Author's Notes: Thanks to my fantastic beta, Bean, for going over my chapters and helping to make Ascent better every time.
v888v
Chapter 23
Hermione couldn't very well sit in on one of the feasts and ask each of the Death Eaters confidentially whether they were the traitor – not that they held many "feasts" nowadays. On the occasions she left Voldemort's quarters for a breath of fresh air, she saw them huddled over their meal at the long table, subdued, suspicious, full of resentment and reconsidering their loyalties.
Already, the Cat's Paws and Black Dogs and the rest of his followers – the ones without a name – were escaping in discreet numbers. Once they realized Voldemort no longer punished them for their cowardice, they ran scared, even more terrified now that they were not punished. They were termites fleeing a dead tree, rats abandoning a sinking ship, but they did not always have a safe place to go. After all, they lived at the fortress precisely because they made their allegiance known.
The Death Eaters would be the last. They had more to lose, whether they stayed or left.
She couldn't ask them who the traitor was, but she was fairly certain how she could find out.
Every evening for the last week, she had cast a Disillusionment spell and hid in the corner of the Harem in one of the empty beds, where no one had cause to notice her. Macnair was right – there were more of them than there used to be. Housebound as most of Voldemort's followers were, and with all the deserters, they were not able to replenish the Harem population at the same rate as in the past.
The traitors obviously kept an eye on when other Death Eaters came in to sample the wares, or else Macnair would have already discovered who they were – if it even bothered him enough yet that someone took away his playthings. Hermione doubted that Macnair was the traitor; she wouldn't be surprised if he were, instead, a target, a member of the old guard still undeniably loyal to Voldemort. After all, Voldemort let him have his Muggles and his animals and his women, and his partners were already dead. He kept his wand and his ax always near his side in the dining hall.
Hermione tried to ignore the sounds around her and checked the edges of her Disillusion periodically, thankful that there were so few women around her. They mostly congregated near the doors. Many of the women that remained were the ones eager to stay, the ones that willingly joined the Harem the way women joined the Cat's Paws. Hermione thought the ratio of unwilling women had gone down, so if the traitors were responsible for them disappearing – as opposed to someone systematically killing them like Voldemort, and Hermione knew it wasn't him this time – it might mean that the traitors were only rescuing the ones that wanted to be rescued.
She welcomed this new development, and she would do nothing to hinder the traitor or traitors. She just wanted to know who they were.
A Medicus never knew when she might need one.
Hermione lay on her stomach with her wand pointing out between the curtains in case anyone approached, and she almost nodded off. She wasn't getting a lot of sleep lately, and it wasn't because she had more pleasant things to do anymore.
Of course, that had been bittersweet at best, once she accepted it and he choose to continue. The latter more than the former determined the course of their encounters. It still gave him no pride, but it pleased her that he trusted her enough to continue their unorthodox liaison. In secret, yes, but neither of them would have it any other way. Carmen knew, but if anyone else did, they would consider it the same weakness that Voldemort believed it to be. Voldemort hadn't wanted that additional perception of weakness. Hermione simply hadn't wanted to kill anyone who tried to attack them due to that perceived weakness. All significant aspects of their Medicus/client relationship had always been private, as ethics, common sense, and preferences often demanded.
But these days, those evenings in firelight – holding him tightly to her and within, as though she could shield him from what ate at him from the inside out – had dwindled by necessity.
Other things kept her awake at night.
Hermione's forehead hit her clasped hands, and she jerked back up, blinking and shaking her head. The double doors swung open. In came a handful of the young Death Eaters, three whom Hermione did not recognize, as well as Draco and Blaise. The willing women swarmed them. Blaise was flirtatious as he always was, cool and smooth. He led one of them to a bed, but Draco swept past and headed to one of the beds where a girl sat, looking warily up at him. The other three split, one accepting the overtures of a willing woman while the two remaining double-teamed a girl waiting in the wings.
It was funny, though, because Blaise and the younger Death Eater stayed with their more willing victims. But after some basic petting and pawing, Draco and the other two younger Death Eaters took the girls out of the Harem. Presumably for a more private show in their quarters, but it intrigued her nonetheless.
Maintaining the Disillusionment Charm, she slipped out of the bed and hurriedly followed them at a distance. The Disillusion didn't make her invisible like Harry's Invisibility Cloak. It just made her less noticeable. If she followed too closely, they would see her. It was fortunate she knew the dormitory wing of the fortress well.
Draco glanced up and down the corridor before opening the door to his quarters, ushering in his choice as well as the choice of his companions. Hermione darted forward as Draco headed in himself, and when she got a glimpse of their other visitor, she almost lost hold of the spell around her.
There was no way on Earth that Draco had voluntarily invited Wormtail to share the girls or watch. Lucius might get off to watching Hermione debase herself with Wormtail, but she doubted Draco shared those particular proclivities.
Nevertheless, Hermione leaned against the wall, slid down, and kept watch. Staring at a blank door was duller than waiting in a Harem. She wished she had some Energizing Elixir handy, but she decided against Summoning a bottle in case someone decided to follow it or the Death Eaters came out of the room just as it reached her hands.
As she suspected, about an hour later the two younger Death Eaters and Wormtail exited Draco's quarters, and Draco closed the door behind them. No sign of the two girls. All four Death Eaters' gazes darted about, their faces determinedly blank.
After a quick re-evaluation, Hermione scrambled up to follow Wormtail, loath as she was to do so.
She probably shouldn't have been as surprised as she was. The combination of her focus on Voldemort and her personal distaste for the man contributed to her prior assumptions, but now that she had actionable proof, the pieces all moved into place to form a more cohesive picture of the events since she arrived. His stutter hadn't improved and he still didn't meet anyone's eyes very long, but he seemed comparatively more assertive and at peace with himself, if not with the rest of the world around him. In spite of his callous murder of twelve Muggles in order to go into hiding and the murder of Cedric Diggory in order to raise the Dark Lord, he never developed a taste for torture, and he should never have survived the battles, more suited as he was to the guerilla warfare of years past.
She'd already suspected him after the burial, but perhaps she had not allowed herself to believe better of him, after having been subjected to his worst. Whether he betrayed Voldemort for altruistic or selfish reasons, he was still helping Harry's side. She should have known; like Severus, once a traitor, always a traitor. He fooled everyone back then. It didn't stretch the imagination to believe he could somehow fool everyone again now.
Wormtail slipped into his quarters, and Hermione abandoned her spell, pushing him further in and spelling the door shut behind her. Darkness enveloped them. Wormtail quickly lit the lamps and whirled around, his form firm and his hand steady even though his eyes widened in fear. Hermione met his wand with her own, ready to cast if she needed to.
"H-H-Hermione," Wormtail stammered. He didn't lower his wand. "What are you doing here?"
"You've either been helping the Harem girls out of the fortress or killing them and disposing of their bodies," Hermione said evenly.
"What do you w-w-want?" Wormtail asked, stalling as he inched to the left.
"Where do you think you're going?" she snapped. Hermione approached him, lifting her wand more threateningly, and he stopped moving. She peered into his eyes, which kept glancing away, but they always came back.
"Look, I couldn't care less if you're one of the traitors or whether you and Draco and the others are picking up where Bellatrix, Rodolphus, and Macnair left off. I serve Voldemort, not his political agenda. I'd kill you if you tried to kill him, but undermining the foundation of his campaign means about as much to me as a Knut to a leprechaun. Have you betrayed him?"
She supposed her reassurances were a bit backhanded with the tip of her wand so close to his jugular. She could outspell or even overpower him if they fought, and he knew that perfectly well. She was Medicus to the Dark Lord and protected him in battle. She had to have exceptional reflexes. But Wormtail must have decided that the risk of not answering an angry Hermione outweighed the risk of answering her.
"Yes," he whispered.
"And you don't work alone."
"N-n-no."
"Draco and some of the younger Death Eaters are a part of it. Blaise. Any others?" she asked.
Wormtail lowered his wand and trembled, but he did not retreat from her. "M-most of the younger Death Eaters s-s-started talking about mutiny when V-Voldemort declared his illness through the Medicus petition. But D-D-Draco has been at odds with his father's beliefs for much longer, and h-h-h-he's been grooming his peers to b-betray the Dark Lord when it was time. H-he discovered my betrayal before you even arrived, perhaps recognizing a c-common g-goal."
Hermione forced herself to keep a stony exterior, but on the inside, she thought, Way to go, Draco.
"N-n-not all of the rest have abandoned the D-Dark Lord's message, but m-m-more of them than you might th-think. None of the old guard. Except for m-me," Wormtail said.
"How long?" Hermione asked, pulling her wand back a little. She believed him.
"I-I d-don't understand."
"How long have you been a traitor against the Dark Lord?" Hermione clarified.
"For a f-f-few years before y-you came. I've been feeding the Order w-what information I could afford. Well, that's n-n-n-not entirely accurate. I've been feeding Harry Potter information," Wormtail said wryly. He held up his prosthetic hand. "It seems thirty pieces of silver does n-nothing to repay a life debt. And I have yet to repay it, nor the other l-l-lives I've t-taken."
"How do you know?" Hermione asked. She lowered her wand down to her thigh, but she kept her arm at the ready in case he decided to strike while she thought him less of a threat. It would be a mistake for him to attack her, but people were known to make such mistakes.
"H-how do I know when the life d-d-debt and the lives I owe are r-repaid?" Wormtail asked. "N-no matter how much Lucius calls attention to it, I forget that you're M-Muggle-born sometimes. I simply know. The scales are w-weighted against me. A life rescued does not equal a l-l-life taken."
"Yet you still try," Hermione muttered.
Slowly, Wormtail sheathed his wand again. The gesture was only symbolically diplomatic, but Hermione relaxed a little more anyway.
"F-for the rest of my life, if that's what it takes," Wormtail said. "H-however short that may be."
"Why?" That was the most important question of the evening. Wormtail turned to sit down in an armchair but thought better of it when Hermione tightened her grip on her wand. He eased back up and kept still, the way one might treat a spooked horse. He seemed sad, but resigned. She'd be fine if he felt that way the rest of his life for what he helped do to her.
Then why do you mourn Voldemort's fall and condemn Wormtail? she asked herself.
The answer was that it wasn't that simple. She took Wormtail's persistent place in her past as a personal offense, a personalized hell. Like Voldemort, Wormtail's deeds had influenced who she was today. Hermione had found some kind of peace – or perhaps détente was the better word – with what Voldemort had done to her. She'd found strength in it, and Voldemort's deterioration, as terrible as Hermione saw it, still struck her as a form of karma. But nothing Wormtail did to her made her better. He just made her sick inside, and as things were going, he would outlive Voldemort.
"I w-wish I c-could say that my catalyst was a ch-change of heart, but it was j-j-just the weighing of my life debt upon me," Wormtail said. "L-l-like a conscience."
"How would you know what that feels like?" Hermione snapped.
"I know what g-guilt feels like," Wormtail said defensively, "I experience it too often for it to have much p-power over me anymore, which was why the w-w-weighing of the life debt s-s-surprised me. After a while, it d-d-disturbed my sleep, my digestion, my health, until it finally reached my mind and disrupted my thoughts. I thought I was going c-c-crazy until I heard the words more clearly, and then it all made sense. As soon as I found an o-opportunity, I escaped the f-fortress and offered prisoners of war in return for temporary clemency, and immediately the w-w-weight lifted enough for me to f-function … but it n-never leaves, and it has changed me. I d-don't ask for your f-forgiveness, Hermione. I couldn't ask that. But even though I belong neither here nor there, I d-don't think I've ever been freer since I first betrayed the Dark Lord."
"I don't forgive you," Hermione said. She fought against the tears pricking the corners of her eyes. She didn't think she'd been alone with Wormtail like this since that evening, and it didn't matter that she held her wand and he didn't. She still looked up at him and felt like that girl again. He knew what she looked like under her clothes just by his gaze passing over her.
"As I said, I d-don't expect you to," Wormtail said. "But whether or not I can s-s-satisfy my debt to you, my debt to Harry is the most p-pressing. My l-life is his. He has given this worthless life meaning, even if I have to die for him before the debt is repaid."
Wormtail ducked his head. "You won't tell the Dark Lord, will you? My life is f-forfeit, but I don't want the o-others found out."
"I already told you I won't tell him anything about you or Draco or the others," Hermione said. "Although I'll know who to watch out for if any of them decide to do anything stupid against him."
Wormtail shook his head. "N-n-no, we already know that the D-Dark Lord is weakening. Y-y-you are our only obstacle, and w-we cannot attack you, so we wait. We're p-p-patient. The Dark Lord is getting worse, isn't he?"
Hermione said nothing. She merely backed toward the door until she could wrap her hand around the doorknob.
"I can't tell you to not tell the Order anything that you might or might not know," Hermione said. "But you cannot expect me to give you that information. Is there anything else I need to know?"
Wormtail collapsed in his chair. Sweat shone on his forehead where the lamp hit his balding pate. "N-no. No, it's just Draco's compatriots and m-myself, and we're no threat to you or the Dark Lord. Everyone knows he's for Harry or Dumbledore, if it even comes down to that."
Before she left, and she was quite eager to do so, Hermione turned back to him. "At the gravesite, who were you crying for?"
Wormtail looked up from where he had buried his face in his hands in weariness. "I'm the only one of us left. Of my friends. And I-I'm the l-last one that needed to survive."
This time, when tears swam over her lower lids, she did nothing to stop them. "The last battle … Remus. That was him."
"He d-died valiantly," Wormtail said.
"There's no consolation in that," Hermione replied.
Wormtail shrugged. "No, there isn't. He might think so, though. As I would, if the Order would let me die."
She knew that Harry still lived after the bad accident she'd dealt him, because if the last battle had killed him, everyone would know, and Voldemort might have won by virtue of everyone else's sheer despair. But she had one more friend to ask about.
"Peter."
Wormtail jerked up at the sound of his given name.
"Is Severus still alive?"
"Yes," Wormtail said.
Hermione made no effort to hide her relief. She leaned her head against the door and closed her eyes for a moment. The memory of the thin, dark-haired man lit with an emerald glow and falling out of the sky flashed in her mind.
"His recovery is taking longer than Harry's, but he's still alive," Wormtail informed her.
"Thank you," Hermione said. Before Wormtail could ask her why that was of such significance that she actually thanked him, Hermione slipped out of the room and shut Wormtail back in, grateful for the door between them. Her opinion of him had raised slightly higher than pond scum, but that didn't mean she wanted to linger.
Still, she might have use for a traitor.
v888v
Hermione returned to her quarters and went through their bathrooms to return to Voldemort's room.
The first thing that struck her was the smell. It was unpleasant only by association: the smell of dust and the subtle, sickly sweet scent of dying flesh emanating from where the open sores festered.
The room was stale and warm. Hermione had rearranged the room so that his bed was right next to the fireplace instead of on the other side of the room. Voldemort lay on the side closest to the high flames. He kept his hand on his wand, but it was mostly cold comfort. When he cast spells at her request, they only worked half the time now, and they sometimes sputtered out. Hermione didn't need to do one of her evaluations to know that the last threads of his magical body were unraveling, and it would untether soon. It could be weeks. It could be days. It could be hours.
When Hermione left him, she put up defenses to rival Hogwarts wards, supplementing the ones he originally set up himself. Now that she was back, she could dismantle some of them. One of them set off an alarm when anyone uninvited tried to enter the room, and it would wake her up before that person could take one step in. She'd not had to use it yet. Carmen always knocked.
He'd become the unofficial envoy between Voldemort and the rest of his followers, but Voldemort already knew that his political days were numbered, since he required an envoy in the first place. He required Carmen's presence less often on official business. So Carmen came of his own volition, silently playing chess like they had in the past. He never mentioned Voldemort's condition, and Voldemort never asked him what the Death Eaters whispered. They didn't need to ask questions to which they already knew the answer.
Carmen wasn't there at the moment. Voldemort had wrapped himself in his blankets and simply stared into the fire, his red eyes a little clouded as when a snake sheds its skin. He was a dark mass of blankets, a single white hand holding a wand in his lap, but Hermione knew what lay beneath, when he could stand the cold long enough for her to unwrap the layers around him.
Where the sores weren't seeping over the knobs of his skeletal body, there were whole stretches of his body where his skin had peeled away from smooth, light scales. Once his magical body floated away into the ether, he'd be left a permanently transfigured shell, half-man, half-snake. Already, his speech sometimes lapsed into Parseltongue without him noticing the difference.
With all his power stripped away, Voldemort was able to see what he'd really made of himself. That was the other reason he hid himself in his cocoon of blankets and shadow, because every time he looked down, his remains reminded him of his folly. He almost wished for the formlessness he had maintained for fourteen years after he tried to kill Harry Potter. Then, he had hope and will, and his power was still his.
Now his power had dwindled, his hope proved false, and his will meant very little without means. None of Hermione's potions worked on his sores. His body rejected most magic like oil sliding over water. She had to tend them the Muggle way, which meant cleaning the wounds, applying an antibiotic ointment, and redressing the bandages. The options were limited and useless. The wounds didn't heal any more than moisturizers banished the scales.
Hermione removed her robes. The heat was oppressive to her, so she reclined on top of the quilt on her side of the bed.
"Any change?" she asked.
"The fire started burning more on the left side than the right this afternoon," Voldemort said dryly.
"Exciting development," Hermione said.
"I thought you'd feel that way."
Nagini hissed sharply as she climbed to the foot of the bed, coiling into a mountain of a serpent near Voldemort's feet like a venomous cat.
"Nagini doesn't understand," Voldemort said, staring into the fire. "She keeps asking why I do not milk her. I tell her it will only kill me more quickly."
"I doubt it's death she doesn't understand," Hermione said.
"She doesn't understand why I can die when I haven't before. She believes that if I do not die from her bite, then I must be invincible. She doesn't comprehend this changed state, or why I smell like kin to her," Voldemort replied. His voice remained emotionless, as it always did when he mentioned his death.
Hermione did not outright encourage him to talk about it, since she knew he would shut down if she did, but she thought that, in spite of his numbness, his willingness to speak of it meant a lot. She'd been reluctant to say it herself, given Voldemort's history with the matter, but once he said it out loud, it broke the enforced silence between them.
Now, Hermione thought he brought it up himself to convince himself that it was going to happen. He didn't quite believe it yet, resigned to it though he was.
"Do you need anything? Do you feel like you can eat something tonight?" Hermione asked.
Voldemort shook his head. His appetite had been hit-and-miss, worse than usual. She would eventually have to make him eat, but they were not at that point yet.
He turned his gaze back to the fire, and Hermione closed her eyes. Although she saw Wormtail in the darkness behind her eyelids, she felt no fear. Instead, she mused on the other incidents in which she should have noticed something was different about him. Eight years was a long time. It was enough time for Wormtail and Draco to reject the Death Eaters. It was enough time for a Dark Lord to undo himself. It was enough time for a girl, who was just trying to help, to crawl out of hell and do just that in her own way – even if that meant helping the man who put her there in the first place.
"Is there anything left to do?" Voldemort asked. Hermione rested her chin on her arm and considered him.
"The only thing left that I can think of is taking away your magic, cutting away the few threads left," Hermione replied. "It would mean leaving the fortress, a new identity, going to a Muggle hospital for aid, as long as they didn't ask too many questions. You could possibly live the rest of your life as a Muggle, with a Muggle life span."
Voldemort curled his lip in contempt, but he did not forbid the measure outright, which told Hermione how desperate he was.
Hermione wished that made a difference. She kept her hands to herself; she neither reached out for him nor touched him.
"However, I think we're too late for that now," Hermione continued. "Removing the last vestiges of your magic would take away the source of the decay. But even if we took you to the best surgeon in the world, they could amputate your arms and your legs, but they can't amputate your head or your organs, and the physical decay has reached everywhere. Even so, releasing your magical body is still a possibility. I know how to get access to painkillers. Without the magic making it worse, I could make you more comfortable, and it would give you a little more time. But I think only a little."
Voldemort clenched his jaw, hollowing his cheeks. "I have endured greater pain than this."
"That doesn't mean you have to endure it now, my lord," Hermione said. She sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees. "Just think about it. The magic you have left is only killing you faster, and it does you no good if you can't use it."
Voldemort's eyes seemed to grow darker as he hissed something at the fire. Nagini lifted her head.
"I'm sorry. I couldn't understand that," Hermione said lightly.
Voldemort clenched his eyes shut for a moment, his lips parted as though to loosen his tongue. He lowered his head and opened his eyes again, blood red slits. This time, Hermione slipped her hand into his, displacing the wand.
"I cannot leave this fortress. I am more vulnerable out there than I am in this room," Voldemort said.
"Have a little faith in my ability to protect you," Hermione replied. "Even if that just means hiding. That, at least, isn't arcane magic that's never been done before," she added wryly. She recognized the irony of asking Voldemort to trust in her abilities when she couldn't help him thus far.
"I am unsafe in and out of these walls, but I have no desire to live as a Muggle the rest of my days," Voldemort said. "A Muggle hospital is out of the question."
"I can bring supplies here," Hermione murmured. Voldemort's hand was dry, almost powdery. The grooves that lined most hands had smoothed out, as though the decay eroded them away.
"I would prefer that," he said. "When I can no longer stand it."
"There is no need to continue this pointless suffering. I know you don't seek self-punishment, so what exactly are you trying to prove?" Hermione asked. "It won't improve your condition, and the only people left for you to impress are myself and Carmen. Neither of us care, or else I wouldn't seek your opinion and Carmen would have already left."
"It is not a matter of pride—" Voldemort began.
"The hell it isn't," Hermione said. Voldemort tried to withdraw his hand, but Hermione tightened her grip. He winced, and Hermione abruptly dropped it. It was too easy to forget how frail he had become when he was being this hard-headed. "I recognize this kind of pride when I see it. Do you think that if you suffer long enough, it will make you stronger, like it has in the past?"
Voldemort said nothing.
"That's not how it always works." Hermione wanted to yell at him, but she forced herself to keep her voice down. "There comes a point when you can't suffer your way into power, Voldemort, and the truth is that you didn't do that before, either. You just delayed the inevitable, which is happening now." She brushed her fingers against the juncture of his jaw, which would have been a tender gesture if it weren't for the open wound near her fingertips. "Your suffering cripples you. Let me help you. You have nothing left to lose but your life, and I can make that a little better. That's something we Medicus do better than anyone. Please."
For the longest time, he remained silent. So much went through his head these days, very little of which he shared with her. Regrets? Reassessing his early spells to see if he'd erred in the execution rather than the whole concept of immortality? Cataloguing his crimes? Reconsidering his chosen path, his raison d'etre? Or was his mind a complete blank, the real traitor in their midst that made him into this weak creature?
"Do it quickly."
Voldemort unwrapped himself from the blankets. He shivered as he parted them. He wore no robes underneath. They would keep him warmer, but they were heavy and rasped on the sores. When the blankets became too much, he simply pushed them aside, but the robes were more difficult.
Hermione pressed her hand against his chest and concentrated, sinking into him like a cold bath. It was an easy matter to pass over him and slice the remains of the magical body, a scalpel against tiny threads. Voldemort saw through her eyes the ethereal but deadened light of the magic drifting toward the ceiling like a ghost. It wasn't even strong enough to pass through. It merely dissipated like fog. Then there was nothing left but the man beneath and around and within her, and she pulled out.
He guided her down, his skin shifting like tissue paper over his skeletal remains, meeting her lips with the last of his power. She shuddered and tried not to kiss him too hard or hold him too tightly. She certainly couldn't keep him there by her own will if he couldn't do the same.
v888v
Hermione stared down at him, shivering even though the fire under the mantel still raged as high as she could maintain it.
Voldemort no longer had the strength to hold the blankets around him. He lay under them, inadequate as they were. Hermione could barely tell that he was breathing, although she knew he was alive because his eyes moved rapidly under his thin, dark eyelids.
After the magic left him, he didn't stabilize like she thought he would. Instead, it was as if he gave up, as though yielding his magic was his act of suicide – or that once it was gone he saw no reason to keep fighting. After all, even when the Killing Curse rebounded back onto him twenty-five years ago, he'd still had his magic. Without his magic then, he would have died. Cutting his magic off now might as well have been the death sentence he had always feared … and he had asked her to cut those strings. He had nothing left to live for, nothing for which to continue his fight. He would never get his magic back, and therefore immortality was nothing but a memory, an impossible dream, the entire course of his charmed life leading to a charmless shell of a serpentine man dying painfully in his own freezing fortress.
Carmen slept in one of the armchairs across the room. Voldemort was never alone. His followers on the other side of the door were falling apart, according to Carmen. It was a quiet civil war. She hadn't told him who to watch out for, but apparently they considered Carmen little threat to them. There were no more burials, but plenty of dead.
When Voldemort awoke – for fewer and fewer hours during the day – Carmen spoke to him about the state of his followers. The soul behind those bright, fevered eyes remained keen. When Hermione went into him, she sensed that his body was failing but his mind was still relatively intact in spite of the decay within it.
Give it time, she thought angrily to herself.
His voice was a rasp and a cough. Hermione knew it pained Carmen to see his master – his friend – reduced to this, but she admired that he stayed when so many would have fled long ago, and so many already had. They didn't even know what had happened to him, and they fled.
Hermione appreciated the company, the scent of tobacco and vitality that still clung to the fabric of Carmen's clothes and his carpet. The rest of Voldemort's quarters stank of the decay, a rich earthy smell that had become intolerable, like dead trees and summer graves.
When she went into him, she also knew that the pain had reached intolerable levels, beyond his ability to stoically accept it. But he didn't even have the energy to scream. Sometimes he groaned, the sound of an old house settling, like a rusty hinge of a heavy, wooden coffin.
Hermione did as she promised and went through the Medicus Order to bring him painkillers. The fluids dripped steadily from an IV into his arm. She also had to feed him intravenously.
This morning, he tried to talk to her. For the first time, he could speak nothing but Parseltongue. She watched him struggle to speak English, but his slightly split tongue lisped in a series of hisses for ten whole minutes as Nagini stared, confused why he would speak to her while clearly addressing Hermione. Carmen stirred in his seat, and Hermione fought the impulse to share a significant glance with him, knowing how Voldemort would hate to be displaced, just like that, the second he could not communicate.
His hand flopped weakly on the coverlet. She sat down on the bed and put her hand in his. He tried to drag it closer, and she understood. Hermione pulled back the covers and went into him. Voldemort had only one thing to say to her.
It is time.
At first, Hermione was confused, but then he sent her an image of the envelope in her room, and Hermione withdrew. She looked back at Carmen to make sure he was awake and could keep an eye on Voldemort. Then she rushed to the laboratory table, where the envelope was still unopened, untouched. She had set the wards just as strongly around her room as his.
The whisper of the parchment seemed too loud to her as she opened it.
When the time comes, I need you to kill me, by whatever means necessary.
The library is yours. Protect it from those who will never appreciate its true value.
I destroyed what I created. Save yourself. -V
Hermione dropped the parchment on the table as though it sliced her fingers.
The Medicus Order accepted the judgment of its members when it came to terminal cases and the cause of death. It understood the importance of quality of life as well as quantity and when one overshadowed the other. She'd given hospice care to her last patient. He'd died on his own.
But Voldemort's death promised to come to him more slowly, minute by agonizing minute, with no hope of recovery and no will left to live – enough for a man who once wanted nothing less than living forever to want to die.
Hermione returned to Voldemort's quarters in a haze. She felt like she had no feet, like her ankles were connected to some kind of dense cloud.
"Hermione?" Carmen asked hesitantly. He appeared concerned, wary at the way she stared back at him.
She pulled out her wand.
She could do this. For him.
"No!" Carmen shouted, but even with his carpet, Hermione was faster than he was. And she wanted it more than anything, meant it with every fiber of her being, hated him for making this a part of her – but it was what she needed to do, and as his Medicus, she could not refuse.
"Avada Kedavra."
The reddish-golden light of the room quelled against the green glow that erupted from Hermione's wand. It went after Voldemort like lightning, hit his prone, still body, obscuring him briefly with its brightness.
Then it was over as soon as it began, and the green light was gone, leaving only the flickering of the fire and the flash of Nagini's attack.
"Stupefy." Hermione didn't even blink. Nagini thudded heavily to the floor, unconscious.
"What have you done?" Carmen asked, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her.
"What I had to do," Hermione said. "What he asked of me."
"Oh," Carmen said. He released her. His carpet sank until it was about the height of her knees. "I didn't realize … I thought…"
"I understand."
So this was what the Killing Curse did. This hollowness in her chest and her belly, as though the Killing Curse had swept in like a Dementor and sucked out all her vital organs. She shuffled to the bed. Voldemort's eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, his mouth slightly open. She covered his eyes and closed his eyelids, then leaned down to collect the body.
His eyes moved under her palm.
Hermione gave a little scream and jumped back. Voldemort almost looked dead, everything about him almost deathly still, but his eyes were darting about in dreamstate, and when Hermione put her hand over his mouth, she felt the slightest puff of his breath. He was asleep again.
Not dead.
Hermione stared down at him, shivering even though the fire under the mantel still raged as high as she could keep it.
She fell to her knees. Sweat dripped down her forehead and her cheeks, and she buried her face in his blankets with a soft cry from a place inside of her not quite numbed like the rest.
He should have died. Hermione was capable of a Killing Curse, sensed it all through her body now.
But she couldn't kill him.
And now she understood. Save yourself.
Hermione raised her head.
"Merlin, you look terrible, and you're sitting next to a … why is he not dead?" Carmen asked.
"Carmen, I need you to get Wormtail," Hermione said.
"What?" he asked incredulously.
"I need Wormtail," she repeated.
"What can he do that I can't?"
"He's the traitor," Hermione said, but before Carmen could fly into a rage, Hermione stood, and he retreated back a foot or so. "And I need his help."
v888v
Carmen dragged a disarmed Wormtail into the unwarded room by the scruff of his neck and threw him into a heap on the floor.
"That was unnecessary," Hermione said to Carmen.
"You told me he was the traitor. He deserves this and worse," Carmen snarled.
"If you want to survive the next week without being thrown in prison, it would be advantageous to turn traitor yourself," Hermione replied. Wormtail twitched from his awkward position and looked up in surprise.
"H-Hermione?" he said, disbelieving. "Is that you?"
She didn't have enough time to look at herself in a mirror to see whatever change made both Wormtail and Carmen regard her with awestruck fear. Part of her hoped that, whatever it was, it would eventually wear off. That same part of her thought that if she felt that way, there was a glimmer of hope that it would.
"Are you … are you giving me partisan advice, Medicus?" Carmen asked. He did not appear accusing, just curious and confused.
"I'm merely stating the facts," Hermione said. "What you choose to do with them is up to you and not ultimately my concern." When she swallowed, it was as though she drank something cold. "Although I would prefer that your friendship with the Dark Lord not mean your downfall. You were never truly his servant. Please, Carmen."
"What are you going to do?" Carmen asked.
Hermione directed her attention to Wormtail, who slowly pushed himself to his knees. "I need you to give this to Harry," she said, handing him a folded letter. "It's unsealed, but I want Harry alone to read it first if possible."
"You're betraying him, too? You're joining forces with this sniveling, cowardly rat who turned his back on Voldemort?" Carmen raised his hand to strike Wormtail, but to Carmen's surprise, Wormtail leapt up and blocked the blow, pulling back his fist.
Hermione whipped her wand between them. "Carmen! Peter!"
The sound of Wormtail's given name startled them both. At Hermione's urging and afraid she might curse them in her present state, they released each other and took a step back, adjusting their robes.
"This isn't about the Order versus Death Eaters or blood feuds or ideology anymore," Hermione explained. "This is about what's best for him, Carmen."
She turned to Wormtail. "Can you do that for me? Harry will let you return with your answer. And if you're lucky, you may just assuage your life debt. To both of them."
"Y-yes. Yes," Wormtail said, forcing himself not to stutter just once for her. "I can do this. I need my wand back, though."
Carmen glared at Wormtail, but Hermione nodded. Carmen reluctantly handed it over.
Wormtail Disapparated immediately. Hermione turned her back on Carmen before he could ask her what the hell was going on.
"Do you have someone you can go to, Carmen? Someone to surrender to?" Hermione asked quietly, approaching Voldemort. Wormtail hadn't even had time to see what was left of his old master, distracted as he was by Hermione's request.
He sidled his carpet up behind her. "I have a few old contacts, yes."
"I cannot vouch for you, even if my word had any weight with them," she said.
"Hermione, what is going on? Is it because you're his Medicus, or…?"
"No," she answered hollowly. "This isn't about me. This is about Voldemort and Harry. It always has been. You should go, while you still can. You can't help him anymore."
Carmen pulled his own wand from his sleeve, but before he Disapparated, he whispered in her ear, "It was always about you, lady."
v888v
Author's Notes: As promised, the last chapter is already finished as of this being posted, so it will be available soon as well.