The events in this chapter run concurrently to the previous one. It's all happening at the same time.

The world was a murky thing, full of sinister voices and shadows that made him doubt his own eyes. He could see images flash before him, fragments of his own memory, but they were twisted here, changed, with little lies that made it impossible to discern fact from fiction. One scene drifted up: him, on top of the Astronomy tower, scared shitless and fully aware of the consequences of inaction, but he couldn't do it, he couldn't, and Snape had to step up and–

And the scene shifted, and now the fear was gone and the wand outstretched daintily in his fingers as the murderous spell fell from his lips, causing the Headmaster to tumble down and all he could do was laugh and laugh and–

Another moment: The Manor, the bodies of three prisoners laid before him. "It's them," he sneered to his aunt, eager for her and her master's approval. "The ginger, the mudblood, and Potter. We've got you now," he added triumphantly, letting his eyes linger on Granger's gaunt features before turning around and asking for several hours alone with the girl, smirking as Potter and Weasley started yelling – and then quickly begging – to take them instead...

No. That's not true. That didn't happen.

But the voices just cackled in response, continuing to circle around him like he was the heart of some demented merry-go-round. They whispered in his ear, urging him to let go, calling his resistance futile, stupid – all of his herculean efforts merely delayed the inevitable. There was no coming back from this.

He could feel it, too: a gradual slipping of the mind, parts of him going dark as if someone was turning off lights in a house. Everything that happened around him did so in a haze; dimly, he remembered the events of the past week, which culminated in his argument with Hermione. Oh, Hermione, he'd hurt her so, he knew, except it hadn't been him, he'd already been locked away in this corner of his consciousness, a prisoner within his own flesh, unable to halt the unfolding horror.

Now, faintly, he could hear her. He knew she was fighting, but the sounds of the battle that reached his ears were distant, as if they had to travel through a thick layer of wax first. They were also hard to focus on, as the voices kept whispering, taunting, and sending up deceiving memories aimed at breaking his will. He hadn't capitulated, though. The virus – he knew what it was by now, he had figured it out – might control his body, but not his mind. Not yet. Not while he remained alive.

It was getting harder to resist, however. Only the fact that Hermione was close and fighting for him kept Draco going. Her actions gave him the one thing which people hang onto in even the most desperate situations – hope. It was but the tiniest of embers, burning deep in his soul, bolstering his defences...but, of course, it wasn't enough. The voices were too strong and, slowly, inevitably, like a rolling tide that sweeps towards a sandcastle to wash out its walls, they were breaching his barriers.

They were right, those voices, those last remainders of Voldemort's evil magic: it was only a matter of time.

Still, he tried to hold on, for his sake and Hermione's. Maybe she'd find a way. She was brilliant, after all. Brightest witch of her age, some said.

Her battle with Dolohov paralleled his own struggles. A small part of him registered the spells she was firing off, the curses she wove. "Sectumsempra!" she gasped out at one moment, and he latched onto the memory that word brought, a memory he didn't like but one that was real, something tangible he could grasp, which might give him just a few more seconds to–

A great pain blossomed in his temple then, cutting off his efforts, and he felt a moment of vertigo, like he was falling from a great height, which rapidly came to a halt alongside a great, shattering crash. The voices rose in volume, screeching, howling; did he detect notes of panic? No, not panic, but fury, and his tiny flame of hope expanded, because if something had harmed the voices, then, surely, that was in his favor? He redoubled his efforts, converting what he still held of his mind into a fortress, all the while slowly becoming aware that his body was beginning to fail.

He was wounded, he realized. Drip by drip, second by second, his life flowed out of him, which, combined with the exertion spent on fighting the virus, began to sap his last reserves. He would die here, he thought, the images swirling in his head, except now they were of his childhood: of racing brooms down the Manor's stately gardens; of playing with Pansy and Blaise; of going to Hogwarts, being shadowed by Crabbe and Goyle, both dim but loyal; and then fighting with Potter, calling Granger names, scoffing at Weasley's second-hand robes…

His past flowed before him like a river, and he took some comfort in the fact that his last action would be a giant fuck you to Voldemort. If he died, wouldn't the curse go with him? If that was his fate…well, he wouldn't argue too much. Only one thing pained him – Hermione. What would happen to her?

Outside – he considered anything beyond his current realm of perception the outside – Hermione and Dolohov's battle had come to abrupt end. He strained his hearing, trying to catch a tidbit, any kind of information (all the while keeping the voices out), and then realized that Hermione had lost. His brave, beautiful girl had fallen.

Draco bellowed soundlessly, cursing his impotent state and battering the walls of his prison with the desperation of a dying man. Please, he begged whatever deity or god would listen, please let me help her. Please!

But no higher power responded; no light descended from the heavens above. Instead, helpless, he was forced to listen to Dolohov's putrid ramblings...something about a muggle store and stacks of canned peaches and a mission the Dark Lord had given him and a…

A cellar?

It took him a moment to fit the pieces together, and then a cold fury swept through his mind. Antonin Dolohov was the beast that had hurt Hermione - the one who had stolen her innocence and caused her endless sleepless nights! Draco hated him at that moment, despised the man more than anything in the world, and his rage gave him the strength to push against the voices, reconquering lost territory. The burden was monumental; he was akin to Atlas, carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, and it still wasn't enough, as the two opposing forces ground to a standstill…

"You," he heard Hermione's tormented whisper. "It was you."

It was the sound of her voice, its listless cadence that brought in one more memory of the night she had shared her woes, and he had comforted her, breathing a single promise in her ear.

It was that memory which broke the gridlock, enabling him to charge at the voices with titanic force, and Voldemort's magic flinched, actually flinched, and then fled, running to cower and hide, to wait out this calamity, for surely no mortal could keep up such pressure!

Draco felt a rushing through his veins; his limbs tingled and his head hurt and there were so many of these tiny feelings, but it didn't matter, because he had regained control over his own body, and, no matter how frail or wounded or feeble it was, he could use it to help Hermione! He opened his mouth, took a fraction of an inhale, and–

Draco Malfoy, surrounded by shards of glass and blood, opened his eyes. He did so silently, the weakness in his body precluding from any additional movement. A dull throb beat near his temple, and a crust had formed around his eyes, as if he'd been asleep for a long time. "We had our fun," he heard from the side, where, at the edge of his peripheral vision, loomed a monster. It sported a hide of chequered pinks and blacks, a patchwork which reminded the Slytherin of a poorly cooked steak. Hermione lay just below. Draco couldn't see her, but her litany of broken sobs reached his ears, tearing his heart asunder. There was so much pain there: pain and anguish, sadness and despair, impotent fury and gut-wrenching hopelessness. His lioness had given up. The battle was over, the victor her foe. Now, only the inevitable final act remained, and then the curtain would fall and the drama would end.

"I promised I'd gut you, didn't I?" Dolohov's cruel words were like the twist of a knife as he took a perverse pleasure in his victim's whimpers.

Neither of the combatants was aware of Draco's conscious state - a pitiful edge, but one he'd use nonetheless. His old promise, ushered in by the memory of holding a ruined girl within his arms, sang in his ears. He had cradled her, like a child, and wiped away her tears and then made that one foolish promise on the floor of their Parisian hotel room, right before they had left for St. Petersburg.

"I'll help you," he had told her solemnly. "I'll get him for you...even if it's the last thing I do."

Now, the unknown, silver-masked entity from Hermione's nightmares had finally taken on a physical shell, and it was mind-numbingly close. Dolohov, leaning over the battered woman with a knife in his hands, was a mere foot away. Draco mustered all of his remaining strength, and felt his hands move an inch, just an inch, but his scrabbling fingers latched onto something long, jagged and sharp.

He didn't know it, but it was a piece of glass from the fallen chandelier that had wounded him.

His vision was growing dim again, and he felt the voices ascend in a triumphant crescendo, reaching for him, longing to drag him back into that murky oblivion. He fought them off.

"Goodbye, mudblood," Dolohov sneered.

It took everything Draco had. All of his conviction, his strength, his love for Hermione and his aching need to avenge her – everything. He put it all in that final movement, and his arm rocketed through the air, imbedding the shard of glass deep into Dolohov's neck.

He heard a gasp and a gurgle. Dolohov's knife fell, his hands diving up in a futile attempt to staunch the flow of blood. It looked like a waterfall, Draco thought hazily. A beautiful waterfall of red.

Dolohov fell, but Draco didn't care. Hermione's face, like the sun after a mighty storm, rose to take up the entirety of his vision, and he almost cried at how beaten it was. "Draco," she whispered. Her breaths were laborious, heavy. Each one seemed to cause her great pain.

She was a frightening sight, too: hair tangled into knots; face plastered with swelling bruises, blood and sweat. Despite it all, her eyes shone with an unyielding love.

"I...I did it," he managed to croak. "I got him for you. Just like I promised."

"You did." She was crying and smiling at the same time. "You did. You got him, Draco. Just like you promised. And it'll all be alright now. We'll be okay. We've had a spot of rotten luck, haven't we? But it'll all get better now, I swear. Even...look, over there, through the windows, you see? It's getting lighter; the sun's about to rise. The night's over; the day's come. We don't have to fight anymore...Draco?" Her voice rose, notes begging and shrill. "Draco! No… no, wait, please. Draco, don't go. Stay. Stay! Draco! DRACO!"

But the blond couldn't hear her anymore. The voices had returned, eclipsing her strangled pleas, and he didn't have the strength to fight them anymore. They tore him down into the leaden abyss, and he sunk like a rock, quickly passing the point of no return, watching the light of the world grow dim until, with a blink, it was gone.

Draco took one last breath – a shuddering gasp that charged his waning senses with that familiarly tender fragrance of asters and foxberry – and then he took no more.