It took less than an hour for Hermione and Draco to be dressed and ready, standing in front of Susan's floo. She'd started to ask him a dozen times if he was sure that he wanted her to go with him. This seemed like a time when he'd need to be with his mother alone, the two of them united together in front of the onslaught of reporters and photographers that were sure to be surrounding St. Mungo's.
But she would have never even considered denying him after he way he'd asked her—"Please come with me," her hand enveloped entirely in his and his whole body tense—and she certainly wouldn't question him either, no matter how uncomfortable she was feeling as they stood in front of the floo ready to greet whatever was awaiting them on the other side.
He seemed just as anxious as he started to take the floo powder from Susan's outstretched hand, her face still wearing the same look of concern that Hermione had come to expect—and wholeheartedly appreciate—from her, but he hesitated. Turning to Hermione abruptly, he took her face in his hands in the same way she always did to him.
His eyes were frantic, flashing back and forth rapidly between hers. "If you don't want to come, that's fine. If it's too much, I—"
She put her hands on top of his, stopping his overanalyzing. "Shut up, remember?" she said with a soft smile. "I love you, and I'm right here." He closed his eyes, and Hermione watched his jaw clench once before he opened them again. After nodding almost absentmindedly, he dropped his hands from her face and took the floo powder from Susan.
As he stepped into the fireplace, his eyes met hers once more, and Hermione said, "I'm right behind you."
He took a deep breath and threw the powder beneath his feet. As bright emerald flames shot up around him, he called out, "St. Mungo's."
"Let us know if there's anything we can do to help," Susan said, placing her hand delicately on Hermione's shoulder and giving it a soft squeeze.
Following in Draco's footsteps, Hermione dropped a handful of dust into the fireplace beneath her and called out her destination as well. After less than two seconds inside the floo, Hermione emerged in the main atrium of the hospital.
The strobing of flashbulbs immediately assaulted her, and Hermione had to shield her eyes from the cameras as she blinked away the spots in her vision. To their credit, the reporters never missed a beat, her presence only halting their barrage of voices for a half a breath.
"Miss Granger, look over here."
"Miss Granger, are you here because of Lucius Malfoy's attack?"
For a moment, she stood completely transfixed, her heart seizing up at the same time her mouth ran dry. Photographers had stopped following her around in only a few short weeks after the war ended, learning that she wasn't much of a story, always tending to keep her head down in an attempt to rush past them. Harry always met them head-on, his head held high, but he rarely gave them a word. Ron, on the other hand, seemed to bask in it for at least six months after the Battle of Hogwarts, but even he got tired of it, eventually.
It had been so long that she'd forgotten how it always took her breath away, leaving her palms sweaty and her nerves on edge.
After fighting her first desire—to scrounge some more Floo powder and immediately return to The Willows—she licked her lips and stepped out of the floo. She swallowed thickly, fighting the lump down that had moved in the moment the reporters started calling her name.
She dusted off her robes as she took a calming breath, trying to appear much more at ease than she felt, and scanned the crowd for Draco; she'd missed him somehow when she'd exited the floo, likely due to the onslaught of questioning and blinding flashes of light, and for a split second, she worried that he'd gone on without her.
Refusing to believe her own self-doubt, she pushed away all the thoughts that accompanied that one—Did he change his mind? Does he not want to be seen with me? Is this too much?—and found him to the right of the information desk. The juxtaposition of calming comfort in his tumultuous-ocean gaze washed over her, and she felt the tension in her shoulders relax. It was odd, how much just his presence was enough to ground her from both the world around them and her own errant thoughts.
Knowing that they'd likely been hurling questions at him since he'd stepped through as well, she was worried that he'd be withdrawn, Occluding and hiding, not that she could blame him, but she was pleased to see that he was unwavering; he stood tall, his hands at his sides and a hardened expression on his face.
He took a tentative step toward her but stopped, glancing quickly toward the cameras and slew of reporters.
"I wanted to give you an out." He'd said to her following Ron's outburst, when he'd been second-guessing her feelings for him, offering her another choice in case Ron's words had changed her mind, and that's exactly what he was doing here. The stone-like expression he was wearing faltered only briefly while his eyes searched her face, as if he was worried about her reaction.
She took a step forward and immediately laced her fingers through his, and in the split second of silence that followed, his wary expression warmed entirely. A slight bit of the rigidness he'd worn before began to slip away. For that brief instance, the crowd behind them completely faded into silence like all of those watching were too stunned to breathe, and in a fraction of a heartbeat their voices returned.
"Miss Granger, you're here with Draco Malfoy?"
"Are you aware he's a Death Eater?"
"Mr. Malfoy, aren't your parents ashamed?'
"What is wrong with you?"
Hermione honestly wasn't sure which of them this last question was even directed at.
Draco's grip on her hand tightened as he pulled her toward the lift, leaving the reporters' questions unanswered as they walked away, the strike and whine of each flash drowning out the voices behind them.
As she and Draco stepped inside the lift, the reporters pushed against the black rope beside the information desk, each of them attempting to get a better shot before they lost the opportunity. As the doors closed in front of them, Hermione saw Draco visibly deflate, as if keeping up the pretense was too much.
"I'm so —"
"If you say you're sorry right now, Draco, I'm going to hex you."
He slumped against the wall of the lift, his hand still in hers and a soft smile on his face as he looked down at her. "I'm not afraid of you," he said, lifting an eyebrow at her, which she returned in kind.
"Well, you should be. I'm pretty livid right now. It's absolutely insane that they're out there like bloody hawks just waiting to swoop in and capitalize on someone's pain. Ridiculous!" Her heart was racing; honestly, she wanted nothing more than to take the lift back down and give them all a piece of her mind, but she knew that wouldn't help whatsoever. She'd just end up on the front page of a dozen papers looking like a crazy person.
"I'm certain the story won't be about my father now, either way," he said, cutting through the fantasy of cursing them all with pockmarks similar to Marietta Edgecombe—she'd been stuck on whether or not "chickenhawk" was too long to be visible on their faces—and her eyes cut to him again. "I'm pretty sure the title will be more along the lines of"—he lifted his hands, using them to enunciate—"'Golden Girl Falls from Grace.'"
She rolled her eyes but leaned into him, laying her head against his heart and feeling her anger start to dissipate as his hand, warm and comforting, came up to rest on her lower back.
"Or 'Hermione Granger Slumming with Malfoy Heir.'" Looking up at his face, she noticed the sides of his lips were curved into a forced smile, his eyes tight and lacking all the light that they normally held when he was joking.
She wanted to tell him everything was going to be okay, but could she really say that? Harry had given them only the barest details, and just the word "accident" in relation to any sort of injury in Azkaban was enough to let her and Draco both know that there was clearly more to the story. Instead of offering empty platitudes, she lifted onto her toes to brush her lips across his cheek just as the lift opened with a melodious ding.
They stepped out and made a left, bypassing the witch behind the counter who seemed more engrossed in whatever magazine she was reading than actually helping visitors, and found Narcissa in the waiting room where Harry had told them she would be.
On the surface, she looked just as impeccable as she had the last time Hermione had seen her—her white, high-collar robes were flawless, and every hair was perfectly in place—but beneath her light layer of makeup, beneath the surface of the mask she wore, Narcissa Malfoy looked awful.
Her eyes were glassy and blood-shot, puffy around the edges and lining the heavy circles beneath them, and her skin was pallid, making her high cheekbones look more skeletal than refined. Even worse than her appearance was the way her hands were shaking, one barely trembling but the other quaking so fiercely that the teacup in her hand was clanking against the saucer. Just from a half a second watching her, Hermione recognized the lost expression on her face, having seen it often enough in herself. Narcissa sat staring out the window in front of her, not even noticing when they walked into the room.
"Mother," Draco said, and Narcissa jerked, spilling her tea across her front as she leapt from her chair.
"I'm—I'm so sorry. I don't… I didn't—" Narcissa fumbled over her words, her face void of color, and immediately cleared the front of her robes, ridding the spot from the fabric entirely with a flick of her wand, but she continued to fuss, smoothing her hands over herself and apologizing.
"Mother, it's fine," Draco was saying, trying to ease her obvious discomfort, but she seemed to not even hear him.
"Thank you…thank you for coming. The Aurors, they—I don't know what—have they—"
"Mother," Draco said again, taking his mother's hands to stop her from smoothing her robes and trying to break through her panic. She finally looked at him, and it was like she'd just awoken; she breathed in deeply, all her resolve crumbling when her eyes met his. She clutched at his shirt as sobs wracked her body, and Hermione stood in shock, shuffling by the door and trying to not bring any attention to herself while the poor woman fell apart.
From the side of her eyes, Hermione noticed for the first time how much taller he was than his mother. Narcissa, on the few times Hermione had encountered her, was always such a strong presence. She was proud and forceful, as all the Malfoys were, and that personality always made her seem much larger; imperial in a way. Her smaller frame wrapped in his arms as she allowed herself to feel something she'd clearly been holding back made her look even smaller.
Hermione felt like she was imposing, intruding on this private moment between them, but she didn't dare leave. She peeked around the corner, making sure no one would notice, though the hall was completely empty save the two Aurors standing guard outside of what she assumed to be Lucius's room, then she closed the door to the waiting room to make sure no one else could step in. Knowing how guarded Draco was with his feelings, she imagined Narcissa to be the same way, and Hermione didn't want someone to walk in and take away this moment that the woman clearly needed so desperately.
Hermione could hear Draco speaking softly to his mother, but she couldn't make out what he was saying over the sound of Narcissa's sobs and the distance between her and the two of them, his arms wrapped tightly around her.
Hermione had known without a doubt just based on the way that Narcissa spoke about Lucius during their visit to the Manor that she loved him, but after what she'd seen Draco's memories, the detached sort of relationship they had and Lucius's domineering control of his household, Hermione had considered perhaps it was a relationship based more on duty and loyalty than actual love.
Now Hermione was convinced otherwise. The cries of the woman in front of her were not those of a woman who only cared for her husband out of a sense of duty. Draco's arms around his mother as she clung to him were essentially all that were keeping her from falling to the floor as her knees threatened to buckle beneath her.
Hermione stood uncomfortably by the door, peeking through the glass ever so often to make sure that no one was outside, as Narcissa tried to rein in her emotions. Slowly, her sobs faded into weak sniffles, and it wasn't until words replaced the sound of her weeping that Hermione turned back around to face them.
"They won't tell me anything," Narcissa said, her voice much raspier than her normal tone of superiority. They'd moved from the center of the room back to the chair where Narcissa had been sitting as they came in, now with Draco seated in the chair beside her, and Hermione took the seat across from them. When she sat down, Narcissa seemed to just remember that Hermione was there at all, and her face immediately reddened, and Hermione wasn't sure she'd ever seen the woman do anything so humanizing. Honestly, she found herself amazed at the level of humility that Narcissa had shown in the few short encounters she'd had with her following the war.
Hermione gave her a sad smile, hoping to rid the woman's embarrassment at having just lost control in front of her.
"Potter is supposed to meet us here in a bit. He…he said he was taking over the investigation himself, so he'd keep us posted." Draco still looked just as suspicious of this now as he had back in his room when Harry had first told them.
"Why?" Draco asked him, his eyes narrowing at Harry across from him as Hermione gaped at him. "Saint Potter coming to save the day again. We don't need your pity."
"Draco," Hermione said beseechingly, but Harry lifted his hand to stop her, his eyes never leaving Draco's. Susan seemed as if she wanted to say something as well but, for now, had chosen to remain silent.
Harry sighed as he seemed to really consider his words for a moment before speaking. "I'd be lying if I said I thought your father deserved anything less than to spend the rest of his life in Azkaban. But I don't have to like him to be bothered by whatever the hell they've done to him in there." Harry's face softened slightly, but the only emotion showing through Draco's mask of indifference was anger. "It isn't pity, it's my job."
"That was nice of him," Narcissa said, fixing her son with an intense stare in response to his hardened expression.
Draco said nothing in response, and Hermione had to bite her tongue to keep from trying to admonish him again.
Suddenly, the door to the waiting room banged open and two Aurors walked inside, navy blue robes cut close to their frames. Hermione had been so focused on the scowls they were wearing that she almost didn't notice the large silver A across the left side of their chests. Just beneath it were name tags that read Sykes and Hewitt. The former she'd never seen before, his face looking far too young to be Auror in her opinion, and the latter looked vaguely familiar.
Hewitt? Hermione thought just as Draco stood, his gaze leveled at the two men interrupting their conversation. It took her less than a moment to place Hewitt as the burly, bald man from Draco's memory when they'd turned themselves in at the Ministry, the one whose rough treatment of Narcissa caused Draco's first magical explosion.
"Can we help you with something?" Draco asked, his voice almost as acidic as his glare, and the way he stepped in between the two Aurors and Hermione and his mother wasn't at all lost on her.
"We noticed you're here without an escort, and we thought we should remedy that," Hewitt said, crossing his arms across his barrel of a chest, his fat lips wet and sneering.
Draco said nothing, but he dropped his chin, leveling his stare at the man. Hermione stepped forward, laying a warning hand across Draco's arm. She expected him to be shaking, barely able to hold back the same anger he'd had during his fight with Ron, but she found him surprisingly steady.
It sucked the air from her lungs when she realized just how similar to his aunt he looked in that moment, his eyes full of fire but almost black with a cold, calculating rage. The only sign that he was struggling to keep his anger at bay was the sound of his teeth grinding as he clenched his jaw.
Hewitt's eyes flicked toward Hermione's hand on Draco's arm before cutting back up to her face. As recognition dawned on his face, the man's eyes widened in shock before he curled his nose up in revulsion, shaking his head at her.
"Disgusting," he said, almost as if he couldn't stop himself.
Draco took a step toward them, pulling his arm out of her grasp, the muscle in his jaw quivering slightly as he stood inches from the bald man. They stood eye-to-eye, level with one another, but Hermione was astonished that the man didn't cower beneath the heat of Draco's glare.
"We're not in Azkaban anymore," Draco said, his lips barely moving but his words loud enough to be heard over the blood surging in Hermione's ears.
"I heard you got your wand back," Hewitt said with a cold chuckle.
"I don't need a wand." Draco spoke without hesitation, and Hermione felt Narcissa stiffen beside her.
"Draco, he isn't worth it," Hermione said, trying to get closer to them, but she was halted by Narcissa's hand around her wrist. She glanced toward her, reluctant to turn her eyes from the scene in front of her but found Narcissa's stone-like expression was back but the hand she'd left on Hermione's wrist was shaking so hard that Hermione was afraid to step away from her.
"You and I both know I don't either." A dangerous smile cut across Hewitt's face, and Sykes laughed behind him. "Need a reminder?"
Hermione could see what was about to unfold in front of her, and she started to reach into her pocket, needing some way to keep it from coming to blows. Her mind was running away with the visions of what would certainly transpire if that happened, and none of them ended well. But before her fingers had even circled around her wand, the door burst open again and Harry stormed inside, flanked by two more Aurors, these two and Harry wearing the customary red and black robes that Hermione was used to seeing. All three had their wands raised.
"You're under arrest!" Harry shouted, and both Hermione and Narcissa closed the distance between them and Draco.
"No, he didn't—" Hermione's words died in her throat when silver sparks shot from Harry's wand and Hewitt dropped to the ground, his hands secured behind his back with a thick, shimmering cord.
Narcissa and Draco both wore matching looks of disbelief, and Hermione was sure her face reflected the same.
"What the fuck, Potter?!" Hewitt yelled, struggling against his binds, and Sykes had taken a step back, his hands raised in surrender beneath the wands of the remaining two Aurors.
Harry bent down, hauling Hewitt up by the scruff of his shirt. "Interesting thing I learned today," Harry said, pushing the man down into the chair beside them. "Did you know you could pull a person's memory even when they're unconscious?"
Hewitt's face flashed red for a split second before he said, "He's a Death Eater! Who the hell cares?"
"They care," Harry said firmly in a commanding tone that Hermione hadn't heard from him in years as he nodded toward Draco and Narcissa, his gaze fixed on Hewitt. "I care. And it's your job to care as well." Harry gave a slight smirk and said, "Well, it was. Not anymore. I'd imagine you'll have neighboring cells with him by the time he makes it back to Azkaban. And if I were you, I'd pray to whatever the hell god you believe in that he does, in fact, make it back there."
Before Hewitt could retort, Harry spun around, turning his attention to Sykes. "And you better hope that we don't find anything inside his mind that incriminates you too."
Sykes shook his head so hard that his cheeks shook as well. "I've only been there a week. I haven't done anything."
"Good," Harry said sharply. "I'd keep it that way. It isn't part of your job to punish the people under your care. You're there to keep them fed, safe, and alive, do you understand?"
"Yes, sir," the man said, looking truly terrified with Harry looking down at him. The other two Aurors' wands were still aimed at Hewitt, who looked murderous but was at least now longer fighting against his binds.
"Then, get back on that door. You have no business being in here," Harry snapped, pulling Sykes out of his daze. The young Auror bolted from the room and presumably took his post back outside Lucius's door as Harry turned back to the two other Aurors accompanying him. "You two get him to booking." Harry's eyes found Hewitt's, and the two men glared at one another for a second, before Harry smiled. "The Minister of Magic requested to see this one personally."
The heated expression on Hewitt's face fell as the man seemed to finally realize the gravity of the situation he was in.
As the two Aurors lifted him from his seat, he snatched his arms out of their grasps. "I can walk out without your help, thanks," he snarled before turning back to look at Draco. For a split second, he looked as if he wanted to speak, likely to say something equally as nasty as he had been before, but the words wouldn't come. He opened his mouth, his eyes giving Draco a once over before he closed his mouth and walked out.
Harry turned back to face Hermione and the Malfoys after the others had left the room. Hermione was a bit taken aback. She'd seen Harry as an Auror many times, had even worked with him quite extensively for almost a year as one herself, but this was the first time she'd seen him really take charge. She'd been concerned, truthfully, when she and Ron both left the department, and she'd advised Harry to do the same. After years of fighting the Dark Arts, she thought maybe they'd already had enough of that to last a lifetime,and she'd told him as much, but Harry had only shook his head. "This is my life, 'Mi."
Now she wondered how she ever could've questioned that. Clearly, this is what he was made for.
She hadn't spared Draco a glance during the entire interaction, with Narcissa's hand still clutching her wrist and Harry's deliberate handling of the situation, and now she turned to find him looking at Harry with a completely puzzled expression on his face. The rage was still there, bubbling under the surface, but the way he was looking at Harry now as if he couldn't quite understand whatever game he was playing seemed to take precedence over his anger.
Harry's shoulders relaxed until his eyes fell on Draco's. Rather than acknowledge Draco's very obvious distrust of him, Harry sighed and took a seat, motioning for them to do the same.
Narcissa seemed to just notice that she was still touching Hermione, and Hermione expected her to jerk her hand away; instead, her grip lingered for another second before her lips thinned into a straight line and she let her go. Draco took the same seat he'd been in before, which now faced Harry, but he didn't relax at all; he sat as stiff as possible, his gaze unwavering and his arms crossed in front of him.
"I take it you've determined it wasn't an accident after all," he said, as Narcissa took the seat beside him, sitting with her ankles crossed and her hands folded in her lap but otherwise just as rigid as her son.
"Partially," Harry said as Hermione took the open chair beside him, turning it slightly so that she was facing all of them rather than just Draco and his mother. When Draco lifted a brow, Harry continued. "Based on your father's memory, it was an accident that he fell. He wasn't thrown exactly. But…" Harry stopped and swallowed, his eyes cutting toward Narcissa quickly before shifting back to Draco's.
Just as Draco glanced toward his mother as well, Narcissa huffed, looking down her nose at both of them, immediately turning back into the Narcissa Malfoy Hermione remembered. "I'm not fragile, Mr. Potter. I want your honesty, not your dithering."
"Very well," Harry said after another glance at Draco, who only shot him a pointed look in response. "He was being beaten," Harry said, and despite Narcissa's previous statement, her brows furrowed in pain as she closed her eyes. After giving herself only a split second to feel what Harry was saying, she opened them again, taking a deep breath to clear the emotion from her face before Harry went on.
"The railing splintered, and he fell. So, the falling was technically not intentional, but the guard will still be charged with it regardless. Based on"—he stopped again and sighed, as if just realizing that the news he was delivering was just getting worse and worse—"based on some of his injuries, this wasn't the first time."
Narcissa's face gave nothing away at this revelation, but her hands clasped together in her lap were still shaking. She blinked a few times, a move that Hermione knew all too well, as she tried to will her tears away. It didn't work; one tear escaped through her lashes, and she quickly wiped it from her face as if its very presence was offensive.
Draco too looked just as stoic as his mother.
Hermione, however, covered the trembling in her chin with her hand. She felt nothing for Lucius Malfoy, but seeing the obvious pain on Narcissa's face, watching as it became too much, this load that she seemed to always have to carry, it stabbed straight through Hermione, hitting her in the chest in a way that she hadn't at all been expecting. No matter what any of them had done, no matter what mistakes or poor decisions they had made, it was overwhelming having to see this woman hurt for someone she loved. And even if Draco's eyes were completely shielded by the mask of Occlumency, his irises darker and unfamiliar to her, she knew him enough to know that this was crumbling him too.
All pain looked the same, regardless of who's suffering.
It hurt the same no matter what the cause.
Even if Lucius Malfoy wasn't deserving of her shared tears, in this moment of solidarity with his wife, Hermione knew Narcissa was worthy of them. She'd seen only bits and pieces of what this woman had endured, but it was as if it was never ending; the world just kept delivering. Her shaking hand on Hermione's wrist and the heavy bags beneath her eyes were proof enough of the constant pain that she must have been going through, and Hermione couldn't shake it off. She knew all too well what that loneliness and hurt felt like–a living, breathing reminder of the war, like a ghost following your every move, consuming everything in its path.
Even after hearing what Draco had gone through at the hands of some of the Aurors working in Azkaban, Hermione hadn't ever actually considered that Lucius's experience would be the same, but the look on Draco's face when Harry had first said the words showed that Draco had. It had been so brief that if Hermione hadn't been looking at him in that second she would've missed it, but Draco's eyes had closed, and there was no surprise on his face; no look of shock whatsoever. He'd already known.
And Lucius's letter made all the more sense now. Why he would've reached out to Hermione. Why Narcissa would have risked bringing him up to Draco during their visit, knowing how Draco was bound to react. The things he'd written now held a meaning much more urgent than Hermione noticed at the time.
"I need him to know that I love him and how proud I am of him."
"I cannot bear for him to not know how important he is to me."
Hadn't Draco himself said he wasn't sure how many more accidents he had in him before they killed him in there?
"So, what does that mean?" Narcissa asked, her voice stern, full of the same rigidity and forced calm that she wore on her face. "Is he… is…" She swallowed, unable to finish despite her façade, but everyone in the room knew exactly what she was trying to say. It was the same question they'd all been thinking.
Is he going to live?
Harry licked his lips before answering. "I don't know. The healer should be coming in to speak with you both soon, and she'll be able to tell you a lot more about his current state than I can. We've given him a second guard, someone from the Auror's office, not from Azkaban." Harry directed the last statement at Draco specifically, whose gaze was now focused on the window across the room, half his face covered by his fist.
Harry stood. He started to put his hands into his pockets, but he stopped, standing up straight and looking down at them. "I'll be handling the investigation into all the guards by the way. You have my word this won't happen again," Harry said.
Narcissa nodded, her face taut and guarded. Harry turned toward Hermione and gave her a sad smile as she stood. As she hugged him, Hermione whispered a "thank you" into his ear. He squeezed her tighter in response before letting her go and turning to leave.
Draco's voice in the silence brought both Hermione's and Harry's attention to him just as Harry made it to the door. "Potter," he said. "Thank you." Draco's eyes looked wary, as if he expected Harry to take his thanks and throw them back at him somehow, to refuse this small attempt at an olive branch, but only the slightest flicker of surprise flashed across Harry's face before he nodded and was gone.
The moment the door closed behind him, Narcissa's determination to fight back her emotions crumpled again, and she clenched her jaw tightly, her eyes closed as she allowed herself a slight reaction to the news that Harry had brought with him. Hermione stood, taking the box of tissues from the table beside her, and took the seat on Narcissa's other side. She wasn't sure why Narcissa was showing this vulnerability in front of her, but she didn't want to make her feel even more self-conscious, so she thought that at least offering some sort of comfort may keep Narcissa from feeling uncomfortable. Draco offered her a tight smile, more a slight twitch of his lips, as Hermione touched Narcissa's back, getting the woman's attention enough to hand her the tissues.
"I'm going to find the healer," Draco said, standing suddenly and leaving the room before either of them could respond. His expression had been guarded, and Hermione thought he probably needed a moment to himself more than anything.
Narcissa pulled one of the tissues from the box, dabbing her eyes with it as she said, "Thank you."
Hermione had never been great at comforting anyone. For most of her life, the sight of tears made her want to immediately run away regardless of who they belonged to, but her time at The Willows had given her more than just a better ability to cope with her own emotions; thankfully, now she at least didn't feel completely out of place when others opened up in front of her.
After a moment of silence between them, Narcissa said, "You probably think I'm crazy." Her eyes never left the tissue in her hands. She continued folding it and twisting it between her fingers as she spoke. "After all that he's done."
Hermione put her hand on Narcissa's wrist, urging her to look up, to meet her eyes. In Narcissa's, Hermione saw fear, likely for her husband and also over whether or not Hermione would agree with her.
"I don't think that at all."
Narcissa didn't pull away from her. In a move that surprised Hermione even more, Narcissa turned her hand over, and gripped Hermione's, and in that small gesture Hermione recognized a need for comfort, even if it came from a virtual stranger.
"He isn't a bad man, Miss Granger. He—he…" She stopped trying to speak, using the tissue instead to dab at her eyes.
"I know," Hermione said, and Narcissa gaped at Hermione, like whatever she'd been expecting, it hadn't at all been this. "I don't agree with all of his decisions, but I can see his reasoning behind them." When Narcissa's brow furrowed slightly, Hermione added, "We have to share our memories, and I've seen some of Draco's."
Narcissa looked away again, as if this revelation would suddenly mean that she had something to be ashamed of.
"But you love him. It doesn't matter who he is to me."
Suddenly the door burst open again, and both Hermione and Narcissa looked up expecting Draco and the healer, but instead they found Nicola barging through the door. Before she'd even crossed the threshold, Narcissa was standing, and the two women embraced.
"I'm so sorry. I just heard," Nicola said as they took a seat, Nicola now taking Hermione's spot in comforting her.
"We don't know anything yet. Draco went to—"
The door opened again, and another woman entered. She wore healer's robes, and she was far younger than Hermione had expected; she didn't look much older than Hermione herself. Her auburn hair was pulled back into a fierce bun that would have rivaled even Professor McGonagall's, and she wore a serious expression that would have made the woman proud as well. Draco walked in behind her as the rest of them stood again.
"I'm Healer Ammons," she said, offering her hand to each of them in turn. "I'll be handling your husband's care." She paused, fixing her no-nonsense gaze on Narcissa. "Before I begin, I want to assure you that he is in good hands. It doesn't matter to me what brought him here or who he is. I take my job very seriously, and I will do everything in my power to heal him." The way the woman cut her eyes at Draco said that perhaps he had already broached this subject with her.
Narcissa nodded, her lip pinched between her teeth and Nicola's hand clasped in hers. Draco stood beside Hermione, and she instinctively reached for his hand as Healer Ammons continued.
"As of now, we unfortunately don't know much more than you. We won't know the full extent of his injuries until he wakes up."
"But he will?" Narcissa asked, needing to ask the question despite the obvious fear in her eyes of the answer.
Healer Ammons was unwavering, and Hermione was deciding more and more that she liked this woman and her straightforward attitude. "I can't say this with completely certainty, but it is my belief that he will, yes." When Narcissa visibly relaxed, her shoulders falling and the death grip she had on Nicola's hand falling away as well, the healer lifted her hands cautiously. "Again, I can't tell you what kind of long-term damage he may have. Despite the advances we've made in modern medicine, both Muggle and magical, the brain remains largely uncharted territory. He may wake up with no memory whatsoever of the event or who he is even, or he may wake up without any problems at all."
Worry etched itself across Narcissa's face as Healer Ammons spoke, but Draco's expression remained as stoic as ever.
"I can't give you a definitive answer, but I can tell you what I think. I have fifteen years in this field, and though it does happen, I'm very rarely surprised. Based on my expertise, he will remain unconscious until his body heals. The level of malnourishment and mistreatment that he's gone through over the last year has taken a dramatic toll on his body and his mind."
"What does that mean?" Nicola asked.
"It means he's exhausted, both physically and mentally. Right now, the best we can do for the time being is treat his underlying conditions and give him time to rest and heal."
"Underlying conditions?" Hermione's gaze shifted toward Draco as he spoke for the first time since he'd returned to the waiting room.
"Most are attributed to his circumstances—vitamin deficiency, muscle atrophy, weight loss. He's gone through about a dozen vials of blood-replenishing potion due to internal bleeding, but we've managed to stop that. He had multiple broken bones, some of which required a much more advanced level of treatment than just a simple Episky, particularly those that occurred from his fall."
"There were more?" Narcissa asked, and Hermione felt Draco's hand twitch in hers.
"He had old injuries that weren't healed properly, internal lacerations, a few cracked ribs, bruised lungs. All indicative of abuse and neglect. Honestly, if the current situation hadn't landed him in the hospital, there's a good chance he would have died in there."
It felt as if the oxygen had been sucked from the room while Healer Ammons had been speaking. Hermione had already known it was bad in Azkaban, but this was insane. There had to be some sort of accountability, some sort of overhead that would prevent this sort of thing from happening, and regardless of what these people had done to be in there, they were still people. It was absolutely disgusting that this had somehow fallen through the cracks.
Hermione gripped Draco's hand tighter, a bitter taste rising in her mouth that this could have been him. It could have easily been him in a coma, left beaten and broken by the people who were there to keep him safe. Not only that, but they would have never had this. She looked up at him, knowing she was being selfish but refusing to care at the moment. He could have stayed in Azkaban and refused Susan's help, and Hermione never would have known about all the ways he'd tried to help her. She never would have known the man he is now.
The realization that he really could have died in there felt like a vise around her heart, clenching tighter around her, restricting everything else, and Hermione recognized the tension in her chest. She turned back to face Healer Ammons who was now explaining to Narcissa that Lucius could hear her even in his current state, and Hermione focused on controlling her breathing.
She couldn't fall apart right now. She was here for Draco, and she couldn't allow her own emotions to interfere with that. It had been a few weeks since she'd felt the beginnings of a panic attack, but she focused on the ways that Alys had taught her to prevent it, counting her breaths, reboxing her emotions, reciting potions ingredients. She stacked bricks in her mind until the edges of her vision became clear again, the ringing in her ears began to subside.
"We'll continue to monitor him as we have been, and I'll keep you all posted with any updates we have along the way." Before she left the room, she handed a copy of her card to both Narcissa and Draco, telling them to contact her with any questions.
When the door closed behind her, the rest of them stood in silence for a moment, all of them likely absorbing the information just as Hermione was herself. Narcissa dropped Nicola's hand, slipping the healer's card into the pocket of her robes along with her wand. She took a deep breath and lifted her shoulders up straighter. "I'm going to see my husband," she said, and without a backward glance, she was out the door.
Nicola turned her face toward Draco, the corners of her brows turned down and her lips stretched thin. "Are you okay?"
"Fine," he said, not meeting her gaze.
"It's okay if you're not."
Draco said nothing as he sat down.
Nicola returned his sigh and said, "I'm going to check on your mother. I imagine it will be a very difficult visit." Draco dropped the healer's card onto the seat beside him and ran his hands through his hair. Glancing at Hermione, Nicola offered her a sympathetic look before following in Narcissa's steps and leaving as well.
Hermione picked up the card and dropped into the seat beside Draco.
"You can go in to see—" Hermione began, but Draco's quick shake of his head made her stop. She'd thought perhaps he wanted to go and visit his father and just didn't want to leave her alone, but clearly that was not the case.
She put her hand on his knee, wanting to comfort him but not really knowing what to say. Instead of words, she just sat with him, brushing her thumb along the fabric of his trousers on his thigh and listening to the clock tick beside the door.
Fighting the need to fill the silence, she glanced down at the card in her hand. Along with contact information at the hospital, it read:
Abigail Ammons
Director of Healing, Magical Neurotrauma
St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries
As she lay the card onto her knee, it slipped between her thighs, revealing additional information on the back.
Abigail Ammons, M.D.
Attending Physician, Neurosurgery
St. George's Hospital
"She's a Muggle doctor as well," Hermione said, more to herself than to Draco, and he shifted in the seat beside her.
"Yes, she's Muggle-born," Draco said, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. "I may have questioned her ethics a bit impulsively, but given his current situation, I'm a bit distrusting of anyone in charge of my father's care at the moment."
Hermione had seen the way the healer's eyes had cut to Draco when she'd first began talking, and now it made sense. Hermione knew all too well the way that he could lash out when he was overwhelmed, particularly at times when he was trying desperately to rein in his emotions.
"I've never much cared for irony," Draco said with a huff, "but tell me this isn't the perfect example of it."
He wasn't wrong.
He lifted his head from hands, resting his chin on his knuckles and staring out the wall across from them.
"Life has a real shit sense of humor sometimes," she said with a sigh.
After a moment's silence, the tick of the clock seeming to grow louder in the small waiting room, Draco said, "It's always something. Are there people who aren't just constantly fighting one thing or another?"
Hermione leaned her head over onto his shoulder. "Not in my experience. But I'm really hoping that isn't the case forever."
Draco leaned back in the chair again, and his thumb and forefinger closed around his signet ring, spinning it as the silence around them grew. Hermione glanced around at the books and pamphlets littered between the boxes of tissues on the tables throughout the room.
Dealing with Trauma.
Saying Good-Bye.
Life with a Terminal Illness.
Curses and the Brain.
She picked up one from the table closest to her, more to have something to do with her hands than anything else and began thumbing through "Traumatic Brain Injuries."
Draco stood up suddenly, walking toward the windows lining the back wall. Resting his hands on the ledge, he looked out, down onto the streets of London below. As he tapped one finger against the pane absently, Hermione laid the pamphlet back down and joined him by the window and looked down at the Muggles beneath them. Pedestrians milled through the sidewalk, leaving the corner coffee shop, cutting through the street at the busy crosswalk, and cars flooded the road—all people without the slightest idea that they were standing in the shadow of a hospital, let alone one filled with hundreds of witches and wizards, some fighting for their lives.
It made her feel a bit small, to be honest. The fact that, despite fighting a war—both physically and the even more difficult one that had waged inside herself over the last year—and none of these people even knew it existed. She and so many others had risked her life to protect them, and they not only didn't know who she was, but they didn't know the lengths that she'd gone through. And now, feeling the worry and anxiety pulsing off Draco like radio waves crashing over her, they were still oblivious to it all. Even when she could see the weight of all he carried carved across his face, the worry lines across his brow and the fainter ones at the corners of his eyes, the world still carried on around them.
"Do you want to talk about this?" Hermione asked, turning to half-lean, half-sit against the windowsill. She could tell by the nervous way he was still drumming his finger against the glass that there were things that needed to be said.
He sighed heavily, and the tap-tap-tap of his finger on the windowpane stopped. "I don't…" He stopped to lick his lips. "I don't want to be here."
Even though she knew it would be easier for him to speak without her staring at him, his words took her off guard and she couldn't stop herself as she turned her face toward him.
"But I have to be." The furrow in his brow was gone, replaced with a look of deep exhaustion, the face of a man who was so tired of having to give more and more of himself, but he had no other choice. He scoffed, shaking his head as he said, "Even from a hospital bed, he's still controlling me."
As soon as the words left his mouth, he huffed again, closing his eyes. "I can't even be angry at him without feeling like an asshole." He opened his eyes, glaring down at the people on the street below him as if it were their fault somehow.
Hermione lay her hand on top of his on the windowsill as she straightened and turned her face back toward the door. "It's okay to feel more than one thing right now. You're allowed to still be angry with him and also be worried."
"It was easier when it was just anger."
"But was it ever just anger?"
"I suppose not," he said. "I want to stay angry at him, but all I feel is guilt. For not even giving him the chance to try and make it right. For being angry at him while he's in a fucking coma. For not doing what I could with the time we had. I should…" His hands on the windowsill gripped the railing so hard that Hermione heard the wood creak beneath his palms. "I should get to be angry at him. He literally made the bed he's lying in. And yet, I don't even get to be pissed off at him properly anymore because he could be d—"
He stopped abruptly, cutting himself off with a deep breath as he dropped his forehead to the glass, his eyes closed again. "What if I lost the chance to fix it? What if he doesn't wake up?" he asked, never lifting his face or turning to face her. "What if he does, and he gets to just walk away without the memory of all that he's done while the rest of us still have to carry it? What if I never get to say the things to him that I should get to say simply because he doesn't remember any of it?"
Hermione didn't know the answer to any of those questions. She didn't think there were answers to them really. Maybe he wasn't looking for an answer, but just saying it out loud was enough. She turned to face him, and not knowing what else to do, she did the only thing she thought could help him that moment. Taking his hand between hers, lacing her fingers to frame his between them, she kissed his shoulder.
He shifted so they stood face-to-face, and, never opening his eyes, he touched his forehead to hers, his skin cold from the frigid October air against the window. "None of those are fair."
"No, they aren't," Hermione said.
His shaky breath blew across her lips as he exhaled and said thickly, "I'm—I'm not ready."
Ready to forgive him.
Ready to let him go.
Ready to make a decision.
He didn't elaborate, but as he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her to him and burying his face in her curls, allowing her to help him carry the weight of it all, she thought perhaps he meant all of those things.