It should have come as no great surprise to Hermione when the other shoe finally dropped. She had been holding her breath for a long time, waiting and praying and wearing the time down.
Glancing at her watch every now and then. Staring at the clock on the wall for an extended length of time, before snapping herself out of her trance and hurriedly returning to her work.
If she worked so hard that she wore her hands down to the bones, peeled the flesh back to expose the gristly white below … perhaps then, salvation would finally be hers.
If only she were smart enough, clever enough, tenacious enough to dig deeply and unroot some divine crumb of knowledge.
If she could find the answer to escape this conundrum, to solve the impossible equation. To free herself and Draco from the shackles which they had so firmly clicked onto each other, in the hopes of escaping together.
The tentative peace was shattered one late-December afternoon, when a house elf materialized in the library. A crack echoed through the then-silent room, causing Hermione to jump and overturn a pot of ink. The dark liquid stole rapidly across her parchment as Hermione cursed and tried to blot at it, turning frantically to the elf.
She knew immediately that something was wrong.
Mippet swayed where she stood on the carpet, her tiny body trembling. Her enormous eyes were flooded with tears, and her chest rose and plummeted rapidly with her shaking gasps.
"Mippet? Mippet, what's happened," Hermione demanded, ink and parchment completely forgotten. She hurriedly made her way out from behind her desk, nearly falling to the carpet in her haste to reach Mippet.
The elf had no words for Hermione — nothing could be discerned from her wails and sobs. Mippet simply stood still for a moment, before launching herself at Hermione's legs. Her thin arms wrapped around Hermione, who made to stoop low to comfort the elf, but her hand was grasped frantically in Mippet's tiny one.
Hermione could only gasp as she felt the familiar yank of Apparition behind her navel, squeezing her sharply into the ether, and disappeared with Mippet.
A moment later, and they reappeared.
Hermione stumbled for a moment, head whipping around sharply.
They had not travelled far at all; Mippet had yanked her into the entry hall, only a few minutes walk from the library.
She opened her mouth to ask why she had been brought here, but the words died just as suddenly as they came when she saw the scene before her. A sudden, horrible swooping sensation overcame her; not unlike that of Apparition. It felt as if her entire world had compacted and up-ended suddenly.
Her eyes took in the prone, unconscious form of Draco upon the floor, and Narcissa kneeling next to him. She was trembling, nearly as hard as Mippet herself was, and shaking him urgently.
"Draco? Draco, can you hear me? Draco," Narcissa whimpered, unshed tears clear in her soft, hoarse voice. Her thin hands alternated between patting him frantically, and drawing back, as if Narcissa was terrified that even touching her son could harm him further.
Hermione moved at once, taking a few steps forward and falling to her knees. She knelt at Draco's side, joining Narcissa.
Narcissa started and gave a soft gasp at the intrusion; she had been unaware of Hermione's presence until now.
"What are you doing, Miss Granger?" Narcissa hissed. She pulled herself from Draco at once, to turn and stare at Hermione. Her face was deathly pale, her skin nearly translucent; all colour was gone. She held her hands protectively over her son, however, as if convinced that Hermione would hurt him.
The action sent a sharp twinge through Hermione's chest for reasons she didn't quite understand herself. Narcissa, shielding her son.
"I need-" Hermione gasped, trying hard to stop her voice from wavering. She had to concentrate. She had to remain calm, even with the unconscious, injured form of Draco in front of her.
She had no idea how injured he was.
She needed to hold it together to heal him. If she still could.
If he was still alive.
Her heart clenched, agonizingly, painfully, and her breath caught in her throat.
She tried again.
"I- I need to perform diagnostics on Draco to diagnose the damage and heal him," Hermione said. Her voice shook painfully, but the words rang out clearly.
Narcissa glared balefully at Hermione through red-rimmed eyes, but made no move to leave Draco's side.
We'll do it this way then, Hermione thought with some trepidation. It hadn't escaped her notice that Narcissa's body was held tightly, a predator waiting to strike. One wrong move from Hermione, and she knew that she would find herself on the receiving end of the discreet agony that only Narcissa was capable of.
Narcissa may have been frail and sick, but illness had never managed to dull the cruelty that this woman was capable of.
She stared at Draco's form for a second. It seemed he had managed to Apparate into the entry hall, but had pitched forward and collapsed unconscious onto the marble floor. His left arm splayed out slightly from his side, while the right arm was trapped beneath his chest. His travelling cloak was tangled beneath his legs.
He had lost consciousness rapidly, and hadn't broken his fall. Her heart raced faster as she tried to take it all in with a clinical eye, memorizing every detail.
Hermione reached out slowly, with trembling fingers, to press them to Draco's neck. His white-blonde hair was soft against the back of her hand. She wanted to vomit at the sensation of it against her skin, at the uncertainty of what she might find.
His skin was clammy and cold to the touch. She held her breath, fingers fluttering for a moment, hesitant, before daring to palpitate and press down.
Please.
Please.
A clock ticked somewhere in the distance and in the agonizing slowness between seconds, between ticks, she felt it at last.
A stuttering, weak heartbeat; the pale imitation of the galloping, thudding in her own chest.
She let out the breath she had been holding.
"There's a heartbeat, he's alive," Hermione sobbed, not daring to turn and face Narcissa. She heard the same quiet hiss of relief at her side. Narcissa had been waiting too.
Too overcome with emotion, Hermione staggered forward and desperately pressed a kiss to the crown of Draco's head. He smelled of acrid smoke and blood, that scratched unpleasantly in the back of her throat and tasted burnt and dark, but he was alive.
It was the sweetest smell she had ever known.
Her prayer, cast into the wide unknown, had been heard somewhere.
He was still alive.
She sobbed again, this time with relief, then withdrew immediately. Hermione wiped away the errant tears that had overfilled her eyes and rolled their way down her cheeks; she smiled ruefully for a second. She hadn't been aware that she had been crying until now. Then, she scrambled for his wand in its holster. It was strapped to his upper left arm and easily accessible to Hermione. The gods seemed to favour her today, for it could've been much worse.
A hand shot out and closed around Hermione's wrist with an iron grip that was almost painful, and she faltered for a moment.
"What are you doing?" Narcissa demanded. The four words were enunciated crisply; her voice wavered not with tears, but with barely restrained anger.
"Unless you have a qualified, competent healer on hand, that can diagnose and heal him in your home," Hermione began coldly, sobering at once. She turned to look Narcissa directly in the eye — a challenge, a gamble.
Narcissa's gaze was clearer than before. The urgency and uncertainty of the moment where she had found her son collapsed had passed, and Hermione realized with slow-dawning horror that she had foolishly exposed far too much of herself just now. There was a cold, calculating glint in Narcissa's eyes as she stared at Hermione. Her expression was unreadable.
A few beats of silence passed and then, slowly, Narcissa's grip loosened.
Hermione relaxed a fraction.
The sharp glint never left Narcissa's eye, however.
"I don't know where he keeps my wand locked up," Hermione muttered in explanation, turning back to face Draco. She retrieved his wand from the holster and began to cast her usual diagnostic spells. Tiny, glowing lights lit up his body, winking merrily like a caricature of a Christmas tree.
Tension returned to Hermione's body as she observed the results.
"What's going on?" Narcissa asked sharply, staring fixedly at the cloud of blinking lights above Draco. "What has happened to my son?"
What had happened to him?
There were the standard injuries — how strange that bodily harm had become normalized to her — of cuts, burns, bruises. Burst blood vessels pooled blood under his skin, until bruises covered large swathes of his body like spilled paint.
His nerves worked in overdrive, firing off electric impulses in disconnected, disjointed ways. Responding to stimuli that didn't exist. Sending agonizing bursts of phantom pain through his body, that burnt trails like wildfire across the neurons. Hermione was momentarily glad of Draco's unconscious state.
Most unsettling of all, however, his magic reserves were empty.
When it had happened previously to Draco, it had been because of over-exertion and long distance travel — he had Apparated to and from Romania, after an already long, restless week tending to his existing duties.
The war was over.
Romania had fallen long ago.
A collection of Eastern European states had been annexed by Voldemort, and now functioned as protectorates under his control. There had been no further pushes into new territory — not since the fiasco of the failed coup in Hungary. Hermione had not read of any political stirrings hinted in the Daily Prophet.
"Has Draco been travelling often? Has he been … working more than usual?" Hermione asked slowly, picking her words carefully.
Narcissa paused for a moment, thinking.
"No," she eventually responded. "His schedule has been erratic, but he has not left the country.
She nodded faintly, thinking hard.
"Why?" Narcissa added sharply.
Hermione stared down at Draco's still unconscious form, pondering the situation.
"His magic reserves have been drained to almost nothing," she replied eventually. "If there was nothing out of the ordinary to cause it, then I can only imagine it was done on purpose by someone who wanted him weakened. Vulnerable."
Narcissa was silent.
"There's nerve damage too," Hermione continued quietly. "From the continued use of the Cruciatus curse. I'm sure you can imagine what that's like. He heals much slower these days, due to his repeated exposure to Blood Rituals. Magical healing spells, potions, tinctures — they're all less effective on him now."
Hermione slid a glance over to take in Narcissa's expression at these words. She looked stricken for a moment, before Narcissa spoke.
"You're intimately familiar with my son," Narcissa said coldly. "This isn't the first time you've healed him — you did this to him. You fostered a dependency on you, in him," she spat, accusatory.
Hermione scoffed, indignation and outrage rising immediately in her.
"Draco did this to himself, Narcissa. It takes two to make a bargain, a Devil's Deal. Draco approached me first and offered up his blood, in case you weren't aware," she shot back.
"And he did this for you," she added, a hint of venom in her voice.
Narcissa's eyes flashed dangerously, but she glanced down once more at her son and bit her tongue.
They were silent for a long time as Hermione set to work, with Narcissa as her silent observer the entire time. Hermione Levitated him off the ground to turn him onto his back, and pointedly ignored looking at his bruised, hollowed face. Her heart couldn't bear it.
She did the best she could with healing him right then and there on the marble floor of the entry hall. There was nothing critical or life-threatening about his injuries; he wouldn't bleed out or die on the spot.
But the state he had been left in worried her. She had never seen Draco this weak before — at least, not without his own machinations like the added strain of the Blood Ritual.
Voldemort had begun to suspect that something was wrong; that something was amiss within his own ranks.
When Hermione had healed him as well as she could, and dosed him with several rounds of Healing Drafts and concoctions brought by terrified elves, she sat back and stared down at him. A sheen of sweat covered her forehead and neck, and there was a deep exhaustion in her chest; she had overworked herself.
She reached out and slowly, took his hand in hers. It was cool and dry to the touch, colder than what she would've liked. Scars and callouses, pale ghosts of every past life he had taken were scattered along his palm and fingers.
She pointed his wand down at his face.
"Rennervate!" Hermione whispered.
Nothing happened for a moment, and Hermione's heart quickened slightly. She heard the rustle of fabric from beside her as Narcissa moved closer.
Then, Draco stirred slightly. He was quiet as he squinted up into her face, eyes slightly unfocused with shock.
"Hermione?" he mumbled, hand flexing slowly in hers. Hermione dropped his wand to the floor to cover his hand with both of hers, rubbing it briskly to warm it.
"You are so stupid," she whispered, eyes beginning to water again. Her voice wavered, betraying the relief she felt. "Apparating like that when your magic reserves were gone — what were you thinking?"
The ghost of a smile tugged at the corners of his lips, before it turned into a pained grimace.
"I suppose I wasn't thinking. It's quite hard to think clearly when you've been tortured for hours," he finally said.
Hermione stilled at once. The warmth that had creeped into her, the affection and relief and yearning at their reunion, had vanished at once.
"What did he manage to get out of you?" she asked, suddenly full of dread. "Is that what happened to your magic?"
Draco grimaced, and nodded again.
"If he got anything out of me, I wouldn't be here right now," he responded shortly. "He wouldn't tell me what he was looking for — just that he was searching for something in my memories. He had other Death Eaters cast the Cruciatus on me until I was drained, then interrogated me himself. He said … he said that he had to be certain. There could be no room for error."
Hermione heard a sharp intake of breath from her side, and gave a start. She had forgotten about Narcissa there.
"What did he find?" Narcissa demanded sharply.
Draco glanced over in surprise; he seemed to have been unaware of her presence until now.
"Mother," he greeted formally. "Nothing of note. I used Occlumency, to great effect, and showed him my carrying out his orders during the war. He was particularly interested in my dealings with the Insurgency, and then moved on."
Both Hermione and Narcissa relaxed at these words, before Narcissa pressed on.
"And what of … Bellatrix?" she asked, meaning evident in her tone.
Draco was silent for a moment.
"I don't know. The Dark Lord did not seem angry with her, but perhaps he's not fully aware yet of what has happened," he finally responded.
Narcissa's expression was tight, but she nodded. She pondered for some time, before speaking. Every word was precise and intentional; picked with care to convey a message to her son.
"There will be whispers, of course. Of discontent among the upper echelon, of Voldemort's dissatisfaction with his best and brightest," Narcissa said quietly.
Draco gave her a bemused smile.
"Will there?" he asked sardonically. "I don't keep up with pureblood society, as it stands, mother. I find myself too bogged down in … 'work', for such matters."
Narcissa shot him a look of deepest contempt, but did not deign herself to respond to her son's sarcasm.
"We will have to show them a unified front and keep up with appearances. To invite the onlookers to take a good hard look at the Malfoy family, one of the foremost families and most loyal supporters of the Dark Lord's new regime."
Draco snorted.
"There are certain matters in which you are woefully out of your depth, Draco," Narcissa responded sharply. "It does not bode well for you to scoff at these traditions. These will be your responsibilities one day, as heir and head of this household. That time draws nearer and nearer."
His expression darkened at these words, and he glanced away. The energy in the room had shifted dramatically, as relief gave way to irritation. Hermione suddenly had the impression that this was a topic that had been a point of contention between the two before.
She cleared her throat quietly, drawing the gazes of both Malfoys. One thoroughly irate and venomous, and the other softer.
"I'll um. I'll … put together a list of potions for Draco to take the next few days, and get to brewing back-ups," Hermione said awkwardly. "He should stay on bed rest for a few days, but I think he could participate in Christmas activities next week."
She made to rise from her kneeling position, but Draco tugged her hand and gave it a squeeze.
"Thank you, Granger," he said quietly. The sincerity was evident in his tone, as was the exhaustion. His voice was so hoarse that it seemed he could've fallen asleep on the floor.
"Of course," Hermione muttered, flushing slightly. She gave him a squeeze back before reluctantly pulling her hand from his grasp, and made to leave.
Narcissa said nothing to Hermione, but the viperish expression on her face said it all.
When Hermione had made her way some distance down the hallway, she could hear the two beginning to argue quietly, in hushed, hostile tones.
She wasn't sure what to make of it.