Ephraim

Chapter four – The fever and the stitches

Hermione's POV

Hermione tried for the fourth time to get a reaction from Malfoy. He had crashed right on his bum in the snow. Because of the heavy falling hail that fell relentlessly on both of them, and since Draco's body refused to get up, the witch was panicking. She was about to slap him once more when he drowsily woke up, hand unconsciously going for his long gone dark mark. The young Gryffindor sighed in relief.

- Thank Merlin, you woke up.

Her Slytherin schoolmate sat up, opened his mouth to speak, and ended up coughing blood. The red added to the blood already staining the ground. He shivered and his breathing started to sound strained. He was emitting a strange wheezing sound. Hermione didn't let it show but it scared her. If his health deteriorated more, they'd stay stranded in the snow storm. He shakily brought a hand to his shoulder and roughly pulled the knife buried deep in the muscle with a half scream. More blood gushed from the wound and Hermione cursed. Now it flowed faster than before.

- Hey Malfoy. Malfoy! She shook him, careful not to hurt him further as he blinked confusedly. You need to apparate us away from here or we'll die of hypothermia.

- What? He slurred.

Hermione put his hand on his forehead carefully, pushing the tousled blond bangs out of the way. He was burning up with a brewing fever.

- Oh Merlin! Let us get to safety!

- No need to call me Merlin Hmionee-eeh. Just call me Draco.

Great. At least his usually defective sense of humour stayed untouched. Being in the snow with a knife wound in the shoulder didn't help.

- Malfoy, apparate us away. I still can't do it myself.

- Are you, Hmion-ioney Granger, the queen of know-it-alls and Gryffindor ask me. Me Dwaco the Slytherin for help?! He chuckled to himself weakly.

Did he just call himself Dwaco?

- Yes! Please! Just get us out of here and somewhere warm!

The cold was beginning to hurt her cheeks, and she wasn't sure if it was physically possible to feel herself turning blue, but it sure as hell wasn't feeling good. Malfoy tried to say something but it just sounded like an intelligible blabber. She wondered what was up with him but shook off all the question blaming the confusion on the blood loss.

- Somewhere warm… yah.

She took his cold hand into (Mind you, hers weren't much warmer) and helped him up. She supported his weight after he swayed a bit. Finally they found a position that was comfortable. Arms wrapped around the Slytherin's waist in an awkward pose, Hermione all but supported his weight, and man, was the guy heavy. His head rested on her shoulders. He was breathing hard, coughing, and it shook the young witch's body, endangering the precarious equilibrium they had achieved. She was a petite girl and he was tall and surprisingly, realised Hermione, athletic.

- Somewhere warm. Repeated Draco in a daze. He closed his eyes and concentrated.

It took a couple of times, but he finally managed to transport them out of the dreaded snowstorm.

They landed, to Hermione's great happiness, on a wooden floor and not in nature. She quickly stood, wand in hand, ready to fight back if need be. When the witch had scanned her surroundings with careful attention and deemed it safe enough, she lowered her wand and dropped her stance. Exhaling a shaky breath she didn't know she was holding, she found herself amazed by her surroundings. A ray of sunshine hit her eye and she all but ran to the window. They were in a large house, quaint and seemingly comfortable, surrounded by vegetation that looked like… A vineyard?! Yes, a vineyard. She could she the beginning of grapefruits growing. The sky was of a wonderful blue, the burnt orange sun haloed by a pink hue. It was sundown, and she couldn't take her eyes off the beautiful scenery painted before her.

The sharp pain that returned to her hip, however, was enough to make her cringe. She was about to conjure a healing spell but was interrupted by the violent coughs of Malfoy, who she had momentarily forgotten. She'd have time later to explore the house and heal her bruises. Malfoy had fallen in another restless slumber, coughing from the back of his throat. Normally he had a fair complexion, when she had found him in the freezing dungeon he was paler than usual and now he was turning a little greyish, which, even with Hermione's more than basic knowledge in healthcare, wasn't good. Just as abruptly as his coughing had started, it stopped, and the eerie silence was scarier than the raking sounds he was making.

- Malfoy? Can you hear me? She tried waking him up, taking hesitant steps towards his form.

He had a strange spasm and let out a grunt of pain, turning of himself. At least, he was moving again. But he seemed in pain. That's about when Hermione saw something she hadn't noticed before. Since Draco's shirt had lifted in his convulsive state, it revealed something inky black in the small of his back. Hermione dropped to her knees near the fallen boy to observe.

It looked like a tattoo. A tribal style tree made of charcoal coloured ink. The branches and the leaves grew all the wall to his shoulder blades, she realised as she pushed the shirt all the way up. Upon closer inspection, she saw one of the leaves fall like it was autumn and gracefully dance to the ground. As it touched what looked like the roots of the tree, Draco's back arched and his face twisted in pain.

- Oh god. Hermione let out as realisation hit her. Each time a leaf falls to the ground he feels pain.

She remembered reading about how the dark wizard would cast it upon their traitors. It didn't kill the victim, merely inflicted pain. Now she recalled Bellatrix Lestrange casting that unknown spell. Malfoy must've caught it with his body when they apparated. They called it the roots of fever. There was no way Hermione could stop it. They'd have to wait until all the leaves fell. There were hundreds.

Hermione sighed. She started by taking off Malfoy's not-so-white-anymore shirt. She struggled to keep his body as still as possible when another leaf fell. She took her time to wash the bloody gash on Draco's shoulder, then stitched it magically, the stitching needle moving in sync with her wand. It was tricky to not stab him with it when he moved in his sleep-like comatose.

- Come on now Malfoy. She lifted his body with magic and ungracefully dropped him on the kitchen table.

- Okay Granger. Time to explore. Oh great! She was talking to herself now.

As she walked around the neutral coloured hallways, she thought about the events that had taken place the days before. She chuckled opening the first door. It had just been two days and she was stuck in a house God-knew-where with her once school enemy. Nope, just a drawing room. She closed the wooden doors and kept going in the same direction. She stumbled on the next two doors and found a huge library, to her great happiness. There was also a reading room, annex to the first one. Finally she found what she was searching for. Two bedrooms, next to each other, separated by a bathroom as big as the prefect's one at Hogwarts. The first one was obviously a boy's room. Painted blue and white with hand painted canvas of bright colours. The second, a master's bedroom, sported beige, brown and navy blue as its colours.

The young Gryffindor backtracked, lifted her blond schoolmate again and made him float all the way to the first room, who had a painted white ceiling. She, gently this time, let him fall on the bed and moved him so he was a minimum comfortable. She took off his shoes, throwing them to the other side of the room. With a couple of flicks of wand, she changed his underwear and pants, looking the other side to give him a bit of privacy. Now in clean slack joggings, she washed his face and hair.

"Now, she thought, that's better."

She drew invisible barriers to keep him from falling. The roots of fever would, as Hermione previously calculated, take a month or two until the tree would be empty of leaves. She sighed again as the young man twisted slightly, groaning in discomfort. She just stood there, rocking on her heels. Honestly at that point there was nothing she could do. She moved a strand of hair falling over his eyebrows and brushed a hand against the bruises still remaining on his face.

- Okay then. Sleep well Malfoy. I… I promise I'll find a way to cure you.

Hermione closed the door behind her. Little did she know she wouldn't be able to keep her promise.

Draco's POV

Draco couldn't see very well. In fact, he couldn't see at all. He could barely hear. It was like a radio between two frequencies. Sometimes he could hear Hermione talking… to him? To herself? It didn't matter. It was all so far, so far away. And just when he thought he was finally going to sleep, he was jolted by a horrible pain in the back. If he could compare, he'd say it was akin to a very bad itch. Painful. Unattainable. He tried several times to reach around, to scratch it until it was gone but somehow he found himself unable to move.

"Bedridden just took a whole new meaning. He thought dryly. That's what you get for saving a know-it-all Gryffindor. You should have stayed in that cell."

"You know you don't really mean that."

Another nagging voice joined his own. Oh the irony of how it suspiciously sounded like the sarcastic, slightly bitchy voice of Blaise Zabini, his best friend.

"Oh shut it Zabini. You and I know very well that you couldn't stand her in school either."

"Don't get me mixed up with Crabbe and Goyle. I always thought she was smart. Maybe even smarter than you." Blaise's laugh sounded in his head.

"No way that mud… muggleborn was better than me in school."

"That's it, fool yourself and pout Draco. You know, I still have no idea what Pansy Parkinson saw in you."

"Why the hell are you here Zabini?"

"Well, I'm not really Blaise. I'm really your conscience. Or what you believe is the closest to the right thing. It just comes in Blaise Zabini's form."

"Okay, let's just say I understand that. Tell me why you are here."

"Oh. I'm here to keep you company for the next months."

Oh joy.