Disclaimer: I own nothing. But I wish I did…
They awoke in a different position then when they fell asleep. For one, each were touch the others in some fashion. Severus was the first to wake up, yet he was trapped between two bodies. Hermione was tucked into his side, her head resting on his shoulder, turned, so that her breath would lap his neck, ebbing and flowing like the ocean. Lucius was on his other side, chaotic in comparison to Hermione. The bed sheet was twisted and wrapped around his torso and he had one leg on top of Severus while he slept on his stomach, twisted slightly to face Severus, but other than his leg and hand holding Severus' arm, he was not touching Severus. Severus was trapped, by his own idea, yet he was comfortable. As he took in a deep breath, it stirred Hermione from her sleep. She tried at first to burrow into Severus' side, seeking the heat. Severus found his opening. He moved his arm up and moved forward. Hermione blinked as Severus left the bed, but turned inwards towards the warm spot he had just vacated, Lucius attaching to her, after Severus extracted himself, going to the bathroom to get ready for the day. Lucius grasped at Hermione's hand and sighed in his sleep while Hermione tucked herself into Severus' pillow and burrowed further under the covers.
Severus came back from getting ready for the day to see the two still sleeping in the large bed. He grinned before leaving the room for a moment. He returned with a camera in hand quickly taking a picture. The click and flash of the camera woke Hermione, who blinked owlishly, turning her head to see Severus brandishing the offending piece in his hands and scowled at him.
"And what do you think you're doing?" the bite was dulled by her voice cracking, as she had just woken up.
"Taking up the art of photography?" Severus tried a smile.
"And what if you woke up Lucius, the poor thing!"
"The 'poor thing'? I'll have you know, that 'poor thing' stole the covers and make me cold!" Severus retorted.
"Oh, Severus," Hermione replied, as if talking to a toddler, patting his shoulder as she left the bedroom to get dressed. "There is no need to be acting like a child. We're all adults, aren't we?"
When Severus looked back at Lucius after gaping at Hermione, he found him awake and smirking back at him.
"I'm the favorite," he was quite smug. As Severus just stared, Lucius stretched and rolled out of bed to take a shower. Severus shook his head and left to get breakfast, not that he was going to make any for Lucius and Hermione.
When Hermione arrived for breakfast, she noted the lack of food and smirked at Severus.
"Dobby!" she looked confused when no elf appeared. She glanced at Severus and saw sorrow on his face.
"Hermione, love, I'm sorry, but he died in the war," Severus jumped from his chair to catch Hermione as she sank towards the ground, Lucius, however, beat him to her, while glancing at Severus, questioning what happened.
"Hermione, Dobby died protecting Mr. Potter. He died saving the savior. Can you think of a better way for him?" Severus asked her as she started to sob.
"But he never did anything wrong! This is a wizard's war, not his!" she wailed, shocked by the idea that someone who she had thought was alive, suddenly, wasn't.
"Was, love, was a wizards war," Lucius replied softly. "I know it seems senseless, but remember, it's over. No one else is dying. People are safe." She nodded to acknowledge that she had heard him. Despite the logic of his statement, she could not stop crying, even as they moved and she got up to sit at the table, she still had tears streaming down her cheeks. Slowly, they stopped, Lucius had left for work before they ceased. She had not eaten, but rather stared into a cup of tea.
"Who else, Severus?" she asked, her voice hollow.
"Hermione, I don't' think that is the best idea…."
"Who else died? I can't just sit here and not know, Severus. I must know!"
"Alright," Severus wasn't sure if it was indeed the correct thing to do, however he had no reasonable excuse that would justify him not telling her without alienating her. "Those that you know that died from the war are: Kingsley Shacklebolt, Alastor "Mad Eye" Moody, Tonks, Lupin, who had married Tonks, I don't know if you knew that. They had a son, Teddy, I believe, that her mother and Mr. Potter are raising with his wife, Miss Weasley."
"Harry's still alive? And Ron?" she asked, with hope in her voice.
"Mr. Potter survived the last encounter with the Dark Lord, yes. He then married Miss Weasley and they are expecting a little heathen," the comment gained a little smile from Hermione, which is what Severus was going for.
"What about Ron? Why haven't you…"
"I'm sorry, Hermione, I'm sorry," he was quiet and watched her face crumple and tears stream down her face.
"How did… H-how…"
"He was fighting Macnair and fell to a stray curse just before Macnair threw the Killing Curse," Severus placed an arm around her, but she shrugged it off and held herself instead.
"Hermione. Love," he tried calling to her, hoping to bring her out of her thoughts, but she was having none of it. She got up and left the room, retreating to her own. She shut the door and fell against it, her own magic out of control, whipping around the room.
After a few minutes, the magic around the room suddenly stopped and Hermione's face was drawn. She heard Severus knocking softly on the door, saying her name over and over, and hoping to get into the room to check on her. She turned at let him into the room.
"Hermione, how are you?" he started to push her hair off her face, cupping her cheeks with his hands. She looked directly at him and in an odd moment of mixed emotions, leaned in and kissed him. Not more than a few seconds later, she pushed back and ran to the bathroom with a horrified look upon her face.
Stunned, Severus floo-ed to Lucius' office only to find it empty.
"He has a class, of course," he muttered to himself as he strode out of the office and into the middle of a sixth year defense lesson. He strode up to Lucius, whispered the situation into his lover's ear so as not to be overheard by the students. It wasn't surprising when he saw the blonde's eyes grow followed by the quick dismissal of the class. They didn't even stay to make sure everyone left.
"Where is she now?" Lucius fired the question as Severus was just coming out of the floo.
"Bathroom, she ran in there after she kissed me."
"Wait, she kissed you? Why? Bet she couldn't resist, you know I couldn't," he sighed wistfully before remembering Hermione's emotional status that brought him here when he should be teaching wordless spell casting. He knocked on the door, quietly and called out her name, frowning when he heard no reply.
"Hermione, love, is Lucius. Please answer the door," he pleaded only to be, again, disappointed. This time, he tried to open the door, finding it, unsurprisingly, locked. Pushing some magic into his attempt to open the door yielded the same result. It was then that he started to panic, it was wild, emotional magic that was holding the door locked. When magic is driven by an emotion, it is much stronger than when simply cast out of a want. The magic interprets the emotion as a basic need that it has to provide. Again, there was no reply to Lucius' incessant knocking.
"Enough of this," Severus growled, worry tinged his voice. Slicing his want through the air sharply, he sent a complicated spell that would disintegrate the door. Before the last of the ashes from the door fell, Severus was already through the doorframe and into the bathroom before stopping at what he saw.
"Oh, Merlin," Lucius' whispered voice broke through the silence and spurred Severus into action. Kneeling down, he checked for a pulse while Lucius ran a towel under water. The room that surrounded them was in complete disarray. All of the glass was broken and blood was dripping down some of the larger shards. Hermione was laying in the middle of the chaos, pale on the floor as the source of the blood. Severus was relieved to find a pulse, it was weak and slightly irregular, but it was there. Lucius was already washing away the blood he could see on her, trying to locate a source.
"There isn't enough blood here to have made her lose consciousness, yet," Severus told Lucius warily looking at the broken glass that surrounded the trio.
"Potions?" Lucius inquired, knowing Severus was looking for a broken vial or a tiny label that would tell him what, exactly, she took.
"Undoubtedly," came the distracted response. "Have you found where the blood is coming from?"
"Not yet, can you help me turn her over?" The two men cleared a space to roll her over that was free of glass.
"Shit!" was the only expletive Lucius heard before Severus was up and running to his storeroom. Lucius worked methodically trying to mop up the blood that was seeping out of the girl laying before him, much quicker than previously. The turn must have opened the gaping wound on her back further. Three towels filled with blood later, Severus returned.
"She's going to die, Sev," Lucius was shaking, attempting to stop the blood flow. "The blood, Sev, it's on me, I killed her. She's dead."
"Lucius. Look at me!" It was not a suggestion. "I need you to Floo Poppy and Albus. Can you do that for me?"
"Poppy and Albus… Poppy and Albus…Poppy and Albus," the chanting was all that was heard as Severus set to work and Lucius rose shakily before exiting.
"Please, Hermione, you can't leave now."
"Severus!" Poppy's voice interrupted his quiet prayer to the girl laying before him.
"She took four potions, judging only on her symptoms, a calming solution or a sleeping solution. She has small lacerations covering her body, eight superficial wounds on her arms and thighs, self-inflicted. She also has a stab wound on her lower back, the shard of glass is still lodged in, presumed to be not self-inflicted. Blood loss is roughly two pints and still flowing. I have applied a sanitizer on the wound to clear out the glass on her back," he was still administering first aid, even as Poppy conjured a stretcher.
"We need to move her, now. On my count: one, two, three," Severus caught sight of Lucius talking to Albus, both were pale and watched the stretcher move from the bathroom and through the fireplace and Severus and Poppy follow through.
"Albus…" Lucius could only stare at him, lost.
"Lucius, this wasn't you're fault. You weren't even here. You got to her in time, she has a better chance because of you," Albus placated Lucius despite his own worries.
It was two hours later when Poppy and Severus finally stood back, relieved, Hermione was physically stable. They learned that she had swallowed a combination of sleeping and calming draughts. She would not wake for at least three to four days, even with the clearing potion Severus drained down her throat, too much of the potions had already been absorbed by her system. After Severus, Poppy, and Albus all placed alerts around her bed to notify them if her condition changed in any manner, they parted for some well-deserved rest.
"What was it that triggered her? The death count?" Lucius asked his lover as they lay in bed, confused and drained from all the trauma that occurred earlier that evening. Lucius scooted closer to Severus trying to make up for the loss of Hermione, despite the fact that she only just entered their lives and their bed.
"I don't know. She was most effected by Ronald's death and when I went to comfort her, she kissed me. I immediately went to get your help. I didn't know she would try to kill herself," Severus started out strong, but ended up whispering at the end.
"You couldn't have known."
"But I could have gone to her first, instead of going to get you. What was I thinking?"
"You didn't know what was going to happen, Severus. It was unfortunate, but she is recovering now, we'll just have to keep a closer eye on her. We can do that, Severus." They stayed together in silence for some time longer before falling into nightmare riddled dreams that all seemed to surround the unconscious woman in the Hospital Wing.
A few days after the Incident, Lucius was sitting with Severus at the breakfast table, both were silent as they had been since Hermione's forced absence. They were not angry with each other, nor did they hold any blame against the other, they simply did not feel like talking. However, there had been something on Lucius' mind that he needed to discuss before Hermione woke up.
"She kissed you," came the blunt, harsh statement. He wasn't accusatory, however there was no nice way to say it, frankly.
"Pardon?" came the choked reply from across their table, it seemed to large as of late.
"Hermione, before the bathroom, you said she kissed you," Lucius clarified.
"She did. I'm not sure why though."
"What was it like?" he really was curious. The only woman he had ever kissed was Narcissa, and that wasn't a terribly pleasant situation, however it happened very rarely.
"I don't know, why the hell do you even want to know?" Severus demanded. He remembered very well how it felt, he just didn't want to admit it, because it was still her horrified face that haunted him. He should have reached out to her, something, anything.
"I was only curious. I wouldn't mind kissing her, and I don't mind her kissing you, if you were wondering," Lucius used his forked melon to enforce his point.
"What, exactly, are you saying, Lucius?" Severus asked directly, wishing a direct answer, even if he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to hear it.
"I'm saying that I miss her and would very much like it if she was a more permanent figure in our life. I want you to know that, I want her to know that. Hell, I even want myself to know that. I want her back in our family, Sev. It just doesn't seem right with out her here. I know you've been feeling the same way, you can't say that you haven't. I know that when I can't find you after classes, you're in the Hospital Wing and that when you sleep at night you will end up reaching out to the place where she spent the night in our bed once. I know that I want her here, with us, for as long as we can keep her. The only question is, do you?" with that, Lucius rose out of his chair and left for his office, leaving Severus to his thoughts.
Less than four days later, the alarms went off in the Headmaster's office, the Dungeons, and in the Hospital Wing. Within ten minutes, the occupants of those rooms could be found in the Hospital Wing surrounding a particular bed. Hermione Granger was waking up. It was a painfully slow process, but she was breaking out the potion-induced coma she where she had placed herself.
"Come on, love," Lucius was chanting slowly, while running a thumb across the back of the hand he held, hoping it would coax her into awareness. She heard her name being repeated, though slightly muffled. It wasn't Lucius' chanting that woke her, however, it was the feeling of being restrained that brought her to consciousness.
"Wh-ugh" came the garbled response. She had flexed her arms only to realized that she was indeed being restrained. In trying to move her legs, she found her arms were not the only limbs restrained.
"Hermione, don't speak just yet. You'll need water before you do that. You've been unconscious for eight days," came the gentle, deep voice to her left. She assumed it was Severus, as Lucius was on her right, she refused to look at him, choosing, instead to stare at her immobile arm. A moment later, a straw found its way into her vision. She took a small sip before turning away from it. The water did feel nice.
"Welcome back, Miss Granger," Dumbledore's cheery voice was odd at this particular moment, however no one made mention of it. Hermione was refusing to talk. She was still feeling the raw emotion of knowing one of her best friends had died in a war she never saw the end to, and ashamed at kissing one of the two people who she owed greatly and who was in a committed relationship, to another man. She knew that she would have to tell Lucius, he would hate her and stop holding her hand, stroking it gently. She knew if she said anything now, he would stop and Hermione could not deal with the looks of hatred at the moment.
"How do you feel, Hermione?" Poppy asked while running diagnostic scans with her wand. "Do you have any pain anywhere?" Hermione shook her head. "Well, you are fine, physically," one could almost hear the "but not mentally" tagged on at the end.
"Excellent, how much longer will she be in the Hospital Wing? I think it would be best if she were back in our quarters," Lucius asked the Mediwitch. His words triggered Hermione's tears that ran swiftly down her face. She knew right then, that he didn't know, and that she would not have any sort of home because she was the idiot girl to kissed his lover.
"Hermione, love, what's wrong?" Lucius quickly turned his attention to Hermione, causing her to sob even more. At this, both Poppy and Albus left the trio so that they could have privacy to talk.
"Hermione, why are you crying? Do you not want to come back to the dungeons?" Severus questioned her, as he scooted his chair closer to her, placing the hang that was not holding her own hand on her shoulder. It was this that prompted her to talk.
"I've ruined everything. This is why I'm better off dead. Ron is gone and Harry has started his own life, no body needs me anymore. Then, I had to go screw up the one thing I had going for me, friends and a place to live. I'm so sorry," she babbled between sobs.
"Hermione, love, calm down. You are most certainly not better off dead, both Severus and I need you here with us. Yes, Mister Weasley may no longer be with us, but he died nobly. As for Mister Potter, he may have started his own family, but he will never just leave you, he has written nearly every day to ask when he might be able to see you and introduce you to his children! And what is this nonsense about ruining the only good thing you have? You will always have Severus and myself and you shall always have a home to stay at with us for as long as you want," Lucius' words were soft, but reassuring and Hermione nodded as her tears slowed, yet she knew she still had to tell him.
"But I kissed Severus," the tears increased in pace down her cheeks and she looked frightened as to what reaction she was going to get from Lucius. Whatever she expected it was not the soft smile that sat on his face.
"I know, love."
"Why aren't you mad at me? He's yours!" A snort from Severus was heard, apparently he didn't appreciate being discussed while standing right there, but he didn't interrupt. Slowly, Lucius leaned in and kissed her softly.
"There. Now we're even." Hermione only gaped, looking between the smiling men who stood before her.
"Oh," was the only reply she could think to say.
"I'm going to go and see when we can return this one back to our quarters," Severus announced while he stood up, giving Hermione's shoulder a slight squeeze and sending a look to Lucius before leaving.
"Why…?" Hermione's mind was running quickly trying to come up with an answer as to what was going on, yet it couldn't find one.
"Hermione, Severus and I have been talking while you have been in a coma. We both want you as a more permanent fixture in our life, if you would agree. However, we will not force the issue, nor do we want an answer right now, you need time to process that and you need time to heal yourself. Which brings me to my next question. Why did you feel like killing yourself would be a viable option?" Lucius' question was met with silence.
"I'm sorry," she mumbled, ashamed. However, it was not an acceptable answer to his question and so he waited for a real answer to come from her. He did not have to wait long, the silence was making her uncomfortable.
"I thought I had no one," she finally answered. "Ron was dead, Harry wasn't here, and I had just kissed Severus."
"That does not justify you trying to kill yourself," Lucius' voice was quiet, but hard, he needed her to realize that she wasn't alone.
"But I felt like it was, at the time," she tried to reason with him.
"Did you know that you lost nearly 4 pints of blood before they were able to stop the blood flow? Did you know that after you took the calming and sleeping draughts, you passed out and fell on a half broken bowl causing a large piece of glass to become lodged in your back? Do you know how worried we were?" with each question his voice threatened to break and her face became paler not knowing the extent of her injuries or what her actions did to others.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," became her chant.
"I don't want you to be sorry, I already know you are. What I want you to do is be aware that there are people who need you. Severus and I need you. In the few weeks you've been with us, you've become lodged in our lives and we can't imagine it without you anymore," by this time, Lucius could not halt the break in his voice nor the welling up of tears in his eyes and Hermione had fresh tears running anew.
"I know. I know you're here for me, I just… there was too much going on. I know it doesn't justify it, but it's the truth." As Hermione's tears ran down her face, Lucius waved his hand across the bed and Hermione's restraints disappeared before she collapsed into his arm, still crying.
"Come on, let's get you home," Severus whispered into her ear. He had come into the room just after Lucius freed her from the restraints. Poppy had told him that Hermione could go back to the dungeons if she wished. Lucius carried her down to their quarters and into their bedroom where they tucked themselves around Hermione. It was moments later that they had fallen asleep, exhausted from the week's ordeal and thankful to have everything sorted and out in the open. It was a new beginning for them, and they were very interested in seeing it's end.
A/N: I'm SO sorry for the wait, but I was having a lot of difficulty with this chapter. Please tell me what you think! Hermione's suicide attempt was the most difficult to figure out, and I don't know how well I pulled it off. So, let me know your thoughts so I can keep motivated to write! : )