Oh my wonderful readers, I am so exhausted! But my end of term draws nigh, and only exam grading and some hoop jumping stand between myself and some much-needed rest. Vacation time means writing time, and wow it has taken over a year to get here. 240+ thousand words later, and only one chapter remains after this one. I am contemplating an epilogue after that, but it may not approach full chapter length. Nearly done now, readers; which means a very heartfelt thank you to those who have stuck with this from the beginning. I had no idea it was going to be this long when I started, but the complexities of subplots surprised me and I felt I had to do them justice. I hope you enjoy this penultimate chapter-let me know what you think with a short review. Thank you!
It was agony.
Hermione had never felt such excruciating pain in her life. Walking was the only thing that seemed to be keeping her sane, so that is what she did. Tom was nearly attached at the hip to her, leaving her a few times to pace alone while he gave very explicit instructions to Miriam and Severus. She only caught snatches of his instructions as she moved back and forth, back and forth, over the same path laid out by the pattern in the carpet.
"…investigate pain blocking potions which will not run afoul of the curse…"
Hermione paced away, catching Severus' intent nodding, and the glance he tossed her way as she turned and moved off again.
"The difficulty, my lord, lies in the fact that a healing charm will likely aggravate the curse further…"
This was from Miriam, and Hermione could tell that Voldemort was displeased by her caution. He was a risk taker, and a cautious treatment plan would not be his preference. She caught some of the reason on her return loop—
"...curses of this nature prohibit the forceful removal of the baby. She will have to deliver him naturally or die trying, which is why she must be kept as comfortable…"
Hermione looped away again, her legs moving almost of their own volition to counteract the terrible throbbing that was steadily growing worse.
"I don't appreciate being talked about as if I am not in the room!" she shouted hoarsely from the far point of her loop, pausing temporarily to take in their reactions.
That was a mistake. The pain intensified instantly; and Hermione bent forward, the rough, clawing pain a vicious beast on her back. She felt better suddenly, then realized that Tom was again by her side, placing his hand on her back.
"That—that's better," she rasped, straightening cautiously and meeting her husband's gaze. "It is obvious that Bellatrix cursed my labor somehow; but please, tell me exactly how the next hours will unfold. I want to know what is going to happen."
He started walking with her again, swiftly calling out orders as he walked with her.
"Evan, supervise the detention conditions, if you please, for those still breathing. I will want an update once my son has been born." Now that the Animagus was out of the cage, there was little point in disguising Evan's service. It would be a mess to sort through the memories and detritus, but with his background as an Unspeakable he would be more than capable of completing the task with alacrity.
"Of course, my lord."
"I expect reports from both of you within an hour," he snapped at Miriam and Severus as they drew to a brief halt at the near end of her loop. "Out!"
Voldemort's command was swift, the responses from the few in the room equally so. Severus nodded coolly, but Hermione perceived that Miriam was unhappy to be dismissed from her patient. She acquiesced quickly enough, however, aware of how quickly Voldemort's temper flared when he was disobeyed. Hermione tugged briefly, and Voldemort followed her unspoken signal and began walking again. She waited for him to explain, the beginning of another spasm of pain distracting her somewhat from the importance of the question.
"When I arrived, I sensed that your aura was disturbed. It was not until I looked in Yaxley's mind that I was certain that Bella had cursed you somehow. She was clever enough to avoid disturbing our bond, but because the baby is not a part of it she was able to curse you indirectly through him."
"The pain of childbirth. How cliché." Hermione huffed, a sharp exhale of breath. "Walk faster, please."
Hermione stole a sideways glance at Tom as they walked, more of a rapid stride/glide at this point. He was maintaining an affectation of coolness in his tone, but his facial expressions said he was less composed than he pretended. "Yes. Although the point of the pain is, quite frankly, to drive you insane."
"Lovely," Hermione said through gritted teeth.
"It is a well-established means of breaking someone's mind," Tom observed. "A certain level of pain, especially if it is magically enhanced and applied unremittingly, will cause even the most solid mind to fracture."
Hermione ground to a halt, stubbornly ignoring the uptick in pain as she did so. She turned to face her husband, inexplicably mad at him, and all of the crazy witches and wizards who thought that these types of magicks were useful in some manner. "Have you ever broken apart minds like that? Played with them and endlessly hurt them, until they begged you to die?"
Voldemort's expression was now, paradoxically, utterly calm. "Yes. It has been necessary."
"How could such things ever be necessary?" Hermione cried, beating her palm on his chest once, twice, until he caught it and held it there. "How could you?"
Tom maintained his imperturbable demeanor. "What is it that you wish me to say? Are there any circumstances under which you could find that less execrable and more palatable to your sensibilities?"
She didn't want to admit that there were, but he wouldn't leave it alone. He pressed the back of her head, forcing her to look at him, and soothing her pain at the same time with the warm flush of his magic. "Tell me."
It was a gravelly order, hidden steel flashing briefly in his expression. She couldn't admit that the base, primitive part of herself would accept such treatment of someone who had done that to another, an innocent, could she?
"An eye for an eye." It wasn't clear whether she had spoken it or thought it as another spasm pulsed through her nervous system. She closed her eyes. How had she never known that about herself?
"The centaurs…the little sneak…you see, you know what drives this." His voice was muted against her hair, but laced with a hint of pleasure at wrangling that admission from her. "I have no doubt that Bellatrix thought herself very clever. She would render you insane and leave me with a mad wife that I could not kill—paying us both back amply for the perceived slights she was rendered."
Hermione breathed heavily against his neck as another wave of pain came. Again he dampened it with the force of his magic. His lips were soft in their pass over her temple. Her eyes opened again suddenly, her expression fierce.
"I refuse to give that bitch the satisfaction of falling to her last curse. I wish I had killed her."
Tom tilted her head, looking at her knowingly. "No, you do not."
Hermione exhaled hard, tucking her head down and into his chest as the pain built again. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, Voldemort wordlessly shifting with her, his magic soothing hers.
"You know I have never killed anyone," she breathed out on a sob. He shifted one of his hands, massaging the back of her neck, absorbing the sting of the curse.
"What is one more death to me? I do not even feel them anymore, pet."
Hermione drew in several breaths as the pain eased again, welcoming the scent of Tom coming from his robes. "But it destabilizes your magic even further," she protested. He was wavering on the edge of control already—how many rifts could he withstand?
"Faes hi takēm kātha." He waited for her to look back up at him, his tone matter of fact. "We have enough riven souls to deal with in this family, don't you agree?"
"I can't do this—"
"Yes, you can."
Hermione bit back a sob, leaning back against the wall in her crouch. Voldemort was crouched in front of her, maintaining the preternatural calm that was beginning to drive her a bit crazy after hours and hours of labor that didn't seem to progress. She knew he felt the pain, too, was drawing some of it to himself, but he maintained a calm demeanor while Hermione was becoming increasingly irascible and strident in her complaints about the unremitting pain. Miriam was monitoring her carefully from a distance. Severus Snape, on the other hand, had not found any potions that he could brew which would help, and had been dismissed back to Hogwarts for now.
"It's getting worse." Her eyes lifted briefly, the irises contracting her pupils as the pain hit again.
"I can tell."
"How do you deal with the pain?" she pled, her head dropping onto his shoulder, seeking more of the contact that made the curse barely tolerable.
"Do you think I can sum up a lifetime's experience of pain in one sentence?" Voldemort replied, steadfastly avoiding setting his teeth on edge. The pain was beginning to piss him off, but he knew there was much more to come.
"There must be something…anything that can be done—" she was sobbing openly now, tears soaking into his robe. The hand he placed at the back of her head was surprisingly gentle, in itself a warning of how bad he expected it to get.
"There is only one thing to be done. Get through it, because no other choice is open to you."
Many hours passed in a slow, steady drip as the torment of the curse racheted up in intensity. Strout, Severus, and Evan all came and went, the only servants the Dark Lord trusted to keep their mouths closed about the state of affairs. All the rest of the Death Eaters knew that Hermione was in labor, but the finer points of her duel with Bellatrix and the manner of Bella's death was lost in the greater noise of swirling rumors and half-truths. Apart from a darkly worded missive to Walden MacNair threatening him with dismemberment if the Prophet published any drivel about the events at the Manor, Voldemort did not have the luxury of caring what went on. He had to focus the entirety of his attention on sustaining Hermione through her labor.
Time bled into itself for Hermione, becoming a meaningless jumble. There was only pain, a cacophony of shrieking nerves worse than the Cruciatus curse. She couldn't discern when Miriam checked her progress, the impact of spells no longer registering in her brain. At one point she dimly recognized that she was moving, a wall of warmth at her back and the continued soothing presence of Tom's magic. Shortly, though, even that blissful awareness of the contact faded, eaten away stealthily by the blackish purple tendrils of agony that sought to steal away any source of relief.
"She is close, my lord, but not close enough to deliver. She has to hang on a bit longer."
Voldemort was stretched to capacity for the amount of pain he could draw into himself before he began destroying everything and everyone in the room.
"Fetch Severus," he instructed Evan, too impatient in his own magic to even summon Severus via the Dark Mark.
"At once."
Voldemort leaned his head back against the headboard of the bed, a brief second of respite between Hermione's contractions. She was almost unconscious, and absolutely unresponsive to everything but his voice.
"Faes hi takēm kātha. Isskæ lish dō sursaaaa…" Parseltongue suited his magic, the base need to make sense of the pain, to use it to power through to the end, to endure and revive and triumph; and through it, he was still able to reach Hermione and soothe her despite the wild crush of pain pressing on them both. He didn't care what his servants drew from the picture they presented, the way his hands cradled her body against his bare chest, his head tucked into her, telling them both that relief would come.
"My lord."
Voldemort looked up to see Severus' head coming back up from his customary bow. He took a deep breath as Hermione's body contracted hard, once again taking as much of the pain to himself as he dared.
"Severus. I require a pain potion. For myself." His eyes were calm but overbright, as if he had a touch of fever.
Severus drew nearer, aware of the sensitivities of the issues in play in a manner that neither Rosier nor the healer were. Rosier perhaps had discerned the nature of what the Dark Lord had done that equinox, but he was quite tight-lipped about it if he had done so—and he certainly knew nothing of the Dark Lord's horcruxes.
"The risks, my lord, are considerable if your—" he paused minisculely, then continued, "—tolerance is exceeded. There may not be time—"
Voldemort cut him off, a dangerous glitter entering his eyes. "If my wife does not make it through this birth, there will be even worse effects. Bring me the potion."
Severus turned to fetch it, returning in short order with one of the only pain potions the Dark Lord could take in his condition. The Dark Lord swallowed it in one go without a flinch, closing his eyes briefly until the potion began to take effect.
"Ah, Bella, you did not expect me to be willing to do this for my wife," the Dark Lord murmured, more to himself than to anyone within hearing distance. He returned his attention to Severus, not missing the shuddered sigh from Hermione as her body was able to relax again briefly as he pulled more of her pain away, into himself. "Be ready with more."
Severus nodded mutely.
Hermione had never felt such searing agony in her life. Her body felt as though it were on fire, the burn focused in a tight ring.
"Almost there…you're doing an excellent job, my lady…" Miriam Strout thought she was too old for this, but the young woman had made it farther than she had heard of anyone doing under the effects of such a powerful Dark curse.
"Cease your prattling!" Voldemort was well and truly pissed now, the second pain potion only barely taking the edge off the sustained, systematic pain of the curse. He wished Bellatrix had had Horcruxes so that he'd have had the pleasure of resurrecting her body to kill her again, only this time more slowly and with wildly inventive tortures.
The words were jumbled noise roaring through her ears, only barely recognized. She felt a crack in the pain, a whisper of possible relief.
"Almost done, sweetling." She let her head fall back, against Tom's shoulder, needing his strength. She licked her lips, aware now as she felt another crack, another release of the pain despite the tremendous, burning fire. "You can feel the curse breaking now, faes hi takēm kātha. Our son is being born."
"Keep pushing—"
"Get out!" he ordered, feeling his control over himself wavering.
"The baby!" Strout shouted, but Severus apparated her out of the room in the nick of time as Voldemort's magic went feral, pulsing through the room like a blast wave from a detonated bomb. The wards of the house caught the brunt of it, the whiplash resounding around and through everything in the property except for the Dark Lord himself and his wife.
Voldemort did grit his teeth as the curse pushed back with a last furious roar. Hermione was entirely focused on birthing their son, biting down on her lower lip with painful effect as her mouth wrenched open to birth a cry of pain as the baby's head passed through, the taste of blood metallic and warm in her mouth. He shifted away from her back quickly, ready to catch their son, one hand on her calf in encouragement as she pushed down one final time, the baby's body slipping free at last into his hands. The indignity of his birth was causing the boy to cry loudly as Voldemort applied his wand to the umbilical cord, severing it cleanly before he stood from his crouch with the baby.
"Meet our son." Voldemort placed the wet, bloody baby into Hermione's reaching arms, wiping off vernix and blood from the boy's scrunched up face as he wailed.
"Oh, hello my love, hello…" Hermione was lost in wonder looking at the babe, touching every part of him as if checking to be sure he was intact. Then she looked up at him, tears in full evidence. He passed his right thumb over her bloody lower lip, and she felt the brief sting of his healing charm. "He's so beautiful, so amazing—we never discussed a name—"
"Orias." Voldemort's voice was firm, decided; but Hermione didn't notice, her attention already back on their son.
"Orias…I like that. Hello Orias, my love…" She was lost in their son again, wiping his face clean and soothing him with her familiar voice before fumbling to get him to her breast, not versed in the mechanics of feeding although his little mouth was making questing sucks against her flesh.
Voldemort leaned down briefly to press a kiss to her hair. "Well done pet. I'll let Strout back in now to deliver the placenta, and ensure that Severus gets it immediately."
The door opened with a wave of his hand, and Hermione was momentarily adrift in the sea of activity as Miriam rushed in, wand waving as she checked Hermione and the baby both, checked to be sure that her uterus was preparing to expel the placenta. Severus wisely lingered at the back of the room, not wanting or needing any further discomforting pictures of how Hermione Riddle gave birth to the Dark Lord's child. It was only a few more minutes before the placenta was delivered, and after a quick but thorough examination of it, Severus disappeared with the long awaited ingredient. Through it all Tom remained at her shoulder, their magics still soothingly intertwined although she could tell that he wasn't quite sure what to make of Orias.
"You are exhausted," he commented quietly, and she could feel the way he was disentangling his magic from hers even though he was beyond exhausted as well.
Hermione looked back up at him, stopping him from leaving with her hand. "Thank you, Tom. Fias hi takēm. I would not have broken the curse without you. Stay with me. Please."
The way she caressed his hand was so incredibly powerful, for all that it was a small gesture. He slid into bed next to her, not caring about the mess that Strout was even now Scourgifying. Verity could change the sheets while they all slept. "You are welcome, faes hi takēm kātha."
"You named our son after a fallen angel?"
Hermione's voice was impossible to ignore, accompanied as it was by the hiccupping cry of Orias as he sensed his mother's outrage.
"Caslas, little one," Voldemort said, laying a hand on the baby's fuzzy head as he dismissed Evan. The child was pleasing in countenance when he wasn't crying, and in the scant week since his birth Voldemort had determined that Orias was perhaps also a Parselmouth. He calmed exceptionally fast when he spoke Parseltongue to him. That vague niggling itch that happened frequently around Hermione was provoked by this runt's behavior as well. He would have spent more time thinking about that if it weren't for the fact that his magic remained…unpredictable after the birth.
Turning his full attention to Hermione, he remarked, "A being with a lion's head and serpent's tail. It was fitting—I could have suggested Salazar."
"You mean dictated," Hermione murmured, but her heart wasn't in it. With one idle touch she confirmed what they both knew but weren't discussing—his decline was accelerating. His magic would be pale and washed out one moment, then flare suddenly the next. "When will the potion be ready?"
Voldemort's answer was quiet and contemplative. "Tomorrow."
Hermione ignored the sudden grip of fear in her belly. Now that Orias was here, she felt keenly that they had, indeed, created their own little family. Tom was, as ever, nonchalant about the prospect of summoning the missing soul fragment from the Veil. She didn't necessarily consider it as misplaced arrogance given the number of times he had cheated Death, but this would be something she would have to do alone. The press of his lips on her forehead wasn't enough, and she ignored Orias' wriggling briefly in order to catch his lips with her own. She needed that familiar press, the steady warmth and rocketing affection whenever she made contact with Tom.
"I will speak to Harry tonight, then." There were things Hermione wanted to set right, in case things went…badly.
It wasn't a request.
"Draco may take him as soon as he acquiesces to my very simple demands."
Tom's tone was reasonable, but his demands were anything but. For the first time, however, Hermione acknowledged the fairness of Tom's claim on Harry's pride, choosing not to argue further as she settled Orias at her breast. "I will try to persuade him. Stubbornness is an empty conceit which he can no longer afford."
Voldemort quite liked this ruthlessly pragmatic side of his mate. He placed a hand absentmindedly on Orias as he suckled. He wasn't interested in any of the tasks associated with caring for him, but this one thing drew him. It was a fascinating interplay between Hermione and an entity he could only classify as a rewarding parasite at this stage. "Greedy little thing, isn't he?"
Hermione's stare was challenging. "Like his father."
The wards holding Harry in their dungeons were more of a courtesy to Hermione than anything else. In their absence, Harry would have been endlessly taunted by the remaining few that Voldemort had chosen to use as examples of the futility of rebellion. Voldemort passed his wand over the archway and a complex disillusionment charm dissolved like soft rain, revealing another section of cells with a lone occupant.
"Mr. Potter."
Harry looked up, a feat made more difficult by the swollen nature of his left eye.
"What do you want now?" he asked hoarsely, unable to stop the shivering induced by the cold, damp floor.
"My wife would like a word with you, Harry." Tom turned to the door, where Hermione waited, wand in hand.
"Thank you, Tom. I'll let you know if I need you." Her voice was quiet, but it was telling that Voldemort merely nodded once in curt agreement, leaving the cell with a swish of his robes.
"Tom. How intimately you deal with him, Hermione," Harry said.
At least he wasn't being derogatory, merely making an observation. Hermione didn't deign to give a verbal response, instead casting a strong Lumos charm so she could take stock of him. "You've managed to do quite a bit of harm to yourself this time, Harry. I'm afraid I can't do anything further to help you at this stage—you're going to have to satisfy Tom's ego on your own."
Harry rolled over onto his side with a groan. Nothing made sense any more, and no one was behaving as he thought they would. "How could you do this, Hermione? I thought you were on our side."
The weight of all that she had gone through suddenly slalomed through her mind, and she was heartily sick of Harry's self-centered behavior. "Fuck you, Harry," she said quietly. "You have no idea what happened to me, and at the first sign of trouble you blamed me!"
Harry winced as she sent a Scourgify over his abused flesh. "I might have misunderstood how you came to…uh, be his…wife. Merlin's beard, Hermione, you're a Muggle-born! How on earth did he—do whatever it was he did to you?"
He winced again as her wand slashed, seaming together one of his smaller lacerations.
"I'm well aware that he's shared with you some of my reasons, Harry," she said hotly, then reminded herself to calm down. "What's more important is what you're being here is doing to Draco. Don't you know that Lucius has been diagnosed with Mala mujer dementia? Draco is having to take over as head of Malfoy Enterprises, and now his mate is a prisoner of the Dark Lord!"
She was perhaps overzealous in her next healing charm, the deep Scourgify of the torn tissue in the deepest laceration on his back causing him to black out.
"What were you thinking, Harry? Running away from Draco to sneak into Hogwarts? You were nearly killed!" Hermione hissed at him after he regained consciousness due to her stinging Renervate! before she began to heal the deep gash. She wanted him to feel every twinge, hardening her heart as he groaned.
"Perhaps that would be for the best, Hermione. Or do you share your husband's belief that I should let Draco bite me, and give up everything that makes me who I am," Harry uttered through clenched teeth as she probed a particularly deep, broken welt across his buttocks.
"I think if you are lucky enough to have a caring partner who loves you, then yes, you should accept him and be happy!"
Harry rolled over to look at her, his face pale from pain. He noticed, finally, that she was pale herself, her lips thin and bloodless. "You can't tell me you're truly happy with him, Hermione. How could I possibly be happy with Draco when Voldemort is in charge of wizarding Great Britain?"
Hermione wished there were a chair to sit on. Instead she leaned softly against the wall, suddenly drained. "You are not your heritage, Harry—and neither is Tom. If you would just wrap your head around that, you COULD be happy with how things are."
"Since when have I ever settled for how things are, Hermione? When have I not asked the difficult questions, strived to make things better?" Harry replied earnestly.
Hermione closed her eyes briefly. She hoped that all he needed was time to think about what she had said. "If you don't value your own life, Harry, at least have some consideration for Draco's. He will die for you before he lets Tom kill you—so if you must cling to your pride, at least be honest with yourself about the full price."