Chapter 17
"I can walk on my own."
"Of course you can." Draco wrapped his arm around Hermione's waist, then nudged her left arm across his shoulders.
Their height difference buckled him into an uncomfortable stoop, but there was no way she was walking the uneven, gravel path that left from the Apparition point to the The Khôra unassisted.
They were both in bad shape, but at least he could be a gentleman about it.
Not two steps later, he cursed every chivalrous thought he'd ever had.
The Apparition itself had been no small feat. Compression around his chest and lungs was the last thing he wanted after cracking what had to be at least two ribs. But it was either that, Floo, or Portkey. Apparition felt like the least violent—and most expedient—option.
He hadn't factored in the strain of supporting Hermione's weight whilst climbing a mountain.
Each hunched step and laboured inhale sent pain jabbing through his torso. His was wheezing before they'd gone twenty feet.
"Oh this is ridiculous."
Hermione pulled away—simple task, as Draco had diverted most of his focus to keeping vertical—and squirmed beneath him. His arm looped over her shoulder now, and her body supported his weight.
"Better?" she asked, as they shuffled toward The Khôra's front door.
It was likely rhetorical; Draco answered anyway.
"Yes, but my way was much more dramatic."
"And significantly less practical."
He gave her a sideways look. "You don't sound surprised."
"I know you too well," she said. "When you have the choice between dramatic and stoic, you'll always choose the former."
Draco pressed a hand to his chest, now metaphorically wounded as well. More because that statement was true than unfair. "Forsooth."
Hermione laughed, then leaned him against a Doric column and opened the front door.
Clover met them there, with Narcissa close behind. His mother paled, and Draco could only imagine how they looked.
Him: stiff and limping, the bandages around his abdomen visible beneath his torn and singed shirt.
Hermione: bloodied face, bloodied arm, bloodied clothes, the fabric stiff with iron-brown stains.
"A little help?" Draco asked.
"Essence of Dittany, sanitizer, and bandages," Narcissa snapped, a common prescription by now. Clover disappeared, but Narcissa's orders continued. "A bowl and some clean clothes for both of them. Two, no, three bottles of an anti-inflammatory potion. The strongest we have."
"Please," Hermione added.
Narcissa didn't even bother glaring. Instead, she took Draco's opposite arm, relieving Hermione of the burden. "To the study. Now."
Draco limped through The Khôra, propelled largely by Narcissa's haste. Hermione followed. She had wrapped her right arm in the bottom hem of her shirt so as not to bloody the pristine floors. Thoughtful, but unnecessary: their shoes tracked that and worse across the tile.
"What happened?" Narcissa asked.
"We ran into some company," Draco answered with a grimace.
He got no further before reaching the study. Mitchell waited, pacing in and out of frame. When he saw them, he pressed his hands against the glass, mouth dropping in horror.
"Oh my gods…"
"We're fine," Hermione said.
"Speak for yourself," Draco muttered.
Narcissa lowered him onto the sofa while Hermione settled herself onto the chair-and-half. He leaned back, shifted, tried to find a position in which his lungs didn't feel pinched. There didn't appear to be one that involved him remaining upright. He abandoned pride and laid down across the cushions, a foot against the floor, an arm across his forehead.
With a quick series of cracks, Clover delivered the requested items to the coffee table. Once she was through, she approached Draco with an empty bowl and a stack of clean towels.
He waved her off. "Hermione first."
Whoever said chivalry was dead?
The elf paused, as if waiting for the order to be reversed. When it wasn't, she turned to the chair-and-half. Draco watched with satisfaction as she Summoned a gentle stream of water and began to clean the deep gash on Hermione's forearm.
Summoning a second bowl, Narcissa stopped her short pacing stint and knelt beside Draco. She drew her wand and began cleaning the small cuts and scrapes on his face.
"Tell us," Narcissa said.
"Brutus was there."
"Where?" Apparently, Draco hadn't spoken fast enough for his mother. "At Gringotts?"
"Yes. He arrived after we did. He…" Draco swallowed the bitter taste of their new reality. "He knows."
Narcissa's gentle touch paused.
"He knows?" Mitchell's tinny voice was sharp in the silence. "What do you mean, he knows?"
"We did everything we could," Hermione said, as if that made the truth any easier to swallow. "He caught us by surprise. We didn't expect him to be there, we didn't think he could be. I mean, the chances were—"
"But he knows?" Mitchell was working himself into a panic now. A sheen of sweat coated his forehead, beaded at the edges of his hairline. "What exactly does he know?"
There was no speaking around it. No way to soften the blow.
"Brutus knows we are aware of his true identity."
Hearing it aloud snapped something within Mitchell. His expression turned vacant, the tension that had animated his face fading until his cheeks and jaw hung slack. Dazed, he ran a hand through his hair and, without a word, disappeared behind the mirror's golden frame.
Out of sight though, from Draco's experience, not out of hearing range. A good thing: this was a story he only wanted to relive once.
"How did this happen?" Narcissa looked between them.
"Everything was normal when we arrived at Gringotts," Hermione answered. "It was just us two…"
Draco closed his eyes, though he suspected Narcissa could see the grateful tears trailing from their corners. He hardly cared. Only the time they'd spent together—the history they'd shared—could have informed Hermione's choice to recount the tale.
She knew how much it would hurt him to admit to failure, especially in front of his parents. Lucius was the less desirable audience for such a defeat, but Narcissa wasn't faultless. They had both expected far more than Draco could give. And though that trauma was two decades old, the wound had never healed.
It remained a vulnerability.
Hermione recognised it, and tried to spare him the humiliation that came with not only having lost, but having done so in such spectacular fashion.
Had the timing not been absolutely wretched, had they been in private, had he been anywhere near confident of her enduring affection for him…
Draco would have proposed to her right then.
"Dittany," Narcissa said in warning.
He winced as the potion hit his skin. The sizzle and smoke and smell of new growth—a warm, heady scent of something being born—turned his stomach.
Hermione hissed in pain, too. Reflexive tears dripped down her cheeks as her fingers curled tight against the fabric of her trousers. Clover applied the potion with as much care as Narcissa, with gentle daubs on her face, neck, and chest.
The care they took did nothing to lessen the hurt.
"It wasn't all a waste." Hermione's voice trembled as Clover wound gauze around the pink, tender skin. She pulled Antonia's diary from her waistband and set it on the coffee table. "We got what we went in for."
"But we lost so much more."
Mitchell reappeared, looking worse than Draco had ever seen him: splotchy skin, rumpled hair, shirtsleeves wrinkled and tear-stained. As a rule, Draco did not give people hugs. If Mitchell were corporeal, he would have considered making an exception.
His bloodshot eyes locked onto Draco's.
"You fucked it up," Mitchell said. He stated it like a fact, his words as dead and unfeeling as the mirror realm. "You were outsmarted, outmatched, and out-duelled. He was better than you in every possible way."
Though his ribs protested, Draco rolled from the couch. He came onto his knees before the mirror, facing Mitchell square.
"I know. I'm sorry. I thought it would work, but I underestimated him."
"That's par for the course with you, though, isn't it?" Mitchell shrugged. "You never consider what other people might be capable of. You never think of what they can do, and if it might be more than what you can manage on your own. You think you're the best there is. You always have. Pure, untempered ego. And now, it's killed me."
He sounded resigned; Draco would have preferred it if he'd shouted.
"It hasn't killed you," Draco said sternly. "We're not through yet. We still have leads to follow. The diary might give us a way out of this. Mitchell, I promise—"
The man disappeared behind the frame once again. Draco looked back to Hermione. "I deserved that."
Hermione swiped at her glistening eyes. "No, you didn't," she insisted with a shake of her head. "He's angry."
"He has every right to be."
"Yes, but it wasn't your fault. It wasn't anyone's fault. We went in with a solid plan. We had no idea that he would be there. We couldn't have known. Just like we couldn't have predicted his access to the Gringotts key."
"He's a Malfoy," Narcissa said, her correction firm but not cruel. "Of course he had access to the key."
"But why did he use it now?"
"You're not exempt from bad luck."
"It wasn't bad luck. It was too coincidental to be accidental." Draco looked at Hermione with wide eyes. "Did Brutus seem surprised to see us?"
"No." Her eyes went distant with memory. "No, he didn't."
"Because he wasn't. He knew we were going to be there. He was monitoring the vault key."
"He couldn't have. The Gringotts key is stored in the ether." Narcissa gestured around her, to the infinite, collapsable pockets of reality where wizards and witches sent things of great or little importance. "We don't know when it's used—it's either present or absent."
"We don't know."
Clover sat on the chair-and-half beside Hermione. Quiet. Unnoticed.
Omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent.
"Rosie!"
Draco's elf—the kind, excitable, faithful being who had cared for him even when he didn't care for himself—appeared on command.
Rosie landed in a hunch, appearing to favour her left side, and stood with her gaze averted. Her broken nose from last week had healed crooked. Or perhaps it had been re-broken: the twin bruises beneath her swollen eyes implied recent trauma. Blood and snot stained the front of her normally spotless shift, which had been torn and hastily patched at one shoulder.
The elf had served his family for decades, but never had Draco seen her this submissive.
Never before had he seen her this scared.
Hermione choked back a sob. She pressed her hands over her mouth, a poor attempt to hide the horror that shone through her tear-filled eyes.
Narcissa's mouth stretched into a thin, grim line. In that moment, she looked every one of her sixty years.
Draco's fury condensed. The burning at the centre of his chest collapsed under its own weight, concentrating into a neutron star. The room's temperature dropped. Its candles dimmed. Outside, a fell wind began to blow.
"I'm going to kill him."
Draco knew it with certainty. Felt it with the same undeniable force of destiny that Antonia must have felt when she'd made her murderous vow over three centuries ago.
Any lingering warmth he might have felt toward his ancestor died, a campfire quenched by an avalanche.
Any excuse he might have made against the restraints of tradition or the cultural context of a bygone era snapped, as dry and weak as old bones.
There was enough hate in this world without hurting a creature whose sole purpose was to serve.
To serve her oppressor.
Draco had been wrong about House Elves.
He had been wrong about so much.
Rosie looked up at him, twisting her knobby, bandaged fingers together. Every inch of her trembled.
"M-master Draco, sir?"
He held out a hand to her. "It's okay, Rosie."
The little elf reached out a tentative hand, flinching away before she rested her fingers against Draco's. He waited. Unmoving. Patient.
She fell against him with a sob.
He wrapped gentle arms around her and tucked her head against his shoulder, silently promising Brutus an additional minute of pain for each of the elf's shuddering breaths.
By the time Rosie calmed down, Draco had lost count of how much hurt Brutus had earned.
In the end, it didn't matter.
Draco was long past mercy: he would happily keep Brutus locked away in the dark for another three hundred years. Such a punishment would only start to take the sting from his rage.
He held Rosie at arm's length, supporting her as she swiped a thin arm beneath her running nose. Clover stood at her shoulder, offering a handkerchief and, Draco realised, familial comfort. The elves had the same eyes: hazel, red-rimmed, dripping with tears.
He looked up at his mother in shock.
"Sisters," she confirmed, as Hermione choked back another sob.
How had he never seen it before?
"Rosie, do you feel well enough to answer a few questions?" Draco asked gently. Part of him wished he could delay this task, put it off until the elf was rested and healed and herself again. But, if nothing else, her well-being evidenced how desperate their situation had grown.
They couldn't afford to wait.
The elf seemed to understand. She nodded.
"Did Brutus make you monitor the Gringotts' vault key?"
"Yes, Master Draco." Fresh tears welled, rolled down her cheeks, and dripped onto the carpet. The handkerchief did little to blot her grief or dam her guilt.
"What else is he making you monitor?"
"Rosie is watching the Malfoy Manor Floos," she answered. "Private and public. We is also watching the family vault and the grounds."
"How?"
Draco lifted his gaze to Hermione. Her horror had burned away into determination. She sat on the edge of her seat, hands curled into fists, as if she, too, were ready to beat Brutus into submission.
"It's the blood bond," Narcissa answered. "Elf magic is almost limitless when it comes to the service of their bonded families. Rosie's obligation to the Malfoy magic—to Brutus' magic, as the elder Malfoy in residence at the manor—means that she's capable of anything he might ask."
"What would happen if he knew about Clover?"
"He would control her, too." Narcissa rose from her seat, expression severe. "We cannot allow this to continue."
"Free her."
Silence fell like an anvil. All eyes turned to Hermione, who canted her chin in defiance.
"If you release Rosie from her obligation to your family, it puts her beyond Brutus' control."
And Draco's.
It was a caveat she didn't need to state, a consequence implicit in the bargain. Beneath his steadying hand, Rosie began to shake once more.
"Rosie is a good elf, Master Draco."
"I know you are, Rosie." He squeezed her shoulder.
She placed her hand over his, her long fingers wrapping around his and tightening. Rosie held onto him like a lifeline, and Hermione was asking him to cut her loose.
"She's right," Narcissa said. "You cannot let her return to him. She knows too much."
"I know."
He realised now the mistake in ever Summoning her. How much danger he had put her in. Had put them all in.
But Draco had no Time-Turner. He could not go back and undo the mistakes of his past.
However, he could learn from them. He could draw lessons from his errors, understand their cause, and do better.
He could be better.
He looked at his mother with sad eyes, knowing how much he would disappoint her. "I can't choose for her."
Narcissa took an urgent step forward. "Draco, no. You don't—"
He stopped her with a staying hand and focused instead on Rosie, meeting her hurt, hazel eyes without guile. She needed to understand her options: the win, lose, and draw of each potential future. Whatever Rosie's choice, she would not be making it blind.
"I can free you," he explained. "I can write to Professor Longbottom. He's at Hogwarts, and I know he would take you in. You would enjoy it there. The kitchens are beautiful, and there are other elves—free elves—who would be there for you."
The elf didn't flinch; Draco continued.
"If you don't want to go to Hogwarts, I can send you to Luna Lovegood. She works at the Ministry and would help you find a new placement. A paying placement," he clarified. "You would get to choose your family. Not many Beings in this world get that option, to choose their family. But you would."
Rosie looked down at her bandaged fingers, twined in nervous agony.
"Master Draco is displeased with Rosie?"
"Never." On this, he was firm. "You've been…"
How to describe what Rosie had been to him?
A companion. A mother. A friend.
How to describe what that meant?
The words caught in his throat. He forced them through, insufficient but honest. "You've been wonderful."
A nod. A trembling chin. A decision.
"We is not wanting to leave, sir."
Draco's eyes filled anew.
"I can't keep you here," he said. This was another future she needed to see with clear eyes, to weigh against her resilience and decide its worth. "When he Summons you, you will have to go. I don't know what he might do. He might hurt—"
He hung his head in shame, unable to finish.
He couldn't send her to Brutus.
Neither could he free her.
It was not his choice to make.
"You is fixing it." Rosie looked at the mirror, at Hermione, back at Draco. "You and Miss Hermione. You is fixing it together."
More statement than question. Draco swallowed back his emotion and nodded.
"We're trying," he said. "We haven't yet, but we're trying."
"Rosie will wait."
"But—"
"We will wait, sir." The elf's trembling ceased, her chin firmly set. The hunch she'd appeared with vanished, and Draco recognized his friend once more. "We will wait, and when you has fixed it, we will still be waiting."
Her ears twitched, as if someone had called name. Draco's heart sank.
"Delay."
It was an order they both knew she couldn't follow.
Rosie gave him a sad smile. "We will be waiting."
And with that, the elf disappeared.