Malfoy Manor – Wiltshire, England
13 November, 2001
Hermione was exhausted by the time she'd managed to pull her weary body up the stairs from the lab and into the library. She entered to find everyone there.
In the months following Warrington's exposed betrayal, they'd all pulled together to research every potions formulae or concoction known to wizarding man, sitting here night after night to research through books that hadn't seen the light of day in centuries (many of them had been stolen from the shelves of the Headmaster's office in Hogwarts, and others from the abandoned Ministry Departments – especially those of the Unspeakables - on nighttime raids). They'd banded together as a family in this desperate effort, ignoring Vampire Clan, former House affiliation and blood purity issues, to offer her any suggestions to aid in finding the winning combination of ingredients. As test after test failed to find a cure and their deadline fast approached, their efforts had doubled.
Tonight, she could finally tell them to stop.
Every eye was on her as she took a deep breath and let it out. She nodded as she locked gazes with her lover, and her voice was rough, laced with the fatigue that comes with no sleep for days on end. "We have our cure."
X~~~~~~~~~~X
European Ministry's Temporary Headquarters – Paris, France
4 December, 2001
Hermione and Draco were Side-Along Apparated by Mopsy to Paris to meet with the Ministry and Muggle world leaders to present their cure.
With her consent, they'd tested it on Patricia, a living victim, and it had worked. They then tested it on several infected humans. What they found was that those who were already in the first stage of the virus – that was, those who were bitten, but hadn't yet died – were cured of the plague and immune to catching it thereafter. Those in stage two – the victims that had succumbed to the disease and died, and were reanimated as zombies – fell over in final death within minutes of being exposed to the cure (which had been dried up into a powder and dispersed by pushing air behind it). It required a good dose directly in the face to do the job, but it was one-hundred percent effective.
The magic combination: the bile of flesh-eating slugs combined with garlic and the mold of an orange.
"You're joking," the British Muggle Prime Minister skeptically stated. "You're telling us that slugs, a common household spice, and penicillin kills zombies?"
Lecture time! This truly was the best part of Hermione's job!
She launched into a long-winded explanation of how the bile of the magical flesh-eating slugs was responsible for the dissolving and digestion of any type of fleshy material, from plant life to animal life, rotting or infected. She then described how the slug used its radula – its rough tongue that had rows of tiny teeth – to scrape away at the dissolved flesh for ingestion. "By nature, magical flesh-eating slugs are at the top of the evolutionary ladder because they've adapted to be able to survive on just about anything," she stated. "They're alongside reptiles for having the most advanced immune systems on the planet. They'd have to be, as they're omnivorous, to include the cannibalistic eating of other slugs, as well as eating carrion. They've also evolved a thicker skin coating to prevent drying out – something their non-magical relatives have yet to master. Their only real weakness is Flesh-Eating Slug Repellent, which contains Metaldehyde – the poison contained in most Muggle slug pesticides. Basically, not much can kill these little blighters, and their bile is powerful enough to dissolve and eat anything in its path, just about – including the zombie virus."
She spoke next of the healing properties of garlic, as used by the Greek and Roman armies for centuries. "Even back in ancient days, its properties to heal were known, though not well understood. There were rumours that garlic was heavily used during the Black Death epidemic of 1347 to 1353. When we went back and read the wizarding history of that same event, it seems that garlic was, in fact, used a key ingredient in remedies to prevent the spread of the disease. What they didn't know, but what we do now in our modern era, is that garlic boosts a person's natural immunity by strengthening white blood cells, which fight off infection. That's how it indirectly keeps disease at bay."
So she could connect the dots, she went into a discourse about Vampire biology, as much as she had learned from Cris Warrington over the past few months. "The fact that Vampires, in general, find the smell of garlic abhorrent tell us that there is something in the plant's chemical properties that does not agree with their systems. When we experimented, we discovered that the zombie plague – a result of Vampire blood curses co-mingling – was affected by the amount of allicin – a chemical produced in garlic. Allicin is an allergen to most Vampires because it attacks their immune system, rather than boosts it, because they're undead. In short, the Vampire-zombie virus physically retreated when in the presence of allicin under the microscope."
Taking a deep breath, she embarked upon the final part of this journey in describing how the vaccine was developed from all three of the ingredients they'd discovered as key to solving this particular enigma. "What we did, in effect, was engineer a super zombie virus killer. We did that by combining allicin with penicillin – a known antibiotic that comes from the mold on an orange rind – which strengthened the allicin's ability to act as an immune booster. We then worked through much trial-and-error to get the bile of a flesh-eating slug to bond to the allicin, rather than attempt to eat it. It required magic – Biothaumaturgy, specifically - to accomplish that part. We then introduced a dead version of the zombie virus – killed using formalin, a formaldehyde and water solution, per standard Muggle practice - and got that to bond on the outside of the slug bile, which was covering the allicin-penicillin compound. Again, that required Biothaumaturgy. We then delivered the vaccine through a dried resin-based vector for the best results. Blowing it directly into the face of a zombie, so it would run up the nostril cavities, into the tear ducts and into the mouth guaranteed absorption. Within minutes, stage two zombies fell over, finally dead, and stage one victims began to fight off the infection. Their complete return to health occurred over a period of two to three days under twenty-four hour strict bed rest."
"Voila!" she concluded with little fanfare. "A cure accomplished using wizarding, Vampire and Muggle techniques and teamwork."
After that discussion, it came down to how much vaccine could be replicated and how long it would take. Thanks to the Geminio Spell, she explained to them that it was possible to make as much vaccine as they needed in seconds. It could be distributed by airplane dump runs, much the same as pesticides used to be dropped upon crops. Teams of military-trained personnel, dressed in biohazard suits, could lure out zombies from indoor spaces and spray the vaccine directly into their faces using hoses on jury-rigged fire trucks or extinguishers. The whole clean up could happen in sixty days, maybe less, depending on how many people they put on the project. The Ministry volunteered the Aurors and Hit Wizards as guard protection to ensure the Muggle military teams were safe.
Nuclear holocaust had been averted. Everyone was optimistic that life could return to Great Britain by next year and resume.
The leader of Clan Toreador in Europe approached Draco that night in their hotel. A bargain was struck that he was to be the head of Toreador Vampires in Britain, now that Sanguini had died, a victim of the plague. The Clan leader – a fourteen-hundred year old Vampire - was impressed by Draco's accomplishments as a newly made Kine, and he saw the benefit of keeping a wizard-turned-Vamp of such prestige and with such powerful friends, as an ally rather than make him an enemy. He was told in no uncertain terms that he would be watched, especially as he'd maintained such close friendships with other Vampire Clan members, but he would be free to act as he wished so long as he and his allies never threatened the continent, and they obeyed the precepts set down by their Antediluvian creator ages ago. Draco easily agreed to the bargain, winning all he'd wanted from the negotiations.
The Clan leader assured he would pass the information of their meeting on to all of the other Toreador leaders in the other parts of the world at their meeting in Madrid next year. Draco made it clear that that he would be attending that meeting as the representative of Britain.
X~~~~~~~~~~X
Malfoy Manor – Wiltshire, England & The Burrow - Ottery St. Catchpole, England
14 December, 2001
Voldemort's body was discovered in the ancestral Riddle House in Little Hangleton. He had died of the zombie plague, having magically tied himself up in his favorite chair to avoid moving about, and overlooking the ravaged village below where every citizen had died of the disease as well. How he contracted the plague, no one could say, but it was clear that he'd died fairly early on, as his skeleton was in a bad state of decay. Hermione speculated that he'd been bitten while at Hogwarts by an infected and fled, hoping to escape his fate – and that was why the wards around the school collapsed as they had. With no barrier to keep them in, the stage two zombies had free roaming privileges on the Scottish countryside, and stage one victims had Apparated out, fleeing the same as their Master – and thus spread the plague. The citizens of Little Hangleton had obviously become infected by somehow encountering Voldemort.
Hermione couldn't manage a smile of joy at the news, even thought the Dark Lord's death officially brought about an end to the war. A terrible chapter of wizarding history could close at long last.
She had lost the will to care.
"Are you going to continue to punish us both?" Draco asked, hands in his pockets and staring out the window of their shared bedroom into the moonlit garden below.
"I'm not trying to punish you," she whispered, feeling tears course down her cheeks. "I just can't… bear to look at you right now."
Oh, yes, during the months of his incarceration, Cris Warrington had been, much to her pleasant surprise, a fount of information on the zombie plague, on how dead and living tissue worked on a cellular level that not even Muggle science understood, and how it could be magically manipulated to be used for one's purposes (à la Biothaumaturgy). All of that had been vital in developing the method of making the flesh-eating slug bile bond with the ancillin-penicillin as well as the dead virus they'd attached to it to make the vaccine. Of course, his bargain for them to obtain such pertinent information had been harsh – a punishment meant for her and Malfoy alone. They'd accepted his terms, and been terribly wounded by the deal, but in the end, they'd gotten what they needed to make the cure. All it had cost them was their hearts…
"We had no choice," he stated for the hundredth time. "We needed his knowledge, and his powers prevented us from using Legilimency or other types of memory extraction on him. There was no way to get at his information without him physically telling it to us. You know that."
Yes, they'd been through it a hundred and one times. It didn't change anything.
"I'm not angry at you for his requirement that you have sex with some of the other women in front of me, or for feeding from their throats while I was forced to watch," she explained. "You were under duress, and Warrington was a sick, sadistic man. I'm just glad you finally killed him. No, I'm angry with you because you lied to me, and because I had to find out about that fact from someone like Cris. You said you wouldn't hurt me, Draco, but you have done. You've taken my choice about my future away from me by not explaining what our bonding truly meant. When Voldemort did that to you the night he threw that Toreador Vampire into your room and ordered him to Embrace you, you cursed him for it. You tried to kill yourself because of it. So, I think you should understand when I say that I… I don't think I can forgive you so easily."
He was at her feet in an instant, kneeling. Hermione shifted on the sofa, uncomfortable with him being so near her now. They hadn't touched in over two months. Yes, the distance between them was killing her a little bit more every day, but if she let him touch her, she knew she'd lose her will again. She couldn't let that happen. Too many people had taken from her throughout her life, especially the last three years.
"I'm sorry," he pleaded, eyes filled with sincere remorse and regret. "I was so afraid that if I told you what the bonding would do – that it would make you un-aging, tied to my lifeforce, and unable to have children - that you'd…"
"Deny you?" she finished for him. "If I had a choice, you thought I'd tell you to stuff it, so rather you didn't give me any choice at all. You manipulated me by seducing me and withholding all of the information so I could make an informed decision."
He lowered his head, showing her the back of his neck – the Vampire's sign of surrender, a gesture of complete vulnerability. "I'm so sorry, beloved - so incredibly sorry. Please, please don't go. Don't leave me! Hermione, please."
Hesitantly, she reached out and touched his long, soft champagne and vanilla-coloured hair. He shuddered at the contact, and with a sob, he had his arms around her middle and his face buried in her lap. His tears stained her Muggle jeans, which she'd begun wearing months ago around the lab, and now preferred for everyday wear.
"I love you," he cried, finally giving the words their freedom. "I love you so much it hurts to be without you."
"I know," she admitted, letting her tears flow unchecked down her cheeks.
She could finally understand poor Ellie's and Evan's broken hearts. As suspected, the young witch and Rosier had not made it. Once the cure had begun to be distributed and things had been finalized with his Ravnos Clan leader (who had come to speak with him from the continent), he'd finally told her that he loved her, and then he'd set her free, taking the collar from around her neck and tossing it into the trash. He'd left with the other Vampire a beat later, refusing to turn back to answer Eleanor's pleading calls for his attention. Hermione could now relate to that kind of pain. Staying here hurt, and yet the thought of leaving here hurt even more. It was the worst kind of Catch-22.
"What can I do to fix this?" he implored. "Do you want me to" - he paused, swallowing with tight anxiety - "break the bond? Do you want me to set you free?"
She considered the offer for a few quiet moments before making her decision.
"Yes."
His chest hitched and he turned his face into her lap, taking deep, gulping breaths.
It took him long minutes to regain control. When he was finally able to, he lifted his head off of her and released his hold around her waist, resting his palms on the cushions of the sofa, instead. He wouldn't look her in the eye, instead focusing on her abdomen. He nodded once. "I… I need to touch you above your heart and to… to kiss you."
"How do you know?" she asked. As far as she knew, he'd never done this before.
He tapped the side of his head. "It's in here. Same as I knew how to bond to you to begin with. Part of the innate magic of Toreador."
She nodded and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "All right."
Slowly, he placed his left palm over her heart, and with his right, he cupped the back of her neck. Sitting up on the couch at her side, he turned her to face him. Their mouths were inches apart, and their eyes were searching each other for answers which didn't come.
It happened fast. He leaned in and latched onto her mouth, opening her up with pressure applied to the bottom of her jaw with his thumb. There was the taste of him in her mouth again, and then it grew colder through the middle of her chest, as if her heat were being stolen away. That same feeling that had broken her apart so many months ago, when they'd first made love and he'd bitten her, trading her life's fluid for a piece of his soul, overtook her again, and she sobbed. There was no accompanying orgasm this time, but instead only a deep despair – the exact opposite of the joy she had received back then.
A moment later, he'd pulled his mouth from hers, and it was done. She could feel the hollow spot in her magical aura and in her spirit that existed where once his lifeforce had resided. He paused for a few heartbeats to rest his forehead on hers. Neither of them moved nor spoke. It was a quiet moment needed to accept what had been done.
In a flash, he was up off the sofa and across the room again, staring out the window in the exact spot he'd begun the night's conversation. "Go," he offered her. "I won't stop you."
On shaky knees, Hermione made her feet, holding a tight grip on her wand. "I'm going to the Burrow. I want to check on the Weasleys, and then… I'm going to find my parents in Australia. I took their memories from them."
"Without their permission. Just like me," he cruelly pointed out, but his tone was anything but. He sounded… broken.
"Yes," she agreed, knowing he was right. Regardless of her good reasons, what she'd done to her parents – taking their choice away from them, and setting them up to live a lie - was unconscionable, and was no different than what Voldemort and his followers had done to her first, and later what Draco had done when he'd bonded her. The metaphor could be extended even further to include Warrington, and Rosier, and… "It's like you said: everyone's a monster, deep down inside. Some of us are just better at hiding it."
"The wards are lowered," he informed her in a deadened voice.
"Thank you. Goodbye, Draco."
She raised her new wand, closed her eyes, and Apparated away, pretending she didn't hear him call out after her – "No!" - as the thunder and the pull of the teleportation magic took her far from his side.
This was for the best, she kept telling herself as she landed on the edge of the Burrow's familiar golden field of tall marsh grass. It was time to be free. She'd been a captive for far too long - to herself, to others. She wasn't dead, as she'd once believed lying on the floor of her cell in Azkaban. She was alive and she had survived the impossible: a genocidal war and a deadly plague. Now, she could enjoy the life she'd fought so hard to keep.
As she walked the familiar path towards the Weasley's front door, hoping to see at least one familiar face from her past greet her today, Hermione realized that Cris Warrington had been wrong all along in chasing the ultimate false dream. Gaining true immortality was as elusive a goal as mastering Death. Just ask the Peverell brothers.
TO BE CONTINUED…