Chapter 4. A World Drowned in Green

There's chaos everywhere—it's all a blur. Draco doesn't have time to run—Hermione just sits there and watches as he's taken away from her, waves of guilt washing over her, crashing on her continuously. She replays the scene in her head, over and over again, immobile, as Avery and Rosier drag Draco away, down the trap door, down the factory.

Regret bites her immediately—she could have obtained her memories from him. She could have just asked. She could have trusted him.

She should have trusted him.

But Hermione's spirit has been broken one too many times. Her past catching up to her without her having any control over it was an unacceptable position to be in. These people all knew her—but she doesn't know herself. Doesn't remember who she used to be.

She can't rely on their perceptions of her, on the influences and the images they've infused to her—refuses to.

She's made her choice.

Her hands open to reveal what Tom has thrown at her. A vial.

The price of her betrayal.

"Don't tell me you're changing your mind," Tom says, quirking an eyebrow. He's still here—she's only noticing now.

"You're not going to hurt him, are you?"

He walks over to her, his arms crossed behind his back. "Why? Don't tell me you grew attached to him. He represents everything we're against, Hermione." He drags a menacing finger beneath her chin, tilting her head up to him. "He's our enemy."

"I know." She bites her lip. "I know."

"Besides, you know I'm after Lucius. If the Malfoy boy plays his part convincingly—if he cooperates—then I have no reason to harm him."

"You've harmed people without needing a reason to before," she bites back. "People from Knockturn, who you pretend to be defending."

"Collateral damage on the way to greater things," he dismisses with a gesture of his hand. "No war is won without a little death along the way. You, more than anyone else, should know that."

She recoils, disgusted by him and his aggrandising gestures, by the pull and the push of his logic, all jumbled up and knotted in its own contradictions. The lies—oh, the lies.

"Just promise me you won't kill him. He's not like his father, he…" Her voice drifts off. Tom can never know, never doubt. "I don't think he deserves to die."

He laughs—boisterously, head shaking and lungs bursting. "Oh, Hermione," he says after a moment. "I made you one promise. The father for Severus' services, free of charge. That is what you're getting. That is what you will have. If you want me to make new promises to you, you'll need to offer up something of your own. You know how things work."

"What do you want from me?"

He tilts his head to the side, amusement and curiosity drawing shadows along the lines of his face. "My, my, you've really grown attached to the boy."

She doesn't deny it. "So, what will it take?"

"Make the Hallow."

The name rings with a sense of familiarity in her head—the Hallow… That's what Draco said she was making before she was struck to the head and disappeared. But Tom doesn't know who she is, doesn't know about her research—and more importantly, she herself isn't supposed to know about it.

"I don't know what that is."

"You'll know soon enough. Go to Severus, take that vial to him, he'll take care of your memories—and once you know, you'll make it for me."

"But—"

He tuts. "No, Hermione. If you want me to guarantee the boy will live, you will make that deal with me right now. I won't hear anything of it."

It's with a shaking hand and jumbled thoughts that she seals the deal. There's no going back, not now that she's committed the unthinkable and betrayed the only person who might have looked out for her without any other underlying interests.

This is the grave she has dug for herself.

She walks down the ladder, with Tom just above her sealing the entrance to the factory. He doesn't leave her even once they reach the floor.

"Are you just going to follow me?"

He shrugs. "We're taking a walk, Hermione. I'm not sure why you think everything I do is nefarious. You came to me, didn't you? Do I have no redeeming grace in your eyes?"

The question surprises her. She supposes he's not entirely wrong—she sought out Severus Snape, but she found beauty in Tom's ideals. Another Knockturn outcast setting out to change their world. Whatever Draco feels for her, whatever she felt for him, it can't get in the way of a future she has always seen so clearly. Or for the better part of a year, at least.

"I don't know. Your methods are so… extreme," she confesses.

They cross an overpass on the upper floor that overlooks the production floor. Glowing green light engulfs the air, with water vapour rising and swirling all around them.

"My methods are only extreme because there is no other way for us to make ourselves heard to the people who matter. Do you think Diagon would care what becomes of us if our Horcrux-infested streets didn't threaten to spill over in theirs?"

Hermione chews on the insides of her cheeks before responding. "Is it worth the death of the people we're seeking to protect?"

He hums gently. "Is anything?"

Once they're on the other side of the building, they walk down the spiralling staircase that takes them all the way to the basement—or, rather, Severus Snape's laboratory.

"You said I would know what to do to make this… Hallow… once I have my memories," begins Hermione. "Does it mean—does that mean it's something I once knew of? And that—you knew about it? About me?" She stares up at him, her eyes scintillating with questions.

Deep down, she knows the answer.

"There are only two Knockturn children who gained scholarships to study at the Academy, Hermione. You. And me. I suspect you've been told this by your little blond friend already."

"But then—"

"Then you know that I do not deal in half-measures and that I do not adopt any street rat that comes running here. I always intended to return your memories to you, Hermione. To return you to the mission that was so unjustly taken from you by one of the men from above. But for that to happen, I needed you to understand, to see the world I'm trying to shape." He tucks a curl behind her ear. "Now is the time for everything to come together. Your fully mended mind and your love of the mission. We shall make the Hallow, heal Knockturn of the disease that plagues it, and turn on Diagon."

A chill descends Hermione's spine—she's so tempted to agree. To forget Draco Malfoy and his talk of love, to set aside whatever ties she had—has?—to Diagon, and to set her sights on the world Tom is promising her.

It's hard to say no to something so enticing, so beautiful, so pure.

"Yes," she says.

"Good," he smiles. "I'll leave you in Snape's more than capable hands, then. Return to me once you're ready."

He turns away from her and walks back up the spiralling staircase, leaving her with the vial in one hand and the door handle in the other.

Whether she's ready or not, now is the time to have her mind returned to her.

"Dr Snape?" she asks as she pokes her head through the door.

"Yes?" It comes out in a drawl, spilling from the other side.

"It's Hermione. I have the vial."

"Come in." He sounds unhappy about it—but, then again, she's never seen the man be enthusiastic about anything.

He's as she remembers him, but his appearance still strikes her when she sets her eyes on him. He's half-man, half-metal. An iron mask covers half of his face, with thick bolts around the edges keeping it anchored on his skin, digging in his bones. The eye that shines in the cavity is mauve, so bright it cannot possibly be human. The rest of him is covered in black robes, so thick the body beneath is hard to imagine.

"So you've made it," he asserts. "I expected no less of you, Hermione Granger."

"You—you knew?"

He clicks his tongue in annoyance. "Of course I knew. No one walks through these doors without me knowing about them—and you were a bright light in the Academy, or so I was told."

It makes her feel small, the way he speaks to her. Here she was, imagining herself living a life free from the shackles of her past, sorting her own way back to it, and nothing could have been less true. They all knew. They all bided their time.

What sounded so syrupy and sweet leaking from Tom's mouth is grating like salt rubbed on skin when spoken by Snape. She instinctively recoils, overwhelmed with disgust.

She should have trusted the Malfoy boy.

"Here." She hands him the vial, wishing for this interaction to end as fast as it has begun.

"Lie down over there." He points to a metal gurney in the corner, with loose straps dangling by its sides.

Hermione complies. Her heart is beating at a thousand miles a second, nerves frittering beneath her skin. The metal feels cool and hard under her, harsh against her spine, forcing her straight and rigid.

"This will hurt," declares Snape clinically.

Hermione watches from the corner of her eye as he pokes a needle inside a small vial and draws a virescent liquid from it.

"Is that Horcrux?" She knows, but can't help but ask.

"Yes," Snape drawls. "Not enough for you to grow hungry for it, though."

As if that was comforting to hear.

Once filled, the needle is poked in the other vial, where the Horcrux is injected and mixed with the clear liquid that occupies it. Snape gives it a shake before poking the needle through once more and drawing the new liquid out.

"Stay still," he commands as he approaches her, the needle in hand.

His hand is cold as ice as he probes her arm to find a vein—his fingernails are encrusted with soot, his fingers black as charcoal. It takes everything in her power not to recoil with revulsion, and to do as he asks.

Deep breaths. In and out.

This is what she has worked so far for. This is what she has betrayed Draco Malfoy for. There's nothing to be scared of—they need her able and lucid to create the Hallow.

The needle pierces her skin and Snape's face is painted with a strange rictus as he injects her with a liquid—and, from then on, it all goes very fast.

An indescribable pain consumes Hermione all at once. Everything burns—her lungs, her stomach, her throat, great flames licking her raw. She shakes and trembles, her back arching and sweat dribbling down her skin. The pain—it hurts. Everything is too much and nothing all at once. Distantly, she feels screams echo out of her mouth—is that really her?

Or someone else?

Could it be Draco?

Draco, Draco, Draco.

Fever, fever, fever.

And, suddenly, the flood.

Halcyon days spent in the Observatory of the Academy; Mum and Dad waiting for her at the station; steam-powered instruments; the kind eyes of her mentor, Albus Dumbledore; meeting Pansy Parkinson one evening in a bar near the Academy; Theodore Nott walking her back to her flat; Draco Malfoy coming to the next outing, and the way he took to her immediately, charming the night away; their first kiss beneath a pine tree in spring, the scent of fresh leaves in the air and the way his hands felt so warm on her skin; nights spent huddled in his penthouse, away from prying eyes; kisses everywhere and 'I love you' muttered beneath the covers; 'we'll change the world one day' over and over and over again; 'you can't save me, but let me love you,' whispered one night in his ear, his lips buried in her neck and hers pressed right at the edge of the jaw; the research; stacked towers of paper threatening to trample and bury her; the Hallow, so blue it hurt, a derivative of the Horcrux with its regenerative properties and none of the pain; a light at the end of the tunnel for Knockturn and Draco, Draco; Draco telling her the world would become brighter with her to save it; Draco talking up her research to the High and the Small Councils, trying to convince them; the perspectives and the ideas, the world shaping itself anew before their very eyes—

And then, Lucius Malfoy, feigning interest in her research; Lucius Malfoy, convincing her to take him to Knockturn, so he can 'see the state of the world and what needs to change'; her heart beating with excitement, and

not beating at all,

after a hit to the head.

She emerges from a small death and inflates her lungs with one sudden burst. The air around her is too heavy and her skin feels too sensitive to it. There's an itch that spreads and spreads, and it's like everything is nothing and too much at once.

"Stay still," orders Snape—he sounds annoyed. "It will take you a few minutes to adjust."

"I need to find Draco."

"Stay still. Don't make me inject you with an anaesthetic, Miss Granger. I have better things to do with my time."

Begrudgingly, she complies. The world has shifted completely—it's all upside down now, and she wonders what she's even doing here.

And Draco—

Oh, God, Draco. The love of her life.

Whom she has just sacrificed—for what?

For bottled up memories—memories she could have gotten from him.

The last fourteen months spiral in her mind—nothing makes sense. No reason can be infused in what she has done; none that she can think of in this moment anyway. Theo and Pansy, that she has mistreated so; the agreement with Tom, the multiple agreements in fact; her thieving and her cons.

She doesn't recognise the person she's been.

She cannot find a way to reconcile her with the person she was for the first twenty-something years of her life.

It's a split breaking right down the middle of her, tearing her in two—she remembers Tom's ensnaring words, and she still wants to believe them, desperately. But there's also the Academy, and Dumbledore, and the world she has left behind, and—

Hermione Granger doesn't know who she is anymore. Even her name rings false in her ears.

"Alright," says Snape. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I don't know myself."

"Hm. Yes. Well, that's for you to sort out. I don't deal in matters of the mind. How are you feeling physically?"

"I'm fine."

The itch is gone.

"You may go, then. I'll warn Tom you're going to meet him."

He walks over to his desk, where a radio waits for him to make the call. If she wants to get out of this, she needs to act now.

Without thinking—because there's no time to think—she grabs the needle and jumps on Snape's back. He flails and tries to make her fall, but she hangs on tight, digging her nails into his flesh.

"Let me go, you little bitch!" he screams as he tries to shake her off.

It's no use—the man is absurdly thin beneath those thick robes of his, and Hermione knocks bone against bone, scraping whatever she can of him, drawing blood until he's so exhausted she can inject him with the liquid left in the needle.

One jab—one stab. In the neck.

Blood squirts out of him, staining his pristine white equipment and the radio he was about to use. Hermione jumps off him and tosses the needle in a corner.

"You're not getting away with this!" are the final words he utters as he falls to the ground, overcome with the pain of the liquid coursing through his body.

"Try me," she says.

And then—Hermione runs. She dashes up the stairs and across the overpass, then down two floors, across another corridor, further and further away from the laboratory and closer and closer to the cells that she knows hold the dissidents Tom has collected over the years. The ones he keeps as punishment, with the added advantage of turning them into guinea pigs for his Horcrux experiments. Disembodied cries ring in her ears as she draws to a close, and the faces that look at her through glass panes are nothing short of horrific—disfigured, green, plagued with disease.

She runs past them, deaf to their pleas and their cries, focused on the only thing she can do now: save Draco.

His cell is at the very end of the tunnel—with the fresh faces, those that haven't yet suffered the torture of Tom's experiments, those that are waiting for their punishment at the hands of a self-designated god.

"Draco!"

He stares back at her blankly. "Why are you here?"

"Draco—I remember. I have my memories back, I—" She presses her hands against the glass pane. "I'm so sorry."

"Haven't you done enough? You should leave."

"I'm here to get you out. Please," she begged, her voice shaking.

"And why should I believe you, after the stunt you pulled? How do you know you're my Hermione, and not the con artist who lured me here?"

Hermione scrambles—he's right, after all. She did this to him. She needs to prove her love to him.

"Do you remember, three springs ago, when we boarded a train to see my parents? God, you were so worried about making a good first impression, even though my parents were thousands of gold coins poorer than you've ever been. I remember, the way you shook in the train, how you kept asking me about their likes and their dislikes. It was so sweet." She inhales and her hands turn into fists. "We never made it there because of the fire, and you never met them—but I was so touched by your softness. By your desire to be a better man. And that's when I first told you that I love you."

Shadows dance on his face as he collects the memory spilling from her lips and the pain in his eyes dissipates, replaced with recognition and something subdued, a shimmer. Something like hope.

"Hermione," he says. "It's really you."

"Yes," she smiles. But there's no time to waste. She jimmies the lock and manages to get it open after a few seconds. "Come with me. We need to run."

Snape must have recovered by now—if he's not dead. Tom could be coming any minute now, looking for her. For them.

"There's a tunnel below the factory—I'm not even sure Tom knows of it. His goons certainly don't. We should be safe there—it goes all the way to downtown Knockturn, and we can go to Diagon from there," she explains, her lungs shrivelled from the lack of air as they run down the stairs. "We'll need to—" she stops halfway through, panting, "to be careful on the production floor."

"Can we hide?"

"No—we'll have to act like we belong. You'll have to play the role of the dignitary coming to visit the factory. And I'll just be—" She stops and bends over her knees, trying to catch her breath. "Your guide," she adds as she rises.

They take a break behind a pillar to let their skin lose its flush and their lungs expand normally again. If they look like they're fresh off a chase, no one will buy their story.

"Alright, let's go," announced Hermione once they've caught their breath. "Ready?"

Draco nods. "More than ever."

She peeks behind the pillar for any sign of Tom or his goons. "I think the coast is clear."

They creep out of the shadows and soon find themselves amidst bubbling tubs filled with a virescent liquid, the glow of which burns Hermione's eyes—and Draco's too, it seems, if his squinting is to be believed.

"How fast can you have twenty cases shipped to me?" asks Draco.

"Production is going quite fast and we keep expanding, so easily within a week I would say," offers Hermione in response. Her eyes are still skimming the floor for any sign of Tom's men, but it seems they haven't yet caught up to them.

But Hermione should know—should have known—never to trust Tom to be transparent.

One of the factory workers turns to face them, and she knows. Immediately.

It's Rosier.

Little by little, other workers turn their heads—Avery, Dolohov, Scabor, Greyback, Karkaroff, Crabbe, Goyle. They're all there.

Hermione tugs on Draco's sleeve and bolts in the opposite direction, hoping to be able to hide from them. Other workers on the production floor seem unbothered by the commotion—they keep pumping the liquid out of the tubs and storing it in glass vials. There are hundreds of them aligned in the crates used to ship them off across the world.

"Toss the crates," she tells Draco, who's right behind her.

Together, they begin pushing crates off the worktables, shoving factory workers to the side so they can access them—the vials shatter in a melody of broken glass on the floor, spilling hundreds of litres of Horcrux, tidal waves dancing on the floor.

The distraction is just enough to give them a few seconds of headway. The bottom of their pants if soaked in Horcrux, and the fumes rise up to their noses—it burns and it's close to dizzying them, but the worst is behind them, hitting Tom's men in the face. Pure, untouched Horcrux.

If it touches the eyes, it's a death sentence.

Hermione takes advantage of the distraction and the spillage to tug Draco by the sleeve and make him duck. All the workers on the far right of the floor have joined their colleagues to contain the spillage, which is perfect.

"There!" she whispers, pointing to a spot on the wall. She knocks it with her foot and it swings open. They slide past it, unseen and unheard in the chaos they've caused. Hermione locks it behind them—there's a little Horcrux spilling past, but they're safe.

For now.

"Let's go."

It's dark in the tunnel—there isn't a single morsel of light, not one torch lined on the walls. They walk for what seems like hours, in complete silence, in total darkness.

"Are you alright?" asks Hermione after a while.

His silence worries her.

"I'm fine."

He says the same thing each time she asks him. After a while, she gives up.

"Let's just sit down and take a break. We're going to tire ourselves."

The tunnel is quite small—some of the more rebellious factory workers dug it themselves, usually during the night shift, when the team was smaller. To make sure only people they trusted could access it.

Hermione first noticed it after one of her early visits to Snape, and kept her mouth shut. Not even the workers digging it knew she was there to take note of it.

She might have just ruined years of their lives.

Draco and her slide along the walls, opposite from each other. Hermione can feel Draco's legs tangled with hers—there's not enough space for them to stay apart and sit down without touching.

"I'm so sorry," Hermione says after a moment. The silence is unbearable.

"I know."

"You have to know I didn't mean to—I mean, that wasn't me."

She hears a sniffle in the dark, and the sound of skin rubbing against skin. Then, he speaks again. "That's just the thing, Hermione. I think it was you. I think it was just—a part of you that I never got to meet."

"Will you ever forgive me?"

"I don't know yet."

She purses her lips but doesn't respond. She doesn't know how to handle his sadness. It's too big, too much for her.

"We should get a move on. I'm sure someone will tip them off about the tunnel at some point."

They resume their walk until they reach the end of the tunnel—just below downtown Knockturn.

"Do you still have a mask?"

"No. Riddle took it."

Hermione unwraps the shawl she keeps around her neck and hands it to him. "That should be enough for now. We just need to make it to the sewers that head into Diagon." She lowers her mask over her face and waits until she hears the shawl slide over Draco's nose and mouth.

They climb up the ladder and push the heavy metal grid on top of the tunnel. It leads them to one of Knockturn's least frequented back alley—one that is empty right now, thankfully.

Hermione turns towards Draco, jerking her head in the direction they're meant to go.

But, just as she's about to move, she notices something.

Something terrible.

A drop of Horcrux in the white of his eyes.