Edited 10/15/15
21. The Battle, Part Five: My Heart Is Beating
Tell me you love me
Come back and haunt me
Oh, and I rush to the start
Running in circles
Chasing our tails
Coming back as we are
Nobody said it was easy
Oh, it's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be so hard
[The Scientist, Coldplay]
Hermione apparated to the corridor outside the Hospital Wing, crashing into a heap with Snape beside her, her hands still clutching his hard. She felt sick and clamped down on her stomach, and the violent urge to retch. There were Aurors guarding the corridor who rushed toward her, recognition on their faces.
"We need a Healer!" she yelled at them before they reached her, naked urgency and exhaustion making her voice shrill, and one stopped and spun around, charging back to the Hospital Wing entrance and barging through the doors. "He was bitten by Nagini," Hermione told the other Auror, as between them they got Snape levitating and began hurrying toward the Hospital Wing at her direction. "He was on our side. An agent for our side, undercover all this time," she told the man sharply, voice weighted with the importance of her words. "He needs to live." The Auror eyed her for a spare second as they hurried along the corridor, and then nodded briskly, accepting her word.
Two Healers came rushing out then, meeting them just before the entrance to the Wing, and Hermione explained the situation in brief, spare words again, telling them what she had done to try to save Snape - and this time, after a pause, mentioned Lucius. She thought someone should know. Not to help him, but to capture him, and make sure that he didn't slip away and escape justice. And then, with Snape in the best possible care - rushed away into the Hospital wing, without any assurances as to his life - and an Auror dispatched to round up Lucius, Hermione had nowhere to be but back by Draco's side.
"Oh Merlin...oh thank Merlin you're alive!" Neville gasped as Hermione ran through the nearly empty in the Great Hall toward him. He all but flung himself at her, eyes wet, and she clung to him tightly for a moment, soaking in his warmth. "I thought - we all thought..."
"It's all right, Neville. I'm okay." She doesn't have the energy to explain that she's possibly saved Snape, and caused Lucius' capture. She just extricates herself from his hug but leans heavy on him still, worn out to dropping and aching from the Crucio. "I'm okay. Where's -"
"Draco!" Neville interrupted her, tugging at her arm. "Come on. He's out there, fighting, in the courtyard. Everyone is there. They left me here to meet you, if - if you came back. We need to go." He was ashen under the blood and filth on his face, and Hermione's heart lurched at the thought of Draco trying to fight. He could barely stand, the idiot. Without a word to Neville, she forced her wounded body to jog toward the entrance of the Great Hall; heading for the battle, and Draco, Neville falling in at her side.
"What happened with Snape?" he asked between breaths, but Hermione couldn't think about that, not right now.
"He's probably alive," was all she said, and then they were bursting through the rubble of Hogwarts entrance and into the courtyard, and the noise of battle hit her like a flood, filling her ears with scream and cries and the fizzing crack of battle magic. One pale blonde head should have been hard to find in the night and the flaring lights, but it wasn't - Hermione saw him within seconds, struggling to block as he fought two of the enemy, unable to dodge because of his leg. Fear seized her like an iron fist around her chest, and her world narrowed to a single, simple, desperate focus; getting to him.
She fought.
Potter hung in the air before Voldemort, his clothes drenched in blood and one leg horribly twisted, his arms dangling limp, his glasses askew, and his eyes behind them utterly despairing. Hermione stood at Draco's side, and he felt her sway on her feet, a whimper leaving her lips.
"Harry," she whispered, tortured and sick, and Draco swallowed hard, through dry and raw. Potter was still alive. Had the plan changed? Did he no longer have to die? The fighting began to stutter to a halt as Voldemort approached with his floating burden, Draco's dear Aunt Bella at his side.
"Stop," Voldemort ordered in a high, long call that quelled the remnants of the fighting. A cruel smile split the Dark Lord's lipless face as gasps and cries of dismay and despair filled the air. A girl's anguished scream rang out, and Draco's gaze flicked to Ginny Weasley, ready to stupefy her if need be, so she didn't get herself killed. But Ron Weasley and Longbottom had her in their grip already - holding her back as she clawed at them and sobbed with fury, trying to get to Potter.
"Oh no…" Hermione moaned sickly, pressing closer to Draco, and he clutched the back of her shirt with his left hand, trying to impart some meaningless comfort. His heart was a stone in his chest as Voldemort let his gaze slide over the battered and broken Order members and their allies, like a king regarding his subjects. Draco felt rather than saw the Order draw in together, clustering up in a ragged, broken line of fighters. He tugged at Hermione to retreat with the others, and move further back - less noticeable because Merlin knew Voldemort had enough reason to want him and Hermione dead - but Hermione was rooted to the spot, and he was too bloody weak, with his broken leg.
"I have your saviour," Voldemort announced, in his eerie warble. "You have lost. Surrender now, and I may show…leniency." Draco chanced a glance at Hermione as a snarl ripped from her throat - her teeth were bared, her eyes hard and dark, and combined with the blood splattered on her face, she looked wild. Dangerous. He kept his grip on her shirt tight as tension he could feel thrummed through her; he was not going to let her get herself killed. "It is over," Voldemort said with relish, and then Potter's dulled gaze met Draco's, and a conflagration burst to life in his green eyes that sent a shock through Draco. Potter lifted his head with an effort, and set his jaw; Draco suddenly knew what was coming next. He wanted to deny it - horror raging in him, dread, and then a terrible acceptance.
"He knows!" Potter screamed in a raw, inhuman voice, and coldness covered Draco like a shroud. This was it. He wasn't ready for this. He'd never wanted this. But he didn't let himself think about not doing it; there was too much at stake. Instead, before he could lose his nerve, Draco shoved Hermione aside - she stumbled and choked a hurt intake of breath that seared into him - pointed his wand at Potter, and then meant it.
"Avada kedavra!"
The breath between one second and the next was filled with a multitude of chaotic impressions; Hermione's betrayed, grief-stricken shriek of his name, the shocked expression of Voldemort's hateful features, the roar of the Order members at Draco's actions, and… Potter's body crumpling to the ground as Voldemort released the levitation charm, and the killing curse soared harmless through the space where Potter had been. Draco had missed. Oh Merlin, he'd fucking missed, and he might not get another opportunity. "What are you doing?" Hermione screamed, ragged nails digging into the flesh of his arm, and Draco fixed his eyes on her face, feeling dizzy and despairing. There was horror and hatred on her pale, blood smeared features, and her wand tip was jammed into his stomach - a silent threat. She looked at Draco like he was a stranger, an enemy, and his heart wrenched unbearably. "How could you -"
"How dare you!" Voldemort screamed, drowning out Hermione's accusations, and her gaze flicked between Draco and Voldemort before she stumbled back from Draco a step, divorcing herself from him. His heart creaked in his chest at the strain, and he hated everything at that moment. He wouldn't have cared if everything in the world had burnt…except her. "How dare you!" Voldemort cried again, and then everything splintered and Draco watched as the remnants of his life began to fall away. "Avada kedavra!" Voldemort spat at Draco - just as Potter, body broken beyond all reason, somehow lurched upright. The Killing Curse hit Harry Potter's shoulder, and he fell, like a stone dropped from a child's hand. He fell, hitting the earth hard and sending up a puff of dirt and ash, and Voldemort's wail filled the air, rising above the Order's grief as they stared hopelessly at their the body of their only hope. On the ground. Dead. A sick relief swelled in Draco's stomach.
Voldemort stepped forward, slitted, baleful eyes pinned on Draco's, and flicked his wand. Draco stumbled as pain consumed him. Pain. Agony. Pain. He convulsed on the hard, bloodied stones, face crushed to the jagged rubble and skin slashed open by it, one glazed eye fixed on the world. As if he was watching through a darkening keyhole, Draco saw the two sides charge back toward each other. A tooth snapped in his mouth as his jaw clenched and ground, and a riot of colour burst across his one open eye as hexes and curses flew through the smoke-filled, flame-lit sky. All he could feel was pain - muscles were tearing and it was unbearable, he couldn't take the pain but he had to because there was no choice. There was only pain, boiling through him like wildfire, eating him from the inside out; nerves flaring like supernovas and bones feeling as though they had been poured full with molten lead.
He watched Ginny Weasley, uncaring of the Dark Lord or the battle, crumple to the stones beside Potter's body, weeping over it desperately. Shaking him and clinging to him, the girl's grief overwhelming her. Draco screamed then; screamed and screamed, the sounds torn from his throat without choice, as the pain began to overrun him completely. The keyhole began to darken further, to blur at the edges, but Draco was conscious enough to comprehend what momentarily blocked out his view of Voldemort. Hermione. Hermione, flinging curse after curse at someone unseen - fearless, mad Gryffindor - and then…she cried out, short and startled, and fell. She crumpled to the rubble like a broken doll, revealing Bellatrix with her wand still raised, and a leer on her lips. She blew her nephew a kiss, and then turned on the ball of one bare, bloody foot, dashing off into the smoke and the night.
Hermione.
Hermione. A still, small shape curled on a fallen slab of stone, and something in Draco's chest wrenched right apart - so much grief that even the pain from Voldemort's Cruciatus seemed to fade, overwhelmed by his terror at Hermione's… No. No. The spell had lost its power - the pain was there, still, but oddly bearable. Weak. Hermione twitched and then screamed, before falling terrifyingly silent. Draco forced himself to move, his heart a hard, frozen knot of fear as he got his arms under him and dragged himself onto all fours. As he shoved himself to his feet, red hair fluttering in the firelight and dark caught his eye - Ginny Weasley falling back onto her arse as Potter impossible rose too, in unison with Draco.
"Tom. Riddle," Potter croaked as he straightened slowly and painfully, like a very old man, and Draco saw stark fear take Voldemort's face as the Dark Lord spun toward Potter. And then Draco was scrambling at a lurching limp toward Hermione without a thought for the pain of his broken body, or Potter and Voldemort, or even the fate of the world because the world didn't mean a damn thing if Hermione wasn't in it.
"No. Fuck no no-no-nono. Please. Please, Merlin." The desperate, begging pleas spilled from him in a flood as he staggered to Hermione - falling and getting up again, cutting his flesh hand on sharp stones, body weak and broken leg a hot, heavy rod of agony, eyes blurring with tears. Bellatrix hadn't bothered to try to finish Hermione while she lay helpless, and Draco knew - knew with sick, furious, helpless certainty - that her laxness wasn't a good thing. His breath came in sucking rasps as he crawled the last few feet to Hermione's side. Aunt Bella thought that the curse she'd hit Hermione with was fatal. He hope to Merlin she was wrong. Hermione was staring up at the patches of stars visible between smoke and flame when Draco collapsed beside her. Her lips were bluish and parted as she took small, rattling breaths, skin ashen where it wasn't filthy - but her eyes were still clear.
"Hermione. Hermione, oh fuck, oh shit, please," he begged, hand finding hers and holding it tightly, feeling his world shatter and he was helpless. "Please don't die. Please. I - I can't… Not without you…" Tears sluiced down his cheeks in a hot flood, sobs juddering roughly with his breaths. He curled his fingers around hers, threaded their hands together as his other sent up a shower of sparks - medical emergency. And then he dropped his wand and touched her cold cheek with the fingertips of his silver hand; a careful caress. "Please."
"Why? Was…was it all a lie?" she asked softly, and it took him a moment to realise what she meant. As far as Hermione knew, he'd betrayed them all and tried to murder Potter, and the only thing that was worse than her d-dying - he could hardly bear to think the word - was the thought that she might die thinking that everything between them was a lie. She didn't look at Draco, but instead just kept looking up at the star-spangled sky through the plumes of dark smoke from the fires that burnt around the battlefield. Her voice caught in a sob, and then she did look at him, and her eyes were the worst kind of accusation; filled with grief, and begging him to prove her wrong. "D-did He make you, or…or have you…all this time?" The last few words came out in an exhausted, pleading rush - breathless and hurting.
"Potter's alive, Hermione. He's alive. He - he was a horcrux," Draco rasped as he scanned her quickly for injury. Her hands were clutched over her stomach, the leather around them scorched and melted away, leaving raw, bubbling burns. Oh fuck. "He - he told me, after he viewed some memories, that he had to die for Voldemort to be defeated, but - but somehow Voldemort struck him with a Killing Curse and he's alive. He came back to fucking life. I swear it to you. I - please…believe me." He begged her to believe him with the tears dripping from his eyes and his mouth a trembling mess. He needed her to believe him - if the unthinkable happened…he couldn't bear the thought of Hermione dying thinking that he was a traitor, or that everything between them had been some sick lie. He didn't want that taken away from her along with her life.
"Oh," she whispered weakly, accepting his word as truth and one of the knots in his stomach unwound. "That's…good. I thought…"
"I know. I know." He tore her hands away from her stomach, and was confronted with an ugly stain on her burnt flesh that looked almost like a bruise. But even as he watched, he saw dark tendrils snaking out from it - the Curse spreading through her body, killing her. "But it's okay. He's alive," Draco said as he roughly ripped her leathers further apart, swearing internally and burning with anger and horror as he helplessly watched the poison spread. "The Boy-Who-fucking-Lived has done it again," he managed, trying to joke though the tears that fell in a flood and splashed down onto his hands and her skin. He sent up another shower of blue sparks, and then stared down at her, his tears choking him, emotion clogged in his throat.
"That's our Harry," Hermione said, ashy bluish lips wobbling into a weak smile as she rolled her eyes to meet Draco's. She gasped a shallow breath, and winced, whimpered - squeezed her eyes shut against the pain and flailed her hand weakly, searching for his. "I'm dying, aren't I?" Draco took her hand, and he knew that he was clutching it too-tightly, but it didn't seem to hurt her.
"No. No, you're not," he denied fiercely, heart creaking in his chest as it threatened to rip apart at the sight of her like this. "You're not." Her lips trembled and she blinked rapidly, tears trickling from beneath her lashes. She guided their interlinked hands down, to the gentle swell of her abdomen in the cradle of her pelvis, and a fresh layer of grief seized Draco. The baby. Oh Merlin, it was too cruel. Both of them, dying in front of him, and he was fucking useless. Where the fuck were the Healers?
"It's okay, Draco," she whispered, and he shook his head hard, repulsed by the sentiment, his free hand coming up to cradle her cheek as he knelt hunched over her, pressing his nose to hers, and his tears dripped onto her temples, sliding down her dirt and blood smeared skin, into her hair.
"Don't. Don't. It's not okay. It's not - it's…" An explosion rocked the ground and nearly sent him falling on Hermione, and she squeezed his fingers weakly in reaction.
"What? What was…?" she got out, and Draco lifted his head, looking over his shoulder in time to see Voldemort crumple to the ground - dead, Draco knew it with a certainty as he felt a searing sensation ripple through his Dark Mark. A brief flare of joy seized him as he felt the Dark magic in the Mark fade, watched Voldemort's body lie motionless on the ground - a small, dark shape in his robes - and saw triumph blossom clear and bright on Potter's face for one, brilliant moment.
"Potter - he did it," he said to Hermione through numbed lips, still staring at the Boy-Who-Lived. And then Potter's eyes slid shut and he followed his enemy to the ground - a limp, crumpled shape, and Draco thought that he too might be dead, and his heart squeezed tight in fear for Potter for a moment. "Potter fucking won," he told Hermione in a strangled, shaking voice as a ragged cheer swelled from the Order. Vindication and hard-won victory…that began to wane almost as soon as it began, as Potter lay unmoving on the ground and the Order members realised something was wrong. But it was still victory. "He won." Draco couldn't tell her about Potter's state - a brief, shining serenity had settled on Hermione's ashen features, and Draco couldn't take that - that last moment of happiness - away from her. Not now, when… He shut the thought down before he could complete it, and shoved back his rage, and his terror.
"The Healers will be here soon, Hermione," he told her urgently. "Please, please - hold on." She blinked at him, heavy-lidded and slow, her breaths growing ever more shallow, and the dark stain creeping its evil tendrils further across her gently rounded abdomen.
"I - I don't… Draco…" There was fear growing darker in her eyes, swelling in her pupils as a hectic flush spread over her cheeks, and he could see the life burning out of her by the second as the dark stain crept up toward her chest, and down over the swell of their child in her belly.
"Please, Hermione," he begged, bending to her and taking her face in his hands - her skin felt scalding hot - and stroking his thumbs over her cheeks. His every muscle was thrumming with tension, the pain of his broken leg and other hurts forgotten altogether in his frantic desperation for her. "Please, you can't die. Not now. Hermione. Hermione, please."
"It - " A little frown crossed her face - a crease etching between her brows, then a cry left her lips. "Hurts…it hurts." The stain had reached their interlinked hands on her lower abdomen now; dark worms writhing beneath her skin, and the helpless rage that seized Draco was incredible. Hermione twitched on the ground, began to spasm and jerk, and he screamed for help, but no one heard over the sounds of victory, and the sounds of Voldemort's remaining followers fighting or fleeing in equal numbers. A twisted up cry wrenched from Hermione's lips then, and she jerked on the ground again, eyes squeezing closed. Draco swore and cursed and yelled for help until his throat was raw, as Hermione's eyes rolled back into her head, and she began to convulse
"Help me!" he roared, dropping her hand and staggering to his feet, turning in a slow circle and scanning the predawn scene. Bodies were strewn over the ground and smoke choked the air, darkness broken by fires and the bright flash of duelling, as the moans and cries of the wounded rose and fell on the wind. It looked like Hell; people torn apart, blackened stone, smouldering fires, rubble everywhere, and the iron scent of blood mixing sickeningly with the ozone smell of battle magic. "Someone fucking help me!" Draco couldn't see enough through the smoke that rose from a broken, smouldering beam near them to know if anyone was coming, but he couldn't leave Hermione. She shuddered and choked on the ground at his feet, and his heart hammered, his breath whooped sickly in and out. He squinted into the dying battlefield, sending up sparks in a constant plume as he screamed hoarsely out for help, again and again.
If this was how it ended…if she died here… It was in his head in a flash, clear as anything; stepping off the Astronomy Tower, a short fall to a long oblivion. Dying like Albus Dumbledore had - it seemed fitting, considering. And Draco knew - knew - that he couldn't go on if she died here, like this. Panic tore through him; he was hyperventilating now, his weak muscles giving out, his borrowed wand falling from his hand. He fell with a crunch on his arse on the jagged stone, splinted leg sticking out oddly and radiant-hot with pain that he couldn't care about in the slightest. He leaned in to her, his silver hand smoothing over her forehead, pushing back matted, fluffing wisps of her hair, and pressed his lips briefly to her temple.
She was greyish-lipped even as her skin was hot - stained with the hectic flush of fever and damp with perspiration, the whites of her eyes eerie and awful as she twitched and shook with the convulsions that hadn't ceased. That horrible stain nearly covered her whole torso now. Tendrils crept up to her throat, and Draco begged her to hold on, to live, his words an incoherent, gasping jumble that he poured into her ear. He didn't know if she could even hear him or not, but he begged her through his tears and panting breaths anyway, his hand petting shaky over her sweat-wet forehead. "Please don't go. Please don't go."
"Over here!" His head snapped up and his heart jolted as he heard a voice yell close by him - through the smoke he saw someone clad in Healers robes running toward them, closely followed by another Healer. Frantic relief and hope drenched him and he managed a weak smile down at Hermione, his lips trembling and his tears dripping onto her face. She was insensible, blotched red and damp with sweat, and still jerking and shuddering with every muscle wrenched tense, but Draco clutched at one twitching hand and spoke to her anyway, tears clogging his voice.
"They're here. They're here, Hermione. Just hold on. Just a little longer. Please."
"What happened?" the Healer snapped out as she crouched beside Draco, and it took his shocked brain a moment to find the words.
"B-Bellatrix cursed her. I don't know…don't know what…"
"Out of the damned way, then," the Healer ordered, and Draco scrambled weakly back, mourning the loss of her skin beneath his hands as he watched the Healer bend over Hermione, all urgent, practiced efficiency. He flexed his hand; he could still feel her, hot on his palm, like a brand.
"She's - she's Hermione Granger, my fiancée and she's p-pregnant with our child," Draco said as he stared at Hermione's sweat-drenched, shaking form. "Please, you have to save her."
"I know," the Healer said, tone softening with sympathy. "I'll do my best, lad."
"Need assistance?" the other Healer asked the first as he reached them and took in the scene.
"Triage and portkey that one, and then keep moving," the first Healer snapped, and then slapped something onto Hermione's chest - a portkey Draco realised belatedly, as both the Healer and Hermione were sucked into nothing.
"What - what - where's my fiancée?" Draco demanded, hand lashing out and seizing the second Healer's robes as he bent over Draco. "Where the fuck did she take my fiancée?"
"Calm down or I'll stupefy you, boy." The second Healer shook off Draco's hand easily, glaring down at him. "She's been taken to the Hospital wing, which is where you'll be going in a moment, so shut up and let me assess you." Draco mumbled an automatic apology as he let the second Healer grab his chin and check his eyes, and then cast diagnostic spells, but his muscles were thrumming with the need to go to Hermione, to be near Hermione, to... "You'll live," the Healer told Draco shortly, after a moment that stretched on for eternity as Draco itched to go to Hermione, in case... "You'll need medical attention but you can wait. I'm sending you to the Hospital wing. Sit down, shut up, and don't get in the way - you'll be dealt with once the more urgent cases are stabilised." Then the Healer slapped a smooth stone into Draco's hand, and a second later he felt the familiar, unpleasant tug of the portkey in his belly.
"Got another!" someone yelled as the Hospital wing materialised around Draco - he blinked as he took in chaos. There were moans and screams filling the air, and the scent of blood was heavy. People were packed into the huge infirmary, filling the beds and stacked along the floor like sardines, as those recruited to be Healers rushed about with an efficient kind of frantic madness. He was looking for Hermione when a woman who looked several years older than him who he didn't recognise crouched down before him, and filled up his view.
"What key were you given?" she grabbed at his hand and numbly he let her open it and remove the smooth, now inactive stone. "Right, come on. You're bottom of the list - we'll deal with you once we've sorted the urgent cases. For now let's get you out of the way."
"Hermione." He looked up at the young woman - blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail and streaked with blood at the left side, and a strong-featured face that was drawn with exhaustion and a sickened kind of grief. "Where's Hermione Granger?"
The girl frowned at him, before recognition blossomed. "Oh. You're him. Malfoy." He nodded.
"Where is she. She just portkeyed up, just before me." She was too slow to answer and Draco growled low in his throat, shoving himself to his feet and shrugging off her attempts to steady him, as she made a sound of concern and hovered close, trying to help. He looked around and still couldn't see Hermione in the madness of blood and death and people screaming. He wished they'd silencio them so that he could fucking think straight for a moment. "Where the fuck is she? Tell me!"
"She was taken straight through to Mungo's, Malfoy - a team of Order members took the hospital immediately after Voldemort fell, and met no resistance. All the - the most serious cases are going there." The woman's eyes were grave, her gaze and answer direct and honest, and Draco appreciated that.
"I need to go to her." It wasn't a question, or a hope, it was a demand, and from the way the woman flinched back a little, he knew she felt the weight of it. He set his jaw and tried to hide the crowding terror he felt. "take me to her. Now." She paused for a moment, as though torn on what to do…and then she stepped back from him and shook her head with a regret that made him want to gouge her fucking eyes out.
"I'm sorry. I don't have the authorisation, and I have people I need to tend to. I'm sorry. Let me take you to an out of the way spot, and a Healer will be with you as soon as possible." She reached out, fingers closing over his upper arm, and he shook her off violently, rage boiling.
"Don't fucking touch me," he snarled, the words coming out in a grief-broken, slurring hitch, and empathy shaped her face. Softened it.
"All right. I won't. But you need to stay out of the way, okay?" she said softly, and then: "For what it's worth, I'm sorry, Malfoy." And it was worth less than nothing, but he couldn't tell her that because she was sorry and Hermione would tell him he was being an arse for being rude to the woman, and…and he couldn't do. He staggered back, and then turned and limped drunkenly on his splinted leg to the nearest wall, and leant his forehead against it and started to sob. Hermione.
He allowed himself a few moments to be a pathetic, snivelling wreck, and then he straightened and turned, and surveyed the room as he wiped at his face, smearing his tears away. Draco recognised some of the faces being tended to, but there were so many missing, and he didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. But first thing's first - he needed to get to St Mungo's, and he needed to get there now. The building itself would be warded, so he couldn't apparate in, but the entrance wouldn't be. He forced himself to move on his broken leg, hobbling and hopping along toward the exit, leaning heavy on the wall to keep himself from falling, shoving down his fear into a small heavy ball that sat like lead in his stomach. That sat there like the black holes he'd read about in Muggle books, inexorably eating him up from the inside out.
Draco nearly fell out the damn door, and as soon as he was past the anti-apparation wards, he shut his eyes and pictured the Muggle street that St Mungo's sat hidden on, out of sight to all but those of magical blood. He fell into a crumpled heap on the pavement, a brief scream breaking his lips as the disapparation made his broken leg feel terrible things. He wondered with a corner of his mind if he'd somehow splinched the bone, or the flesh of his leg internally, as he tried to scramble to his feet. It took him far too long to realise there was a growing crowd of horrified Muggles staring at the bloodied, maimed man who had appeared out of nowhere on the side of the road. One of them approached him with wide eyes - a guy who seemed around his own age who seemed halfway to pissed, cigarette forgotten jammed into a corner of his mouth, in a hoodie and jeans and reaching out tentatively.
"Shit, man. You aw right? Fuck. Fuck, man, where'd you even - even come from…?"
Draco swayed on his feet, but waved away the other man's outreached hand. "I'm - I'm fine," he said numbly, and a hysterical laugh welled up in his throat. "I'm fine," he said again and really did laugh, cracked and rough, because Merlin, he was anything but. "And nowhere. I came from - from…nowhere." And then he was brushing past the guy, lurching for St Mungo's entrance down the alley in front of him.
"Fucking - fucking yeah you did," the guy said in bewildered shock at the impossibility, plucking his ciggie from between his lips and blinking bloodshot eyes. "Fucking nowhere. Jesus." But Draco was already out of earshot, halfway down the alley, biting his lip bloody at the flaring agony in his leg and forcing himself on regardless. Hermione. He had to make it to her. He had to get there before…before…
Nymphadora was there. She was pacing the corridor on the fifth floor, her dirtied face going blank with shock when Draco stumbled around the corner and directly into her path. "Draco!" she gasped, doing a double take as she took in the state of him, and then grabbed him, slipping an arm around his back before he could protest or pull away. "Here, you shouldn't be bloody walking on that, you idiot." No-nonsense and brisk, she helped him to a seat up against the wall, easing him down into it and perching onto the edge of the one beside him, her face all tight concern and bottled up grief. He decided weakly to sit for a moment and give himself a breather, to recover so he could actually manage to make it to Hermione, wherever she was. As it was he was barely staying upright anymore. "What on earth…why…?"
"Hermione," he said in explanation, wanting to get up and find her but needing to take the moment to just breathe, damn his useless fucking body. "Aunt Bella cursed her. She's -" He shut his eyes and crammed down the sobs threatening to escape him, and then started again, staring past Nymphadora's shoulder because the sympathy blooming bright and wet in her eyes is too much for him to bear. "She's dying," he admitted aloud for the first time, hands twining together in his lap, sticky with blood spatter. Hermione was dying and everything was falling into nothing and he felt so lost. "She's dying and they said - they said she would be here, but they wouldn't let me portkey so I apparated, and…"
"You apparated? But the wards…" Nymphadora's eyes widened as she realised what Draco had done. "Don't tell me you've been walking around this whole bloody place on that broken leg. Merlindamnit, Draco, permanently ruining your leg isn't going to -" She snapped her mouth shut abruptly as Draco's eyes slid onto hers, and he knew she could feel the cold weight of his fear and helplessness fall upon her.
"Save her?" he finished in a voice like ice. "I know that, Nymphadora. But if she…I should be there, with her and - and the baby. I don't give a single shit about the state of my leg."
"Of course." Nymphadora's face was white beneath the dirt and blood smeared across it. "Of course. I'm sorry. I'm not - not thinking very clearly." And it was only then that Draco wondered why Nymphadora was there, and then a split second later realised what the only reason could be. He adjusted his splint with a wince as he felt vaguely guilty for being too caught up in fear for Hermione to even have a passing thought for others' pain. He forced himself to meet Nymphadora's eyes, because that was what Hermione would tell him to do.
"Shit, Nymphadora. I'm an arsehole." He swallowed hard. "...Lupin?" Nymphadora bowed her head, and nodded small.
"The healers are stabilising Remus now. They - they think he'll live, but…" The vicious envy that seized Draco at hearing that Lupin was likely to live was sudden and sickening, and he felt shame well up in its wake. And then his cousin finished speaking and he was even more ashamed. "It's too early to tell for sure, much too early, but…they think he may never wake up." Her voice was tiny and fragile, and so unlike her usual self, and a tear slipped down her cheek, carving a clean path through the filth.
Draco knew that he should say sorry, he knew that maybe he should hug her and try to comfort her. But he couldn't. It just wasn't in him. Not now. He struggled up to his feet, hissing at the agony in his leg.
"I -" His voice broke and he cleared his throat and tried again, rough and ragged still, but firm. "I have to find her. Do you know where she might be?"
"She'll be somewhere along this corridor, most likely." Nymphadora stood, trying to shape her features into something other than worry, and helpless fear. "Let me look. No point in you limping up and down on that leg when I can check twice as quick." She glared sharp at Draco when he opened his mouth to protest, and so he nodded shortly rather than waste time in arguing, feeling numb and hollow. She was right, after all. He felt so fucking useless.
He bit his already wounded lower lip hard as leaned against the wall and watched Nymphadora run down the corridor, from door to door. He didn't even know if Hermione was still alive.
Draco sat beside Hermione's bed, his still only-splinted broken leg sticking out awkwardly, eyes pale and blank as he stared at her motionless, ashen form. The morning sun streaked in around the edges of the heavy curtains at the windows, but the room itself was dimly lit, and quiet except for his breathing, and hers - shallow and rapid.
The Healers had tried to have Draco come away to have his leg seen to, but he'd refused. When they'd offered to treat him right there, he'd told them to fuck off. Hermione was on the thin line that separated life from death, and his broken leg could fucking wait.
He sat and watched her, alone now. Nymphadora was with Lupin, who had been stabilised but was still comatose - she'd popped her head in once or twice, but not stayed long. Draco had made it clear no one else was welcome right now. He stared at her chest, as it struggled to rise and fall, and agonised over whether or not to try to take Hermione to a Muggle hospital. Whether it might not have a better chance of saving her, now that the Curse - the same one that had nearly killed Cho Chang - had been neutralised.
For now though, between his own wounds and her fragility, he thought it best to remain here, and she remained on the brink, and he wished over and over again for the whole world to burn around them as he stared at her pain-carved white face, and his heart scraped raw with grief.