Chapter 10) The First Trial
Selected Listening: Why- Secondhand Serenade
As the group walked back up the lane from the Hog's Head, a little spring in their step and the joy they might actually make a difference on the horizon, a hard shoulder bashed against Anastasia's. The familiar scent of mint overcame her, and she was suddenly looking at the back of a blonde head jaunting off with two cronies.
She found a note in her hand.
She stuffed it in her pocket before her friends could see, and when she split off and reached the hidden staircase to her bedroom in the castle, opened the note frantically. It was marked with the Hogsmeade post office address in an elegant hand, but not any names.
A,
It's ready. The treatment will happen on All Hallows Eve. You will go to S's office to floo in at 6pm after making an appearance in the Great Hall for the feast.
School owls are being monitored. Do not reply.
N
Two weeks. Then she would be free.
The next week, a new educational decry was hung in the entrance hall beside the first, indicating that all school clubs would be up for review.
Including quidditch.
Umbridge left the Gryffindor team hanging for days. The Gryffindor quidditch team was left to sit in the common room with their studying while the Slytherin team could practice every evening, or at least the fifth years were.
On the other side of the room, the twins continued advertising by testing their concoctions on themselves, since Hermione had threatened to tell Molly if they tested on any more first years. An hour after dinner, the twins had collected a small fortune with their demonstrations of a vomiting sweet. Lee Jordan kept taking customers while George walked over to Anastasia, holding an orange-purple candy high.
Fred rolled his eyes at his brother.
"Come on Anastasia," George suggested as he hovered over her shoulder from behind. "You could help us ruin Slytherin quidditch practice in one bite."
"Ew," Anastasia said.
"Ew? Think of what the prat has done! At the very least, it'll make him nauseous, and they'll never get a good practice out of him," George pushed. Harry and Ron, who had been cringing at the sound of their vomiting demonstrations moments ago, now looked intrigued by the proposition.
"I'm not making myself vomit just to make Draco sick," she protested in a whisper. She knew she was already dooming him to wasted Sunday afternoons with her legilimency headaches.
"A fever fudge, then?" George shoved the other option in her face. "Take one for the team. I won't even charge you."
She had to admit, it was tempting, especially after Draco taunted Neville about St. Mungo's mental ward before potions that day.
"Fine," she said and grabbed it from him before heading up to bed.
Feeling the heat rise to her face and neck, Anastasia picked up the Snow Queen once more. She read more of the little girl, stuck in the garden, not remembering her friend at all, but as the girl continued not remembering, she realized something was missing, and the flowers began to tell her sad stories she did not want to hear.
In occlumency club, the theme was secrets.
Pansy smiled innocently.
"Go ahead, Dumblebrat."
Anastasia cast the legilimency spell. Again, Pansy did nothing. The dark green marble of the Slytherin dormitories fell around her.
"What's wrong?" Pansy asked Draco as he emerged from the 5th year boys' room, his brow crinkled with pain.
"Nothing, bad headache."
"You didn't used to get headaches," she fretted, reaching up to touch his forehead. "Pershore says nothing gets past you in occlumency."
He swatted her hand away.
"Yeah, well, I still get them sometimes."
"Poor thing," she fawned. "Maybe we should go somewhere, so I can make you feel better."
Anastasia expected him to brush her off again, but his eyes gleamed at her.
"Alright, Parkinson."
In a darkened alcove, Anastasia saw them. Panicked touching, short breath.
Anastasia backed off the spell, dejected.
"That's vile," Anastasia spat.
"Not sure what you're talking about," she said calmly before turning the spell on her.
Pansy's spell blasted into Anastasia's head, going straight for her more private memories. While she couldn't force the girl out, she was able to drag her somewhere else.
"Oooh, writing a letter to Pansy," she sang, falling onto the throw pillow beside Draco in the vacation house.
She looked up at him as she had in August and adored the way his blonde hair fell into his frustrated stare.
"Shut it. It's not funny."
"What's it about, Oh Pansy your eyes are as beautiful as a—"
He snapped.
"I'm trying to—"
Anastasia broke away from the memory as fast as she could. An infuriated Pansy stood in front of her.
"Where were you?" Parkinson demanded. "Don't lie, Dumblebrat. That was recent."
Anastasia refused to say anything. She couldn't reveal where they were or why they had gone. She couldn't come up with an excuse in the moment.
The Greengrass twins, observing quietly, smirked and giggled to each other. They hadn't found anything incriminating in Anastasia's memories, at least not yet. Simply fragments of her life. Vacationing with Hermione in Sydney. Eating meals in the headmaster's suite. Sitting with Draco in the library.
"Well—" Parkinson started.
"If you don't want to find things you don't like, maybe you shouldn't go digging for them." Anastasia walked out.
On the night of Halloween, Anastasia complained of a stomachache and slipped away from her friends before the feast started. She wandered up the stairs, strung her old patchwork rucksack over her shoulders, and grabbed her invisibility cloak from her dorm, not wanting to be seen in the halls before disappearing for a day.
She wasn't telling Albus. She decided that much.
Anastasia snuck down to the corridors of the dungeons and nearly turned the corner when she heard two voices arguing. She glued herself to the wall.
"You never want to be with me anymore," Pansy shot. "I'm not sure why I even have a boyfriend."
"What?" Draco asked. "Some of us don't want to shag all the time. We have lives," he complained. "Leave me alone."
Pansy stormed off in a huff. Draco walked the last few paces to the office door and froze.
"I know you're there, Dumblebrat." he said. Anastasia removed the cloak.
"Rough time?" she asked.
"Don't know why you would care," he said. "And what was that fever about last Tuesday? Are you trying to sabotage our team?"
"Maybe," Anastasia admitted with a sly smile. "How do you know I wasn't just sick?"
"I'm not stupid, Dumblebrat," he glared icily. "The Weasels sell to Slytherins too. Besides, when you're really sick, your eyes get hot and your knees get all weak."
Anastasia blushed. It had been a long time since she'd had a normal fever, and when she did, Madam Pomfrey could fix them so quickly, it almost didn't matter.
"Is what you said to Pansy true? About…the…um…"
"Are you jealous?" he smiled smugly.
Anastasia steeled her heart. She had never thought that it would bother her, Draco getting physical with another girl, and if they succeeded in breaking the lifeline, it would never have to bother her again.
"Not at all," she said stiffly.
Draco scowled.
Snape had left the door unlocked during the feast. They entered the small, dark office, and grabbed their respective handfuls of floo powder.
"Mum said we're flooing to a nearby tavern and then walking over. We can floo out of the hospital, but we can't floo in."
She nodded, keeping her mouth shut to keep him from hearing the break in her tone. They entered a small, barren pub, similar to the Leaky Cauldron and exited quickly as to not draw attention. The longer they stayed in the presence of other magics, the faster someone would recognize them.
Anastasia trailed behind Draco as he turned one corner after the other. She didn't have a right to be upset, she told herself. She was the one who broke things off. He could do as he pleased.
Again, she felt the presence of someone behind them as they whipped through the alleys. She quickened her pace to walk in Draco's blind spot. The damp October mist hung around them. Their school cloaks didn't distinguish them from the rest. Muggle children wandered through the streets in their own capes, carrying plastic pumpkins and holding them up as neighbors opened doors to shower them in candy.
"It's this one," Anastasia said, facing another corner.
"No, it's not," he argued, and kept walking.
Anastasia put her foot down.
"I swear it is." She had to steady her voice on the last word. "It's here. Would you please trust me?" she begged.
He turned around, frowning at her through the dim light.
"Fine, but you'll see in a minute that you're wrong."
She folded her arms over her chest and stalked forward, gesturing around the final corner to the dead end.
"Oh," he said.
They approached the flat, gray brick wall. As she drew her wand and stepped forward to tap on the right combination of bricks, his hand flew out and grabbed her sleeve back.
"Anastasia, we don't have to do this," Draco said. "We can go back. It doesn't matter how long it took to set up. It's our choice. We can go home and pretend it never happened."
She took a step back.
"Why wouldn't we?" she snapped, wiping her eyes on her shoulder sleeve.
Draco narrowed his eyes and reset his jaw.
"I don't know."
Anastasia wanted nothing more than for the procedure to be over with. She couldn't stand being even vaguely connected to Draco Malfoy for a moment longer. Vivian greeted them at the top of the stairs.
"Is Narcissa here?" Anastasia asked. The stern nurse pursed her lips.
"Narcissa's a bit busy right now. Her patient list is long, and now she's having to take even more precautions to hide from the Ministry."
"Oh," Anastasia said disappointedly. She trusted Narcissa with healing alchemy, but she didn't know the woman who was supposed to be doing the most important procedure of her life, and it did make her nervous.
The nurse handed her a dressing gown and she changed quickly in the loo, avoiding eye contact with Malfoy as they walked to their room.
"Spot your knickers, Dumblebrat," he jabbed. She shot a lethal glare at him and held the opening in the gown with one hand behind her, but he smirked back.
Redder than before, Anastasia entered the room without acknowledging him. There were two beds across from each other. The full, silver moon barely cast any light in the two windows beside the beds. The nurse gestured to the one on the left for her, and the one on the right for Draco.
Anastasia sat on the edge of the bed and waited for instructions. The magic circle on the floor had been finished, but something about the arrangement of the runes and the harsh chalk markings filled her with a sense of dread. The nurse came around to each of them and cast a spell that attached hospital bracelets on their wrists to the monitors next to the beds. Instantly, their heart rates appeared, beeping simultaneously.
Anastasia looked up. Draco's eyes flashed darkly at her.
Vivian folded her hands calmly over her apron.
"When I begin to cast the spell to separate you, it is important you do not fight the spell until it is complete. Do you understand?"
Anastasia took another look at the circle and panicked.
"But what if it goes poorly?" she asked. Draco's eyes shifted towards her, but Anastasia didn't return his glance, instead staring the nurse down.
"If it goes poorly, we'll stop," she said with a note of finality that meant there would be no more questions. "You can lie down now."
The two hesitantly leaned back onto the cots. The witch raised her wand and left hand simultaneously.
"Secare lineam." The chalk markings on the floor luminesced, shimmering a pale gold light. Vivian began to chant other words in an ancient tongue, following the runic script.
Anastasia didn't feel anything at first, but slowly she could sense a golden warmth in her chest growing stronger and stronger. Her heartbeat quickened, and at the same time, Draco's monitor slowed on the other side of the room.
Draco's hand shot out. He grabbed for the air in front of him, gasping for breath, his heart monitor stuttered as it slowed.
"It's hurting him." Anastasia said as calmly as she could.
But the witch kept her wand and hand raised. Anastasia began to panic, her own breath stilted as her power grew and his faded.
"Please—please something's not right."
The woman continued chanting the runes.
Horrible, strained sounds echoed from Draco's chest. The monitors' beeping slowed to a single tone.
"STOP! Stop it now!" Anastasia yelled. The golden energy she felt left her in a large wave. Draco took a deep breath in and clutched his chest, heaving air in and out.
He fell slack against the cot, eyes closed.
"Stupid girl! You ruined it." The nurse scolded. Anastasia didn't notice. There were tears in her eyes, and she ran to Draco's cot. She took his hand and felt the inside of his wrist. The beeping began again steadily. He was alive.
"Oh Merlin." She whimpered and felt the world crash around her as she fell to her knees, still crying over his hand.
Stupid Malfoy. Stupid curse. She hated him, yet she hated the lifeline more. No matter how egotistic he became, no matter which girl he slept with, she couldn't bear the thought of living without him.
"Despite your interruption, we've learned one thing," Vivian said coldly.
"What could we have possibly learned from that?" she spat back at the nurse through her tears.
"The lifeline will backup the energy it needs to exist, and it will fight all attempts to break it."
The nurse swept away into the corridor.
Anastasia stayed there, hoping he would wake, but eventually found herself exhausted and urged herself away from Draco's unconscious body. She clamored into bed and stared at the wall and let herself sob until she lost consciousness.
Draco awoke in the middle of the night and looked around him. The memories came back in a rush, making him instantly nauseous. He heard Anastasia's horrified scream, the beep of his own heart monitor go dead, but it had returned to steadily keeping time alongside hers.
He felt the golden warmth of their energy flood back to him.
Draco gazed across the room at Anastasia's sleeping form and urged himself to his feet. He walked across slowly and memorized every angle of her face as he had once before. He wished he could lie beside her.
"You saved my life," he said quietly, brushing a lock of hair away from her cheek. Eventually he tore his gaze away and looked toward his own cot. He wasn't tired anymore. In fact, he felt full of energy. Draco found one of Anastasia's muggle books on the nightstand. "The Snow Queen."
Having nothing else to do, and no one to witness him reading a muggle book, Draco pulled up the single chair in the room next to her side and began to read in a soft tone. He read until dawn cracked on the horizon and fell across Anastasia's cheek. She stirred.
Anastasia awoke to the sound of creaking metal. She sat up, looked around, and saw Draco sound asleep, breathing even. Her book lay on the nightstand beside her where she left it.