Chapter Seven

He sat there, on that cold glass chair, staring in front of him as he made the surface of his hands keep his chin up. He just sat there, staring at the bed before him with indescribable iron-looking eyes; his pale features showing exhaustion, emphasizing the previous years of war he'd tried to make fade as an even more defined fatigue shone.

The room was silent, nothing but the beep, beep, beep of that muggle contraption that many wizards found use for invaded the room. Only the sound of the machine and nothing more—but inside of his head, there was swooshing of wind, brain cells jamming together, voices speaking, movements marking, memories playing. Inside his head, Draco Malfoy was turning into a hectic mess that contradicted the silence of the room.

"...She's growing up so fast, isn't she?"

Draco looked towards the small figure laying perfectly still underneath magenta-colored sheets. The large window behind the bed showing the calm midnight sea, the light of the conjured moon in the scene reflected off the white walls of the room; tossing deep light at the pale face of a young girl.

He watched with muted fascination at the girl, completely dazzled at how beautiful she looked as the moonlight washed over her in her peaceful slumber. Looking exactly alike the woman he loved, like the brunette he had been watching for years sleep.

"She'll be going to Hogwarts soon," is what he replied from the door, watching a tall figure lean down towards the bed and press a kiss on the girl's forehead. Staring for another two seconds before she walked towards the man at the entrance of the room.

"She's going to be just fine, Draco," stopping in a perfect spot, where the light of the moon exposed the delicate features of her face, Hermione Malfoy stared at her husband knowingly; already guessing what his previous statement actually meant. "Ariana isn't like everyone else, you know that." She smiled at the man. "Besides, she's got loads of protection inside of Hogwarts if anything were to happen."

Looking away from his wife's smile, Draco turned from his place and walked down the hall of his house, hearing the light footsteps of the woman follow behind him. "Can you call that protection, Hermione?" He asked, opening another door with a soft creek; a very light teasing tone in his voice as the room came into view.

And even though Draco's voice had held some teasing in it, Hermione stared inside with a contemplative gaze. On the furthest wall, on the right side of the room, her eyes flicking past that giant window at the center of the room—knowing perfectly well that the scene playing behind the glass was that of the Hogwarts Quidditch pitch—she stared calculating at a sleeping boy. Tousled and twisted between his dark sheets, an unconscious palm smacked against the emerald wall behind his bed, she twisted her lips to the side after a few more seconds of contemplating.

"So he is a bit of a commotion," Hermione interjected, smiling softly as the moon in the Quidditch pitch highlighted her son's blonde hair. "He's a growing boy, Draco, he'll adjust. He is just a Second Year, he still has time to settle in."

"He's a smart boy, Hermione. He's had plenty of time to settle in," her husband said, turning to her as they both stood watching their son from the door. "He's like a higher version of who I used to be, remember? We've figured that since he was three."

Without saying anything, the brunette raised her brow as she turned to look at him.

"…I'm just a bit nervous of his turn out," the blonde wizard explained, frowning at the lack of interest his wife was showing. "I don't want his arrogance to conflict with other people's feelings, Hermione. Especially his sister's. "

"Scorpius has his ways, Draco, but at the end of the day he loves his family," reaching a palm to his shoulder, Hermione smiled again. "Let them grow accordingly, there is nothing to worry about."

But her husband looked unconvinced at her carefree tone."...You say that so easily, why?"

Rolling her eyes at the disguised concern in Draco's face, Hermione squeezed his shoulder before letting her hand slip. "Because, Malfoy, we have you." Her hand traveled to her abdomen—to that small bump already popping out from her skin . "And if I am corrected, nothing can possibly harm us when we are with you. Or, would you let danger get us?"

"Never," he responded fluidly, his eyes looking away from his new, developing child to his wife's brown eyes. "...Isn't that why I'm here? To protect you from anything and everything?"

"Then stop worrying," she commanded, her fingers already grabbing and intertwining with his as she led him out of their eldest child's room. "Nothing will harm us as long as you're with us. Everything will always be okay, Draco."

The man nodded, his face kept serious as if he was making an unheard unbreakable vow. "...Nothing will harm you."

Draco gritted his teeth as the memory faded—of course he had failed.

His mind was playing dirty, tossing him memories of when he had sworn time and time again that he would never let anything happen to his family; that he'd protect Hermione with as much dedication as he once had when he thrived on making her life miserable. He had given her his word that he would protect their children, that not even the flu would come knocking on the door of their kids room to pay them a visit.

He had meant protection against everything, but he failed miserably. Now there was this sickening thump to his heart that made it seem as if a hole was starting to form in his chest, all because he didn't keep his promise. Now he was starting to feel like he used to, like a failure, like he was completely useless.

Entering the hospital room of St. Mungos, Harry Potter sighed with aggravation as he caught sight of the paralyzed blonde. "Come on, mate, what are you still doing here? How long are you going to stay here until someone kicks you out? Dean already told you that the room needs to be vacant."

Malfoy didn't move or blink, he just continued to stare at the taunting bed in front of him. Growing dizzy as he let his eyes wonder off to every wire and tube that made circles around the floor and over the white-sheets of the hospital bed.

Grunting to himself, the Chosen One decided to take a direct path to make the wizard react. "You should go outside to the waiting room. Be with your mother, mate. She needs you right now."

Swallowing, Draco cursed internally at the forming knot in his throat.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Harry sighed once more, the silence still pissing him off. "Look, Malfoy, if it gives you a bit of serenity, I promise I'll find who did this. I already have Aurors inspecting and analyzing the manor. Teddy's in charge, mind you, but he has direct orders to search the place multiples times before they are even granted a break. Kingsley's sent in Mister Weasley to see if he could find traces of any ancient dark magic."

Beep. Beep. Beep.

"I'm...erm...going to be reporting to Malfoy Manor later on today, mate. I'll find something, I promise," Harry added awkwardly, clearing his throat as he attempted to make his old nemesis feel better. (Because, come on, who can feel calm if Teddy Lupin is leading an investigation?)

"…I'm going to take the case, Potter," lifting his head higher than how he'd had it in the previous hour, Draco turned his stormy gaze to the Savior of the Wizarding World. "I know Shacklebolt handed you the investigation, Potter, but as you can understand, I'll be taking the lead now."

This time Harry gave it a few seconds before speaking, calculating what he was going to say. "I can't, Malfoy." (Okay, maybe he should've given it a few more seconds of thought before he spoke to the temperamental man.) "This is my case and I'm the one who is going to be leading it. I can not have you be in front of this, Malfoy, and shun anyone who gets a little close to being the person at fault. You're not going to be thinking straight. This situation is personal—"

"Of course it has gotten bloody fucking personal!" Malfoy hissed, standing up in any angry flash as he glared at the bespectacled man. "My family was attacked, Potter! Do you bloody expect me to sit back and let someone else handle my business? It's my responsibility to find whoever did this—" His white finger pointed at the bed, the beep, beep, beep still going on became louder as his voice broke off. The Chosen One and him looking away from each other before the moment could become more tensed.

"—Usually," opening the door to the hospital room, a dark-skinned man walked inside; expecting the two men as he entered, hands folded over his bright Healer robes, "St. Mungos doesn't allow yelling to take place in their rooms. Unless it's from the patients, of course."

"Sorry, mate," Harry muttered, his aggravation coming back to the surface as Malfoy stood frozen into silence once again.

"I've come to check their pulses," Dean Thomas said, waving away his old classmate's apology and walking towards the bed first. "It's been a few hours, and I'm sure changes must have occurred."

Like being slapped beside the head, Draco took an unconscious step towards the white-sheeted bed, looking on the verge of breaking as the graduated Gryffindor pointed his wand at the face of the patient. His heart giving another one of those odd thumps as a 3-D image was conjured over the patient's head, showing an x-ray scan of what was going on internally.

"Hmm," Healer Thomas mumbled to himself, flicking his wand and making the image disappear as he turned away from the bed.

And almost as if the previous hurt wasn't enough, Malfoy felt as if he skin was being burned with the dark mark all over again. This time deeper, to every layer of skin and throughout his entire body. He watched with agonizing eyes as Dean bended slightly down to a glass crib; all the same wires and contraptions that were on the hospital bed were repeated and more dangerously placed around it. Around a small, fragile, and mangled toddler.

He watched as another image popped to the open, showing all those unexplainable signs and codes that could only be comprehended by the Healer."...How is she?"

And with another flick to make the scan disappear, Dean shared a silent stare with his old friend and then promptly turned to face Malfoy; knowing that it had gone unnoticed by the blonde since his mind was too preoccupied at the moment to notice the small details. "The amount of spells that hit her were too much for her developing system to handle." As a good friend of the Malfoy family, the Healer felt a bit of his own pain as he spoke to the man in front of him. "She is almost three years of age, Malfoy, and her central nervous system has yet to be fully developed as a grown adult would have. There was plenty of head trauma and we've barely managed to stop the hemorrhage since the house-elf brought her in."

"But you did stop it, right?" Harry asked, his tangled emotions starting to untwine themselves as two redheads entered the room silently, having heard most of Dean's diagnosis as Pansy found her way in with them. "The hemorrhage?"

"It was difficult, but we managed," Dean responded, feeling guiltier than a Healer should as all the others began to stare at him with worry. "It wasn't easy to stop the rupture of the blood vessels in her brain. There was already too much magic in her system, we didn't want to risk inflicting more into her and causing more damage. She'll be in a comatose state longer than what I could expect…However…"

"However?" Feeling a bit weak to shove off the hold that his friend had on him, Draco let Pansy have her palm resting on his shoulder; feeling more settled as his old friend was now present. (He didn't mind Potter, the Weasel, and the Weaslette, but nothing like his once-lap-dog to make him feel sturdy.)

Healer Thomas clutched onto his wand tighter, his expression dissolving into his dark skin until there was nothing but a blank canvas looking back at his friends. "I don't guarantee anything. The damage might be irreversible and she'll never wake up from her unconscious state...Or in a few months she could wake. But the effects might be too painful for her to handle, and she might now be able to survive on her own." Pausing, Dean tried to picture Luna's soothing face, an action that he did whenever he had to face the relatives of one of his patients with bad news. "You've to consider that having her in a long-term ward is an option. Or, as it has been proved, you can have her watched by your own personnel, alike Ariana Dumbledore had when the Fourth Floor: Spell Damaged was declined by the Dumbledores."

"Dumbledore's sister was not comatose, Dean," Ginny Potter snapped, staring stunned at her ex-boyfriend. "Her story is by far different than Demi's."

"Their brains were effect in similar ways, Ginny," Dean retorted, forgetting about his wife's soothing face as his anger flared as the redhead assumed he didn't know what he was talking about. "The point is, there is profound damage. The outcomes are not good. Maybe if Demetria had been nowhere near the first blast, there could've been more hope for her."

Ginny frowned at him.

Dean ignored her and continued. "According to Mrs. Malfoy, there were many spells thrown before the attackers managed to get inside the manor. She could have gotten hit by newly-created spells, but that doesn't matter, does it? She was still unprotected and got hit. The damage is done."

Draco's nostrils flared, his gray eyes turning into a thunderous storm as the image Thomas had played out descriptively well, took home in his head.

"…It's not his fault, Draco."

Before Malfoy could even let his venom slip, Ginny and Pansy squealed out a 'Hermione!'; distracting him completely from his bubbling murderous rage as brown eyes blinked alive from the hospital bed.

Hermione clenched her teeth, exposing a look of true pain as she started remembering everything from the attack as soon as her eyes fluttered open. "…I know what you're thinking, Draco, so stop," she whispered, her eyes already glistening as her husband stared at her from his stand feet away. "I didn't know where it came from...Before I could react, Demi was...I-I froze...I couldn't think of anything…N-no spells, no enchantments...just my daughter on that floor...I-I could have gotten to her but—"

"It's not your fault," her husband retorted, his feet still stuck on the tiled floor. "You went into a nervous breakdown, Hermione. Your senses were off, just as your mind did."

Knowing that Draco was about to start justifying her mistake, Hermione let her tears fall as she looked at the glass crib on her right side. Her insides burning with self-hate as she could see her daughter's bare chest attacked by wires and magnets connected to the beeping machine.

"...What happened?" She murmured, looking up at Draco. "Who could have ordered an attack at the Malfoy Manor?"

"That's what they're trying to investigate, 'Mione," Ginny replied, walking away from her own husband to join her brunette friend at her hospital bed. "Harry's leading the case."

Groaning internally at his wife's slip, Harry tried looking assured and professional at his best friend. "I've got a team of Aurors working on analyzing the manor, Hermione. Ron and I will be down at the site soon. We'll find whoever did this, I promise."

Glaring at Harry in a quick glance, a second later Ron forced an awkward smile at the woman on the hospital bed. "Yeah. We promise, 'Mione."

"Where's Narcissa?" Was Hermione's next question, remembering to corner her redheaded best friend as he sent another deadly frown at Harry and her husband; almost as if he knew more than he wanted to keep bottled. (And she knew that Ron Weasley's p-p-poker face was easy to b-b-break.)

"Andromeda's with her, Hermione," Pansy spoke, moving her comforting hand from Malfoy to her husband's back. Soothing him before his face started matching color with his hair. "She didn't want to be hospitalized and Andromeda promised Thomas she would look out after Cissy."

Hermione nodded. "And Mister Malfoy?"

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

No one answered, so the brunette looked at her husband again. "...Draco, your father?"

"Dead," Malfoy responded emotionless, his silver eyes sparkling with that feeling he could not express. With those emotions that could not come out as they grabbed a hold of his heart.

Hermione's eyes widened in horror. "W-What?"

"'Mione, relax," Dean ordered. "If you let yourself go into overload, you'll be here longer."

"Relax?!" She huffed, her expression looking struck. "How can I possibly relax? He's dead, Dean!"

And just as Hermione's heart-monitor starting beeping erratically, her heart rate and blood pressure going awry, someone said, "Who's dead?" With expecting silver eyes, Ariana Malfoy stood by the entrance of the hospital room, her school-robes covered in dust as she looked firmly at the surprised faces of the adults. All of them looking at her as if Nearly-Headless Nick finally lost his head.

They all stayed in silence, giving each other fleeting stares.

Ariana narrowed her eyes at them. "Who died?"

"…Ana," Hermione breathed, her face looking more tortured.

Pulling the on girl's sleeve, Ron studied the dust on the robes for a few seconds. "Floo Powder," he stated, clucking his tongue disapprovingly at the almost-brunette. "Dumbledore let you by, didn't he? Bloody old man, I'm telling you. Complete menace for these kids."

"McGonagall left me a letter," Ariana explained, pulling away from Ron's hold as she walked closer to her mother's bed. "She said you were attacked at the manor and that—Demi!" The rest of her explanation was cut short as she let out a shrill scream; her eyes bulging out as she caught sight of her little sister in all those wires.

"Ana! Ana, no!" Ginny reached for the girl and pushed her to Hermione, stopping her from reaching out and grabbing Demetria's unconscious body. "Calming droughts would really help right about now, Dean!" She hissed at the Healer.

But almost like it was the day for interruptions, a knock, knock, knock was heard on the hospital room's door.

"—Excuse the interruption," Opening the door with a bit of a light push, a curvy witch came into view; her light green eyes looking at the people in front of her as she moved a jet-black strand away from her face. "The Minister sent me to check in with you, Mister Malfoy."

With an eyebrow raised high, Pansy leaned over to Dean and said, "...well, you can forget about the droughts now, Thomas. You might want to go open another hospital room."

Dean sighed a little, his skin certainly feeling the instant tension that had emerged into the room as the brunette laying on the white-sheet bed pulled on some sort of scowl.

"Who is this?"

"Oh, Mrs. Malfoy," shaking her head to herself, the curvy woman turned to face the brunette with a sympathetic stare. "I'm so sorry. How rude of me. I'm Tanya Rowle. I'm the new secretary for your husband."

Narrowing her brown eyes as the secretary went to go stand by her husband, Hermione collected all of her manners for a slight second. "Hello."

"I know this is the worst moment for greetings, Mrs. Malfoy, but I'm really glad I finally got to meet you. You're quite famous and loved at the Ministry." Putting a hand to her chest, the woman turned away from the brunette to the blonde man next to her. "My deep sympathies, Mister Malfoy. I am very sorry for your loss."

Ariana knitted her eyebrows, her distraught-looking eyes moving away from her little sister to her father as he nodded once at his secretary.

"Report back to the Minister, Miss Rowle," Draco said to the woman, "and tell him that Potter has granted me the lead of this case."

"Malfoy—"

"Oi! You can't do that, ferret! Harry's Head Auror!" Ron hissed, interrupting his best friend before he could finish his outraged sentence. "And if anyone is getting bumped up, it's me! I'm second in the throne!"

With a shaking will to restrain himself from lashing out at Weasley, Draco was pushed back lightly by two soft palms on his chest. "Look, Weasley, I'm leading this case whether Potter or you object! You can play queen another day, but this time I'm calling the shots!"

"Malfoy," Harry frowned at the blonde wizard, "we already discussed this."

And with those hands still on him, still holding him back for the atmosphere's security, Draco said in a hesitant voice, "Potter, this is my matter. You can't leave me out of it."

Looking warily now, almost calculating, Ariana loosened her grip around her mother's body to blink towards her and her narrowing brown-eyes. Seeing that unguarded feeling seeping out through her pupils.

"We need to talk about this, alright. At the Ministry." Sighing in defeat, Harry Potter crossed his arms as Ron frowned even more. (Well, he could always be the Princess.)

"Keep calm, Mister Malfoy," Tanya Rowle stared soothingly at her boss, her palms still on his chest as the man heaved dangerously.

Having enough of the tension in the air, having enough of no one telling her anything—and that bloody woman touching her father, Ariana stood up from her mother's side. "Dad," and as she walked, she shoved the woman away from her father, "Demi is going to be fine, right?" She looked up at him from her lashes, their silver eyes connecting.

With that knot in his throat forming again, Draco looked at his daughter with those glistening tears still sparkling unshed in his eyes. With the guilt of not being able to protect them, with the misery that reflected on his older daughter's face. "Of course, Ariana."

"I don't want to go back to Hogwarts, dad," she whispered in that tiny voice, her arms aching to wrap themselves around her father's waist for support and comfort. "I want to stay here with you, with Mum."

And not bearing that guilt or Ariana's misery, Draco scooped up his thirteen year-old into his arms. Holding her tight like when she used to be a toddler and she needed his comfort on nights thunder roared. "In an hour, Ana," he told her gently as he walked them to Hermione's hospital bed. Exhaustion coming back full speed. "One hour, then you have to go back."

Staring at the woman past her father's shoulders, Ariana glared expertly at Tanya Rowle; their eyes connecting for a millisecond. A tiny fragment of a moment that sufficed to express everything. From the distrust, to the suspicion, and even to the common factor between them—the stare of one destruction form to another. Of two lethal bombs ready to explode and devour everything.

Bang.

"Drake! Drake!"

"Oh, for Merlin's sake," grunting to herself, Ginny leaped out of the way as Blaise Zabini came bolting in through the door; jumping onto the foot of the hospital bed before Draco and Ariana could settle themselves on either side of Hermione.

"Why?!" Zabini cried.

"Why are you in your underwear?" Ariana asked her godfather, her anger and hurt mixing with disgust as her the man's bare legs landed on her lap. His purple slippers added more dust to her robes.

Blaise cried harder, gripping the sheets as he buried his face into them as one by one the other adults started clearing out the room; no one wanting to be in the room willingly as Zabini flared with dramatics."Why?!"