Author's Note: We're headed into the final stretch, folks. One more chapter and an epilogue are in order, I believe. Thanks, as always, to my wonderful beta, Bean.
Chapter 22
Voldemort turns her around, pressing his forehead against the softness of her hair as his fingers work at the buttons down her robes. He wishes he could use his wand, but he heeds Hermione's demand that he remain as magicless as possible within his quarters. Voldemort follows that demand diligently now.
After Hermione finished her assessment, she did not immediately withdraw her hands like she had in the past. Her palms smoothed against his chest as she bowed her head and kept her eyes closed.
Voldemort knew what she found. When she was inside him, his mind was open to her and she made sure to keep hers open to him. It embarrassed her less than it used to, but his humiliation at such exposure still had not faded, even if the dynamic between them had changed.
At first, Voldemort simply laid there, his arms tight against his sides. He loathed every second of the invasion; that had not changed. He recognized the necessity, of course, so he didn't protest anymore, but he still despised the procedure.
He doubted he would despise it less even if Hermione had found something more promising. They had both observed the spreading decay within the course of a few weeks – since the last assessment following the third battle – and the unraveling, fraying threads binding together his physical and magical bodies.
At this point, neither of them was surprised. Hermione thought he might have known longer than she did, that he somehow knew even before he sent in a request to the Medicus Order, and maybe that was the reason why he had in the first place. By a less intelligent man's reckoning, Hermione had failed the task he set for her.
But no matter how he skewed the data, he came to the same conclusion every time: The disease and decay started eating away at him before he ever contacted the Medicus Order, and Hermione's mind and her persistence made her the perfect Medicus for him. She had done everything she possibly could. Anything she did to exacerbate the condition while she tried to cure it didn't mean she caused it. She had not failed.
Lord Voldemort had failed.
Her robes spread open to reveal the expanse of her back. Voldemort doesn't slide the sleeves down her arms yet. He traces the lines of the Medicus seal, over the ripple of her spine all the way down to its base. As he salutes the back of her neck, Hermione's breath hitches. She moves one of the hands holding the front of her robes against her chest up to guide his lips to hers.
They begin slowly, as slowly as he wants, but she soon presses for more, and he acquiesces. That kind of invasion he welcomes, and the passion it represents.
He strips her robes off her then, like a serpent shedding its skin.
Frantic knocking at the door jolted them out of their respective thoughts. Hermione was fully clothed, but Voldemort stood from the bed and picked up his robes.
"Carmen," he said to Hermione. "You may let him in."
Hermione opened the door, and Carmen swooped in, grasping the front of his flying carpet. Bad news etched deeper, troubled lines into Carmen's face. He pulled himself short when he saw Voldemort pulling his robes over his shoulders and doing up the fastenings the slow way.
"Did I interrupt—?" he began. He looked between Hermione and Voldemort, took in Voldemort's state of undress and her impeccable uniform. Carmen displayed chagrin rather than smugness, which testified further to the gravity of whatever news he brought. Hermione felt like she had swallowed a cold stone weighing heavy in her stomach.
"No, no, Carmen, nothing like that," Hermione replied, locking the door behind him. "Medical evaluation only."
"What do you need?" Voldemort asked. Carmen was one of only two Death Eaters Voldemort permitted to see him without his robes, appearing vulnerable, since he had seen Voldemort like that before. But Voldemort did not hide his impatience with Carmen's easy distraction.
"I'm sorry, my lord." Carmen swallowed. "Bellatrix and Rodolphus are dead. And so are Avery and Nott. Murdered in their sleep."
Voldemort paused in the act of buttoning his robes, his fingers posed like frozen spiders against the dark velvet. Then he continued, completing his task before pulling his wand out from the sheath up his sleeve.
"Show me," he said.
"There are no marks, no signs of torture, my lord," Carmen said. "I could show you the bodies, but there's nothing to show. It was the Killing Curse, untraceable."
"Executions," Voldemort said, clenching his fist around his wand. "From within."
"You mean the traitor?" Carmen asked.
"What do you know about that?" Voldemort snapped.
"Everyone knows by now, my lord," Carmen said, trying to placate him. Carmen, by his very ostentatious nature, could not melt into the woodwork or make himself small or scarce very easily, but it almost amused Hermione to watch him try.
Unfortunately, the deaths of four of Voldemort's most prominent and loyal Death Eaters meant that any potential amusement collapsed under creeping, numbing fear. If the traitor felt secure enough to attack Death Eaters within the fortress itself, then Hermione thought it might be time to implement a new Medicus duty that she had previously used only on the battlefield: bodyguard.
Or traitors, she thought, because Hermione didn't believe one person could have killed those four, not even in their sleep, especially Bellatrix and Rodolphus, who did not sleep alone.
"I should cut out Wormtail's tongue for telling," Voldemort said. He swept past Carmen's carpet. Carmen grasped his shoulder, and Voldemort reacted predictably, wrenching away. Remembering who he was trying to stop, Carmen jerked his hand back.
"Draco was the one who informed Wormtail of the possibility, and if Wormtail hadn't told you, Lucius would have," Carmen explained. "I wouldn't care if you ripped his tongue out of his head, but there are so many more reasons to do so without punishing him for an insufficiency he doesn't have."
"Voldemort," Hermione said. She came up behind him and touched his arm lightly, just to alert him to her presence. She need not have bothered. If the Dark Mark did not tell him how near she was, then the additional binding between them – enhanced by the recent assessment – would have. "There aren't many secrets in a place like this, even fewer since they can't leave like they used to. Remember how hard it was to keep secrets back at Hogwarts?"
"For other people to keep secrets," Voldemort corrected, but some of the tension drained out of him. Hermione suspected that his reaction came from the results of the evaluation, the crippling loss of crucial supporters to his cause, and the insult of a spy among his Death Eaters more than any real malice toward Wormtail. He had never told Wormtail not to spread the information about the possibility of a traitor in their midst. However, the knowledge that someone worked against them from within only served as another piece of evidence that Voldemort was losing his touch. All the more reason for Voldemort to snuff out the traitor before he or she did any more damage.
Not that it would make much difference in the end. Hermione and Voldemort knew the helplessness of futility well.
But they also knew how to keep secrets.
The fire before them blazes high. Even though winter still rages outside the fortress, Hermione's skin glistens with sweat from the heat. The skin under his robes stays smooth and dry. Voldemort licks a line up her spine and tastes salt. Her breath hitches. She tries to face him, but he stops her, wrapping his hand around her wrist.
"No," he whispers. He pulls his unfastened robes to the sides like black wings, drapes them over the arms of the chair, and pulls Hermione down. His arousal nudges her leg, and he moans as she addresses it.
She leans back to rest her head against the back of the chair next to his. His eyes gleam, like blood spilled on marble. He cannot quite meet her gaze, instead staring into the blaze. He clenches his jaw. Nevertheless, he releases his hold on her wrist and slides his palm instead over her thigh, each pass higher than the last.
Hermione kisses him first, sensing his hesitation. His pleasure is even more evident to her when she withdraws. He pants, uneven rhythm with a trace of anger. Never at her anymore. There's nothing left to hate her for.
The Death Eaters buried the bodies. Most bodies left over in the fortress were cremated; then again, the dead they usually threw away came from bodies they believed worthless. Any other dead fertilized the battlefields and attack sites. The fortress had never needed a cemetery before.
No one said any words over the graves. Voldemort had no respect for death, and so any care that the Death Eaters carried for the dead would be given after Voldemort left. He oversaw the interment, however, his body like a snake coiled to strike as he supervised the lowering of the caskets. He met the eyes of none of his followers, but they were fools if they believed he did not observe them. His presence thrummed through their Dark Marks with shallow Legilimency. Whoever had committed the crime either covered their tracks or schooled their thoughts well enough to hide their involvement from Voldemort's prying mind.
Hermione paid no attention to the graves of Avery and Nott. She welcomed the rot coming to them, a maggot for every child they killed.
She should have felt the same way about Bellatrix and Rodolphus, who deserved at least as many. But she remembered that, although they believed in the importance of blood purity and although Bellatrix had jealously contributed to her torment nine years ago, the Lestranges had been some of the first Death Eaters to welcome her as a Medicus, regardless of her bloodline.
There was no love lost for Bellatrix or her husband, but Hermione at least spared them a few minutes of her time, staring at the temporary headstones erected in their honor. They would have wanted to be buried in the family plot, but that simply wasn't possible at this point. Perhaps when this whole mess was finished – one way or the other – their wishes would be honored.
When Hermione turned away from the Lestranges' graves, she found herself face-to-face with Lucius and Draco. Their expressions seemed strangely solemn to her until she remembered that Bellatrix and Rodolphus were part of the Black family tree, too.
"What are they to you, Medicus?" Lucius spat quietly, advancing to force her aside. Hermione had the impression that he used "Medicus" as a substitute for another appellation entirely.
"More than you," she replied.
Draco grabbed his father's outer winter robes to keep him from confronting her. He did not quite succeed. Lucius whirled around and closed his hand around the back of her neck, not hard enough to hurt, but it threatened her enough that she drew her wand on him.
She literally bit her tongue against the Unforgiveable that begged to escape. She didn't want to do that again, not here, not with Voldemort watching them with a kind of curious bemusement. He did not fear for her well-being; she could punish Lucius faster and more efficiently than Lucius could attack her.
"I know what you're trying to do," Lucius hissed. A glint of grieving madness in his gaze alarmed Hermione, and she tightened her grip on her wand. "If the Dark Lord remains blind to it, then I will take measures against your treachery."
"You think I did this?" Hermione asked in disbelief.
"You infiltrated the very center of our organization. You have the Dark Lord's complete trust and protection, all the more opportunity to take your revenge," Lucius said.
"Father," Draco tried to protest, but Lucius shook him off, then released Hermione.
"And why on Earth would I need to take my revenge, Lucius?" Hermione said. She lowered her voice to control her own mounting anger, but she widened her eyes with false innocence. "I cannot imagine why you, of all people, would believe any of you deserve retribution."
"He may not be able to see what you are," Lucius hissed, "but I would never turn my back on you."
"If this were my revenge, Lucius," Hermione replied, "you'd be one of the bodies down there. Do you really think that if I were running about the fortress murdering Death Eaters that I would conveniently overlook you or Wormtail or perhaps the elder Crabbe and Goyle? If this is the result of a personal vendetta, my aim seems to be a bit wide. And you know better than that, don't you?" The tip of her wand pressed against his cheek. It twitched from where Lucius ground his teeth. "I'm a better witch than that."
"You're a part of it," Lucius said, tilting his head away from her wand and composing himself. He straightened his robes and glanced nervously at the Dark Lord. "I don't know how yet, but you are an author of this destruction, somehow."
Hermione lowered her wand when she recognized that the threat had passed. "Even if I wanted to, even if you and I both know I'm capable of it, you should remember that I can't. The only way I could kill them is if they had attacked me or the Dark Lord in their sleep. Bellatrix was good, but she wasn't that good, nor would she dream of attacking me when it would hurt him."
She backed away. Any of the remaining Death Eaters withdrew from her, more reluctant to interfere with her than Lucius.
"I suggest you look for your traitor elsewhere. I couldn't even if I wanted to," Hermione said. "And I don't want to."
"Why should we believe you?" Lucius called after her.
"I don't care if you believe me or not," Hermione replied.
As she turned, she caught the gaze of other Death Eaters. Carmen hovered high behind Macnair and Dolohov. Many of her peers and some of their younger counterparts gave her all the consideration, even deference, that they had withheld when she had been a pet. They used to ignore her or mock her, but if she wasn't mistaken, she thought she saw respect, amongst them and the older Death Eaters as well.
Lucius may harbor suspicions against her, but Hermione guessed she had proven herself enough for them. If they couldn't respect her for her blood, they respected her ability, maybe even her loyalty.
Before she headed back up to the fortress, she caught Wormtail's eyes, in the back between the elder and the younger Death Eaters, his presence as grudgingly accepted as always. He could only maintain eye contact for a few seconds before hunching over again.
Hermione trudged through the snow behind Voldemort, boots crunching violently with each step. Almost all of the Death Eaters surrounded the graves to pay their respects, and almost all of them knew that one of their presumably loyal comrades had slaughtered their brethren. Suspicions were high. Hermione counted herself fortunate that only one Death Eater suspected her, easy as she was to suspect.
She had her own suspicions, so she would keep up her guard.
Ahead of her, Voldemort's left hand closed around the base of his wand, ready for any attack, and Hermione protected his back.
"This hasn't subsided," Hermione murmurs.
"It has subsided." He wishes he never said it, wishes he could have left the silence between them. Then they could pretend that the way he touches her – feverish in spite of the coolness of his fingers – comes from nothing but his magic gone wrong. They could pretend that this is nothing but a snake's winter urge to mate and nothing more. But he cannot lie to himself, nor to his Medicus. It is just another curse fate has seen fit to cast upon him.
"Then why are we still…?"
She says "we," and the word brushes over him like her breath on his neck before she licks at his pulse, draws determined, lingering life to the surface in a flush under her teeth. He senses her magic, an aura, an outline, a halo, as tangible to him as her skin. He senses it because he knows how magic feels as it slips through his fingers.
She shifts in his lap to face him, and he lets her, tries to take solace in the evidence of her own desire, because he would hate to be the only one in their dark sanctuary to need someone he shouldn't.
Hermione peered out her window, abandoning her laboratory experiments.
Most of the Death Eaters had already left the graveside. They reserved their limited compassion and grief for very few, if any. They would lose little sleep over the loss of their compatriots; what sleep eluded them would come from fear that the assassin would target them next.
An unlikely mourner remained. Wormtail stood to the side of the graves, staring at the headstones. The snow already covered the bottom halves, inclining down onto the freshly dug dirt mounds. He wore winter robes, but he must have also cast a Warming Charm to stay out for so long.
Wormtail harbored no affection for any of the four Death Eaters. Hermione magnified her vision to observe him more closely. Tears ran down his grooved, weak face, and his eyes were red. Breath billowed from his mouth in stuttered clouds in the cold air.
When he thought no one observed him, he stood straight, although his head was bowed. Among others, he still slouched over as though they would curse him or fling their usual verbal barbs his way. Hermione believed that his behavior was mere force of habit these days. No one liked him, of course. However, the elevation Voldemort offered him back when he rewarded Wormtail with her had solidified his place amongst the Death Eaters even more than cutting off his hand. The Death Eaters groused about him behind his back, but she honestly could not recall the last time she had seen him outright insulted to his face since she arrived.
Hermione considered going down to the gravesite to ask him whom he grieved for, but she contemplatively pulled the curtain back over the window. Wormtail wanted to be alone, and Hermione did not particularly want to talk to him either. Also, she thought she might know the answer to her question, and the last thing she wanted to do was mourn with him.
She walked away from the window, swallowing back the memory of fallen soldiers she valued far more than the four buried down the hill. She returned to the busy work she had assigned herself. In a few hours, the world outside the window would go dark, and Voldemort's call to her would thrum not through her Dark Mark but pool low in her abdomen. Even when Voldemort did not sleep, Hermione spent her nights either in his bed or in the library.
All this pointless work. Hermione threw down her pestle. It cracked, but she could fix that easily. She buried her hands in her hair and leaned against the table. The mice and lizards rustled in their partitioned cages as Nagini wrapped herself around the box.
Hermione wondered whether Voldemort had told her yet. Neither of them had said it aloud yet. Hermione doubted Parseltongue was any exception, although Hermione wouldn't be surprised if Nagini suspected, given how the milking had stopped.
If Nagini knew, she accepted the premise without outrage. Then again, Nagini was a snake, a predator. She wouldn't blame Hermione for nature taking its course.
Because whatever charms Voldemort used to suppress any semblance of sexual desire had collapsed during one or more of Hermione's efforts to stop the fraying. Because the serpent inside of him may not need rut but the urge to mate had not yet completely gone. Because Hermione had cast some sort of spell during the permanent Medicus binding ceremony that stripped away his inhibitions.
Excuse after excuse fill his mind and swell in his throat. All of them would be easier than the truth.
The truth that he simply wants her, and she simply wants him. It had not always been this way, not exactly like this. But the elements pieced together over the years, and although Voldemort cannot pinpoint the exact moment it changed, he understood that the moment occurred prior to the new year. He may not have recognized it then, but hindsight provided him a sobering perspective of them both. He does not want to speak of it. Neither of them do. There are many things they do not say, but the silence cannot last much longer.
That is why Hermione curls her arms around him and kisses him again, her consuming him, him consuming her, her flesh heated as she rubs against him. He recognizes her single-minded fervor, the way she tries to lose herself in the feelings stirred up by the frantic maelstrom of their meeting.
But neither of them truly manages to forget who they are, what they once were, and what their continued liaisons in the privacy of his quarters mean for each of them. It doesn't matter how fevered their desire, how sweet the pleasure in the places they tease and tantalize and try to resist. They never truly forget that as high as their passion brings them, they only have farther to fall because of it.
At the long dining table, Hermione sat next to Voldemort at his right hand, with Carmen to her right, their usual arrangement when she joins their feasts. The attendants at this feast were more subdued, solemn, sullen, with the same distrust that made them avert their eyes in the corridors but avoid being alone.
She picked at her food. Voldemort's appetite remained particular as well, although it did not differ too much from previous feasts – he created the illusion of a more rounded diet but mostly ate the meat on his plate while sparing only a few bites for the rest. In the brighter light of the banquet hall in comparison to the more flattering light from his hearth, his already skeletal frame seemed gaunt, drawn, not just pale but tight and worn over the protrusions of his bones. And since Hermione would not allow him to expend his magic on a glamour just to appease his unique vanity, the Death Eaters could see for themselves the ravages of his self-made illness.
His power was still undeniable, but so was the disease.
Like his power, he made no effort to mask his fury as he peered from one Death Eater to the next, increasingly frustrated each time he met their eyes and found nothing but the expected questioning loyalty instead of any outright betrayal.
Voldemort had known about Severus's duplicity, used it against him and played Severus for a fool until Voldemort saw fit to cut his betrayal away. At that time, he had Hermione to toy with, a traitor of a different sort, and no longer needed Severus's services to amuse him.
If he had found his traitor in his own kind of assessment, he would have swiftly and mercilessly dealt justice, and the line between his brows would have smoothed out, his thin lips stretching into a terrible smile. But he remained troubled throughout the meal, and because he did, so did the rest of his followers, loyalists and traitors alike.
After the feast ended, Macnair stopped her before she could return to Voldemort's quarters. He still smiled as rakishly as ever, but it did not quite reach his eyes.
"The girls are still disappearing," Macnair murmured, just loudly enough for her to hear over the hum of hushed conversation in the corridor. "Did you inform our lord? Even if he doesn't care about the girls, he should care about what it signifies, especially in light of these new developments."
Hermione almost dismissed him by saying that was impossible, that she had taken care of it, but she curbed her tongue in time. If she hadn't, Macnair might have immediately made the connection between the missing girls and the only man on the premises she took care of. But then she realized what he was telling her.
"What do you mean, they're still disappearing?" Hermione asked. She had automatically assumed that Voldemort killed all the girls missing from the Harem.
"They're no longer disappearing one a night like before," Macnair replied. "Maybe the traitor knew someone had noticed. But even so, more have disappeared over the last month, more than usual, and I'm beginning to wonder whether even the usual may not represent our true … shall we call it turnover rate?"
"The Dark Lord didn't think it was pertinent at the time," Hermione lied. Macnair showed no signs of disbelief. "But if the traitor is behind it, I think he'll accept its relevance now."
"Good," Macnair said. "With everything as tense as it is, I would hate to lose my favorite toy."
"Just when I start to think you care…" Hermione said, but Macnair knew she wasn't serious. She'd believe Carmen cared if he came to her with this information. Macnair exuded the same charm, but lacked any capacity for empathy. He loved his knives more than the lives they took.
As Hermione locked Voldemort's door behind her, she said, "We've got another problem."
She drowns against him, clutching at the smooth skin of his back. Her nails run over rough patches at the prominent ends of his shoulder blades, almost like the frostburn of Dumbledore's spell. Pieces of his skin flake off. Hermione tries to gentle her touch, but she doesn't think that Voldemort even notices. At this point, it is easy for him to ignore the way his skin peels away from the scales beneath.
If he doesn't notice, then she will just hold him closer. Sometimes it seems like he peels away from her, that it doesn't matter how tightly she holds on – he just frays away, as tenuous to her reality plane as the pulses of magic that escape him like unstable radiation.
She should rejoice. The rest of the world beyond the walls of the fortress wish and pray for his ruin every morning and every night. While she once joined their number, Hermione has always been separate from them, and now she can't hold him tightly enough.
When she sinks over him, she knows he cannot bury himself deep enough to escape, and she can't guarantee his life by giving him hers. There's no animal to sacrifice, no tattoo to invoke the gods, no charms, no talismans, nothing left to do.
Nothing but take what pleasure is left and hold on as tightly as possible while she can. Hermione thinks that is why this continues. His pride frays with his magic, and there's no reason to hold himself above the rest when he has learned – finally – that his end will be the same.
"Are we going to talk about this?" Hermione said one evening.
She lay under his covers next to him, and the dark circles under her eyes told Voldemort how tired she was. He wasn't. But although her lips were soft and dark from his kisses and she was flushed down to her chest, and although their bodies slid against each other with no impediment, Voldemort did not need Legilimency to know she wasn't talking about their continued affair. The motives for that remained unspoken; the silence meant more than the explanation, and the explanation implicated them both.
Her gaze drifted down to his chest, where she placed her palms during her assessments. She had given him another that evening, and after, Voldemort told her that there was no need anymore. More and more symptoms manifested physically now, so the metaphysical assessments were no longer necessary. If the symptoms could be seen, there was nothing left to do, because the worst was already upon him.
Voldemort's controlling hold over his followers deteriorated every day. All he could do was punish them, but even the blind among his followers could sense the inevitability of his defeat.
The traitors became bolder, and his loyalists joined the other graves. The Cat's Paws and the Black Dogs diminished in number. Even a few more Death Eaters died, but not as many as Voldemort might have anticipated. He suspected that perhaps the population of traitors exceeded his followers now, even in the midst of those he once counted as his most loyal followers.
Voldemort had received another missive from Dumbledore for the next battle, this time accompanied with highly political and diplomatic language seeking a solution to this war, which told Voldemort that the last battle had hurt Dumbledore's side as much as his, although Potter still lived.
Voldemort had not yet returned the missive because he did not yet know whether he would survive another battle if his own followers turned around and fought for Dumbledore's side. Voldemort also wouldn't be surprised if Dumbledore sent him the additional note calling for an end to the violence because the traitors told him that Voldemort's disease was finally running its course. Dumbledore might be throwing him a line to save himself or save some of his more devoted followers, to rot in Azkaban the rest of their lives without execution.
What little pride Voldemort had salvaged refused to bow to Dumbledore's too amiable, too arrogantly merciful requests. He would never give that old man the satisfaction of Voldemort on his knees begging for mercy. There was only one person to whom he would ever kneel, and only because she knelt before him as well.
"No," he answered quietly.
"That was a rhetorical question, Lord Voldemort. If you're not going to talk, I will. It needs to be said, because unlike … this … we can no longer pretend the decay hasn't spread, and it's only a matter of time…"
"Hermione." He turned away from her to stand, but she curled her hand into the crook of his elbow and pulled him back down. Physically, she was now stronger than him. Although she did not pull too hard, he yielded nevertheless, hating every second he lowered himself beneath her. She sat up, unself-conscious of her nudity. She had lost that a long time ago. The context, however, had changed.
"I already know what is happening to me. I saw it through your eyes, through your magic. We do not need to talk about anything if there is nothing to be done," Voldemort said tonelessly.
"I'm trying to look for ways to cure your physical body if the magical body detaches. I've looked for ways to unite some kind of other magic to the cores, like a magical prosthesis. I'm sure Nagini would be more than willing, but it's only a theory at this point, and I'm not sure I have enough t-time." Hermione swallowed and commanded herself not to stutter again. That was a kind of weakness Voldemort never wanted from her.
Hermione wasn't the only one researching. Although Voldemort knew his personal library backwards and forwards, she sometimes woke up at night to an empty room, and she would duck into the library and find him poring through his books as though the third or fourth reading would yield some kind of eureka they never gave him before. Something to counter the damage that they helped contribute toward his present state. Sometimes she joined him.
The issue of his decay was academic, manifesting on his body in scales and dead patches. He seemed to be drying out, his skin a husk and his voice roughened from lack of moisture. His breathing sounded like wind shifting sand.
He still had his magic, and he used it while he could in bouts of temper against his Death Eaters, seeking for the origin of the betrayal and still coming up dry. He theorized that Severus and Dumbledore had their hands in the matter, teaching Occlumency to whoever started the quiet campaign against him, but that left him as clueless and furious as when he began.
"How long?" Voldemort asked. No worse curse had ever passed his lips, not even Avada Kedavra.
"The magic? Any day," Hermione replied.
The assessment that evening showed how the knots at his palms, chest, head, feet, and core had all untangled in the absence of the immortality spells and the transfigurations that hadn't seeped into his physical body. Hermione's attempts to cure him had merely exposed and accelerated the problem, but Voldemort could not deny his own culpability in the decay to both bodies. He was the one who had applied the spells that strained the connection between the two bodies in the first place.
Now, mere threads connected them, like a helium balloon loosely tied to a chair during a storm. It was only a matter of time before the magic, already leaking from him, released entirely. To leave nothing but a rapidly decaying body behind, a body endangered by the insidious transfigurations meant to remove any residual traces of his Muggle heritage. And when the magic left, he would be left worse than a Muggle, because he would know what he lost.
"You? We would have to see," Hermione added.
Voldemort's drawn expression tightened even more, a skull grimacing with perpetually morbid humor. "You are being overly kind, and you know I despise pity," he said. "You mean we need to see what the magic deigns to leave behind."
"You could live indefinitely," Hermione said, abandoning her impossible attempt to soften the blow. "You could live an average life span of a Muggle or a wizard. But the decay poses a threat, especially if magic exacerbates it. We would be limited to Muggle pharmaceuticals and homeopathic remedies, but their only cure for decay is amputation, and I can't do that."
Because the decay was everywhere. She might as well ask Macnair to draw and quarter, then dissect him. Or…
Voldemort stopped that thought as it started. All his life he had not allowed himself to entertain the thought, worked to avoid and eliminate the eventuality. Even with the impending, inevitable end he had fought against, he couldn't think about quickening it. Not yet.
"My duties as a Medicus included situations like this before I came here," Hermione said. She crossed her legs, and her knee brushed against his ribs. "But my clients weren't like you. I need to know, Voldemort, what it is you want me to do for you. What do you need from me?"
She could protect him against any who sought to cause him harm. She could try to make him as comfortable as possible when the time came that magic no longer worked on his body in the right way. But she asked because she didn't know what he needed after that.
And he didn't either. That point in his future remained as blank as it ever had been, because it was supposed to be impossible.
He buries his mouth into the hollow under her jaw, breathing her in. Her scent and strength overwhelms his senses. She surrounds him in every sense of the word, and he clings to her as though her offering will pass some of that strength to him by sheer force of will.
Hermione makes no effort to muffle her cries – the walls are charmed against all kinds of screams. She tosses her head back, tightening her hold around him. He jerks and fists his hand in her hair as he pulls her down over him.
Their moment of connection and completion fades too quickly; unspeakable power fades to unspeakable weakness. She lowers her head to his shoulder. Her fingertips press against the places where his skin has gone numb, semi-consciously testing them. Voldemort continues to stroke down her spine, remembering what she was and what she is, realizes that is what she has been all the time – the only reason he ever cared about the direction of her fate at all.
Years invested into breaking her, and Hermione, not Voldemort, rises above the wizarding world that despises what it should admire. She holds together the broken remnants of a Dark Lord Who Lived.
Avoiding his Death Eaters, he has had plenty of time to consider her question about what she needs to do for him. He left her the answer in a vellum envelope on the library table. He told her to open it when it was time; she would know.
He hopes that time doesn't come as soon as he thinks it will, as soon as he feels it will. And he does feel the decay now, more than just the diffuse malaise of the last few years. The disease eats away inside him. He is used to pain; it's not the pain that he fears.
Voldemort caresses her cheek, and Hermione lifts her head. Her eyes seem dark in the shadow. He admires her resolute stoicism. He knows what he looks like when reality returns to them.
He whispers, "I'm dying."