CHAPTER 16. CHECKMATE
When she woke, she already knew it was too late.
She opened her eyes before she let her mind whir back to a semblance of a thought—deep down, though, she knew. She'd collapsed—whether for a minute, or a second, or a thousandth of that, any of it was time too precious to be lost when she'd been cutting it so close.
A fool, that was what she was; what she'd always been, deep down. Her fate was met the day she decided to follow Harry to the forbidden third floor; the life of a foolish girl.
Though she did not doubt finding the ingredients again would be possible, she knew the clock had begun ticking the moment she killed Dolohov with his own wand; a beginner's mistake, even if it was her only choice—deep down, she knew Obliviating him was never even an option for her. This man had inflicted too much pain on her; deformed her body and tainted her blood with his sinful one; he had to die, regardless of the consequences.
Regardless of the consequences.
For a long time, Hermione was a woman to understand and know consequences. She'd meet them head on, calculate the probability of each outcome, fairly weigh the pro and the con—no, even that was a lie. She calculated nothing when she set Snape's robes on fire, or when she took Harry back in time, or when she trapped Rita Skeeter in that jar. She found solutions as she went, lucky to always have them turn out just the way she wanted—that was the truth, plain and simple. Any of it could have gone haywire at a moment's notice; luck, after all, runs out.
"Hermione."
She kept staring at the ceiling. She knew where she was; she knew who was there with her. It hadn't taken her more than a second to make those calculations, to gather her carefully crafted observations and make of them a conclusion. This ceiling was not the Atrium's; the last people she saw were Draco and Theo; that voice belonged to Draco.
She was back at the manor.
"Hermione, look at me."
She did not look at him. "I've failed you Draco." She pursed her lips. "There was just a minute left for me to pour the unicorn blood into the potion, and we missed it, because I was too weak to poke through the veil Dolohov covered me with. I survived it all—Goyle manor, Voldemort, Theo, the Marauding Bandits, the obstacles to the Pact, and I failed, in the end. All because I did not try to escape when they came through those doors."
"Hermione... I've poured the blood. Just—just seconds after I Disapparated you back here."
She sat up quickly—nausea overcame her like a wave, and she almost vomited the meal she ate back at the Ministry. "What?"
"You—calm down, please," he insisted when he saw the rage painted on her face, "you moaned in your sleep. You repeated the instruction over and over again, I just—I followed it. Please don't—I did not betray you, alright?"
It took her a moment to settle. To breathe.
She had to be the one to tell him; she'd never shared this secret with anyone else—if he knew, it could only be because she told him.
"Alright, then."
He smiled—it was a small smile, barely reaching the corners of his eyes. "Are you—what happened?"
"Dolohov happened."
She tried to leave the bed—only then realising it was his, though the sheets were fresh—but he placed a firm hand on her wrist. "I used an ointment on that scar of yours, but you need to let it settle. Just a few minutes, I promise."
"But the potion—"
"Needs to be stirred once in three hours to come to completion."
"Four," she corrected.
"Four after pouring the unicorn blood, yes—but you've been out of it for a little over an hour."
Hermione glanced down at her chest—the skin was purple all over, a nasty shade she found unnatural on skin.
"Whatever he used to cut you, it was cursed," Draco explained as he trailed her gaze. "Not entirely sure how, because Dolohov's favourite pastime is creating his own sadistic curses, but I can tell it's not deadly. It was most likely—"
"To torture me, yes. He was quite fond of that."
Draco's hand was soothing on her arm—gentle and fresh. He was the one who was ill; he was the one who should be in this bed, not her.
"Was?"
"Well, he's dead now. So I suppose he's not fond of anything anymore."
"Hermione..." His grip tightened around her wrist, but she did not pull away—she wanted him to touch her. Even if it felt more like a warning than a caress.
"Draco, I do not—I do not wish to speak of it. He was a sadistic man, cruel to the bone; he inflicted me that scar when I was sixteen, and had more than his share of fun when informing me of its true nature, of the way he poisoned it with blood magic so he could detect my presence if I ever were to be near him. Which I was, yesterday. And will never happen again, seeing as I killed him with his own cursed wand; a poetic end to a man who did not deserve the name." Her eyes were still fixated on the ceiling; she'd never noticed before, but there were paintings on it; angels and demons fighting it out, surrounded by clouds—that, too, she found ironic.
"His own—"
Hermione opened her hand; it had not been an illusion, after all. That wand had burnt her skin to a crisp as she held on to it; surely a punishment for what she'd done to its master. "Like I said. Barely a man."
Draco grabbed the wand from her and snapped it in two before tossing it in the fire, where it hissed and moaned and released black smoke as its cadaver burned to a crisp. "Thankfully, I Apparated us here. With my own wand—the one you were foolish to leave in my pocket when you promised we'd leave the moment things turned sour."
"I'm forgetful." Bad faith dripped from her tone, but she could not find it in her to care.
She was, it seemed, at her rope's end. Spooled out infinitely until, well—ropes are finite. And so was she. "How did you even—you're too ill for something like that."
He avoided her gaze; he was hiding something—worse: Hermione realised she didn't care.
"Listen, we need to talk," he said instead of answering her question.
"Haven't we done that enough?"
His hand slipped from her arm and shock coursed through him. "Haven't we—Hermione—"
She did not respond; at least, not with words; no, instead she pulled him close to her, so close she could see the flecks of blue in his eyes, and—
she kissed him.
He was everything Theo was not; where Theo had been demanding and violent, sinking fangs into her flesh and forcing her soul out through her mouth, Draco was nothing but soft lips and gentle hands, a curve that folded where she pushed. She grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him to the bed; if he'd found enough strength to Apparate them both back, she figured he had more than enough to endure her designs for him.
They had three hours. Then, if luck allowed it, she'd enact the Pact, save his life and run for hers. Forever. Thousands of years would stretch out in front of her, Time standing immortal as her only companion.
The way Hermione saw it, this was her very last moment of being human. And she wanted to indulge in it fully, to slather herself with Narcissa's words come to life through Draco's hands and limbs and skin, to let the remnants of her humanity bloom right there, right then, and to circumvent the deep hole burning through her oesophagus.
She was alive, and relishing it.
Draco did not try to change her mind; he sank into her with ease, hands slipping past the cut Dolohov made in her dress and touching every inch of skin he came across. Her scars, her open wound, her dried blood were no obstacles in his search for her warmth; he caressed it all with equal fervour. His mouth was hungry for hers, but not brutally so—he was iron encased in velvet, a man carved from manners with a tamed beast inside roaring. Soon, his hands turned to claws as they ripped through every layer of Narcissa Malfoy's elegant gown.
"Your mother's dress—" Hermione breathed out from beneath him.
"I don't care." His voice was low, practically a grunt, thick with lust. "I refuse to fuck you with this many layers between us."
Good God. The mild-mannered, somewhat reluctant, sacrificial lamb she'd come to know since he'd fallen ill with Theo's curse was gone entirely from his demeanour, from his words, from his touch. He was a lion tearing through the world of fabric that kept her from him, digging until he could reach his dinner and gulp it down whole.
The idea of him biting into her flesh and eating a scrap of it was enough to elicit a violent impulse in her; she pushed herself out of the clothes entirely. The pins and fasteners that kept the layers in place pierced and dragged along her skin; soon, thin bleeding lines appeared down her stomach, along the slope of her curves, trailing down her thighs. The gown was removed, but her dirty blood was apparent, warm to the touch—and she had to think he'd sooner reject her than sully himself.
It seemed, though, that; rather than deter him, the sight of her blood spurred him on—he slid his hands down her stomach and around her ribcage until she was held so firmly in his grasp she could no longer move; then, he darted his tongue out and trailed the fresh wounds with it, licking every drop of blood he could encounter. Hermione's breath shuddered and stilled in her throat—it was as if the pneuma from her lungs had gone into his instead, taken and not to be returned.
She wondered for a fleeting second if it did taste like mud—the thought floated out of her just as quick as it came.
Once he reached the apex of her thighs, Hermione knew there was no turning back—this was it. Months spent out in the wild had culminated in a chance meeting with him, and the months spent by his side thereafter had pushed her into this very moment, nude and dripping blood on his bed while he ravaged every part of her—even the one he'd admonished for years.
With Theodore Nott, Hermione had met the touch of the Devil, with Draco Malfoy she was learning about the touch of a man.
A man deprived, thirsty, hungry.
He ripped through the last shreds of her undergarments and settled between her thighs, hunger lurking in his eyes. "I've wanted to taste you for weeks, now," he confessed while his fingers gathered amidst her bush and pushed the flesh of her cunt apart. "Theo didn't deserve to get there first," he added, brewing a storm.
Theo was dangerous terrain for them both—especially right now. "He didn't—he didn't taste," she responded, her breath caught in her throat. He wouldn't have, she almost added, but, in truth, she didn't know whether she believed it—Theo did not seem as attached to his beliefs as he said he was. He was a demon in human clothing, without a doubt, but all he'd done came from something else stirring in him—an egomania fuelled by survival. Not all that different from her, she realised.
"Still," Draco growled.
That was the last word he spoke before he drowned himself in her, tongue lapping flesh and excavating treasures Hermione wasn't sure were ever there to begin with. She writhed, burning and torn, touched and sullied, eaten and devoured; her body was nonsense to her, a mangled mess her mind had lost its reason in; he ate and she starved.
Quickly—almost too much, too soon, too real—she buckled; he'd not even entered her yet. Her limbs scattered themselves in the emptiness around and her form melted; she puddled into incoherence, called upon by a name he wrote with his tongue, one that was silent and almost illegible but that she knew to be hers.
He rose from between her thighs, sticky with her, drenched in her, and she swore for a moment that his eyes were bright red—a blink of the eyes, a second past, and the memory turned to illusion. Grey again—but not the grey of dull English weather or the grey of stone dungeons; the grey of thunder sizzling, of silver being churned and stirred by blacksmiths, of destructive fog swarming farmlands. It wasn't hunger; it was power.
"Turn around." He demanded without asking, took without question; worse, she felt the urge to comply.
She wanted this—to give up control, watch it become smoke exiting her body, skin turned to clay, silhouette to moulded statue.
But—before—in a moment of rashness, a desire born of impulse, she raised to her knees, faced him, and ripped his shirt off; she watched as the delicate white linen flew into the air before descending on the bed, then turned back to him and grazed his skin with her nails. His gaze bore holes though her—she could not see him, but she could feel it. Her skin tingled with senses, some she'd never even known to exist—between the events of the evening prior to their return, the knowledge of what was to come, and the hotness of his breath on her, she was overexposed to and overwhelmed by the elements; even the touch of stale air distracted her.
Draco waited for a moment before he slid his hands down her hips and twisted her so her back was to him; he did not bend her over, not just yet—it was coming, soon—for a moment, he held her against him, the bones of her back sinking into his chest, and caressed her; it was neither gentle nor rough. It was a touch of recognisance, an investigation; his hands poked her stomach, pulp to seed, then climbed to and pinched the curve of her tits. Hermione arched her back instinctively, spilling her matter into his—his touch amplified and strengthened, pushing harder, pinching enough to hurt.
"Hurt me." Her voice spoke before her mind could.
He let go of her the moment the words escaped her mouth; his hands left a burning trace on her skin—fire and air, this is all fire and air, smoke and flames—before sliding down her back and forcing her to fold for him, spine straightened and body exposed. Vulnerable.
Hermione hadn't been vulnerable in a long time—defenceless, at times perhaps, sometimes encumbered by fear, but not vulnerable, and certainly not of her own will, not like this, not sprawled open for someone who was once an enemy. This was a luxury, almost an exercise in trust—and, yes, she realised as her palms slipped on the sheets and her back curved in symphony with her chest sinking into the bed, as her folded legs split open and offered her cunt to him, she did trust him. In the same breath, the same impulse, she knew she did not love him; she loved that he loved her.
Cruel as it may be—and she knew it to be cruel—Hermione had given up on the very idea of love the moment Ron and she became mirrors of disagreement. Her heart had been blackened beyond repair; no vinegar could wipe the soot from its walls and no water could purify the sins it carried. What she was agreeing to with Draco, in that very moment, was an exchange—her body as gratefulness for his love; her touch as redemption for his; her trust as recognition of his strength of character. In many ways, this was a mercy as much as an indulgence.
His hands crept down her back then trailed back to her hips before digging into her flesh; knuckles and pulp pushing and holding, then—sudden, visceral, the feeling of fullness, of being torn asunder, ripped from the Earth and thrown into the skies. Draco said nothing, spoke no words; he just dove into her, as if reaching for her guts and her feelings all at once. Hermione waited for a moment—or three—while he settled; jittery and tense in her warmth, as if cradling a flame between open palms.
"Fuck," he breathed.
Then, he started moving; she rose her hips to meet his, a junction, a puncture, of their broken bodies finding comfort in the frigidity of the world built around them, of the moments they'd made of each other. Hermione's hands fisted the sheets below as her organs swam up her chest; there was nothing quite like this, quite like feeling one's body ripped and pierced, reassembled at every turn, not knowing what sensation will come next; she was flames and ice, sweat pooling on skin, lungs breathing smoke, bones carved by the hands holding her in place.
The cadence of his movements was a song she hadn't heard in years—a melody that spoke not in notes but in touches, a medley of sounds dripping down her ears and slipping into her mind; for a moment, she forgot… everything. The only things slicing through the edges of her mind were his hands spading into her hips, the rough jutting of his bones, the crash of a wave on her shores, the slashes of his cock in her cunt—quick like one-two-three and just as intense, the eerie silence of his room filled with the dissonant tonalities of their raw voices—sounds scattered and skin rippling, breath hot and loud, fuck fuck fuck like a prayer.
It dawned on Hermione—somewhere between the moment Draco leaned forward to bite her neck and the final beats of his body—that this should not have been possible; this did not feel right in the right way—oh, it felt right, but not the way she'd expected it from him; almost like it hadn't been him.
The crescendo of their spent bodies reached a peak sometime between midsummer and late winter, a final note so loud and so grave it ruptured Hermione from the insides—the Earth shaking where her stomach once stood, the skies breaking open where her lungs had once breathed, the texture of soil on her skin where air had once breathed—and the thought passed; all she felt was an all-encompassing wave of release, almost as if being bled by leeches, a struggle to find sense in the world; and, it seemed, so had he.
"Hermione," but his voice wasn't his voice, not quite.
They fell down together, crumpled pieces of parchment bleeding ink.
And, when she finally turned to face him, she saw the source of her doubt flittering—Draco's left eye, no longer blue or grey, but almost black—the colour of Theo's eyes.
She jumped out of bed without a second thought. "What is that?" she yelled, pointing a finger to his face. The rest of him was as it had always been—blond, pale, carved with a knife. Only one eye had changed; but that eye was everything to her, because it reflected treason.
"I can explain," said Draco. "Fuck, it wasn't supposed to—"
Hermione swiped Draco's wand from where he'd left it. "Talk now, before I kill you." She brandished it in his direction, her arm rigid and her mind set; she would do it. There was nothing she wouldn't do anymore as far as he and Nott were concerned.
The last shred of her morality snapped.
"It's just—it's the curse, Hermione."
"Are you Theo right now? Just say yes or no."
"I am and I'm not."
"That makes no sense!" She yelled those words, spoke them from poison rather than voice. "Stop lying to me."
He stood from the bed and raised his hands in defeat. "Hermione, please—please listen to me." It sounded like him, felt like him even—beyond the physical shape, she could only see Draco Malfoy in that body. Not Theodore Nott in disguise.
She did not lower his wand.
"This is—this is what the blood oath does."
"The blood oath keeps you tethered so long as Theo is alive. He's explained this to me. Do not take me for a fool!"
"He lied."
"You could be lying right now." Her grip whitened and hardened around the wand in her hand. It was just two words and a flash of light; nothing she hadn't done before. Nothing she couldn't forget she'd done once she'd taken on Morgana's burden. Centuries would pass, and she would forget.
"Yes, I could. But if you trust me, if you trust Draco, you'll know I'm not—Hermione, listen to me. Look at me."
She was still fixated on the tip of the wand. It was febrile in her hand;
It was her hand that was febrile. Weak with shakes and doubts.
"I saw the Devil," she said, not entirely of her own volition. "I saw the Devil in his eyes." She looked up to him. "And now I see him in yours too." Part of her understood why Muggles burnt witches at the stake—this incomprehension running through her right now, dwelling in her limbs and ensnaring her heart, there was nothing quite like it; it overwhelmed her from head to feet, spread across her matter like tar, sticky and dark and glacial. "But you didn't use that curse Draco, you didn't make that oath—Theo did. So, pray tell, why I am seeing the Devil in your eyes, unless you're not who you say you are."
"You see what you want to see, Hermione." His eyes—one blue, one black—darted towards her wand carefully; he did not move from where he stood, but she knew he was weighing the risks of snatching the wand from her hands.
"It would make sense, wouldn't it? Hours earlier, wearing a doublet spent Draco. Spending hours in the Ministry, with an army raging through, should have almost killed him; yet, he supposedly Apparated me unconscious. Not a splinch, not a scratch, nothing. And—" she gulped audibly, "if that were not enough—which, for the record, it is—he—" She let the rest of the sentence hang into the air, laden with the vapours of their affair. "But Theo could have done all that and more, couldn't he? I was—unconscious. I would not have seen. I could not have known."
Perhaps he knew then there was no arguing with her; perhaps those words made him understand that she'd finally reached the truth and would not believe him; perhaps he'd grown tired of playing Draco; whatever it was, Draco dropped his hands to his sides and shrugged. "Kill me, then. If I am who you think I am, then Draco will die. And if I am Draco, then—I will die too. Either way, it makes no difference."
"You seem to be harbouring under the impression that I would not kill Draco."
"Am I wrong?"
"I made a Pact with him. Not you."
"Yes, you made him—me—cannon fodder. Threatened twice over by the blood oath and the Vow. Entirely reliant on both Theo and you, forever—whichever of you dies, doesn't really matter which as this point, I die too." He smiled, but it was pained—marred by lines that true joy would not be require. "It is, after all, what I've deserved."
This, this one sentence, this sense of defeat, was the first thing to make Hermione doubt of her conviction that she was standing in front of a disguised Theodore Nott. Those were words Theo would never have spoken, even when uttering them using Draco's mouth. He did not believe that his friend deserved death—he'd done everything in his power to avoid it.
"I'm listening," she finally said, lowering the wand. She eyed the clock off to the side. "You have two hours left before I enact the Pact and decide what to do with both your fates."
"Look, I knew you wouldn't be happy to hear it, so I—"
"Spare me the excuses."
He shifted uncomfortably from one leg to the other. His dark iris was deeper than his blue one, she realised, almost as if it was feeding off him.
"Blood oaths have a price. You know that."
"All too well."
"And the price for a life resurrected and breaking the balance—"
"Is steep, yes."
"Well, this is the price we're both paying for Theo's choice. When my body began breaking down and my death was imminent, we started sharing a… a connection, I guess you could say. It was as if my body was pouring my soul into his."
"That—" she scoffed, "is ridiculous. Bodies are not vases. Souls are not water."
"Sometimes, I remember you grew up with Muggles," he laughed quietly.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Just that the cultural divide is deeper than you could ever imagine; at least, as far as this subject is concerned. Muggles believe in the soul as an immaterial imprint of the being on the world, carried by a body. The soul, they conceive, is given to them by God, and thus remains whole until the body decays and the soul meets its eternal sentence. That is correct, isn't it?"
Hermione pursed her lips. It was.
"Wizards live far longer than Muggles. We practice magic. We play with matter. We know souls not as imprints of divinity lent out to bodies, but as essence derived from matter."
"Some Muggles believe that too."
"Do you?"
She realised she did not.
When she did not respond, he continued. "Even then, our vision is different. The soul and the body are not tied together; if the body dies, we do not imagine the soul flies out into the ether and disappears into an immortal land. The immortal land is here, this Earth—our souls can remain here if they so choose, through the imprint of a ghost. Partial, but real all the same."
"But they don't always," she protested. The logic he was showing made no sense to her; it was less logic than make-believe.
"No, those that don't return to the soil as essence; they filter through the Earth and form the magical energy that is all around us. The very one we manipulate. That is why keeping the balance is essential—if we could all be immortal, if we could escape death, magic would die. Death always comes—and if not for us, then for what makes us."
"Are Muggles devoid of souls, then?"
He seemed to get frustrated. "No, but we are raised to believe that they are, yes. That Muggleborns steal essence that was destined for another witch or wizard, and that this is how Squibs come to be." He paused. "But I'm not talking about belief here, Hermione. Muggles' souls come from the same source as do Purebloods' and Squibs' and even animals—whether magic manifests or not isn't… it's random. It's the way Nature is built, much the same way you have brown eyes and mine are blue, much the same way some of us are tall or short or pale of skin or—" He raised his eyes to meet hers. "Do you get it now?"
She frowned. Did not dignify his question with an answer. "Is that," she began quietly, "why Horcruxes are so dangerous?"
"Yes," he quipped. "Just like immortality, like blood oaths, like all manner of things that prolong life more than need be."
Hermione thought of the two immortals she knew of and almost asked why they did not suffer the violence of corruption the way Draco or Voldemort had, but she didn't. Because she remembered Nicholas Flamel had decided of his own death. And so had Morgana.
Their corruption was not a physical ailment; it was pain. Enough to beg for death when the time came.
"Alright. Then, what are you saying? That your soul is being poured into the vessel of Theo's body, like water in a vase?"
"Yes."
"But—"
"Hermione—this is the price. Theo will have to live with two souls for the rest of his bodily existence; and, even then, who knows what my soul will do to him. Maybe the excess will kill him. Maybe his soul will never be able to return to the Earth. Neither of us knows—what we do know is that we've almost run out of time. Soon, I will look like him completely—and this envelope will crumple and die. What is in it will go to him." He walked closer and grabber her hands in his. "For now, for whatever time is left, whether it's counting down to you saving my life and leaving or me dying, I am here. With you."
She regretted the impulse that dwelled deep within to let him kiss her; and so, she stepped away from him. "I can't trust you."
Pain slashed across his face, a gash from the ears to the jaw cutting across his lips and nose. His dark eye sparkled. "What is left, Hermione? I've told you everything."
"Maybe so, but you're late, aren't you? I've been waiting for months, at your mercy, for the truth; and only now, when I threatened to butcher you the way I did Dolohov, did you back down and give it to me."
Whatever he was about to say was interrupted by the brutal arrival of Theodore Nott, who almost crashed into the room; the door swung and there he was, blackened by soot, the edges of his clothing frayed and burnt.
"Granger," he said. "It's time for us to make a trade."
The terms were simple enough. He'd hand her the documents; she'd hand him the potion.
"It needs to simmer for another," she looked up to the clock, "hour or so. Then you can take it from the cauldron." She remained tight-lipped on the last step; so, she noted, did Draco.
A contingency could never hurt; it would not be the first time things would go to shit in the last minute of a well-concocted plan, after all.
"Where were you?" she asked absentmindedly as she flitted through the manuscript parchments. Rookwood's handwriting was spidery; traitorous; slippery.
"Where do you think, Granger? I had to help clean up the mess your friends (Hermione almost betrayed her surprise—she remembered just as quick that Theo was talking about their blood status; hopefully, he was still very much in the dark about her activities with the Initiative) left in their wake. I couldn't slip out of there unnoticed; Gaunt has his eye on me."
She whipped her head back to him. One of his eyes was blue, which she'd noticed when he returned, but had not commented on. "I thought he trusted you."
"Trusted, yes. Not anymore—between my showing up late, Dolohov's body discovered lying in a locked office, and the attack, he probably thinks I'm a traitor," he said bitterly. "All things I can thank you for, Granger. Lots of good that alliance did me."
"Remind me how you'd be faring with the Pact right about now if it weren't for me?"
He didn't even have the decency to look ashamed. "I still don't think we needed you." Oh, if only you knew. "But fine." He leaned towards the page she was looking at. "At least tell me you found something worth risking my skin."
She had.
She certainly had.
"You know, it's funny," she said, "but part of me was always at least a little convinced that I'd gotten it all wrong. All this time. That whatever I found out about the Terror that proved me right had to be a coincidence. A bias confirmed." She pushed the second, penultimate, and last pages towards him and let him read them. "Turns out I was wrong to doubt myself."
Page 2
All experiments have failed me. Despite my best efforts and the plethora of tools I've imparted the Terror with, it seems it has no ability to discern Mudblood matter from Pureblood one.
Tests should have been conclusive: I've shaped the Terror from ink-clay, structured it with real human bones, given it a human brain, dipped the ink-clay in Dittany and Polyjuice potion and wrapped it in an Invisibility cloak. Both Animagus and Imperio were used as bonding agents to wake the brain and force it to perform its basic functions. Its nose is more performant than a dog's, its brain as able as a human's, and its liquid body makes it the perfect killing machine. The composition of the Polyjuice Potion allows it mastery over the elements, and the ink-clay is impervious to dissolution; I cannot make sense of this flaw It seems to have.
The first batch of blood was collected from a group of enslaved Mudbloods; the second batch carried the blood of Order members; the third batch was from Purebloods the blight left for dead; the fourth batch was a sample from various members of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. Yet, my efforts have yielded nothing: At every turn, the Terror hungers for every lick of blood, regardless of the batch it came from. If I were to unleash it now, it would kill us all.
Page 37
I am forced to conclude that there is no difference between the blood of Mudbloods and that of Purebloods. Incorporating Half-Bloods into the experiments was useless; if anything, it has proven the lack of substantial difference even more. Meetings with Augustus Gaunt have not been productive. He insists on having the Terror kill all the Mudbloods it finds, which is not something I'm able to do.
Success has come when asking the Terror to identify a single person's blood; It was able to track the Malfoy blood signature in three different samples—Draco Malfoy's, Lucius Malfoy's, and Abraxas Malfoy's. I fear this means the machine intends as worked and there is more substantial difference from individual to individual than there is from group to group. Narcissa Malfoy's blood was only identified when I submitted a Black sample to the Terror; even the bonds of marriage have not proven to successfully carry a blood signature from one stream to another.
Page 38
It seems we've reached the inevitable conclusion of my endeavours. In order for the Terror to achieve the purposes we set out for it, we will need to feed it with a series of blood signatures to attack and to protect, without being able to account for the vast majority of wizardfolk out there, whether traitor Mudbloods or Purebloods.
To guarantee these efforts, the blood samples of the Sacred Twenty-Eight have been marked into the Terror's ink-clay; should any members of these illustrious families die at Its hand, It shall self-destroy—I cannot bear the risk of It ending the lines of so many important families.
As far as chosen targets go, the only available samples are those of members of the Order and a few other rebellious groups who came and went. It will not be enough to rid the world of Mudbloods—far from it—but Augustus believes the threat to be enough to protect us; the others will be rounded up and enslaved, providing the opportunity to rebuild this world at no cost, all the while keeping their magical energy in check.
One hurdle remains still: the Terror, despite my previous observations, is too weak to leave. It can scent blood, detect it, thirst for it, but not yet end life or survive of its own accord, unlike what I previously thought. We gathered a few warm bodies for It to feast on but were met with defeat. There are yet more things I need to do before it can be a real monster.
That, Hermione gathered, would have been right about when Morgana intervened; something she kept to herself as she watched Theo frown further with each line.
"So this Vow…" he said after a moment.
"The Vow still holds. You and Draco and all those of your lineage are protected by the enchantments meant to deter the Terror. Every Pureblood death you've seen or heard of has left It alive because these were not the people Rookwood or Gaunt cared to protect." Hermione's hand slid on the table as she gathered the notes back together. "This changes everything."
"It changes nothing."
"Don't you see? We could put an end to it all. Not just the monster itself, but the war! If this information spreads, no one will trust Gaunt anymore. No one will want to fight in his name, no one—"
"You're wrong."
"Theo—"
"Granger, don't be naïve. The Purebloods will always rally behind Gaunt. They will always seek to exterminate your kind. The truth does not matter. Power does. This," he pointed to the scrolls she held in her hands, "would mean the end of slavery. The end of a system in which people like Draco and me are always the best, always given everything, told the world belongs to us. You could get away with being an idealist when you were eleven—Hell, you could still get away with it when Voldemort died; but now? Haven't you seen enough? Haven't you suffered enough? You should know better."
"I—"
He snapped, an explosive blowing up in the wind; his eyes lit up with rage, burning coals consuming his pupils whole. "Do you ever stop talking? Or arguing? There is no debating this, Granger. It's an objective fact, whether you agree with it or not. I will not coddle you. I will not feed into your delusions of a better world. I'm giving you an out, which is generous enough."
Draco was still standing silently by the banister—Hermione resented that he had not spoken once, and that he did not seem like he would any time soon. Even as she was being berated before his very eyes by a man who, of his own admission, had never shown himself to be anything but cruel.
"An out?" She didn't try to barter with him any further; there was not much of a point.
"Once I have enacted the Pact, I will end the Terror. And I will send you packing wherever you wish in the world, with enough material comforts to last you a lifetime. Nothing more."
They'd never quite agreed on the contours of his actions once the Pact had been enacted, other than saving Draco from the fate that seemed all too eager to finally meet him; but Hermione had—perhaps naïvely, she realised now—hoped that being an all-powerful wizard would entice Theo to bring peace, even forcibly, to the world. Since he'd returned with the promised documents, she'd accepted that she would never fulfil her promise to Morgana; and that was, most likely, because she had so staunchly wanted to believe Theo would not limit himself to his own selfishness.
He was right—she was too easy to fool, even now. Because it was obvious he would never do more than what pleased him; and, deep down, though he knew there was no true difference between wizards of different blood status, he did not care. He'd always known, she imagined—even when he called her a Mudblood, he'd known. He'd done it to hurt, to put her in her place—and that was why he'd never feared touching her or fucking her or being touched by her blood. He'd always known it wasn't dirty—but he still thought he was above her. By virtue of his name, not his blood.
In that moment, Hermione knew she could never let him enact the Pact. That last instruction would be followed by her or taken to her grave. Even if Draco had to be buried alongside her.
"Fine, then." She looked up to him. "In an hour."
One hour.
Theo summoned the cauldron and its kindling downstairs. "I'd like to keep an eye on it," he said when he noticed Hermione's bemused expression. "I don't trust you."
He was right not to, of course, though it did make things harder for her. She watched the steam rise from the corner of her eye, then surveyed the exits and the possible routes she could take; it didn't seem like there was an easy way for her to vanish with the potion while having enough time to provide it with the last stir and chant the incantation. She'd have to draw Theo away, rather than take from him.
"I'm going to rest," said Draco. He was looking quite faint—his skin was sallow and pitted, his eyes—both the dark and the light—empty. "Hermione, would you mind—"
"Of course."
She rushed past Theo, who did not seem to care about their being alone together now that the Pact was within his grasp, and draped Draco's left arm around her shoulders before helping him walk back to his room.
He shook her off as soon as they stepped past the entryway. "I'm fine."
She didn't say anything.
"I needed to talk to you. Alone."
"Alright."
She didn't trust him.
"You can't let—"
"Like I have a bloody choice in the matter," even though she'd thought the very same thing as him. "Maybe you should provide me with a solution instead of ordering me about like my life isn't much more at stake than yours."
He took no offense at her jab. "I'll distract him," he simply said. "But you need to be quick about it."
There was a sizzling energy between them just hours ago, when she thought she could trust him; now, it was more of a fizz, splintered in her fingertips and crawling lazily down her back; it felt like a menace more than it did desire. Something in her had snapped; not quite her heart or her mind, but something wooden in her spine, a casing she'd never known had been there, not until he broke it. Perhaps there was love there and she'd been too stubborn to see it.
"I will," she promised. "But—" But I think I'll run. But I think you'll die. But that seems like a horrible idea.
"Yes?"
"Nothing." She pursed her lips. "You can't distract him until the very last moment, or he'll see something is amiss."
He nodded.
The air around them was cold, so cold—had she grown so distant from him in the span of a few hours? was she feeling his hatred radiating towards her? had Theo's presence cast a chilling charm over them? It was like they were two strangers in the night, having just met hours earlier, never acquainted with each other's forms and quirks and language ticks.
She shivered. "I don't know what you think you're doing, but it needs to stop now."
Draco quirked an eyebrow. "And, pray tell, what is it you think I'm doing?"
Hermione never liked games—when she was six, the children of the village tried to get her to come play hopscotch or marbles or tug of war with them and she always said no, preferring to bury her head in a book or to inspect the local flora and fauna. Later, when she came to Hogwarts, she hoped she'd find enjoyment in the things her friends were doing—but, not only were there few friends to be found (she wasn't sure there would have been any if not for the troll incident), there was also the fact that all the games they played were so utterly boring. Quidditch, in particular, she'd never grown to find a fondness for, even though it was played on flying broomsticks. Chess, she could have grown to enjoy, perhaps, but the barbary of the wooden pieces decapitating each other on the board had eventually repulsed her.
Those were physical games. Mind games, Hermione thought, were the cruellest of all. The constant head-hopping, the bruised feelings, the lies, the heartbreak of it all.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Some part of her really did love Draco; she wasn't sure when or how or even why, but it had happened—somewhere between the hatred and the pity, she'd found room in her heart to welcome him; and now, she was looking at him and wondering what he was playing at.
"Quit it." Her skin was covered in gooseflesh, thick bumps down the slope of her shoulders and all the way to her wrist. "I'm sorry you're vexed at my refusal to jump into your arms and thank you for saving the day, but now is not the time to be playing around." She hugged herself and squeezed the flesh of her arms so tight her knuckles turned white.
"You're cold," he observed. "Why is that?"
"You tell me."
"Hermione, I haven't done anything."
"And yet, you don't feel it."
That much she knew to be true; he was barely dressed—no more than she was—but his body was still rigid, his skin smooth, his expression unchanged. There was no sign that this sudden burst of cold was having any effect on him.
He laughed, albeit dryly. "Hermione, I'm always cold. I'm dying. I'm so close to death I just—I don't feel it anymore." He swung a hand in the air, like he was feeling the wind for himself. "But you're right, it has gotten a bit… windy, in here." The window was closed. "That's odd," he remarked, noticing it for himself, likely for the first time. "Do you remember when—"
"When what?"
His stare did not leave the window—his eyes, both blue and black, were drawn to the night sky outside. The moon was peeking from behind a cloud, gentle specks of silver light in an otherwise ink black sky. Nothing had changed—it was like nothing had changed, like this night was just another night, passing them by without a care for them—but even by then, this could not have been less true. That night, Hermione had murdered Dolohov. Infiltrated the highest strata of Pureblood society and fooled them all into believing she was one of them. Witnessed her brothers and sisters in blood flooding the gates and shedding the life from those who had oppressed them. She had finally gotten the answer, the truth. And, in a little less than an hour, God willing, she would change her fate forever.
But what did the moon care for these human affairs? The moon would continue to shine long after Hermione's change; it would continue to spill silver light over heavy clouds even as bodies grew and decayed; on this night, like on any other night, it would remain up in the sky and wait for its time to hide and reveal the sun in its stead.
Yet—
"Did you feel that?"
Hermione couldn't quite explain it; Draco could not either, she could tell. Even though the moon did not care for human affairs, she had changed tonight.
"You need to hide."
Draco narrowed his gaze and turned to her. "Why?"
"Just hide!" She ran to the nearby closet, nearly tripping on her way there, and opened the door. "Stay in here. It'll buy us some time."
"Hermione…"
"Draco, if there is one moment for you to trust me, and one moment only, please pick this one. I'm begging. I may yet be able to save us, but if you're found first—"
She'd been silly; had lost precious minutes interrogating him and feeling the breeze on her hand. The answer was clear to her now, as it had always been, as it should always have been—this was not an artifact of human magic or one of nature's whims. It was a distinct threat, one she had met a thousand times already in her lifetime, even at times when she wasn't in Its vicinity.
It was the Terror.
"Found—" He did not say anything more. It was as if the idea of speaking the creature's name would cause It to materialise in the room suddenly. Yet he made no move.
"Draco." She grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. "Draco, if you die now, at Its hand, I will never be able to save you." There were tears streaming down her face—when had those come? she did not remember this wetness on her cheeks moments ago—and snot hindering her ability to breathe. "If you die now, I will lose you forever."
At last, Draco obeyed her orders; his eyes turned melancholic and his demeanour softer—he huffled over to the closet and Hermione closed the door before charming the lock so he wouldn't get out.
Then, she acted quickly—she had to. Minutes from now, the Terror would be inside this very room, and there would be no escape left for her. She remembered what the Initiative had told her and ran across the landing, to her room—she'd kept some incense stashed in there for a while now, just in case. An in case she never hoped she would need.
A flurry of snowflakes and icicles followed her down her path; she shot an eye over the banister and muttered under her breath when she noticed Theo had gone and, with him, the potion; she'd known he would double-cross her if given the opportunity, but she hadn't expected him to act so fast on it.
Part of her hoped he'd already been killed (something that, frankly, would bring her great satisfaction), but the universe had never been so kind as to offer her such respite. He still had to be here, somewhere, waiting. Somewhere with no exits for her to double-cross him.
Finally, despite the cold gnawing at her limbs and the ice growing down the ridges of her skin, she reached her room; she grabbed the incense from her drawer and covered herself with it, emptied the whole pot on herself, until she was all dust and dirt and smelled stronger than a church after service.
She noticed with satisfaction the ice melting off her skin and the snowflakes dropping to the ground in puddles of water. She'd managed to mask her scent, but she knew she only had minutes to come up with something else.
Theo first—she had to find Theo.
If anyone had dragged the Terror here, it had to be him.
Her legs stumbled down the stairs in a jumble of speed and force, a fit of strength she hadn't known herself capable of until this very moment, and she turned left to the dining room.
Empty.
So was the drawing room, and the petit salon, and the water closet.
But not the kitchen.
Pinky was standing in a corner, shaking from head to toe—Theo had a knife in hand and the cauldron with its kindling sitting on the table where they used to eat bread and cheese together.
"You brought It here," Hermione said.
He tilted his head up and looked straight through her. "Covered in dirt, Granger? Seems fitting."
She did not react to his taunt. "You did this."
He smiled. "I did." The scroll was laid out neatly next to the cauldron, so flat it was clear Theo had passed his hand over it again and again and again. Obsessed. Maniacal. Methodical. "It was awfully convenient, too. I was smeared with your blood and It was right there, locked up so It couldn't do more damage."
"You should have died."
"If I'd unlocked Its cage right there and then, certainly. But I'm not stupid, Granger." The tiles on the kitchen were glazed over with the first frost of winter, as if great Northern winds were inching closer. "I left behind a little souvenir and instructions, then I Disapparated."
Hermione couldn't tell whether she was growing cold from the Terror or Theo's deadpan statements of evil. He'd done this. He'd done this. "Draco will die," was all she said.
"Yes, well—you've seen him. He's not doing so good at the moment, is he?" He rolled his left shoulder backwards and stretched his neck, tilting it from side to side. "But then, I figured—I could endure your insufferable presence and risk you betraying our deal, or I could get rid of you now and resurrect Draco later, once I'm the most powerful sorcerer this Earth has known." He looked back at her. "Easy choice, once you look at it like that."
His callousness sent chills up her spine. "I've been scared of a monster for so long," she said quietly, speaking without even truly realising it. "But he's been there all along. Sleeping mere feet from me. Touching me. Playing me like a fiddle." She pursed her lips. "The monster was always you."
Theo tutted her. "Come now, Granger. That's rude."
Her eyes darkened. "You made me hallucinate Ron. You were there, inflicting on me the pain I thought I was dreaming—slicing through my scalp, strangling me. You made me go to the Terror. That was you." She hadn't understood this until this very moment—it had never made sense that the Terror could draw her out like that. Not when It hadn't been able to since. Not when she'd been so far away, so well-guarded. "You knew if I left of my own accord that the Vow wouldn't hold up." Do you promise to let Death take you should the Terror kill me as a result of your failure to protect me? "As a result of his failure to protect me… Not as a result of my failure to protect myself."
Theo got up from his chair and began pacing. "Took you long enough to catch on. I had the perfect plan, so perfect even you never doubted me." He paused. "Well, you did, but never about that. I was so close to getting rid of you, of this idiotic Vow, of getting our journey back on track, the way it was always meant to be—just Draco and me. But the idiot had to go on right ahead and save you." He looked terribly inconvenienced, as if she'd told him there was no jam left, or that his favourite tunic had gotten some mud on it. "Draco cannot be saved from himself; that's a lesson I learned long ago yet fail to recognise every time it slaps me in the face. How he weakened himself to go on an errand for you, because you did not want me to know about the cipher. How, at every turn, at every step, he chose you over me, and for what?" His eyes darkened, shadows dancing on the edge. "You don't even love him. Not like I do."
The air was almost too cold now for Hermione to think—it was thick, a coat draped over her shoulder, lacerating her skins, threatening to tear her limb from limb. Still, she persevered. "What you're doing right now—choosing to end his life so you can get me out of the way and resurrect him later—that's not love. That's possession." She thought back on Narcissa's words. "And even if you succeed, he'll never forgive you. You do know that, don't you? He will never accept what you've done. What you're doing. He would rather die than be at the mercy of someone so cruel."
Rage painted crimson splashes on Theo's skin; on his cheeks, his forehead, his nose. When he spoke again, rage painted crimson splashes in his words, in his tone, in his voice. "And who do I have to thank for that? You! The infuriating bleeding heart who's been meddling with my plans and playing with his head since the day we met again. You, the rebel without an army, the cause without a reason."
Hermione laughed—she meant it as a soft, broken sound, but there were icicles in her mouth and her teeth knocked together loudly. "That's the problem with you, Theo. You could never see further than your own nose." She didn't elaborate—her body was rigid, close to paralysed.
He laughed. The sound of the Devil rang in her ears, clear as day. "It doesn't matter anymore, does it?" He cocked his head, as if to see past her. "Any minute now, you'll be dead. And I will have won."
Hermione tried to think of a way out. There had to be a way out. An exit plan. Something.
She thought of Draco hiding in the closet. Of all the times he'd put his life in danger to save hers, while the man he believed to be his closest ally and companion played him like a fiddle. She thought of Ron spiking her with a dangerous poison. Of betrayal and friendship and moments of laughter lost in the ether to vengeance and violence and war. She thought of anger, of the way it raged within her, had raged within her since she was welcomed into this world of wizards and magic, not with open arms but with spiked weapons. She thought—and, as she thought, as she grew desperate, as she grew terrified, as she felt the end come to a close, something snapped. The same thing that had snapped a thousand different times, often to save her own life.
Her skin lost its paleness to something else—a green tinge, glowing faintly in the light of the candles burning; just enough for the ice at her feet to snap, and for her to run.
She ran out the kitchen, past the foyer, rooms flying in a medley of blurry colours past her, and she kept running. She ran outside, she ran until her legs gave out. She ran—
But the cold followed. And a haunting voice, one she had not heard in what seemed like a century, disembodied and rigid, rang in her ears.
"Little one."
Hermione closed her eyes. Last they met, the Terror said the dreams were Its idea. She figured, if Death was to finally come to her now, that she should know. "You said the dreams were your idea. The dreams of Ron." She sucked a breath in; it wasn't cold enough. Not yet. "But you never tried again."
A groan resonated in the air, bouncing from tree to tree until it reached her ear. "The boy has talked."
"No." She pursed her lips. "I guessed. A shot in the dark, really."
"Clever little one. Cleverer than the boy, really."
Hermione heard blades sharpening, but nothing appeared.
"Maybe the boy should die, then."
"The little one likes to play games, doesn't she? To trick the mind into compliance. The little one has done this many times before—with hundreds, if not thousands; all idiots spread out in villages, willed to die for her and her kind despite their hatred of them."
Hermione hated games, always had. Mind games, she thought, were the cruellest of all. Even those she'd been forced to partake in.
"You've changed," she noted. The cold was around her, still, but it was not moving—it was a force being kept at bay. Preserving her, for now. "Something's happened."
"The little one never stops to play, even if she's convinced herself of her honesty. The little one likes to do things for herself and forsake all others. She's tormented the blond boy for almost a year now. Even though he made a Vow to protect her."
Hermione's frustration grew with her confusion. She couldn't tell up from down or left from right anymore; she knew this voice, she knew it was the right voice—but the words were all wrong, as if jumbled and picked haphazardly from a purse before being spoken.
"The little one is here now, ready to die. She was not ready to die last we met. She was not ready to die first we met. But now, at the last meeting, she's tired. She's hungry. She's lonely. They're all dead, her little friends. They're all dead, her little lovers. They're all dead, her little allies. It's just little her now, with two little enemies sitting in the shadows of the big house."
She did not speak. She did not respond. Instead, she looked for the dagger she usually kept hidden in her skirt, she looked for her wand, she looked for Draco's wand—and she realised she'd left all these things behind, because this skirt was not her skirt.
"The little one would be so easy to destroy. The little one has been a prey for so long now. But the Terror is lost, because now the Terror knows the little one knows more than she lets on. The little one has met The Creator."
That was the moment when she understood—that was when Hermione knew. "Do you mean Morgana?"
"Yes, The Creator. The Mother. She made the Terror, and she likes the little one. But the little one doesn't like her, and the little one doesn't like the Terror."
"Has The Creator met with you, then?"
"The Creator says the Terror has to obey the little one, but The Creator does not understand how good the scent of the little one's blood is. The Creator is not burdened to breathe it and love it the way the Terror is." A breath swept past her. "Choices, choices, choices. Always choices. The Terror was free, once. And now it's all choices, choices, choices. The Terror does not like the prison. Or the idea of dying. The Terror wants to give Death, not receive it."
"You're scared of me." It was a statement, not a question.
"Yes. The little one is not yet powerful, but The Creator means her to be one day. The Creator would be terribly cross with the Terror if the little one died. But the little one has to die."
Hermione smiled. The air was warmer, almost a sun-kiss on her skin, even in the dead of night. There was a way out after all. "Catch me if you can."
And she began running again. This time—with a purpose.
Behind her, a great Northern wind swept the trees; the leaves sang and whistled.
The manor was quiet. Unlit and coveted by shadows.
Theo was likely still cowering in the kitchen, hovering over a potion he'd never be the master of. There were only scraps left in the hour. Plenty of time. Enough for her plan to work. Enough for things to change irreversibly.
The cold was still trailing her, but it was distant now, just a faint breeze brushing past her skin. The Terror, too lost in its conflicted state of mind, having eaten too many human memories, was now prone to a moral dilemma, and thus—still deciding whether or not to kill her. There was still hope to be found, if Hermione knew where to look for it.
It was altogether a cruel twist of fate that it rested in the hands of Theodore Nott.
She knew this last path she was choosing to embark on was not an easy one to take; if things worked out in her favour, she could have it all; but, if they did not, she would lose everything.
And that, despite the Terror's previous words to her, was not something she was willing to conceive.
She rushed past the foyer and the dining room down to the kitchen. She had no wand or weapon on her; all she had left was her mind. It had helped her in the worst of times, and she hoped it was only strong enough to move the last pieces of the board in her favour and call checkmate.
She did mention earlier she was repulsed by chess. This was not true—well, not entirely.
She hated wizard's chess; she hated seeing the pieces physically destroying each other. That was another game, another one she found childish and petulant and useless. Chess, though, the Muggle kind, just like she was, was right up her alley.
She waited by the door, ensuring Theo would not see her. He was too focused on the clock running out to notice her—probably he thought her dead already. And she would be, soon—but not without taking him down alongside her. They would burn in Hell together; he'd never be able to escape her. And that was enough for her.
So she waited.
She waited for the cold to sting, for it to crawl up her limbs and remind her of the last moments.
Morgana had met with the Terror. Morgana had lied, again. Morgana lied, always.
And Hermione could not conceive giving her the satisfaction of dying.
So she waited.
And, when the air felt cold enough that Theo's head came unglued from the clock on the wall, she stepped forward.
It all happened very quickly; in a second, really. The moment he noticed her, Theo grabbed the knife he'd left by the cauldron in one hand, his wand firmly grasped in the other. "You just will not die, will you?"
She waited some more. Any second now, he would attack. Any second now, he'd draw the Terror in with the scent of her blood and force It to break past the dilemma It had found Itself entangled in.
"Where is It? I know It can't be dead. What did you do to escape?" Theo's body was burdened with tremors; his voice was unstable, its pitch betraying his panic. For the first time since meeting him, Hermione witnessed him at a complete loss. Without any control. And she relished it.
"It can't be far from here. You did something. I know you did. You Mudblood cockroaches—you simply never know when you should fucking die. We stomp on one of you and ten others pop up elsewhere." He was too nerve-wracked to attack, Hermione realised. His eyes were dancing around the room, looking for clues that did not exist. Looking for the monster lurking in the shadows. "I know you brought It back here. I can feel it. Maybe you ran fast enough, but you're not invincible, Granger. You're truly not. I don't know what made you think that you could overcome Death, but it comes for all of us. And it will come for you first."
"She."
His eyes widened. "What?"
"Death is not an it. Death is a she," Hermione simply said, though she could feel herself growing nervous too. In hindsight, this plan of hers was poorly-thought-out, weakly executed, and probably too ridiculous to work. She'd been egged on by the adrenaline, by the pursuit, by the three drops of power forced down her throat during her conversation with the Terror.
It wanted to kill her. And It would, if Theo didn't act fast.
But Theo wasn't acting. He was trembling, like a little boy caught with his hand in the jar.
She could always approach, but the idea of being zapped by an Avada irked her. He couldn't before now—Draco would have left, the first time; then, she'd become valuable, and the Pact relied on her. But now, he could simply send her crumpling down, an envelope of flesh whose soul would slink back down to the soil. And all her efforts would have been for nothing.
As long as she stayed put, he was too anguished by the prospect of the Terror to think of casting a killing spell her way. He was uneased, uncomfortable, terrified. Rattled.
"You've always been a nutcase, Granger. Semantics, really? Now?" His grip tightened around the knife. "No matter."
Hermione motioned to move away from him; her body jerked off to the side, but her legs never left the floor—she only stretched her waist and rounded her shoulders. It was enough: Theo lunged at her, wand all but forgotten, and lifted the knife in the air to slash her with it. Her blood was the key; her blood was what he wanted.
In the end, it had always been about that. Blood. Despite the fact that it had never meant what Purebloods thought it did, blood had always been the key. Just in a different way.
Hermione watched as the blade sliced through the air; she waited for it to reach the point just above her eyes, and then, finally, she acted: her leg swiped in the space between his, breaking his balance and sending him stumbling—his grip on the knife loosened, and this was when Hermione grabbed it for herself.
The Terror was nearby now—so close she could feel it in her bones.
Before Theo could think to use his wand on her, Hermione stabbed herself in the stomach; one swift motion, just deep enough to bleed out, but not so deep that she could die from it—then, she crashed against his body, smearing all that blood, all that iron and Noxious and sea of crimson, on his clothes, his skin, his hair.
And she ducked.
What happened next happened quickly—so quickly Hermione wondered for a moment if she hadn't imagined it. The Terror, who'd been inches from the kitchen, caught strands of the iron scent, and almost burst at the fact. The kitchen grew glacial, colder than Hermione had ever known—her lungs dropped in her stomach, deflated by the lack of pneuma in the thick air; her blood froze, both within and outside of herself.
The Terror walked—slashed—into the room, humming for the blood. It was still as terrifying as It had been the day Hermione first encountered It: a tall being of ink and shadows, looming high above them, without a face. It bent down, its faceless visage moving in waves as it hummed for the blood in the air; It was close, so close.
And then, it bit Theo's head off.
Chunks of mucosa and blood and other viscous things Hermione could not name flew into the air—for a second, time stilled, then came to a halt. Theo's headless corpse crumpled on the ground, as loose and inarticulate as a puppet; a horrible crunching sound rang in the air as bones and organic matter were munched on, slurped down, and digested.
Then: blood everywhere.
That was all Hermione could see. One second, the Terror was there, munching on Theo; the next, there was nothing but a sea of blood, dissolved morsels of ink and shadows floating weightlessly above. There had been no sound, no clamour, no explosion. Just blood and ink. Hermione was covered in it from head to toes; she managed to catch her breath once the sea left the kitchen and spilled out into the other rooms of the manor, signalling to those nearby the end of a sinister time. The most sinister of all.
The end, as it were, had come swiftly.
Hermione rested her hands on her knees and breathed; massive puffs of air, coming in and out, tumbling down her lungs and up her trachea with no consideration for the weakness of her constitution. She was breathing.
She was alive.
She was alive—
And no one else here was.
The blow came violently—she did not see it coming; it knocked her in the chest, breaking open her organs until all she was were bones and matter, soulless and broken. Draco died in that closet, she though. Draco died waiting for you to come back for him.
She tried to breathe again, but nothing came. Draco died in the dark.
She walked mindlessly over to the potion, her eyes firmly set on the clock. One minute left. Draco is dead. Draco won't come back. She stirred the potion once and bottled it in a vial.
The blood was beginning to dry and crust on her skin; everything around her smelled of iron. Blood and iron, everywhere. Draco died thinking you abandoned him.
She walked out of the kitchen, vial in hand, and climbed up the stairs to retrieve her belongings. Including her wand. And Draco's wand.
And maybe his body.
There were things in that knapsack she'd forgotten about: the rope she used to tie herself to tree branches; the dagger she once carried everywhere, until she didn't; the poster she'd grabbed from the wall it was nailed on, the one with her face on it; a couple of books she couldn't part with, even when times were hard. And a necklace. It was a tacky thing, a forgery made of cheap metal with a heart pendant dangling from it. Ron had given it to her, and she'd never worn it, too hardened to envision allowing herself to be sappy in public. She'd stuffed it in the knapsack and forgotten about it.
With trembling hands, she unclasped it and placed it around her neck. The pendant swung above her thoracic cage, almost like a threat.
She breathed in, slowly, then walked out of what had been her room for almost a year and walked over to Draco's room. He'd need to be buried—maybe beneath his mother's roses. He would have enjoyed that.
For a moment, Hermione thought of Theo's promise. Of how he'd said he'd resurrect Draco after enacting the Pact.
He didn't know, she realised, that souls returned to the soil. He didn't know that of all the things the Pact promised to do, reversing Death was not one of them. Saving a dying person was one thing; returning a soul to Its body was another altogether.
Hermione stood by the door for a long time, her hand glued to the handle. She tried to will herself to open the door a thousand times, a million times. She feared that, in the end, she would never be able to—but the body spoke what the mind could not and she reached for the door, then for the closet.
In war, death is never as tragic as it is in stories; there are too many bodies and not enough time to cry over each. All those Hermione had loved, she'd lost sight unseen—none got burials, none got eulogies, none got prayers. This was her last chance to give someone she loved the proper rites and scatter her tears into the wind.
This would be the last time she would cry over someone's death.
She opened the closet door, bracing herself—
But there was nothing there, except for the linens and the mundane things that filled such spaces.
"He's dead, Hermione," she told herself. "Don't be an idiot. Don't have hope." She backed out of the room and retraced her steps, terrified of being confronted with one last mockery from the curse, with the disappearance of Draco's body the moment Theo died. It had all been told to her, after all: souls moving from one vase to the other, bodies merging in a final effort to restore balance to the order of things.
Hermione walked around the manor for a long time; she peered at the things of luxury and gold the Malfoys had owned—all things she'd never taken the time to lay her eyes on before, too preoccupied with the secrets that haunted the walls. Narcissa had had beautiful taste: even beneath the carnage and the blood, Hermione discerned the carefully crafted rooms, the well-placed furniture, the cohesiveness of the fabrics and the shapes. There had been life here—life she liked to think had once been happy, and joyful, and all matter of things this place would likely never be again.
It was only when Hermione stepped out onto the porch that she found him—he'd disobeyed.
He'd come looking for her.
Perhaps she'd been too fast, or he'd been too slow, but in either case: she had not seen him. She had not heard him. His last choice before death had been to try and help her, and she'd never have known if not for his corpse lying right there, on the stone steps leading to the French doors.
She kneeled beside him and passed a hand through his hair, gentle. Hoping she would not disturb him. "You left for me," she whispered in the air. "And I could not save you." She sighed. "I had a plan, you know. I was going to finish the potion and save you, even if it went against everything—against nature, against God's will. I didn't care." He was so cold beneath her touch. "If Theo hadn't…" She pursed her lips and let her hand drop to the side before lying down on the steps, right next to him. "I have to wonder if you knew, or even if you doubted where his true alliance lay, all this time. He betrayed you when he denounced the Order; he betrayed you when he tried to have me killed at least once; he betrayed you when he decided the best course of action was to let you die and then resurrect you. He never stopped betraying you, and he never stopped hating me, but we both believed… We both wanted to believe he could be redeemed, and he fooled us both." She turned to her side and stared into his vacant, blue eyes. There was comfort in the notion that all trace of Theo had left him, but it wasn't enough to prevent her from crying.
"I just wish I had seen it earlier. I might have had a better plan. I might not have told you to stay in that closet. I should have looked—" Her words died in her throat: Orpheus' string had reappeared around both their wrists.
She'd never looked back—she'd never fulfilled the prophecy. The Vow hadn't been broken.
She could—
No. She could not.
It was something of a bittersweet conclusion; the string could have brought him back if she'd thought about using it to break the blood oath, but Hermione had never even considered the possibility, too concerned by everything else to stop and remember. The Devil's Pact was not just named that way because of what it could do—chasing after it consumed the very being of the chaser. She'd only thought about that since she heard of its existence—every other possibility had become secondary the moment she'd decided to create it.
And yet, despite knowing, despite being wiser than that, she tried: she grabbed Draco's cold hand and held it in hers as she breathed through long forgotten incantations and spells to reveal its magic. Bright red sparks ignited on both pieces of strings, and hope settled in her heart for a moment—
But Draco did not return.
"Hermione."
She stood on her feet and whipped her head around.
"I'm here."
A blue wisp floated before her; it was vaguely shaped like Draco.
It was the colour of his eyes.
"Draco…"
"Don't try to bring me back." The wind blew between them; Hermione's tears dried on her cheeks. "This life is over for me."
"I-t's all m-my f—"
The wisp came closer, so close its warmth breathed on her skin. "It's not your fault. How could it be? I lost my way the day Theo corrupted my being. I was never going to be the man I could have been, even if you'd saved me. I would have been a shell, condemned to immortality." Blue light in the shape of a hand held hers. "I had to die, even if I resisted the notion. I see it now—it's all so clear." He paused for a moment, and Hermione did not dare fill the silence between them. "You gave me something true and real, Hermione. You made me whole again, in all the ways that make us human. Hope, and love, and faith. I never thought I'd be able to know these things once my mother died—Theo made sure I relied on him completely, he took what little of me was good and crushed it. You brought it back, and I died being protected by you. That's enough for me. That's more than I could have ever wanted."
She choked on her sobs; the waterfall was not to be stopped, now. Her body was broken by the sadness, splintered by sorrow. "I'm alone now," she said after a moment. "There's nothing left for me here."
Draco's blue-lit hand caressed her arm and settled beneath her chin. "Don't be stupid," he laughed quietly. "I will always be here. And there will be others, too. But for that to happen, Hermione, you cannot enact that Pact—do you understand? You need to make your way back to the Mudblood resistance and follow in their footsteps. Finish the work you began."
She nodded, though she was not sure this was something she could promise. And then: "You will always—"
"Two souls bonded by Orpheus' string cannot be separated, even in death. Remember? You're the one who told me."
And, with that, the light moved through the air and flew through Hermione's hair: it settled in her bones, in her flesh, in her mind. In her heart.
She buried her body the Muggle way. Dug the hole herself amidst Narcissa's roses. Recited Catholic prayers and Latin chants. Tossed and turned the soil until it was fresh and lay flat on his grave. Carved the tombstone herself until her hands bled.
She said goodbye.
On her way out, she picked up Narcissa's portrait from the hall it had hung in for years.
"One of your eyes is blue, my dear," she said upon seeing her.
Hermione lifted her head to a nearby mirror—Narcissa was right.
"I gather…"
She did not say anything. "I made you a promise, Narcissa. I intend on keeping it." She swirled Draco's wand through the air and turned the portrait into a pendant, which she slid down the chain of the necklace Ron had given her. "You'll see everything of the world. Everything I can see myself, that is."
"Thank you, dear," and Hermione knew Narcissa was thanking Draco when she said it.
By evening fall, she was ready—Draco's wand finally felt like hers in her hand, so she'd broken and tossed away the one that had been hers since childhood.
There was now a choice for her to make—one that would determine her path from now until the end of days.
A Pact or an alliance.
End of Act IV
FIN
