an unforgivable curse! You saw him!"
She winced at the lie she'd told Harry. This was another turning point, another moment where she took another step down that darker path. It had been incredibly stupid of Draco to act in anger and even attempt an unforgivable. His curse had hit her, barely, but she'd told no one. She'd promised Lucius to protect his son, and getting Draco sent to Azkaban for his own stupidity would surely violate that promise.
She'd long had an innate sense of fairness about her, and while she was open to bending the rules if the ends justified the means, it rankled her when others broke rules she perceived as fair. Draco deserved to be punished for using an unforgivable, and whatever detention he had - likely with Snape - wasn't severe enough in her opinion. Although, she reasoned silently, if he figured out that his father was having an affair with a 'filthy little mudblood' that knowledge was probably more punishment than anything Snape or even Dumbledore would dole out to him.
"Yes. I did," she said eventually in response to harry, "but you know as well as I do that you have mean it for those curses to work."
"And what? You don't think he really means it? He could have killed us both!"
"No, Harry, I don't think he meant it. First, the cruciatus doesn't actually kill anyone. And second, he didn't cast it effectively. Had I not lost my concentration when you burst in there, I could have held my shield and deflected your curse as well," she said. It wasn't a completely honest statement, but it would have to do.
Harry looked at her pensively but didn't say anything, so she continued.
"I know you've been following Malfoy around for months now, but have you really LOOKED at him? He looks… sickly almost. Something is wrong. He's, well, he's a right prat, I'll grant you that, but he's not a killer. He's not evil."
"I don't see how you can believe that when you nearly died!" he exclaimed.
"I nearly died because YOU cast a spell not knowing what it could do! Had you not hit me, you would have hit him, and we'd be an even worse situation. Harry, do you have any idea what Mr. Malfoy would do if he thought you'd meant to kill his son? It's a miracle he's not already here, demanding your arrest!"
Harry looked slightly ill at the thought.
"Is that why you flung yourself in front of him? Why you took that curse?" he asked quietly.
She looked at him surprise. "Well, I didn't really think about it, to be honest. I just acted. I didn't want anyone to be seriously injured. And YOU, Harry, have enough pressure on you already with you-know-you and what's inevitably to come. I couldn't possibly let you distract yourself from that by getting expelled from school or worse if that spell had killed Malfoy. I'm just thankful Professor Snape was there and was able to slow the bleeding so I didn't die."
He seemed chastened by her remarks, and she was relieved that he wasn't questioning her too much about just why she'd followed Malfoy.
"So we… are we good, you and me?"
She felt horribly guilty about twisting the truth, but she smiled and reached for his hand, giving it a squeeze. "Yeah, Harry. We're good."
He heaved a deep breath and then smiled. "Good. Listen, I'm going to go find Ron and let him know that as usual, this whole thing was you saving my sorry arse again."
She smiled back. "He hasn't figured that out yet?"
"Nah. LavLav has been filling his head with all sorts of rubbish, like that you and Malfoy were having a lovers' spat that I interrupted."
Hermione's mouth fell open in shock. That was the sort of rumour she absolutely did not want in circulation.
"Please tell me you set her straight."
"Oh, I did. Don't worry about it."
Hermione wrinkled her nose. "Not to be impolite, but really, what does Ron see in her?"
Harry's face flushed red, and glanced around to make sure Madam Pomfrey wasn't watching them. Then he cupped his hands around his chest to mimic the shape of breasts.
"Tits would be my guess," he admitted, causing Hermione to burst into raucous laughter.
~oOo~
D. said you were cursed. By Potter?
You took a curse for my son?
Are you well? In hospital wing still?
Respond, pet.
Messages from Lucius trickled in via her bracelet every day she spent in the hospital wing. It was clear that Draco had told him about the encounter in the lavatory, and from the brief messages she was able to receive, it was clear he was both concerned about her well-being and grateful that she'd taken a curse meant for his son.
She was unable to respond to him until she was released to her dorm and tucked safely behind the curtains of her bed. Communication via jewelry was quicker than owl but incredibly inefficient compared to a telephone. She gave her version of the incident to Lucius as concisely as possible, bit by bit, via the bracelet.
Lucius was grateful to her for blocking the curse that would have seriously injured his son, but he was unhappy she'd been injured instead. He did not need to chastise her for her decision to throw herself between the two wizards instead of using magic - she'd done enough of that herself for the last few days. He was rightfully angered by the minimal punishment Harry garnered for his actions, but conceded that campaigning to have Harry expelled for harming a muggleborn would draw too much attention to them all, especially given that Draco had cast an unforgivable during their fight.
When Hermione recovered from her injuries, she noticed that Draco seemed to go out of his way to avoid her. He would not meet her gaze in the Great Hall or in class, nor did he and his friends taunt Harry and Ron like they usually did. Harry was exceedingly apologetic about using the sectumsempra curse, and the sight of his friend bleeding on the floor had apparently scared him into dropping at least some of his rivalry with Draco.
Harry spent most of his free time in detention for his use of a dangerous curse or in special 'lessons' with Professor Dumbledore and Professor Snape. When Harry confessed to the awful methods Professor Snape was using to 'teach' him occulemency, Hermione brought out the books she'd received from Lucius and began tutoring him herself. He was a quick learner and far brighter than Professor Snape preferred to believe.
She was rather perplexed by Professor Snape. She knew he was a member of the Order of the Phoenix, a marked Death Eater turned spy, and she knew that Harry did not trust him even though Dumbledore did. His parting words to her in the hospital room - his warning to stay away from Mr. Malfoy - had sent an icy shiver of fear through her. Did Professor Snape know about her involvement with Lucius? They were friends, weren't they? At least, it had seemed that way before. Why would he warn her away from his friend? Surely he'd want Lucius to be happy.
She noticed though that since the incident in the lavatory, her defense against the dark arts professor seemed to watch her more closely than before. During class and in the Great Hall, she would occasionally catch him looking at Draco and then at her. When they engaged in practical lessons, he allowed them to select their own dueling partners or kept pairings strictly intra-house. She wondered if that was in the interest of keeping the peace in general, given how poorly Slytherins and Gryffindors tended to get along, or if he was keeping her away from Draco.
Draco had a task, Hermione knew, but then she recalled the meeting she'd witnessed in Hogsmeade with Lucius and Draco - Severus had been there too! Surely Professor Snape knew about Draco's task. Perhaps he was concerned about Draco's ability to complete this mysterious task? Perhaps he'd not been referring to Lucius at all that day in the hospital wing. The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that her professor had referred to Draco after all.
All in all, the final weeks of the school term were less stressful than Hermione had anticipated. She recovered completely from the sectumsempra curse, and her wounds faded to faint, silvery white scars across her torso and thighs. She was still a little bit self-conscious about them, but they'd were admittedly less noticeable than she'd initially feared. Lucius let her know via the bracelet that he would contact her after the school term ended but that he would be traveling and would be very busy until then. She had gone days or even weeks before without hearing from him, so she reassured herself that everything was fine. She would see him soon enough, and she had an early summer visit with him to look forward to.
In the meantime, Harry FINALLY agreed to get rid of that awful Half-Blood Prince's potions book. Ron and Lavender broke up and then got back together again. Malfoy continued to ignore her, but his friends in Slytherin were still arses to just about everyone else. It all felt so, so...normal. She should have known the sense of relative peace would not last.
~oOo~
Hermione was en route from the Gryffindor common room to the library when she saw him pacing a stretch of hallway on the seventh floor. She would have thought he was trying to open the Room of Requirement, but it was on the same floor on the opposite side of the castle. Draco Malfoy looked nervous, very nervous. She paused for a moment and debated whether or not she should say something to him. He looked up then and saw her, and his face twisted into an ugly sneer.
"Here comes the little mudblood, just like clockwork," he spat.
"Excuse me?" She was used to Draco's sneering, name-calling, and lousy attitude, but she'd drifted into a sense of relative ease lately, given how he seemed to be avoiding her. His slur caught her momentarily off guard, a lack of preparedness she would regret.
His wand was out and pointed at her before she could respond. She wasn't expecting an attack in the halls of Hogwarts, although after everything that had transpired in the girls' lavatory a few weeks ago, perhaps she should have been.
"Petrificus totalis!"
When the curse hit her, Hermione had her wand out, but had not managed to throw up a shield. She silently cursed her own stupidity for not shielding herself the moment she saw Lucius's son. It had all happened so fast, but really, that was no excuse. 'Constant vigilance' and all that rot.
To her surprise, Malfoy did not let her fall flat onto the stone floor. He hit her almost immediately with a levitation spell and guided her frozen body to him, her bookbag trailing on the floor, the strap locked into her hand.
"You can deny it all you want, mudblood, but I know you're fucking my father," he said in a disgusted half-whisper as he looked down at her.
When her body was within arm's reach, Malfoy grabbed her and steered her floating form into a nearby broom closet where he canceled the levitation spell and propped her against the shelves.
"All of his talk about mudbloods soiling the magical world with their filth, and he's soiling himself with YOU."
She wanted to say something to him, anything, but her mouth remained frozen from the petrificus spell and she could only make muffled whimpers. He seemed so very angry, as if their confrontation in Myrtle's bathroom had not even happened. She wanted to tell him that he'd seen her blood - a lot of it - and it was no dirtier than his own. She wanted to tell him that she loved Lucius, that Lucius loved the both of them. She wanted to tell him that she understood his anger - for surely it must be difficult to find out that your father was having an affair - but that his father had been so very unhappy in his marriage, and did he not deserve at least a little bit of happiness somewhere?
He pointed his wand at her and applied what sounded like a sticking charm, binding her frozen form to the shelves behind her. She was unfamiliar with the spell though and was unsure how to counteract it once the petrificus wore off.
Draco sheathed his own wand and gripped the lapels of her robe, ripping it open to reveal her blouse and skirt underneath. Hermione stared back at him in horror, hoping that he was not about to sexually assault her. Lucius had been so adamant about teaching her to defend herself, and she'd managed to get locked into a closet by his own son! If only she could speak, she could warn him that Lucius would be angry if he harmed her.
Draco looked her up and down and then slid his hands over her waist and up her ribcage, his thumbs grazing the underside of her breasts. She could not move, could not shove him back or flinch from his touch.
Please stop. Please stop. Please don't touch me, she repeated in her head. It was incredibly disturbing to be able to feel his hands on her body but be so utterly defenseless.
"I wouldn't have guessed it, given the frumpy robes and clothing you wear, but you're not half bad, Granger," he admitted.
She tried to glare at him, furious that he'd dared touch her.
"You know, if you wanted to fuck a Malfoy, I would have given you plenty of pureblood cock had I known you looked like this." Mercifully, he did not grope her breasts, instead sliding his hands back down to her waist.
'I hate you. I hate you. I hate you, you foul, loathsome, evil little cockroach,' she repeated silently in her head.
"Someday, we're going to have a lovely little chat, you and me, Granger, and you're going to tell me all about how my father convinced Potter's mudblood prude to spread her legs. Or did Potter and his weasel sidekick get to you first?"
Tears pricked her eyes at his ugly words, but she refused to let them fall, not when he had her at such a disadvantage. He noted the look in her eyes and smirked.
"I'm guessing not then. Pity I didn't get to you before my father did. I never thought of him as the type to want to break in a virgin."
He let go of her then, much to her enormous relief.
"You might want to rethink your nightly sojourn to the library, Granger. You were all too easy to find. Still, I appreciate you making this easy for me. My father was adamant about keeping you out of the way," he said with a shake of his head. "You must be bloody fantastic at sucking cock for him to care that much. Maybe he'll reward me for this and share. I'd love to see you on your knees where you belong."
Wait, what? She tried to keep up with what he was saying. Lucius had something to do with this? Why would Lucius send Draco to keep her out of the way? Out of the way of what? Did he knew his son would lewdly insult and grope her? Surely not. What did Lucius know about whatever was about to happen?
He withdrew his wand again and pointed it at her, making her instinctively try to flinch even though she was frozen. He pried her own wand from her frozen hand and then tucked it into the pocket of her robes.
"I'm sure the witless wonder duo will find you eventually, but I need to know you'll stay put for now. I wouldn't want to make it too easy for you to undo my spellwork. Silencio!"
She screamed inside her head as he took her voice from her as well. Once the petrificus wore off, she'd have to try to use nonverbal magic to free herself.
"I'll be seeing you around, mudblood," he said as he turned and walked out of the closet without so much as a backward glance.
Anger coursed through her body as she heard the click of a lock and the sound of footsteps departing. He'd really left her there! He'd frozen her, stuck her to a set of shelves, robbed her of her voice, and left her locked in a closet. Had she been able to think rationally, it would have pleased her to know that he thought her skilled enough that he'd felt the need to enact multiple layers of protections against her magical abilities. She was angry enough though that this thought did not occur to her until much later.
He must have wanted her to at least have a fighting chance though because he'd not taken her wand. Did Lucius tell him to leave her with her wand? Or was that Draco's doing, in the hopes that she'd escape and participate in whatever was about to happen?
Of all the nights for something nefarious to go down at the castle! She knew Harry had left with Dumbledore before dinner for… something. Harry was deliberately vague about whatever mission they were on. Why did Lucius want her locked away? Was it to protect her? Or was he afraid she'd stop whatever was about to happen?
This must be the task, whatever awful thing Voldemort had required of Draco. Draco was an awful git, but he wasn't exactly an evil mastermind and the wards at Hogwarts were some of the strongest in the magical world, so how bad could whatever this was actually be? Was he to kill someone? She did not like Lucius's son, not at all, especially now that he'd groped her and said such disgusting things to her, but she did not believe that he was a killer. She didn't think he had it in him.
She was unsure how long she stood there, awkwardly frozen and stuck to the shelf, but she knew something happened because she heard an unnaturally loud boom and what sounded like a crash.
This was agony, absolute agony knowing that her friends and classmates could be injured or dying, and she was just STUCK here, waiting to either be rescued or for Malfoy's bloody charms to wear off. She'd not yet learned how to wandlessly and nonverbally undo a petrificus totalis, but it was going to be one of the first things she looked into when she got out of here.
She heard more crashes, more screams, and the sound of people running. A horrible thought suddenly entered her mind: what if the castle was on fire? No one but Malfoy knew she was here, and she could burn to death before she was able to escape!
She forced herself to concentrate on her magic, on feeling it within herself. She tried to center herself mentally, as she did when she practised occulemency with Lucius, and focus on feeling her magic, extending it from the depths of her body to the tips of her fingers.
Move, she told herself. Move. Move. Move.
Sweat beaded on her forehead, and she was breathless with the effort, but finally, finally she felt the first stirrings of movement in her fingertips. She wasn't sure how long she'd been locked in the closet or how long the sounds of destruction and chaos had raged on the other side of the door, but at last the petrificus gave way, though whether it was from her own effort or simply Malfoy's spell wearing off, she did not know. Hermione was able to awkwardly maneuver herself, stuck as she was, to withdraw her wand. Canceling the unfamiliar sticking charm non-verbally proved exceptionally difficult, and it took a great deal of concentration to undo the silencio non-verbally as well.
By the time she unbound herself and was able to focus on canceling Malfoy's locking spell on the door, her body ached from the strain of being frozen and stuck in place and from the effort of casting wandless, non-verbal magic.
"'Mione? Hermione! Are you in there?"
Ron! Yes, that was definitely Ron!
"Ron is that you?!"
"Yes! Are you alright?"
She heaved a sigh of relief. "Yes, I'm okay. Can you unlock the door?"
She waited as she heard him cast alohomora several times, but the door remained stuck.
"There's no muggle lock, and it's not opening," he called out in frustration.
Fucking Malfoy, she though in irritation. There were any number of darker charms he could have used to lock her in, and she had no doubt Lucius would have taught him well.
"Move away from the door, and let me see if I can blast it open," she said.
When Ron called out that he was safely free from any blast zone, Hermione cast a protective shield on herself and cast a bombardia maxima.
The door exploded into thousands of tiny shards and splinters of wood, scattering everywhere but bouncing harmlessly off her shield.
Marauder's map in hand, Ron rushed through the door and grabbed her, pulling her into a tight hug, which she accepted wearily.
He brushed her hair back from her sweaty face. "You okay? You don't look so good."
"Magical exhaustion. Malfoy hit me with a petrificus totalis, a sticking charm, and a silencio, plus locked me in."
His eyes widened almost comically. "And you freed yourself? Bloody hell, that's impressive! Come on, we need to get out of here."
He led her into the corridor, which was eerily silent.
"What happened? I heard a lot of noise after Malfoy left."
The haunted look on his face was impossible to ignore.
"Death Eaters. Malfoy let them in."
She followed him through the halls, numb with shock and horror as he described seeing Malfoy with Bellatrix Lestrange, Fenrir Grayback and others. He was unsure how Malfoy had managed to slip them past the school's wards, but his presence was the only explanation. She had a sinking feeling that Ron was correct - surely letting the Death Eaters into the school had been Draco's task. According to Ron, the Order of the Phoenix had been notified, and a skirmish ensued, which explained all of the blasting she'd heard. Ron's older brother Bill had been injured and was currently in the hospital wing but would survive.
"How did it end?" she asked, almost afraid of the answer.
"They left."
"What do you mean they left?"
"I mean, they left - the Death Eaters who came in, plus Malfoy and Snape. Harry saw them leave, and Snape hexed him as they left. Come on, McGonagall's gathering everyone in the Great Hall."
She stopped abruptly. "What are you not telling me?"
Ron turned when he realised she was no longer beside him, and he looked as if he'd aged years in the span of an evening.
"Dumbledore's dead. Harry said Snape killed him."
~oOo~
She was numb. She'd been numb since she escaped from that broom closet. Dumbledore was dead. Harry had witnessed Snape kill him. She'd insisted to the boys for months that Dumbledore was surely afflicted by some sort of dark curse, but she'd never expected that Snape would be the one to end their headmaster.
Harry, who'd just returned to the castle with Dumbledore, witnessed the entire thing. According to him, Malfoy had let the Death Eaters in through a broken vanishing cabinet in the Room of Requirement, disarmed their headmaster, and held him at wand-point until the Death Eaters and Snape arrived. It had all been some sort of twisted test of Voldemort's loyalty, forcing Snape to kill Dumbledore. Malfoy left with Snape and the others and had apparently not been seen since.
In his anger over the death of his mentor, Harry had lashed out at her for all the times she'd defended Malfoy in the previous months, stating that he wished he'd hit "the smarmy ferret" with the sectumsempra curse. He still refused to listen to her suspicions that Dumbledore was dying anyway, and by the time Sirius and the rest of the Order showed up for the funeral, she and Harry were barely speaking.
He and Ron had both questioned her extensively about why Malfoy had locked her in the closet, and she'd been unable to tell them it was apparently because Lucius wanted to protect her from Greyback and the others. She'd been forced to make up a lie that she'd simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Malfoy had hexed her to stop her from going for help. Mad Eye Moody did not look as if he believed her, but there had been enough disorder following Dumbledore's death that he'd not taken it upon himself to question her.
It wasn't until after Dumbledore's funeral that Harry finally pulled her and Ron aside to tell them what he'd learned about horcruxes from Professor Slughorn and from Dumbledore and how he and the late headmaster had journeyed into the depths of a cave to retrieve a horcrux, only to find out it was a fake. Hermione was horrified. Harry easily could have been killed by the inferi in the cave. What kind of headmaster sends a teenager into a situation like that?
Despite his dismay that the locket was a replica, the idea that they now actually knew how Voldemort had survived a rebound of the killing curse in 1981 and how he could be killed today had lifted Harry's spirits tremendously.
"But you don't know what the other horcruxes may be?" Hermione clarified.
"No, but we know that Dumbledore destroyed one - a ring belonging to Voldemort's grandfather - and I destroyed his diary in the Chamber of Secrets in second year. We know the necklace is number three," Harry said. "Dumbledore thought that perhaps there were six."
Six. He'd split His soul six times. The very thought was staggering. Lucius had described Him as unstable, and this would certainly explain why.
"I find the necklace and the other three items, I destroy them, and then I kill him." His tone was grim, as if he'd accepted the enormity of what fate and destiny had required him to do.
"You won't be alone, Harry. I'll come with you," Ron volunteered, hopping down from the railing and offering their friend a hug.
"I can't ask you to do that," Harry said. "I can't ask anyone else to risk their lives for me."
Ron punched him lightly in the arm. "Won't be the first time we've done something crazy for you. Why stop now? We're in this together, mate."
Harry looked both relieved and grateful, and then he turned to look at her.
She knew then, immediately, what she would do. There was no other option really. Voldemort had to be stopped. He had to be stopped to make the world safe for her and for other muggleborns, and to finally free Lucius from his forced servitude. There could be no happiness for her in a world ruled by the Dark Lord.
"I'm in too," she said. "If you'll have me."
She waited with bated breath for a response from Harry before a slow smile spread across his face.
"Of course I'll have you. After all you're the brains of this whole outfit," he said. "It wouldn't be the same without you."
She flung herself at Harry, wrapping her arms around him and Ron both.