Silence - Chapter 11
"Hermione, please open those eyes," he murmured, pushing back the rumpled hair surrounding her ashen face. He ran his fingers over her blue lips, panic rising with each moment as he fought his inert mind for what to do.
Think idiot! First rule, find the bloody source. This is from infection so you need to find the wound, heal it, and then warm her damn body! You can't let damage to further ensue by exposure so hurry up...
Draco, accordingly, began to search for whatever was drawing her life source away from him. He pulled up her shirt and scowled at the bruises marking her flesh. He owned Hermione, her body, mind, and soul, and to see such welts on his property pissed him off worse than any other covetous feeling or chloric situation he'd ever felt or been involved with. The contusions and bumps marked up her lovely, near-flawless skin to something he didn't even recognize.
"I swear I'll kill any sorry son-of-a-bitch who thinks to do such things to you again," he murmured to her, brushing her cheek with his bloody hand.
Afterward, he put his attention back to finding her injury. Whatever it was, he figured it would require spells he was unfamiliar with. Sure, their sixth and seventh years had brought upon basic knowledge of healing, but none, as he despairingly figured, that could heal her. Not to mention, his line of work in the Dark Lord's ranks did little to prepare for this sort of thing. He had been trained to kill, not to heal.
He ran his fingers along her ribs, making sure each one was steadily in place, not jabbing her internally. His fingers slid across her stomach with grace, running over her legs to check for broken bones and other possible damage. Finding nothing of the sort, his hands ran back up and slipped behind her back, stopping short when he felt, with a sick dread, moisture—
"Blood," he whimpered, pulling his right hand back to observe the crimson liquid falling down his arms. "No...no, no, no, no—NO! Hermione, I won't let you go!"
It was then when a sudden, though slightly superfluous, anger washed over him. He was pissed at Hermione beyond all reason in that moment.
"Damn it! What have you done to me?!" he asked, staring at her closed lids with a fiery heat. "I liked being the way I was. What am I saying—I loved being that way! I loved only worrying about myself. I didn't have to care about anyone other than me and it was so bloody easy. I knew I was going into battle and that was fine as long as I only had to worry about myself. Then you came along," he hissed, gesturing to her as though she could actually see his movements, an accusatory signal.
"I don't want to be in love!" he barked, throwing himself over her and planting his hands on either side of her head; "but Merlin help me, I am. I am in love with you, Hermione, and I...I WILL NOT LET YOU GO!"
Suddenly, belying his angered voice, he gently turned her on her right side, allowing him complete access to her bloodied back. If he thought she felt bad then he received a rude awakening; nothing could compare to the sight before him.
"Bloody hell," he muttered, touching her upper back to check for other injuries. Every bit of her flesh was ice, numb even to his own touch, like he could feel her pain. He ripped off his own cloak, ignoring the cold clamping down on his abnormally pale skin, and balled up the material before he gently lifted her head, letting her luscious curls slip through his fingers, and laid her upon it as means of a pillow.
He followed up by whispering every healing spell he could think of, not caring on his life what was occurring behind him. All he knew was he had to save her. If she died there on the battlefield, cold and blue in his arms, he would die as well. Draco Malfoy, notorious Slytherin prick, who once claimed he would only care for himself, was dead in love with this girl. Losing her would be losing himself.
"Damn it, Hermione, I need you to wake up. WAKE UP!" he bellowed, voice tinged with anger and slight despair.
Slowly but surely, Draco watched the spells heal her back, not fully, but enough to eliminate the foreseeable death in her near future. The branch had done damage, yes, but it was repairable. Now, the matter at hand was no longer her back, a deep gash still spread across her blue skin, but just that - her skin was still blue!
"I have to get you warm, baby," he murmured, more to himself than her. Think! THINK! You know this. How do I create heat? And then it hit him like a bludger in the gut.
"ACCIO!" he bellowed, holding out his hand to retrieve several branches. They piled into his palm, scraping his arms and grating his face in the process, but that was the least of his problems. Throwing them onto the ground, he buried himself into the snow and began to dig, building a large fire around them. Once the branches were set up, he pointed his wand into the center where he planned to set the fire.
"Incendio!" he hissed, watching the sparks fly out of his wand to set the branches ablaze. Immediately, like an ocean tidal wave splashing on the rocky banks of the surrounding beach, a flood of heat swarmed his face and body. Draco turned to Hermione and drew her in his arms, crawling on his knees to get closer to the fire.
"Sweetheart, please open your eyes. Please, Hermione," he whimpered, dropping his face into her astoundingly (still) sweet-scented hair and just breathed her in. "Hold on, love. Just hold on. Please, don't leave me. Don't make me go on alone..."
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Entirely consumed with the safety of Hermione, Draco did not even notice somebody creeping up behind him. He didn't notice the shadow of a tall man circling around them. He didn't see Jordan Lee standing upright with an angry scowl, eager to repay Hermione for the mistreatment of his closest friends.
How dare she hurt them, he'd shouted, furiously, when he first had found George, later coming across Fred; how dare she for one second think to hurt my best mates and try to get away with it?! Not bloody likely.
What's more, like his best friends and the other members of the Order, he was out for her blood strictly because she'd betrayed them all.
TREASON!
TREASON!
TREASON!
THE BITCH!
So he had followed her, watching her as she confronted Ginny and then had been left to die in the snow. Of course, he'd cocked his head to the side when he witnessed Draco Malfoy hunch over her in a state of mounting hysteria unfamiliar coming from him. Watching in a dazed fascination, he observed Draco speak to her - though he couldn't hear the words exchanged - in haste, held her throughout the whole ordeal, passed his wand over her body as if to heal her, and then summoned some loose wood from the forest in order to create a fire for the two. This didn't change his resolve; he was still going to kill her. If Malfoy got in his way it only heightened the victory, but damn it if he was going to let the bitch get away with anymore crimes.
He moved forward, out of the brush, moving with agility most would never have dreamed belonged to him. Having been friends with the Weasleys, he learned how to be stealthy yet still maintained a degree or two of clumsiness. Now, he moved through the snow as though he were a feather simply gliding along the air, ice-skating on a clear, frozen pond. He moved so well that Malfoy, still focused on the bitch, didn't notice him.
Jordan pulled out his wand made of mahogany and containing the hair of rabbit, pointing it directly at Malfoy as means of eventually getting to his prize.
Then things happened very fast.
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"Bloody hell," swore an exhausted Blaise Zabini, dragging his feet through the dirty and bloody snow. He just dueled a surprisingly talented Alicia Spinnet, a fight which had lasted a solid ten minutes, neither willing to go down.
In the end, Blaise managed to catch the girl off guard and accio'd her wand before she even realized the situation. Being a death eater, he gave little consideration to the defenseless girl before he shouted 'AVADA KEDAVRA!' and walked away, not throwing her another glance.
From there, he moved slowly along the outskirts of...come to think of it, he didn't know where he'd gone off to. He'd been so caught up with fighting one after the other that he didn't realize just how off course he'd drifted. The fighting seemed to be dying down, various bodies and carnage littered around him on all sides from every angle imaginable. Most of the snow was no longer white, but marred with a red liquid. Along with this grotesque sight came the absolute foulest smell to ever enter his nose. It was a mixture of old sweat, sour pumpkin juice (many of the victims had vomited during the duration of their dueling), and corpses - a smell he knew would haunt him forever.
Vile.
Disgusting.
Death.
Blaise felt about ready to collapse, but he held himself firm, determined to remain true to his cause until Potter fell and the light side dispersed.
Out of nowhere, Vincent Crabbe emerged baffling Blaise completely. The bloody bloke is still alive?! How in the hell is someone as incompetent as him still breathing?
His question was answered when he saw a burly Gregory Goyle and a gaunt Terrence Higgs, a former Slytherin with a little brain power unlike his comrades. Higgs must be casting while Crabbe and Goyle are the muscle - idiots. Self-preservation, I say. Worrying about others is what gets you killed.
"Oi, Zabini? Is that you?" called out Goyle, Blaise rolling his eyes at the boy's complete lack of common sense. We're in the middle of a bloody war and the moron yells out with no worries over his survival. I could have been Harry Potter for all he knows.
"Yeah, it's me. Any of you seen Malfoy?" he asked. Blaise may have been worried about his own hide, but if he did care for another person out on that field, it was Draco. Even though Draco started up a relationship with the girl he still did not trust, even so he felt concerned about his best mate.
"I saw him a ways back," muttered Higgs, looking over his bloody left shoulder. "He was searching for the mudblood, but last I saw of her she wasn't doing too hot. I think she was stabbed or something. Who knows where either of them are now."
"Which way?" asked Blaise pointedly.
"Back the way we came, but I wouldn't suggest heading over there. I saw a bunch of Gryffindors rallying and even the redheaded lass...what's her name? Gina? Ginny? The female Weasley was wandering around and firing off curses. Nobody seems to be able to take that girl down." Higgs sounded bitter, choosing to not inform Zabini how Ginny had already broken his nose and several of his ribs only an hour before.
"I'll take her down and how. You idiots just start heading back to the main line and let us men do the work," quipped Zabini, smirking when he saw a flash of annoyance surface in Higgs' green eyes.
"Be my guest," he snarled, pushing the bigger, paunchy boys in the opposite direction, no longer worried about their former dorm-mate.
Blaise set off at a quick jog, desperately hoping he'd reach his best friend before it was too late. If something did happen to the mudblood, who knows what Draco is like now? Merlin, the guy would probably be out of his mind. That means...He is either dead from not being able to defend himself or killing anything that moves, blinded by his rage.
"Shit," muttered Blaise tensely, "Shit, shit, shit..."
Moving as fast as his tired legs would carry him, Blaise trudged through the snow, diving out of the way of a few Gryffindors who were shooting curses left and right. They were young and appeared frightened so Blaise disposed of them quickly. The joys of having seventh year knowledge - the dimwitted younger students never stood a chance against him. How could a group fourth years take on someone with three years of knowledge on them?
Returning his attention back to the matter at hand - what am I doing again? Who am I looking for? Aw, shit, Malfoy! That's right, I still have to find him. Where in the bloody hell is he? And why in the fuck is it so cold?
Hypothermia threatened to engulf him and the exhaustion he felt in his legs now shifted to the rest of his body. Feeling like molten lead had been poured on him, he hauled his ass in the direction Higgs had said. In an attempt to keep himself alert, her slapped himself hard on the right cheek. Stay awake! He began to repeat in mantra, urging himself to listen to his own words - Stay awake, stay awake, stay awake...
After what felt like several hours, he finally spotted Draco and Hermione, laying in the snow, both appearing unaware of the outside world. Hermione looked dead and if she wasn't, she was on the brink of fatality. Draco, though shaking from the cold and looking sadder than he'd ever seen, a man on the edge of both insanity and utter sorrow, gave the impression he was relatively healthy.
Then he saw him.
He saw the idiot former Gryffindor walking up behind them like a cat preparing to pounce on its mouse prey.
Blaise didn't notice the woody debris around him as he stepped forward. He must have come down on a branch or something, anything that made a crunchy sound, because out of nowhere Jordan turned his wand on him. With grace he had not expected, the dark-skinned boy muttered a successful silencing spell and rendered Blaise mute. Once Jordan knew his spell had been effective based on Blaise's frantic hand gestures and furious expression, he smirked and waved, as if saying - watch! Come and watch while I KILL your best friend! You Slytherin bastards deserve all of this.
Oh, shit! Blaise thought sickly; Draco turn around! You bloody fool, just turn around and kill the wanker! DRACO!
Blaise could not defeat the silence. His words would not come out and the Gryffindor was still approaching the near-swooning couple. He had to act fast, swiftly, and just plain...do something, before he lost them both for good. Even though he questioned Granger's loyalty everyday before this, on the off chance she was true to their cause it was best to keep her alive. They needed everyone they could get.
A sacrifice of one in order to leave two?
Draco...you better win this war or else this will have been in vain. Damn you - DAMN YOU!
Then, without another coherent thought about whether he'd made the right decision, Blaise practically flew across butchery ground, holding his breath, and tore toward his best mate and his friend's lover. His black boots stepped on various limbs littered on the ground, some of the fallen he'd even recognized with a feeling of odd detachment, hurling himself at them.
Please, don't be too late. Let me get there before the idiot speaks. Let me get there in time. Please, don't be too late. Don't be too late. Don't be too l—
Blaise threw himself in front of Draco right as a green light emerged from the former quidditch announcer's wand, blinding him.
And then the pain was gone.
And then the worries were gone.
And then nothing.
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Draco, though consumed with Hermione, reacted much like he did when he was playing quidditch. Someone with less expertise and skill would have been scrambling to figure out the situation. Draco didn't work like that - kill and then think bored a firm place into his mind. Knowing the green light had been directed at him, but somehow managed to miss, he turned around, fired on instinct.
"AVADA KEDAVRA!"
Jordan Lee fell to the snow with a heavy thud; no more.
Draco stared at the boy for a moment, sweeping over his features and read an expression that signified a sense of daft unexpectedness, before he turned back to Hermione. Pleased to see some of her color returning and the blue of her lips dulling, he turned around again to investigate how the Lee idiot had missed.
How could he have missed? I didn't see the spell deflect and it didn't go over my head, so how did it miss? How did it—
"Oh fuck. FUCK!"
Blaise. Blaise fucking Zabini. You stupid bloke, what were you thinking? Why sacrifice yourself for me? I mean...I wouldn't have done it for you, would I?
When it came down to it, he actually figured he would have. Very few people he would die for, but Blaise would have been one of them. Hermione, surely, and his parents, of course, but Blaise...Yeah, I guess I would have done the same. Merlin though...I wish you didn't have to do it.
Draco, unexpectedly, found himself seething all of the sudden, angry at his friend. This time, he voice his opinions aloud, as though Blaise laid on the snow in a daze, out yet aware; like he could hear him–
"Damn it, why didn't you just say something?! Why did you stay silent? Damn you, you could have told me to watch out, to look behind me and you didn't. Bloody hell, this is a mess. Why didn't you just scream for me to turn around?"
Just like the moments before Blaise's death, the answer to the question came out in silence. Just silence.
Feeling the need to treat his friend with a decency that nobody else on the battlefield had received, Draco marched over to Jordan, removed the boy's cloak, kicked him in the groin for good measure, and then returned back to Blaise.
"Thanks, mate," he murmured, before he covered him from head to toe with the dark material. "Thanks."
"Draco?"
The sweetest voice he'd ever heard abruptly halted his feelings of grief over his best friend, knocking him senseless really. In a moment of total idyllic bliss, Draco stood with his back to her, just drinking in her voice. The melodic waves of her words wrapped around him like a force-field, something so strong he could not be touched. In that instant, in that moment, Draco was safe and peaceful in just hearing her voice. The only thing greater than hearing her speak lyrically would be to see her, awake and healthy. Dare he hope? Dare he hope she truly was alive and well and this was not some cruel trick his mind played on him? Perhaps this was just a beautiful mirage and Hermione was still out; turning around would only bring unpleasant silence.
"Draco," she whispered more forcefully.
"Hermione," he croaked, his voice hoarse with emotion.
When he turned around, he was greeted by the most amazing sight - Hermione was awake and staring back at him, her brown eyes focused on his.
A/N: Thank you all for the support you've given me. I'm doing much better now - though I'll never get over this - and trying to get back to normal. I appreciate everything that everyone has said. It means quite a bit - thank you. To those of you who asked who I lost - sorry, I don't reveal that sort of information on here. I don't know any of you (save for two) and while I appreciate curiousity - it's not really anyone else's place.
I'll try to update soon though I can't say when. This story is only a few short chapters away from being finished (probably two, possibly three - I highly doubt anymore than that, but never say never, right?) and I want them to be great!
READ AND REVIEW!! If you can read it, then you can review it.
Evil's Mistress is the work of fanfiction. The characters belong to J.K. Rowling, but the featured story is mine.