Harry Potter - Series Fan Fiction ❯ War of the Wizarding World ❯ Chapter 7

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Scooping up the invisibility cloak from where it lay, a silver pool of fabric just inside his bedroom door, Draco turned quickly to leave. He had lingered in his room just long enough to rinse Harry’s blood from his chest in the adjoining bathroom and Accio himself a soft black shirt from his wardrobe- but now he wanted nothing more than to get the hell away from this room, where so much of his childhood had been spent but which now made his stomach turn over with queasy revulsion. Any fond memories he may have associated with this place in the past, such as poring over the well-loved books which even now sat stacked on his desk or diving from his balcony into the crystal waters of the pool below, had been erased by the fact that his cherished Hermione had been tortured nearly to death- no, screw nearly; she HAD been tortured to death- right here.

He never wanted to see this room again as long as he lived.

And yet-

Before he could make the hasty retreat he had planned, something caught at the corner of his eye- something he had missed on his way hastily to and from the bathroom- something unfamiliar in a room full of familiar things. He turned slowly back toward it and, even from across the sizeable room, recognized it immediately for what it was.

A penseive.

The bed was flanked by two massive green marble fireplaces; the penseive sat upon the mantelpiece of the further one.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, and completely against his better judgment, he crossed over to it and stood, staring at its lazily swirling contents with a dull, horrified fascination. He had never kept a penseive, and so he concluded, correctly, that this one had been used by his father during the days in which he had held Hermione captive in this room.

Which meant, of course, that he had to look.

Never mind that just the sight of the penseive filled him with sick dread and a strong desire to shatter it on the floor and run; run and not look back. If this thing could show him what had happened to Hermione over the past three days to reduce her to the state in which he had found her, then he HAD to look.

He swallowed hard- his throat was suddenly painfully dry- then reached up with hands that he noticed, with some distant surprise, were shaking slightly, and brought the penseive down from the mantle. He carried it across the room and placed it carefully on his desk. Planting his hands firmly on either side of the shallow bowl full of his father’s swirling, milky white memories, he leaned close over it.

He closed his eyes for a moment, not ready to fall into the penseive just yet. He took a deep, steadying breath first, bracing himself.

He knew perfectly well that what he was about to see would be bad.

But he did not- COULD not- begin to imagine just how bad.

He opened his eyes.

With an anguished cry, Draco stumbled backward, away from the penseive, throwing his arms up to shield his face, as if attempting to physically ward off the horrendous images that had just bombarded him.

“Aw Jesus,” he gasped, as his legs began to give way; he grabbed for the edge of the desk, but missed, and fell hard to his knees, which screamed in protest at the shabby treatment they had been getting just lately. “Jesus Christ, Hermione,” he muttered, dropping his head into his hands; “oh, bookworm. Oh no. If I had known...I’d have killed him slower for you.”

And quite suddenly he found himself doubled over, being violently sick onto the floor.

Several long moments later, using the edge of the desk and the back of a chair for support, he dragged himself to his feet once more and stared in utmost horror at the once again innocent-seeming milky white contents of the bowl. Dear sweet God.

He had just watched himself...HIMSELF...brutally, savagely, mercilessly, repeatedly, raping the woman he loved. There had been other atrocities too, yes, but- but nothing touched that. He just barely managed to fight down a new wave of nausea.

“I gotta get a hold of myself,” he croaked.

He turned away from the penseive, leaning back against the desk, breathing hard, hands balled into fists, staring sightlessly across the room as he fought to regain control of his emotions. After a moment, he inhaled and exhaled deeply, and ran both hands through his silvery hair. He closed his eyes and when he opened them, tears were standing in them, but otherwise it seemed that he had recovered his usual cool demeanor.

His eyes swept the spacious bedroom from one side to the other. “I renounce my father,” he said, his voice low and dangerously flat. “I renounce my mother. I renounce this house and everything in it.” Behind him, the penseive suddenly and violently exploded. Shards of the bowl flew like shrapnel, not a few of them slicing stingingly through Draco’s skin. He turned slowly back to face the desk, watching the opaque substance that was his father’s memories slowly disperse with nothing left to contain it. He trailed one finger through it before it vanished completely.

“Well,” he said, in a quiet, almost strangled voice, “at least now I understand why she flinched.”

At that point, the massive wrought iron chandelier that provided most of the room’s light rent itself from the beamed ceiling with a metallic scream and crashed to the floor. Draco, turning his back once and for all on the desk and the shattered remnants of the penseive, surveyed it with apparent mild interest. “That’s right,” he said calmly, as though answering an unspoken question, “I renounce this house and every last God forsaken thing in it.”

And stepping around the wreckage of the chandelier, he crossed the room to the door with purposeful stride, stopping only for an instant to pick up the invisibility cloak, which he had flung across the foot of the bed on his way to view the penseive.

As he left his childhood bedroom for the final time, the two enormous fireplaces cracked from top to bottom, with nearly human groans of agony. Draco did not look back.

00000

He walked slowly down the long hallway of his wing of the manor. His face was expressionless, but his jaw was set in a tight line and his hands, at his sides, were clenching and unclenching spasmodically. Each light fixture he passed under shattered violently; each heavy wooden door he walked past blew inward off its hinges, splintering under the force of his rage.

He barely seemed to notice the havoc that was being wreaked by the near- palpable waves of rage and hatred that were radiating out from the very core of his being. Like Harry, and most wizard and witch children, he had discovered, when still very young, that odd things seemed to happen around him when he was in distress (though of course, unlike Harry, he had always known the reason behind such phenomena). However, that this raw destructive energy should reemerge when he was nearly grown was very unusual. Controlling one’s magical essence was, after all, foremost among the many important skills that students at Hogwarts learned.

But what Draco had seen in the penseive had pushed him well beyond the last artificial barrier he had erected, under the careful instruction of his teachers, to keep his magic safely contained. That barrier had crumbled; his power was unleashed, and it was out of control.

Which suited Draco just fine.

It was, after all, accomplishing exactly what he wanted to accomplish. He wanted this house razed to the ground. He would have torn it down with his own two hands if necessary, brick by brick and stone by stone, but if his powers should opt to do the work for him, then so much the better.

He paused for a moment at the threshold of his library, which was now devoid of a door, and gazed into the room that had once been his favorite retreat. As his eyes, dark gunmetal gray with wrath, swept the room, every one of the thousands of books contained within it spontaneously combusted.

“This isn’t enough,” he said aloud, in the same eerily calm voice he had used back in his bedroom, as flames reflected in his eyes; eyes that, for all his outward semblance of calm, were those of a caged beast. “I’m going to need to kill something.” He spoke with flat assurance. “I’m going to need to kill something or else I will go bloody...fucking...insane.”

Then, leaving the burning library behind him, he moved on, in an almost trancelike state, down the hall.

00000

As Draco reached the imposing, ornately crafted front doors of the manor, they blew outward off their hinges, tumbling over and over in the air, and hit the ground at the foot of the manor’s front steps. It was then, as he stepped out onto the landing of his ancestral home under the darkening sky, that Draco was confronted by the full consequences of his decision not to portkey back to Hogwarts with Ron’s body.

For ranged out in a rough semicircle around the base of the steps stood some fifteen or so black-robed figures; his father’s most loyal followers. It appeared that they had been converging on the manor but had stopped short when the doors had exploded outward, dropping into defensive stances and whipping out their wands.

Draco now surveyed them with the same outward dead calm he had displayed since leaving his bedroom. Inwardly, his mind was racing as he sought to understand what had brought them here. Then he realized; it was dusk on the third day since Hermione had been taken. They had come for the ceremony in which his father had planned to kill her- and Draco himself- cementing his position as their undisputed leader by proving that his hatred for his errant son was stronger than any blood ties between them.

His attention was suddenly caught by one figure in particular; a slender figure he could tell was a woman merely by the shape of her under her robe. She raised pale hands and thrust her hood back away from her face, revealing a cascade of fair, silvery hair exactly like his.

Mother. She had known what his father had done to Hermione; known and done nothing to stop it; known and approved. Like as not, he thought, the polyjuice potion had been her idea; she always had been devious that way. And he had seen in the penseive, too, that she had visited Hermione herself on more than one occasion, always bringing with her more torture, more anguish, for the already sick, already pain-wracked girl.

Now she was surveying him coldly through ice-blue eyes so like his own. They stared at one another for a long, spiraling moment, until the figure next to Narcissa also lowered its hood, shaking out a thick mane of raven hair shot through with silver. Draco’s gaze went now to the woman standing beside his mother, one arm protectively, bracingly about her waist.

Bellatrix. So that was where his mother had been all afternoon; with his mad bitch aunt. Probably prettying themselves up for tonight’s festivities. Right, a day at the spa, because one must look one’s best when witnessing the ritual murder of one’s only child, after all. He remembered vaguely that he had wondered, earlier- a lifetime ago, it seemed- before Hermione had died in his arms, before he had found out just what had happened to her here in this evil place, where his mother had been.

Well, no matter. She was here now, and mother or no mother, he would show her no mercy.

Narcissa’s voice rang out through the dusk, trembling with wrath. “Draco! Why were there anti-apparition wards on the house? Where is your father? Traitorous, ungrateful child, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!?”

Draco didn’t answer. His eyes, which so often shone silver in the fading light of day’s end, were flat and dark with rage. He reached up slowly and pushed his hair back, out of his face; he would need to see very clearly if there were to be any slight hope at all of surviving the coming confrontation.

Narcissa’s gaze left him then, and she looked around at the others grouped about the base of the steps. When she spoke again, her voice was commanding, through it shook even more than when she had addressed him; still with anger, but also, now, with grief.

“This upstart boy, who is no son of mine, has killed my husband!” she cried to those around her, her voice that of an aggrieved queen. “I can see it written all over his accursed face! Now all of you, throw back your hoods as I have; let him see the face of vengeance before we send him to the deepest pit of hell!”

In a single, seemingly choreographed movement, every hood was pushed back. Draco surveyed them all, meeting the eyes of each one. There were the fathers of his childhood friends, Crabbe and Goyle. There, the father and older brother of the girl who had been intended for him practically since birth, Pansy Parkinson. Over there Nott and Avery, men with whom he had sat down to dinner numerous times growing up, both at his own table and theirs; and over there- over there was Blaise Zabini’s father and beside him, Blaise himself.

He was the only one present of Draco’s own age, and this confirmed in Draco’s mind the fact that Blaise had indeed been working for Lucius; had been his contact within Hogwarts. No doubt the seventh-year Slytherin had been invited tonight to receive special honors for the part- a very large part, Draco was sure- that he had played in bringing about Hermione’s capture.

Each of these, and all the others, met Draco’s gaze with glares of unmitigated hatred.

And Draco did something that none of them would ever have expected, outnumbered as he was more than a dozen to one.

He smiled.

His desire to kill had been answered, after all- and how. Even though the outcome didn’t look so good for him, damned if he wasn’t going to take these bastards with him. A lot of them. ALL of them, if possible.

And he thought that, given the current state of his mind and his powers, that just might BE possible.

Behind and above him, every window in the house blasted outward, raining glass shards down on those gathered below. All except Draco. His magic, even while causing the destruction of the house, was also protecting him from the effects of it.

Narcissa screamed her outrage into the gathering night.

And then all hell broke loose.

00000

Hours had passed.

Draco groaned; a low sound of pain beyond words; almost beyond coherent thought. He wrenched his eyes reluctantly open.

He was lying face down in lush grass; his head was turned to the side and, blinking hard, he recognized the sweeping front lawn of the Malfoy estate. Several yards away, he could make out the iron gate he needed to get through before he could apparate back to Hogwarts. About half a dozen bodies littered the grass between him and it.

Gritting his teeth with effort, he pushed himself slowly over onto his back where he lay, spread eagled, gasping up at the stars. Stars which were, by the way, nowhere near as bright as they should have been; they were dulled and obscured by an angry red glow coming from Draco’s left.

He turned his head in that direction and was greeted by the sight of the manor burning fiercely in the night. The entire enormous building was ablaze; dark, oily smoke rising into the sky and blotting out the stars altogether in that direction. It looked as though large chunks of the once- majestic house had already collapsed in on themselves, and as he watched, the entire roof caved in with a terrific crash, sending sparks flying hundreds of feet into the air.

The faintest ghost of a smile touched Draco’s lips.

He was enjoying watching the house burn.

He could have watched it all night.

And truthfully, considering the amount of effort and pain involved in merely rolling himself over, the thought of actually getting to his feet held little very appeal right now.

Except-

Hermione.

He remembered another time, not so long ago, that he had lain on his back, suffering, just like this- only Hermione had been there then, cradling him, comforting him. She wasn’t here now, though; she was miles away, and in just as much pain as he was himself. And he had promised that he would return to her, just as soon as he could.

It was a promise he meant to keep, now that he had completed his business at the manor. Which meant-

That he had to get up.

He attempted to push himself into a sitting position, and was spectacularly unsuccessful. Groaning, he then rolled back over onto his stomach- this gave him much better leverage- and pushed himself slowly up onto his knees. He stayed like this, on his hands and knees, head hanging so low that his fair hair brushed the grass, for a long moment, as his head was swimming and he was afraid that if he moved again too soon, he might well black out.

“Hermione,” he croaked through clenched teeth, in an effort to keep his focus.

Have to get back to her...have to....

When the dizzy spell passed, he brought one leg forward, knee up against his chest, foot flat on the ground. Then, wishing mightily that he had something to grab onto for support (but if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride, as his mother used to say with a contemptuous sneer) he pushed himself to his feet with one great heave.

He reeled backwards and almost fell, but managed- just barely- to keep his balance. He would not- COULD not- allow himself to fall to the grass again, because he had a very strong suspicion that he would not be able to get up a second time.

Once he had steadied himself he stood for a moment, swaying slightly, eyes tightly shut and heels of both hands pressed to his temples.

Get a grip, Malfoy, he thought grimly; you’ve had worse, so just get a bloody grip on yourself.

But the thing was, he hadn’t had worse; if he were to be completely honest with himself, he would have to admit that the screaming agony he was in right now was about as bad as anything he’d endured in the past. He wouldn’t go so far as to say that this felt WORSE than when he had been stabbed and Crucio’d, all within a minute’s time- but it was as bad. Yes, this was every bit as bad.

For he’d been hit by at least half a dozen curses during the fight- probably closer to a dozen. And these were not the spells employed by his Hogwarts compatriots when they took it into their heads to have a silly little duel now and then; the curses he had been hit with had not tickled him, or given him jelly legs, or made him sprout feathers, or tentacles. No, these had been had deadly serious curses, designed to kill their victims slowly, and with a great deal of pain. Curses that opened bloody gashes where they hit, or caused internal injury; broke bones, or time- released poison into one’s system.

Narcissa had deemed him undeserving of a quick, “merciful” death by Avada Kedavra, and had shrieked at Lucius’ followers- her followers, now- to “be creative” in which spells they hurled at her son. Ironically, it was this very viciousness on his mother’s part, he realized, that had actually saved his life (assuming he made it back to Hogwarts without dropping dead first, anyway); for he certainly could not have been hit by a dozen Avada Kedavra’s- or even one, for that matter- and be standing here now.

You outsmarted yourself, mother, he thought, and bared his teeth in what he had intended as a triumphant grin...but ended up looking more like a snarl. Not that there was anyone else left alive to pass judgment. If anyone HAD been present to witness him at that moment, they probably would have turned tail and run, gibbering with fright, because, he realized, when he opened his eyes and looked down, searching the ground for his wand, his snarling face was all of him that was visible at the moment. The rest of him was concealed beneath Potter’s invisibility cloak, as his head had been until a minute ago, when the hood had fallen away as he reeled backwards.

He had forgotten that he was wearing it, but now he remembered putting it on. He had done so almost at once, after the first barrage of curses had knocked him sideways over the edge of the landing, causing him to fall some eight feet to the ground and be temporarily hidden from all but a couple of his foes. He had realized that he still had the cloak balled up under his arm, had shaken it out, ducked swiftly beneath it, and vanished from view, eliciting cries of dismay from the two or three people who had witnessed this clever trick.

For just the briefest instant a small part of him had protested that fighting invisible was dishonorable; but he had ignored this assertion and it was gone with the next curse that hit him, fired by one of those who had seen him disappear and had made a quick, keen guess as to which direction he might have taken. Given the choice between remaining visible and trying to wage a “fair fight” when the odds were stacked nearly twenty-to-one to one against him, or taking refuge under the cloak and actually having some slim hope for survival, he would go with surviving, thanks. The others weren’t fighting fair; why in the bloody hell should he?

And the cloak HAD saved him; its protection, coupled with his mother’s overconfident refusal to allow him to be Avada Kedavra’d, had somehow seen him through. If he had remained visible, he would probably have been hit with fifty curses, not just eight or ten; he would be dead for sure.

The sight of his wand lying in the grass nearby brought him back to the present. He stumbled over to it, and not wanting to crouch down to retrieve it, for fear of falling, held his hand out over it and willed it to rise into his grasp. It did so. But it came slowly, falteringly, reluctantly; it did not leap from the ground to his hand as he had expected it to.

This was a clear indication of just how little strength, both physical and magical, he had left.

Suppressing another groan, he took a few, staggering steps toward the gate- then stopped. He had just realized, with equal parts dismay and resignation, that his work here wasn’t quite done yet.

“Mother,” he whispered, a raw, painful sound. He had to find her body; had to pay her one last courtesy, that he had denied Lucius, but somehow felt he could not deny the woman who had, after all, given him life- for all that she had attempted today to take that life away again.

Well- that, and he wanted to see that the bitch was really dead.

Changing course, he stumbled over to the body which lay nearest him. He recognized Crabbe, even though the man lay face-down; there had been no others among his parents’ circle with such an astounding girth. This was good, Draco thought dimly; this would do nicely.

Focusing on Crabbe’s large black cloak, he said “Accio,” in a barely audible voice, and the blanket-sized garment flew into his outstretched hand, ripping at the dead man’s throat, where it had been clasped. Then, dragging the cloak behind him on the ground, Draco made his stumbling, halting way from one corpse to the next, searching for his mother. He would find her and cover her; something in the thought of her lying here, exposed to the elements like the bloated Crabbe, repelled him, even after all he had been through in the past few hours.

Yet, he never found her.

He’d found Blaise soon enough, and stood over him for a good long time, staring hard into the glassy, sightless eyes of the boy he had once counted as a friend. “Rotten luck, Zabini,” he had muttered at last, before moving on. “You brought it on yourself, though. Bastard.”

And he had found his aunt Bellatrix, whom he had not covered; indeed, the only courtesy he had done her was to resist the impulse to spit in her dead, upturned face. He never had liked the woman, even back when he had counted himself among Voldemort’s faithful; he had always sensed something mad, feral, and innately rotten about her.

But of his mother, there was no sign.

When he had made a complete circuit of the lawn and arrived back at Crabbe’s body once more, he shook his head in mounting panic and started his search again.

The second time he encountered Crabbe without having found Narcissa, his panic was complete. He now cared less about covering her body than just seeing it and proving to himself that she was, in fact, dead. He might well have searched a third time, and perhaps even a fourth, except that he was well aware his flagging strength would not allow it. He’d be lucky even to reach the gate now.

Where did she go?!? his tired mind was screaming as he staggered toward the gate, which looked impossibly distant. Did she crawl into the house to die beside father, or did she escape somehow? Where in the bloody hell did she go?

The thought of his mother out there somewhere, injured but alive, licking her wounds, nursing her hatred, chilled him- not so much for himself, as for Hermione, who had already suffered enough for several lifetimes at the hands of both his vicious parents. But there was nothing to be done about it now...in his current condition, searching any further would be madness. It would guarantee him a lonely death here on the grounds of the home he had renounced.

He made it to the gate, dropping Crabbe’s cloak along the way; it slipped easily from between his increasingly nerveless fingers. When he realized this, something clicked in his pain-dulled mind and he thrust his wand into the waistband of his pants, so as not to lose it too.

Passing through the gate, he stopped, reached out a hand to steady himself against it, and gathered all his concentration and energy in preparation for apparating back to Hogwarts. He had to be extra careful, in his weakened and pain riddled state, not to let his focus lapse and end up splinching himself.

When he at last felt ready, he let go of the gate and took a deep breath. He felt as calm and focused as he thought was possible under the circumstances.

Now if only the world would stop spinning like this....

He apparated.

He arrived, miraculously in one piece, just outside the school grounds- and fell forward...right into the side of the stone archway that marked the boundary of Hogwarts land. He hardly knew whether to curse the ancient stone structure that he had impacted with such jarring force- or be grateful to it for halting him mid-fall, allowing him to use it as leverage and, with however much difficulty, regain his feet.

This accomplished, he stumbled through it and began his slow and painful progress toward the school, which, from this distance, was just a dim shadow, black against the star-filled sky, with only a handful of lights burning within. It was, after all, the dead of night.

He managed to make it about halfway before the inevitable happened and he collapsed to his hands and knees on the gravel path.

At this point the invisibility cloak, which he had been wearing all this time, became tangled and fell off to his right side, trailing on the ground, though it remained fastened about his throat. As a result, Draco was left completely exposed to sight, except for, oddly enough, a thin band at the base of his throat, which made it appear as though his head and neck were hovering about an inch from his body.

For his part, he was beyond noticing, and, being back on Hogwarts land, there was no longer any need for secrecy anyway. Even if there had been, there was no one around to see him there- yet.

He let his head drop right down to the ground, resting his forehead against the cool, scratchy gravel as complete and utter exhaustion threatened to overwhelm him. He was bleeding profusely from a long, deep gash in his side, not to mention several other, lesser wounds. Then there were the non- visible injuries he had sustained.

The world was still spinning. His head was spinning too. If felt as though his head and the world were spinning in opposite directions, the result of which was a faint urge to throw up. Fortunately, he was able to fight off the urge. He didn’t want to stay here, prostrated in the gravel, retching. He had to keep moving.

He had to get back to-

“Hermione,” he muttered aloud. And then, as he began to slip inexorably down toward delirium, “I have prom-promises to keep. And...miles to...go b’fore I sleep.”

It wasn’t miles to the school, of course; but it felt like it. It felt like it might as well have been a thousand fucking miles.

Nevertheless, he began to crawl.

00000

Snape was on his way back down to the edge of the grounds. After Draco had disappeared, he had tried several times in rapid succession to apparate to Malfoy Manor, where he was sure the boy had gone, but had been thwarted time and again. Draco, he’d realized, had scrambled the coordinates; it was something that those of Malfoy blood could do. He’d cursed a blue streak, given up, and hadn’t tried again. Instead he had walked the path between the castle and the stone arch at least a dozen times since finding Ron just outside the front doors of the school; back and forth, back and forth, hoping desperately to encounter Draco on his way back up to the castle- his mission, which Snape now realized had been to recover Ron’s body, long complete. Yet Draco still had not come, and he grew more frantic with each hour that passed.

He was now actively considering embarking for the manor by broomstick, though it would mean flying for the rest of the night and most of the next day as well.

Was that boy ever going to get a piece of his mind, he thought furiously.

Then he saw him.

And all anger fled.

He stopped for just the merest second, staring at Draco- his Draco, his almost-son- in utter horror. It was like the time Potter had come crashing through the window of the infirmary on a pair of lashed-together Firebolt broomsticks; Draco, a good deal more than half-dead, clasped in his arms. Now, as then, he was certain that his heart literally stopped beating for a moment.

He was running, then, before he was even aware of moving at all.

“Draco!” he shouted, “Draco!”

The clearly hurt and exhausted boy, who had been crawling up the path toward the school on his hands and knees, head hanging low, now raised his pale face toward Snape. The two of them locked gazes long enough for Snape to realize just how ill Draco looked; deep dark circles under haunted eyes in a face that was, even for him, far too pale. Then the silver-haired former Slytherin’s strength gave out altogether and he pitched forward, sprawling face-down in the path.

“DRACO!”

Putting on an extra burst of panic-induced speed, Snape reached him in an instant, hurling himself to his knees beside the prone form of the one person on earth he truly and deeply and paternally loved.

“Draco-” his voice was anguished as he pulled Draco over, onto his back, and then up into his lap. “Bugger. Oh no. Oh God-” his sharp eyes were quickly taking in the blood and signs of other, less obvious damage- “what have you done? Draco, what the hell have you done?”

Pale eyes blinked slowly open as Draco, a small, puzzled frown on his face, focused on Snape.

“Sev...(he paused and swallowed hard)...Sever...rus?”

Snape hid his amazement at being addressed thus; he had told Draco all the way back last summer, when the boy had stayed with him over the holidays, that he could feel free to call him by his first name, so long as there were no other students around- but this was the first time Draco had ever actually done so.

He felt a new and even stronger surge of protective love for the boy; he wanted to find whoever had done this and tear them limb from limb; rip their bloody heads off with his bare hands. He wanted to murmur soothing nonsense to Draco- something he had NEVER done before in his life to anyone- tell him he was safe now; that everything would be okay. Instead-

“Goddamn you for a fool, boy!” he exploded, his anger returning in a bright, crimson wave; as red as the blood that soaked Draco’s clothes, and now his own. “What the bloody hell were you thinking, running off alone like that?! I’d have come with you if you had just- DRACO!”

This frantic shout was the result of the exhausted boy’s eyes beginning to roll back in his head- fortunately, it had the desired effect of bringing him back around- at least, for the moment.

“Huh?” he said, eyes flying wide, expression guileless; it was, Snape thought, nearly the same expression Draco was able to turn on at will whenever he got caught goofing around in Potions. This thought tore at his heart.

“Draco, what happened?” he asked, in a gentler voice.

“Had to...get...Potter’s cloak back. And I ran...ran into...a few of my parents’ friends.” He coughed, then added, his inborn sarcasm shining through, “they really...rolled out the ol’ red carpet for me...Severus.”

“I can see that,” Snape replied, shaking his head. Idiot boy! Running off alone when all he would have had to do was take one bloody minute to explain the situation and he, Snape, would have gone with him- fought with him- died, if need be, to protect him from just this sort of harm. And that was no small matter; there were only two people on earth Snape would willingly die for- Dumbledore and Draco.

But enough. There was no changing what had happened; what was called for now was not recriminations, but action- he had to get Draco to the hospital wing.

“I’m just going to get a stretcher under you,” he said to Draco, whose eyes were drifting shut again, “and then I’ll get you to Madam Pomfrey faster than you can say I’m-a-bloody-idiot-who-should-have-asked-for-help!”

All right, so I’m still mad, he thought grimly, as he prepared to conjure a magical stretcher; I have a right to be, damn it! Of all the stupid, reckless, arrogant-

“No.”

Snape looked down. The pale eyes were open and alert again, boring into his own.

“No stretcher,” Draco whispered. “C’n bloody well walk...myself.”

This was, of course, absurd.

Bloody well walk, indeed.

Snape’s first impulse was to snort his disbelief, and then to ask why exactly, if Draco could walk so bloody well at present, had he been crawling a moment ago?

But he resisted this impulse, which would have been needlessly cruel. After all, the boy had his pride. It was one of Draco’s most defining characteristics, Snape knew- that pride. So, after a moment’s careful consideration, what he said was, “we’ll walk, then, Draco, but at least let me help you. Lean on me. We’ll get there faster that way.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Draco, whose thoughts were all bent on the hospital wing not because of the aid that awaited him there but rather because that was where Hermione was, nodded his reluctant acceptance of the offer of help, refusing to meet Snape’s eyes as he did so.

To accept even this much assistance chafed him, despite the condition he was in.

“All right,” Snape said. “On your feet, then.” Getting to his own feet, he hauled Draco up with him and slung the boy’s arm about his shoulder.

Draco was unable to suppress a low, agonized groan, as he pressed his free hand to the deep, ragged wound on his side.

“Draco! Are you-”

“I’m fine,” Draco cut him off, biting out the words from between clenched teeth, his face a grim mask of pain.

“For God’s sake, boy, there’s no shame in-”

“I’m FINE!”

Snape shook his head, scowling; there was no point in arguing further, though secretly he hoped that Draco would fall unconscious before he could do himself any more damage through his damned, stubborn pride. For a moment he actually considered Stupefying the pigheaded boy, but decided against it. Draco’s trust was not easily won, and once lost, it was lost forever. He was not willing to jeopardize the trust Draco had put in him.

So they began to walk.

00000

By the time they reached the infirmary, Draco was contributing very little to the joint walking effort. Snape was, in fact, half-carrying, half- dragging the now barely conscious boy along.

Nevertheless, when Snape attempted to ease Draco down on a bed near the door, removing the invisibility cloak as he did so, Draco resisted. Calling on his very last reserves of strength and determination, he pushed away from Snape, and the bed. As close as he now was to Hermione, he was not going to rest without first seeing her.

He stumbled down the long ward, leaning briefly, as he went, on the footboards of each empty bed he passed, then using them to push against, to propel himself on to the next one, and the next. He was almost to the end of the ward and starting to panic at not having found her, when his knees gave out and he slumped against the footboard he’d been holding onto, clasping it fiercely in a desperate attempt to prevent himself from sliding the rest of the way to the floor.

He would not go down! He would not!

When he felt Snape’s strong arms grasp him and pull him upright again, the potions master shouting all the while for Madam Pomfrey, he snarled and tried to wrench himself out of his mentor’s grasp- but to no avail. He no longer possessed the strength to throw Snape off- or to stand unaided, for that matter, even if he had been successful.

“Draco!” Snape, his patience at its very limit, gave him a quick, hard shake. “She’s not here! She and Potter were moved to a private room. I will take you there if you will just- stop- fighting me!”

At this, Draco slumped defeatedly against him. “Private room,” he muttered distractedly to himself, “why pri-private room? That’s bad...always...very, very bad....”

“I think that at this point, you’re worse off than either of them, and all your own doing!” Snape growled in frustration. “Come on, then, since you obviously won’t listen to reason until you see Miss Granger.”

Since Draco had already made it nearly to the end of the ward, they didn’t have far to go. Snape led/dragged him through the first door off the small hallway at the back of the ward that held the school’s four private hospital rooms. Draco could hear sounds of hysterical grief coming from further down the hall, and thought briefly that Ron’s body must be in the room at the end, and that his family had arrived to claim him.

But all thoughts of Ron vanished from his mind when he saw her lying in the narrow hospital bed, so still, so pale, so deeply, deeply wounded, just as she had been over a year ago when he had first grudgingly come to realize and accept that what he felt for her was more than respect for her intellect, more even than the close friendship they had formed over their secret study sessions in the library; it was love. A bright, hot, sharp, almost painful kind of love that he had never before even dreamt existed.

There she lay, the very reason he was here, the reason- the ONLY reason- he had not simply lain on the grass in front of the manor, watching it burn and waiting for death- the reason he had walked, staggered, stumbled, crawled his way back to Hogwarts. It had all been for her.

Hermione.

With a hoarse, inarticulate cry, he threw himself toward her; Snape let him go. He fell against the foot of the bed- then managed, somehow, to drag himself up the length of it- (registering, just barely, that Harry was in a bed opposite hers, looking like death)- until he was sitting beside her, leaning over to trace the outline of her face with a finger, to smooth back a stray curl of her unruly hair, which was fanned out over the pillow, dark and lustrous; clean, thanks to Madam Pomfrey, of the dried blood with which it had been matted the last time he had seen her.

So far gone was he in pain and fatigue that he didn’t even notice the tears that leaked from his eyes the moment his hand made contact with her too- warm skin.

“Hermione-” he croaked; “bookworm?”

Her eyes flew open all at once, wide and startled, and the fear was there, of course, as he had known it would be; that wretched fear his bastard of a father had planted in her and that he wondered if he would ever, even over the course of a lifetime, be able to erase.

But it only lasted for a second. The flash of fear was gone as she raised a hand to brush the tears from his grimy, blood-smeared face.

“Draco,” she breathed.

“I’m sorry I was gone for so long,” he murmured, and paused for a moment to bury his face in her soft brown hair before continuing, “but it’s over now; it’s done. I’m not going to leave you again. Not ever.”

“Draco,” she whispered, her brow creased worriedly; even in her groggy, heavily sedated state she could tell, with intuitive certainty, that something was very wrong here. Draco’s eyes had a faraway look she had seen only once before- as he’d lain sprawled on his back in the aftermath of the battle with Voldemort, bleeding his life away- and he was slurring his words. “Are you okay?”

The corners of his lips quirked upward in just the faintest hint of a smile. She couldn’t resist the impulse to smile back, even as hurt, tired and suddenly anxious as she was. She loved it when he did that- of all the expressions to sometimes cross his usually guarded face, this one had to be her favorite.

“I am now,” he said.

Then, abruptly, belying his words, his eyes rolled back and he slid from the bed, landing in a crumpled heap on the floor.

(A/N: FYI, Draco’s quote, “I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep,” is from one of the most beautiful poems ever written in the English language, in my opinion; “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost. It’s a short poem, so I’ve included it in its entirety here.)

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep

“DRACO!”

Two voices shouted the name together; Hermione from her bed, and Snape from where he had remained by the door.

As Snape crossed to Draco’s side in two quick strides, Hermione pushed herself into a sitting position, gritting her teeth against the pain and wooziness this caused.

“I KNEW something was wrong,” she was babbling; “I knew it, I knew it, I- oh, my GOD!”

This last was uttered as, virtually throwing herself over the side of the bed, she saw clearly for the first time just how bad his condition actually was.

00000

Draco had only passed out for an instant, but it would have been kinder to him not to have regained consciousness so quickly- for along with his return to awareness came a screaming, blinding new agony such as he had never experienced before in his life. It was a pain that put Cruciatus to shame- here, indeed, was an experience worse than being stabbed and Crucio’d at nearly the same time- and it was coming from the gash in his side.

He bit down hard on the cry that threatened to escape his lips and immediately twisted himself onto his uninjured side, folding himself into a tight fetal position, trying to concentrate on breathing through the pain while wishing desperately for blackness to claim him again- anything, anything but this torment he was in.

He was barely aware of Hermione sliding out of bed and landing on the floor beside him, or of Snape kneeling on his other side a fraction of a second later, shouting his name over and over again in a voice made gruff by fear.

He only truly became aware of Snape’s presence when the older man gripped him firmly and turned him once more onto his back, forcing him to straighten out again, telling him he needed to see the wound. Draco heard these words, but was unable to really make sense of them, so great was his suffering. He fought against his mentor, knowing only that he wanted to be on his side, that he wanted to curl up tighter and tighter until he disappeared altogether, ending this torturous pain.

But Snape would not allow it; he held him firmly, pinned on his back. Draco lay with his eyes tight shut, jaw clenched and head turned to the side, in the direction that his body yearned to follow, both arms pressed over the vicious wound that was causing him such agony, booted feet kicking out, trying to find something solid against which to brace himself in his attempt to fight off the searing pain.

“No...unngh...Sev...Severus, don’t,” he panted, as Snape attempted to pry his arms away from his side. He was desperate to keep the wound covered; protected. He was beyond reason in his agony.

“I’m sorry, Draco,” Snape said, and he truly sounded it; “but I have to see the wound. I can’t help you unless I can see what’s wrong.”

Snape managed, at length, to wrench Draco’s arms away from his side. He knelt on the arm nearest him to immobilize it, and enlisted Hermione’s aid to hold down the other one. She twined her fingers through Draco’s as she held on with both hands. This left the potions master free to peel the sticky, blood-soaked clothes away from the wound. When he did so, Draco’s entire body stiffened and his head whipped sharply, just once, from side to side, as if in a desperate, futile negation of the pain he was in.

“I can’t...take...this,” he ground out hoarsely from between gritted teeth; “hurts...too...bloody much!”

Snape felt a fist of sick, icy cold fear clench his heart, more from Draco’s words than even from the sight of the wound he had just uncovered. The amount of pain Draco had to be in, in order to make such an admission, was unthinkable.

“Where the hell is Pomfrey?!” he shouted, panicked, to no one in particular. “Goddamn it, I’m not a healer! I need some help!”

Draco heard this as if from far away, the words coming to him between the great, crashing waves of agony that were now threatening to engulf him. He was marginally aware of Hermione’s hand in his, their fingers twined together; he tried to concentrate on it, gripping it tightly, visualizing, through eyes that were clamped shut against the pain, that small, warm, often ink-stained hand; that hand that now wore the ring that symbolized their love. He tried to use this thought, this vision, as a mental means of bracing himself against the agony that coursed endlessly through him, just as his feet had tried to find a physical brace moments ago, but he was overwhelmed. It seemed too much to bear, and yet he remained agonizingly, unremittingly conscious. His awareness of his surroundings was fading, however, as the pain took up more and more of his attention.

His strong, ingrained discipline was slipping; he knew that he would soon do something he hadn’t allowed himself to do in years- not since the Hippogriff incident of third year ; start screaming from pain.

A voice in the back of his mind; the voice of his dry, sarcastic wit, which apparently, even now, had not been entirely subdued, spoke up. Well, why not? the voice said, and he found that even his thoughts had a far-off quality to them now- I’ve already screamed my head off once today, albeit for a different reason; why not try out some good, wholesome pain screaming too? Who knows, it might be a real-

“Uhhhnnnnnnngh!”

Despite his thoughts of a second ago, he managed to stifle the sound before it became a true scream, though only by an act of sheer, iron will.

“Pro-professor...Severus...I can’t- you gotta- STOP!”

“Draco.” The deep voice of his mentor sounded from just above his head. “Draco, look at me. Open your eyes. Please try.”

Draco wrenched his eyes open. The pupils were dilated, as a result of his pain and shock; they were so wide and dark that his eyes appeared black, ringed by just the thinnest coronas of silver. Despite the agony he was in, those eyes widened in surprise when they focused on Snape’s face- because tears were standing out in the hardened professor’s eyes. It was a phenomenon no student of the potions master had ever witnessed before; indeed, Snape had not shed a tear in over twenty years. Nor was he shedding any now- but he looked as though he might, at any moment.

“Draco,” he repeated, catching the blond boy’s head between his strong hands, “listen to me. Madam Pomfrey is here now; she’s examining the wound. You have to bear with us so we can discover what’s wrong, what’s happening to you. Do you understand?”

Draco could hear Madam Pomfrey’s voice murmuring from somewhere beyond Snape, though he could neither see her- all his attention was focused on his mentor at the moment- nor make out her words. “Yeah,” he gasped out, “I...Uuunnnngghhh!”

His entire body jerked momentarily right off the floor as the mediwitch probed cautiously at the wound (which had now begun, unbeknownst to Draco, to glow with an evil, pulsing green light). It was like nothing she had ever seen, and so her mind was racing back over years and years’ worth of reading and research she had done on magical maladies, trying to connect what she was seeing with something- anything- she had encountered before, no matter how obscure the reference might be.

“Why am I...still awake?” Draco wondered aloud a moment later, wanting nothing more than for blackness to take him, in the wake of the new blaze of pain Madam Pomfrey had caused him- and then; “Severus...?”

“I’m right here.”

“I think I...n-need something to bite on.”

The resigned, matter-of-fact way in which this request was made cinched it; just as Snape turned to search for something that Draco could bite down on as he attempted to fight his way through the pain, a single tear escaped his eye and streaked down his face, which was haggard with worry; he was doing something he hadn’t done since he’d been years younger than Draco himself was now; he was weeping. He ducked his head quickly and wiped savagely at the tear, and only Hermione saw; Madam Pomfrey was still engrossed in studying the wound, an expression of shocked, horrified recognition just beginning to dawn on her features as something finally started to click in her mind.

Regaining his composure, unaware that Hermione had witnessed his brief, unguarded moment, his gaze fell on the small, white pillow of her hospital bed. He strained toward it, just barely able to grab it without removing his weight from Draco’s arm- Draco was still straining against him, still wanting nothing more in his pain beyond reason, beyond comprehension, than to cover the wound and roll himself into a tight, protected little ball, in an attempt to hide from his suffering.

The potions master yanked the pillow roughly out of its case and tossed it aside; the pillowcase he folded over and over again until it was a small, thick wad of material. He then leaned close over Draco, willing himself to keep control and not shed any more damnable, weak tears. “Draco,” he said gently; “Draco? I’ve got something for you to bite down on. Draco- hey. You’re going to have to open your mouth, if you want it.”

Draco sucked in a deep breath through his clenched teeth, then obediently unlocked his jaw, for just the merest instant- enough time, just barely, for Snape to shove the pillowcase into his mouth. Draco clamped down hard on it, eyes squeezed tight shut again, fair hair now plastered to his forehead with perspiration, cords standing out on his neck as he strained against the waves of pain radiating endlessly out from his side.

Snape turned toward Madam Pomfrey, intending to tell her that if she couldn’t figure out what was wrong then she should at least make herself useful by fetching Dumbledore, who probably could, and while she was at it, bring a cool, damp towel for Draco’s forehead- and then stopped, arrested by the expression on her face. Judging from that appalled look, she had made some sort of connection- and it wasn’t good.

Not that he had expected it to be.

“Poppy,” he said tensely, “have you figured out what’s going on?”

“Dear God,” she breathed, an expression of utter, stricken horror on her face, “I can’t believe what I’m seeing- oh dear, sweet God, who would do such a thing?”

“What is it?!?” Snape practically screamed. “Out with it, you bloody, useless fool of a woman!”

Madam Pomfrey was still staring at Draco, aghast. She was so deeply distraught that she seemed not to even register the insults Snape had hurled at her.

“I read about this once, years ago- but I’ve never seen it, nor ever dreamed I would,” she said shakily. “Whoever did this was a powerful dark wizard, and unspeakably cruel. It’s a time-released curse that was buried deep inside his body with the creation of this wound. It has the power of half a dozen Cruciatus curses; it is, quite literally, crucio-ing him from the inside out. There has also been a powerful wakefulness spell incorporated, to prevent him from escaping the pain by losing consciousness. If this curse is not lifted, it will kill him, but slowly- it will probably take a day or more- and causing him pain almost beyond human endurance all the while.”

She paused, trying to collect herself; she looked as though she were on the verge of breaking down- then continued; “it’s monstrous. Just- unthinkable. But the most puzzling thing is not the curse itself, but Draco’s reaction to it. A wizard’s natural magical ability, his- his magic reserves, so to speak, should afford him some degree of- not immunity, exactly, but ability to fight this thing. Because magic fights magic, as you know. And we all know that Draco has very powerful magic- so the curse should not be ravaging him as it is; he ought to be offering some degree of resistance to it- but he’s not. He’s reacting as though he had no magic; as though he were a muggle or- or a squib. I don’t understand it at all.”

But Snape had barely registered what she was saying about Draco’s inborn magic, or sudden lack thereof; he was still trying to get his mind to grasp exactly what the mediwitch had said was happening to Draco as a result of the curse; the brutal and deliberate torture that was being inflicted on this boy he loved beyond all other human beings. This strong, proud, fiercely independent man-child who was now laid low on the floor; still struggling, still stubbornly fighting not to cry out in his anguish, holding tight to the hand of the girl he loved (a girl who had, at Madam Pomfrey’s words, dropped her forehead down to rest on their joined hands and was now sobbing great, convulsive, body-wracking sobs). A wave of white hot rage such as he had never known- and this was a man well- acquainted with anger- engulfed the potions master.

‘Draco!” He gripped the boy’s shoulders hard. “DRACO!” He shook him, then yanked the wadded-up pillowcase out of his mouth. Draco’s teeth came together with an audible click. Finally, the ice-blue eyes cracked open again, though they were now dull with pain- that ceaseless pain- and failed to focus on him. It was probably just as well; Snape looked alarming. He looked, in point of fact, like a raving lunatic.

“Huh?” Draco whispered again, just as he had outside on the path.

“I need to know who did this to you. Draco? Draco! The wound on your side- who gave it to you? Draco, TELL ME NOW!” Snape intended to find the person responsible and use whatever means necessary to see that they suffered every bit as much as Draco was now; more, if possible.

Draco’s eyes fell shut again. “I don’t know...professor,” he whispered hoarsely; “there...were...so many of them. On all sides...hit-hit me...all at once.”

Actually, this was not true at all. Draco knew exactly who had given him this particular wound. But even as far gone as he was, he was not about to reveal- he would NEVER reveal- that it had been his own mother who had done this to him. He did, after all, as Snape had noted earlier, still have his pride.

“GODDAMN IT!” Snape swore in his helpless rage, pounding a fist into the floor just inches from Draco’s head; Draco, at this point, seemed beyond noticing. Then he rounded on Madam Pomfrey again. “Do you know how to treat it?”

Silently, not taking her wide eyes off the evilly glowing wound, she shook her head no.

Abruptly, Snape leapt to his feet, releasing Draco’s arm as he did so. If Madam Pomfrey could provide no help, then he didn’t see any harm in allowing the boy to cover the wound, if that gave him some small comfort. “I’m going to get Dumbledore,” he said tersely, and started for the door.

“Wait!” the mediwitch called from the floor beside Draco. He whirled about, thinking that she had remembered some means of fighting the curse, but all she said was, “he’s in with the Weasleys. They are all beside themselves. Molly is- I’ve never seen her so- I believe she may actually do herself harm. And in any case- I fear there is nothing to be done here. He’s needed there.”

It took every ounce of restraint Snape possessed to keep from crossing back over to where she knelt and kicking her in the face.

Fists clenching and unclenching at his sides, he spat out, “just because YOU don’t know how to help Draco, doesn’t mean that Dumbledore won’t. Ron Weasley is beyond all help, but hope may still exist here. As for Molly, she has a husband and six other children in that room with her to prevent her from doing anything rash. Therefore, you pathetic excuse for a healer, I submit that Dumbledore is needed HERE MORE!”

“I couldn’t agree more,” came a quiet yet authoritative voice from the doorway, “though there is no call for such harsh words, Severus, no matter how deep your concern for young Draco here. You are not the only one who is overwrought just now; it is a trying time for all of us.” It was, of course, the headmaster. Stepping into the room, he continued, “Please move aside, Severus- and you too, Poppy; let me see if there is anything I can do.”

Within moments, he had rendered Draco deeply and mercifully unconscious.

“Oh, God,” Snape groaned, from where he had seated himself on the edge of Hermione’s bed. He let his head fall forward into his hands as Draco’s tortured body finally relaxed. “Thank God. Is he...is the curse lifted, Albus?”

“No,” the headmaster said gravely, straightening up from where he had been kneeling beside the silver haired boy. “I was able to overcome the wakefulness spell, but that had simply been added into the curse, almost as an afterthought. The main part of the curse- the part that is hurting him- killing him- is far stronger and more complex. It will require time and effort to undo. Time that I’m not sure we have. So enough talk. Let’s get him into the room next door. I need more space to work. And Severus- he will require an immediate magic transfusion, in order to give him the means of resisting the curse just a little while longer, and thereby buying us more time. His own supply has been completely exhausted somehow. Am I right in assuming that you’d be willing to be his donor?”

“Anything,” Snape said hoarsely, not raising his head from his hands. “I’ll lay down my life if I have to. Only Albus...please don’t let him die. He’s...he’s all I have.”

“I give you my word, Severus, that I will do everything in my power to keep this child alive. Now if you would bring him, please...?” And the headmaster swept out the door, to prepare the room next door.

Hermione, still sobbing brokenheartedly, reluctantly let go the hand which had gone limp in her grasp as Snape went down on one knee and, with infinite tenderness, gathered Draco into his arms. Standing, he shifted the unconscious boy so that the hot, sweat dampened silver head lay against his shoulder. “I should have been faster,” he whispered, in a voice ravaged by guilt. “I should have caught you- gone with you. I should have protected you. God, this is all my fault.” He moved toward the door, then, murmuring as he went, “stay strong, Draco. Fight this thing. If you die because of my failure- I’ll go mad.”

And then he was through the door and gone, Madam Pomfrey, after ordering Hermione sternly to get back in bed and rest, following him out and shutting the door.

00000

Hermione did not get back in bed.

She remained sitting on the floor, drew her knees up to her chest, and continued to sob, arms wrapped tightly around herself, rocking slightly back and forth, alone and comfortless, until she reached the point of hyperventilation, when she literally could sob no more because just breathing had become difficult enough.

She finally raised her head, eyes still streaming, breath coming in tiny, shallow gasps all one on top of another, and pushed her hair back out of her flushed face. She turned her head toward her bed, intending to crawl over to it and climb back in- then froze. Something had caught her eye; something lying halfway under her bed.

“Accio,” she said, in a shaking voice, and it came obediently to her hand.

“Draco,” she whispered brokenly as she held the object, tenderly, cradled in her lap. It was his wand, which had fallen out of his waistband as he’d been thrashing in agony on the floor. Bowing her head over it, she kissed it, then pressed its smooth, cool length against her overheated cheek. When she raised her head again, the wand glistened wetly with her tears.

“L-lumos,” she said in a choked little voice, and at first thought that nothing had happened; that the wand, which was inextricably linked to Draco’s life force, had failed produce any light at all, which could mean only one thing...“no,” she whispered, and bent close over it, searching, searching for any light radiating from it at all. “Come on, Draco- oh God, please....”

Her long, thick hair fell forward in a rumpled curtain, creating a dark, protected little space in which she held the wand, watching it intently. And it was only in this darkness that she found she was able to make out just the faintest hint of a glow coming from the wand tip. It was barely there, and flickering like a candle flame in a strong wind.

Seeing that fitful glow caused her to break down and sob again, both in relief and renewed fear. Really, as hard as she was crying, it was a small miracle that she heard the quiet voice at all.

“Mione...hey.”

She raised her head, startled, at the sound of the familiar, beloved voice. “Huh-Harry?”

“Mm-hm. Where are you?”

“On...on the floor.”

She pushed herself up onto her hands and knees and crawled over to the side of Harry’s bed. He didn’t look as though he’d moved so much as an inch, but his brilliant green eyes were now open and gazing at her, albeit somewhat unfocused without his glasses on.

“Oh my God, Harry...” she reached out and clasped his hand; “I was so sure you...you were...and Draco...God, I thought I’d lost you both and- AND Ron- and- and what would I DO all on my own and- oh Harry, I was so scared!”

“Hey,” he said softly, “don’t do that to yourself. Hermione- don’t. I’m okay. I am. And you think YOU know scared- bloody hell, do you realize that you actually went and DIED on me?!?” His face contorted with the pain of the memory. “Thinking I’d lost first Ron, then you- I wanted nothing more than to die as well. Christ, Hermione, I love you so much.”

“I...I love you too. Are you really going to be okay?”

“Yeah,” he murmured sleepily, eyes heavy-lidded, words beginning to slur; “I’ll make myself, if I have to. I’m not gonna leave you, Mynee.”

These words were, of course, intended to comfort her- but they had the opposite effect; fresh tears sprang to her eyes. “Draco said that too,” she choked out, dropping her face into the crook of her arm where it lay on the edge of the bed, “but Harry- I really think...he’s dying!”

“Wait, wha...dying- WHAT?” All sleepiness had fled Harry’s voice; he now sounded well and truly alarmed. “Hermione, what’s happened to Malfoy?”

“He left me,” she whispered between rapid, hitching breaths; “When everyone thought you were- that you would- when they were all working on you. He snuck out; told me he just needed to go back for Ron, that he’d come back to me as soon as he could...but he didn’t. He sent Ron back with a portkey, but he didn’t come back for hours- and when he did he was half dead, under a curse. I don’t know what happened to him, but I- God, Harry, I’ve never seen him in such pain, not even after Voldemort. And they took him into a different room and told me just to go back to bed, as if I- as if...and I found his wand on the floor and I tried Lumos with it and it won’t stop flickering and oh...God...Harry...I can’t lose him, I just can’t, what did I live for, if Draco’s going to die?”

And she lapsed back into broken sobs.

“Hey,” Harry said gently, “what am I, chopped liver?”

“I...no...oh Harry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I just....”

“Shhh...I know. I know. S’okay. C’mere.” He patted the bed beside him, brow furrowing as he did so, as if even this simple gesture required all his concentration and effort.

“Malfoy’s not gonna die,” he said, as she pulled herself off the floor and up onto the bed, stretching out beside him, laying her head exhaustedly down beside his on the pillow, allowing her eyes to fall closed, overcome with weariness. “He already proved himself a fighter once- remember? He beat the odds that time; he will again.”

“I...you really think so?”

“The only way Malfoy’d die is if he gave up, pure and simple. And he’s not gonna give up on life. He’s got you to live for, hasn’t he?”

“You didn’t see him,” she whispered miserably, unconvinced.

“But I know him.” And then, a moment later, “you’re shaking. Come under.”

As she crawled under the blankets, Harry reached for his wand, which lay beside his glasses on the nightstand, and murmured a quick spell to widen the narrow hospital bed- then, as an afterthought, summoned all the blankets from Hermione’s bed for additional warmth.

Now snug under a double weight of blankets, Hermione curled up against Harry, their heads so close together on the pillow that their hair and breath both intermingled. She closed her eyes, though silent tears continued to leak from them, trickling slowly now down her face. Gradually her trembling subsided, but her breathing was still hitching and uneven. Her thoughts drifted from Draco, who was fighting for his life, to Ron, who had already lost his. She felt herself being pressed down under a weight of grief so enormous she felt it must surely crush her.

“It was never meant to be this way,” she whispered, a long moment later.

“What way?” Harry’s voice sounded drugged with exhaustion and the remnants of an immense pain.

“Just the two of us. Friends. It was never meant to be just the two of us. Without Ron. Never. How will we live without him, Harry? I can’t- I can’t even begin to imagine a life without him in it. I look ahead and I see years, decades...a lifetime that was supposed to include him. We were all supposed to buy houses in the same town- on the same street- raise our children together...my kids would have...have called him Uncle Ron. It’s not fair! It’s so unfair that my kids will never have an Uncle Ron. And how can it be that I might live to be sixty- seventy- eighty years old without ever hearing his voice again?! I can’t- I can’t- fathom that, Harry. I can’t make my mind accept it. It hurts...so bad...oh God, Harry, the pain is killing me and it won’t ever get better, it won’t ever go away, even if Draco’s okay I don’t- I just don’t...know how I can live like this, when it was never meant to be! Why? God, why Ron? I can’t...Harry, it’s too heavy...I can’t breathe!”

This was true; she was hyperventilating again.

“Hermione!”

Gritting his teeth hard against the pain it caused his still not-entirely- healed ribs, Harry rolled from his back onto his side, wrapped his arms around her, and pulled her into a crushing embrace. Without knowing when he had started, he became aware that he was sobbing too; great, shuddery, wracking sobs that sent white hot pain lancing through his ribcage again and again and again. He was having no easy time breathing himself. Didn’t matter. The grief he felt couldn’t be contained; and despite the physical pain, it felt right, on a very basic level, to share this grief with Hermione. He pressed his cheek against her hot, damp forehead and they sobbed together; their tears intermingling now, too.

Clinging to each other like lost children, or like the only two survivors of some horrific wreck, afloat on a single piece of debris in the midst of a vast, dark sea, they sobbed themselves to sleep.

“I was never...good enough...for you. Fuck you! I hate you- I HATE you! I renounce you!”

Tears were streaming down Draco’s face; in the throes of delirium, he lacked the self-control that would normally have kept them tightly in check.

“I hate you, I hate you...get off me, let me go...Hermione!”

It had gone on like this for a good part of the night, ever since Dumbledore had managed to lift the curse Draco had been suffering under; he had triumphed over the malign magic just when all hope had appeared to be lost, but Draco had been left weak, virtually without magic of his own (still, no one could understand how he had exhausted his own supply)- a magic transfusion from Snape had been required to give him the means to successfully fight the curse- and very, very sick. Since Dumbledore had left the room, nearly stumbling with fatigue and looking every one of his many, many years of age, Snape had been restraining the delirious Draco and forcing water into him at hourly intervals, until they were both exhausted and the fight finally went out of the former Slytherin.

Though his body ached from the constant struggle, Snape was anything but relieved by the state Draco fell into then; he looked more than half-dead, all further attempts to revive him failed, and the potions master was certain, with a feeling of cold dread deep in his heart, that the silver haired boy was slipping away.

00000

In another private room off the main hospital ward, Harry and Hermione had been sleeping curled together, deriving what comfort they could from one another’s presence in the wake of their best friend’s death, which had shattered their world.

00000

Hermione, of course, woke up screaming.

And, considering the nature of her nightmare, it did not help matters at all that a disoriented, half-asleep Harry had rolled on top of her and was pinning her down in a severely misguided effort to curtail her frantic flailing. He was also shouting her name, but as deeply distraught as she was, her eyes screwed shut and her mind still halfway caught in her dream, his voice, his words, failed to register. Only his presence- his strong, male presence on top of her, pushing her down into the bed, immobilizing her, filled her awareness and drove her into absolute hysterics.

“No! No! NOOO!” she was screaming, to Harry’s horror; “Not again, PLEASE not again, I can’t take any more, I want to die! God, let me DIE! Get- get OFF of me, get AWAY, you’re not Draco, you’re not, you’re NOT-”

“HERMIONE!!” Harry gave her a single rough shake. Even this probably would not have been enough to snap her out of it, except that her head hit the headboard, hard, causing her eyes to fly open at last as she gasped in surprise and pain. They locked onto his and he watched the recognition flood into them, even as her mouth kept forming the words, “not Draco...not...Draco!”

“Hermione,” he said, more quietly this time, shifting his weight off her, “it was a nightmare. Just a nightmare. We’re in the infirmary, remember? You’re safe.”

“Huh- Harry...?”

“Yes. Yes, love. It’s me.”

“Oh God. Harry. Oh, my God. I can’t take this. I can’t sleep. I can’t close my eyes...without seeing...”

“What?” he whispered, smoothing her sleep rumpled hair back from her face; “what do you see?”

“Draco...Lucius...Draco...oh, God! It’s gonna drive me mad! He...he knew it would, and it will- Harry, it will!”

She was nearly incoherent in her distress; Harry found himself utterly unable to follow her fractured train of thought. But her eyes; her eyes were scaring the hell out of him. They were dry- she had cried so long and hard before falling asleep that it seemed as if, for the time being anyway, she had no tears left- but in them he saw a hurt so deep, a fear so profound, that it did almost appear, as she had said, to border on madness.

“He knew it,” she repeated; “he knew, he knew what it would do to me! God, Harry, what if I can never get past this, even...even if Draco lives, every time I look at him I’ll see... oh, it’s going to tear us APART!”

“Hermione.” Harry caught her face gently between his hands. “I’m not following you. Surely you’re not saying that Draco hurt you?”

“No! Not Draco- never Draco. I kept telling myself and...and telling myself... that Draco would never- would n-... it was Lucius, it was always Lucius, but God, Harry, the way he looked- and sounded- it was like he was raping my MIND!”

Harry just stared at her, aghast, trying to process what she was saying. Although he had not the slightest idea of exactly what had happened to Hermione during her captivity- Lucius’ actions toward her had been far too depraved for Harry to even begin to imagine them- he was starting to get an understanding that whatever she had endured had been bad. Very, VERY bad.

“God, Hermione,” he murmured, more, it seemed, to himself than to her, “what did that incredible bastard do to you?”

She didn’t reply.

She just stared up at him with those haunted, panicked eyes for a long moment, then blurted, “I don’t- I- can’t... I...need to... um, check on Draco.”

And bolted from the bed, and the room.

00000

Hermione approached Draco’s room- at least, she was reasonably sure that it was Draco’s room due to the sign posted on the door: “Room Occupied, Quiet Please”- on bare, silent feet. She paused in front of it, her heart racing in her chest with fear- the residual panicky fear from her dream combined with a more rational fear stemming from just how badly off Draco had been the last time she’d seen him, being carried out of her own room by Snape.

She took a deep breath and slowly, terrified of what she would see, pushed open the door and stepped inside. It was a small, sparse, white room, exactly like the one she had just left, except that this room contained only one bed, on which lay-

Draco. Oh, Draco.

She wouldn’t have believed that it was possible for him to look worse than he had after the confrontation with Voldemort the previous year- but he did. The sheets and blankets were tangled as though he had recently been thrashing about- but he wasn’t moving now. He barely seemed to be breathing. His skin was ashen, his closed eyes set into bluish hollows, his silver hair lack-luster. His face, even in sleep, or unconsciousness, or whatever state he was in, was taut with pain.

In a chair beside the bed sat Snape, arms crossed tightly over his chest, appearing almost to be hugging himself, perhaps in a futile effort at self- comfort. His head was turned to the side, and Hermione saw that he was asleep with his chin on his shoulder. Even as he slept, his face was haggard with worry and guilt.

She took Snape’s appearance in quickly, then her attention returned fully to Draco. Her love. Her fiancé. Still fighting for his life; that much was patently obvious. Still at death’s door.

“Draco.” Her voice came out in a choked whisper as she crossed the room and sank down on the edge of his bed. “Oh, no.”

Conscious thought flew out the window and instinct took command as she leaned close over him, until their foreheads were nearly touching. Her masses of thick, dark hair fell down around them, creating a small, secret space, just as it had when she had bent over his dangerously flickering wand. Only now it was his face itself that she was desperately searching for signs of life.

“Dracodraco,” she whispered, her breath bursting warm upon his still face, “come back. I love you and you’re safe now and you promised...you wouldn’t leave me...you PROMISED and so it’s time to come back. Can you hear me? I need you and I’m calling you back. Draco?”

His brow furrowed at her words, as though he heard her, and he swallowed and parted his dry lips. She ran her thumb gently over them. “I love you,” she breathed. Then, scooting down a little on the bed, she laid her head down on his chest, feeling it rise and fall beneath her- barely, just barely- and allowed silent tears to leak from her eyes and soak the soft white shirt he was now wearing, unaware that Snape had awoken, discovered her presence, thought of sending her back to her room, and then reconsidered, deciding that if anything could bring Draco back now, it was only her love.

“You once said,” she whispered brokenly, “that you were a man of your word. Well, you promised me it was over and that you’d never leave me again, and I intend to hold you to that promise, Draco Malfoy! Don’t you dare go where I can’t follow you!”

Her hands balled into fists there on his chest, clutching the material of his shirt, as she fought down a sudden, irrational impulse to pummel him, shake him, scream at him, slap him; anything to cause those gray-blue eyes to open.

And then she felt it; the tiniest ghost of a touch on her back.

She raised her head and immediately the pressure on her back increased. Turning slightly, she saw that what she had barely dared to hope was true; Draco had indeed curled an arm protectively about her.

“Draco!” she cried. Pulling herself up along the length of his body until her face once again hovered over his, she bent and planted a soft kiss on his forehead. His eyes remained closed, but one corner of his lip twitched upward, into a tiny, lopsided smile.

“Hey,” he whispered in a raw, cracked voice.

A single traitorous sob escaped her before she could prevent it. Draco’s half-smile vanished and now his eyes did crack open; a pain-dulled slate gray.

“My-nee,” he croaked, sliding his hand up her back until it was buried in her hair, “m’sry.” His brow furrowed and he shook his head then, frustrated by his apparent inability to form simple, familiar words. (Well- familiar in theory, anyway, if not in practice- he had very rarely ever said ‘I’m sorry’ before to anyone... but it still should have come out easier than this.) “Suh...s’rry,” he tried again. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t waste your strength being sorry!” she cried. “Just get better, Malfoy, that’s all I care about now.”

“Won’t leave you,” he whispered. “Keep my promises.” Then- “water?”

“Water,” she echoed distractedly, “yes. Yes, of course. Hold on, love. I’ll get you some water.”

She started to straighten up, but found herself held firm by Draco’s hand, which had fetched up at the base of her neck.

“No,” he rasped, “don’t go.”

“But,” she said, puzzled, “you said you wanted water-”

“Want you more. Don’t go.”

“Draco, stop being-”

“Miss Granger,” said a low voice beside her, causing her to start. She had forgotten all about Snape’s presence in the room. She looked over and saw the potions master holding a glass of water out toward her. He gave her a small, weary smile and indicated, with a tilt of his head, a pitcher standing on the nightstand.

“Professor,” she murmured. “Thank you.”

She took the glass, then returned her attention to her fiancé. “I’ve got your water, love,” she said. “Can you raise you head?”

His eyes fell shut once more and a look of concentration came over his face for a moment. Then, “no,” he whispered in a small, lost voice.

“It’s okay,” she half-sobbed. “That’s just fine, don’t worry about it.” She slipped a hand gently beneath his head, feeling his hair slide through her fingers like damp silk, and raised it a couple of inches off the pillow. Holding the glass to his lips, she whispered, “drink.”

He tried to obey, but as weak and uncoordinated as he was, more water ended up out then in, mingling with her tears to further soak his shirt. Hermione felt her heart twist within her. Seeing the man she loved in a state of such profound helplessness that he couldn’t even raise his head or drink a glass of water held against his lips was...it was more than painful. It was killing her. She honestly didn’t know how she could survive Ron’s death, the horrors she had endured, and now this- being forced to watch Draco suffer so.

She eased his head back onto the pillow; his eyes did not open again. Laying her own head beside his, she stayed with him until his breathing evened out and the hand at the base of her neck first relaxed its hold, then fell away, to trail over the edge of the bed. She took it in her own, planted a kiss on it, then folded it over his chest and straightened up, intending to ask Snape about the dangerously flickering wand. She had to know what to expect; no matter how bad the answer was, it was preferable to the agony of not knowing.

But she sat up too fast, and, still being far from entirely well herself, swayed dangerously, nearly slipping of the edge of the bed. Snape was at her elbow immediately.

“Miss Granger, I must insist you return to your own bed at once. You are not well.”

“But Draco-”

“No buts, Hermione. I insist. Bed. Now.”

“But I HAVE to know-”

Snape sighed. “Until you came in, I wasn’t sure if he’d make it. Now I believe that he will live. But I refuse to go into any more detail with you at the moment; not when it is obvious that you are in dire need of rest and recuperation yourself. I’m not going to say this again, Miss Granger- Go. To. Bed.”

Hermione took one last, lingering look at Draco, swallowed hard, and nodded. She was too exhausted and numbed by grief and suffering- her own and that of the people she loved most; Draco- Harry- to argue further. Standing slowly, carefully, she shrugged off Snape’s offer of assistance and made her way back to her own room and bed.

Harry was asleep again. And how he needed it. She knew he was still hurting too. That was to say, physically hurting- not just the constant, empty ache that would be a permanent part of his soul- and her own- now Ron was dead. After all, when she had seen Harry on that floating stretcher earlier, he had been just as close to death as Draco was now. The thought of how close she had come to losing all three of the men she cared most about- and entirely because of her own stupidity in letting herself get caught- caused a wave of nausea to roll over her. Fighting it back with some difficulty, more because she didn’t want any resultant retching to wake Harry than for any other reason, she collapsed into her own bed without a sound and immediately fell into a doze- but not a true sleep, because something was nagging at the very edge of her mind.

She came back to full awareness with a jolt a mere ten minutes later as she realized what it was; Draco’s wand. She wanted- NEEDED- to keep it with her, to hold it, at all times, even when sleeping, to watch over it until Draco was well enough to take it back, to safeguard its dim, flickering light. Rationally, she knew this was silly; like a child with a favorite stuffed animal, but she also knew, deep down and beyond the shadow of a doubt, that she would not sleep peacefully without her love’s wand in her hand. Sleepily, she reached behind herself and groped for it on the nightstand, a tiny sigh escaping her lips as her fingers closed around its smooth, somehow comforting length.

She was already drifting off again, the wand held tightly in her hand and snuggled under her pillow, when it occurred to her that she hadn’t bothered to check its light. After all, Snape had said that he hadn’t been sure before, but now felt that Draco would most likely live. Perhaps the wand would be shining steadily now, confirming Snape’s prognosis. Pulling it out, she held it before her eyes and looked at it closely-

And sat up, her heart suddenly slamming painfully against her ribcage, feeling as though a bucket of ice water had just been poured over her.

The wand had gone out.

She made a small, strangled sound without being aware of doing so, bringing the wand closer still to her eyes- there was no light to be seen, flickering or otherwise. The room was dark, the only illumination coming from Harry’s wand which still lay on the nightstand- her own was lost, taken by Lucius- she never expected to see it again. If Draco’s wand had offered up even the faintest shimmer, it should have been visible to her. There was nothing.

The tiny “no!” that escaped her then was more a forcible expulsion of air from her lungs than an actual word. Getting a grip- barely- on her rising panic, which was threatening to spin entirely out of control, she swallowed past the sudden enormous lump in her throat and whispered “Lumos.”

Still nothing.

“No. LumosLumosLUMOS!”

Nothing.

Her shriek of pure, soul-deep agony ripped through the hospital wing.

Almost before she had stopped screaming, she was out of bed, through the door and tearing down the short hallway to Draco's room. At Draco's doorway she collided with Snape, who had been roused from his own dozing state by her bloodcurdling cry and, fearing some sort of attack, was on his way, wand out, to see what was the matter. He tried to grab her, but she shoved him aside with such unexpected strength that he stumbled back and fetched up against the wall; if the wall had not been there, he probably would have gone sprawling.

Never slowing, Hermione flung herself onto Draco's bed, literally screaming his name. Kneeling over him, again with an adrenaline-born strength not her own, she pulled him fiercely, almost violently, up into a sitting position. Clasping him against her, one arm wrapped around the small of his back, the other hand pressing his face to her shoulder, she continued to keen out her anguish; a pain that was beyond words.

She took no notice of Snape in the doorway, staring at her aghast, or of the pounding footsteps that heralded the arrival of other adults at a run- she was too deeply immersed in her grief for that.

But what she did notice, what she couldn't help but notice, was this; Draco, with a monumental effort, raising his arms to clasp them about her waist, returning her embrace.

He didn't hold her tightly; he hadn't the strength to. But he WAS holding her- a fact which meant that he was, of course, irrefutably alive.

"Draco!" she sobbed into his silver hair, hardly daring to believe, and felt him turn his head slightly to the side, his cheek resting against the place where her neck met her shoulder. His cheek was hot and damp and sticky against her skin. And then-

"Bookworm," he mumbled dazedly, "w'sa matter?"

"Oh my god," she cried, "Draco! Oh my God, I thought I lost you. I don't understand, I don't- your wand, I thought- I was- but you're awake! Oh Draco, you're awake!"

"Course I am," he mumbled. "You were screaming...t'wake the dead."

This was more than she could take.

Intense anger welled up in her, an extension of her fear and grief a moment before, and it didn't matter that it was irrational; it was there, and so needed to be acted upon. Dropping him back against the pillows, she hauled off and slapped him across the face with all her strength. How dare he frighten her so!

Then she collapsed on top of him, sobbing hysterically into his chest.

She felt one of his hands come up and tangle itself gently in her thick hair; it stayed there until she managed to gather herself together enough to raise up and lean over him. He was looking up at her in sheer bewilderment, a vibrant red handprint glowing on his left cheek.

"I said I was sorry," he whispered, sounding for all the world like an injured child, "you didn't have to slap."

And then, before she could reply, he was gone again, sunk back into unconsciousness.

00000

Feeling a hand clamp her shoulder firmly from behind- this was definitely not Draco- Hermione, still on her knees on his bed, yanked herself away and whirled about, snarling.

Snape was standing over her, his dark eyes unreadable.

"Miss Granger," he said in an uncharacteristically gentle tone, "what on earth-"

"I'm not leaving again!" she shouted, cutting him off. "I'm not leaving him, do you hear me, I won't go and you can't make me! When his wand went out I thought- I thought he- I have to be here, right here, where I can SEE him! I don't care what you say, you'll have to Stupefy me and carry me out of this room because I'm not going! I can't TAKE another scare like that! It'll kill me, d'you hear? It'll KILL ME!" Having said all this in one breath, she drew in a long, shuddery gasp of air and dropped her face into her hands, crying weakly.

When Snape's voice next came, it was from right on her level.

"Miss Granger- Hermione- I am so, so sorry that you had such a fright."

Raising her head in surprise, she saw that he had hunkered down so that they were eye-to-eye. Before she could formulate a reply, he further astonished her by reaching out and pulling her into a fierce embrace. She stiffened for a moment, then melted into him, burying her face in his dark robes, which bore the fragrance of a hundred potions ingredients, immeasurably comforted merely by the feel of strong arms wrapped tightly about her.

He held her thus in silence for a long time, then at last said quietly, "of course you may stay here. I would not have you any more distraught than you already are. Let me modify the bed for you."

Hermione heard a disapproving little "hmmph" sound and, glancing over Snape's shoulder, saw Madam Pomfrey hovering by the door, summoned, no doubt, by her screams and looking decidedly less than thrilled with the newly proposed sleeping arrangements. The mediwitch, however, said nothing, perhaps remembering Snape's earlier fury and not wishing to see it unleashed again.

With a flick of his wand, the potions master widened Draco's bed just as Harry had done to his own bed earlier and held the covers back while Hermione crawled under them. He then settled himself back into his chair as Madam Pomfrey huffed out of the room, still without having spoken a word.

"Hermione," he said softly, just as her eyes began to drift shut.

"Huh?" she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper, as she snuggled into Draco's warmth.

"Tell me again, now that you are calmer, just what made you believe that Draco had died."

She winced at the word, then her eyes opened, a look of consternation on her face. "I don't understand," she said. "I was watching his wand. I had put a Lumos charm on it so that it would shine continually-"

"You were using the wand to monitor Draco's condition?"

"-because I know that though a wand will respond, to some degree, to any witch or wizard who is holding it, it is bound, from the moment it's purchased, to the magic and the life-force of its owner. It would obey me and stay lit, but only as long as Draco was alive. If he died, the wand would no longer respond to me, or anyone else. It would go out, and I wouldn't be able to relight it. And it did- professor, it did go out! So I don't- I don't understand."

Studying his face, she caught the pained expression that flitted briefly over it- it was there one second and gone the next but, as she had spent over a year in love with a man who was equally adept at hiding his emotions, Hermione was not fooled for a minute. The pain had been there; it had been real.

"What's going on?" she asked, pushing herself into a sitting position. "There's something you're not telling me. Something bad. Draco's alive, but something's still wrong, and I have a right to know, I love him!"

Snape sighed. Under his breath, barely audible, she thought she heard him murmur "damn you, Lucius, damn you to hell. Your own son. To think I ever counted you a friend." Then, turning his full attention back to Hermione, he said, "there are two events, Miss Granger, that can cause a wand to permanently cease functioning. One is, as you have said, the death of its owner. Do you know what the other one is?"

"Yes," she said, clearly not understanding, even now, "I've read about it, but it's really rare, it hardly ever happens, it-" she broke off and swallowed hard, her face a mask of horror as comprehension dawned. "It can't be. No, professor. No."

Snape's face was suddenly tight, as though he were struggling to maintain control of his emotions. When he spoke, his voice was constricted. "When Draco was hanging by a thread, all I asked was that he live. As long as he pulls through and lives... I am content. But this- this is going to be a heavy blow for him to bear. I can't even begin to imagine how he will react."

He saw in Hermione's eyes the silent pleading for him to tell her that this was some misunderstanding, some mistake- and what wouldn't he give to make that be the case. But he would not lie to her; she had been through enough without being lied to and she did have a right to know, as she said; she did love him.

"Draco has lost all of his magic, Hermione. I don't know how, but it's gone. I lent him enough of mine to survive on, but though it kept him alive through the most trying time, it will not respond to him as his own inborn magic would have. Whether his magical ability will ever return, I can't say, but as of right now, for all intents and purposes... he's a Squib."

00000

Harry lay flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling, which looked very far away. Which WAS very far away, considering that he was sprawled flat out on the floor between his own bed and Hermione's.

It had happened when she had pelted from the room screaming, of course. Harry, awakened suddenly from a sound sleep, without time to remember where he was or why he was there, had reacted without thinking, throwing himself out of bed in a panicked attempt to go after her. Unfortunately, the moment his feet had hit the floor he had collapsed, his legs unwilling to support him, his body still weak and in pain.

Repeated attempts to pull himself up and back into bed had failed.

He absolutely refused to yell for help. He couldn't stand the thought of being found here, lying on the floor in a state of complete helplessness. No, he would keep trying until he got himself up, damnit. Right. So. Again.

Mustering all his strength and determination, he pushed himself up into a sitting position. His entire ribcage screamed in agonized protest, but this was the most progress he'd managed since landing himself in this predicament, so he was pleased. Only for a second, though; then, before he could grasp the side of the bed in order to haul himself up, he collapsed backward, into a half-sitting, half-lying position against the nightstand, hitting his head hard on its edge in the process.

Raising one hand weakly to his head, he groaned- just as the door flew open.

"Harry!" cried Sirius.

00000

He was at Harry's side like lightning, kneeling over his grimacing godson, his hands on Harry's shoulders.

"Harry, what in the HELL-?"

Harry looked up at his godfather, trying to focus on his face without the aid of his glasses, hatinghatinghating being found like this.

"Sirius," he said hoarsely.

"Christ, Harry, why are you on the floor? Are you all right?" Sirius paused and shook his head. "Stupid question. Let me help you up."

With Sirius's aid, Harry was soon sitting on the edge of his bed, arms pressed tightly over his aching ribs, breath coming in short little pants; it still hurt to breathe deeply. Miserably, he turned his face away from Sirius. It wasn't that he was not happy to see his godfather- he was. It was just that he hated being caught by anyone, especially someone he looked up to this much, in a moment of weakness, and he was afraid that his face betrayed the pain he was in.

Sirius sank down on the edge of the bed, facing away from Harry, as though sensing his discomfort. With his elbows on his knees, he dropped his face forward into his hands, sucking in a deep, shaky breath. At this, Harry finally turned his head towards him, taking in the older man's stooped posture, his obvious worry.

"Sirius?" he asked tentatively.

Sirius looked up at him then, and smiled- but his smile was as shaky as his breath had been. "Harry," he said. "You really delight in these sadistic strains on my blood pressure, don't you?"000

"Sorry," Harry whispered.

"No. Don't be. You did what you had to for your friend. I understand that- I do. When I was your age- hell, now too- if this had happened to one of my friends, I'd've done the same. It's just that- the message I got...Christ, it almost scared me to death."

Harry shook his head. "Don't worry about me. Hermione and Malfoy are both hurt a lot worse than I am."

"Bollocks," Sirius said succinctly. "I spoke to Madam Pomfrey. She said you almost died."

Harry's jaw went tight, his eyes filling with a pain far deeper than the physical ache in his ribs. "I should have died," he said, looking away again. "Ron took that curse for me. It should have been me. He should be the one here right now."

"Supposing he had been," Sirius said quietly. "Would you have wanted him to destroy himself over that fact?"

"No," Harry said, then, "I don't know... bloody hell... I'd've wanted him to feel something though!" Abruptly, he lashed out, the immense amount of grief that lay just below the surface morphing quickly and easily into anger- anger directed at Sirius simply because he was there; a handy target.

"What the fuck are you trying to say anyway-" his voice was rising with every word- "that I should just forget about it and move on? Don't waste another thought on Ron, he's yesterday's news- is that what you're telling me? Fuck you, Sirius, you have no fucking idea- you can't even begin to imagine- I feel like- like-"

"Like you'll never be whole again," Sirius supplied gently. "You want to remember who you're talking to, Harry. I know the pain of losing my best friend. And the pain of feeling that it was all because of me."

"Oh God," Harry whispered, stricken. "God, you're right." He raised his eyes to Sirius; they were all the more brilliantly green because of the tears that were leaking slowly, steadily from them. "Help me, Sirius. Please help me. I don't think I can bear this."

He dropped his face forward into his hands, shoulders hunching, a shudder ripping through his body from head to foot, totally stripped, now, of the fierce, defiant pride that had caused him to resent Sirius finding him on the floor a moment ago- all that was left at this point was an orphan child in a staggering amount of pain, in desperate need of comfort.

Without a word, Sirius gathered him into his arms, pulling him tight against his chest, rocking him slightly. He held him thus for a long time, as Harry continued to shake; not saying a word, just offering the simple, yet powerful physical comfort that Harry had had so little of in his life.

Harry, for his part, sobbed silent, wracking sobs into his godfather's chest, his hands fisted in the material of Sirius' robes, letting his pain and grief and guilt and horror wash over him in waves like sickness until that was what it all became- and suddenly he was wrenching himself away from Sirius, leaning far over the edge of the bed, his head down between his knees, retching violently, and still Sirius was supporting him, one arm wrapped firmly around him to prevent him from collapsing entirely onto the floor, the other hand rubbing soothing circles on his back.

Only now did Sirius speak again, murmuring, "that's all right, Harry, that's just fine, you're doing fine... the grief you'll have to live with, but the guilt is like a disease, it'll poison you if you let it, so just go on and get it out... get it all out."

When Harry had retched himself dry, Sirius helped him settle back into the bed again, and vanished the mess with a flick of his wand before turning to hand Harry- who was propped up on his elbows , looking like hell warmed over, yet refusing to lie back all the way- a glass of water to rinse the foul taste from his mouth.

Once he had drunk it all down, Sirius took the glass from him and, putting one hand flat on each of Harry's shoulders, pushed him firmly down amongst his pillows.

"Rest," Sirius said, in a tone that brooked no argument. "You need to rest. I'll stay right here."

"Sirius," Harry half-whispered, half-croaked, looking up at his godfather, his eyes vivid green windows into a soul that was drowning in sorrow, "I feel like I'm dying every minute. Am I gonna feel this way forever?"

Sirius bent over him, running a hand with astounding gentleness through that characteristically messy black hair. "I'm not going to lie to you, Harry," he said softly. "The pain is always going to be there. For a while it will be right on the surface, every minute of every day. Then it'll sink to just below the surface... in a few years, who knows, you might get through a whole day or more without so much as a whisper of it... but it will still surprise you, at the oddest moments, and with enough force to knock you flat. It's never going to go away, it will merely become... endurable. But you will have something to help you, something that I never had."

"W'sat?" Harry asked, his voice sleep-slurred, his eyelids beginning to drift shut despite his best efforts.

"Someone who's been where you are," Sirius replied, "who knows exactly what you're going through, and who will help you every step of the way. Me, Harry, you've got me, and you always will. Always."

"Th'nksS'rus," Harry mumbled, his eyes now completely shut. And with a sigh, he was lost to sleep.

Sirius sat for a while in silent thought, then flicked his wand over Harry, whispering the words of a spell that would have much the same effect as a good-sized draught of Dreamless Sleep potion. He then stood, pulled Harry's covers up to his chin, placed a quick kiss on his godson's forehead, and, as there were no chairs in this room, retired to Hermione's bed, where he propped himself against the headboard, stretched out his long legs, pulled the latest edition of the Daily Prophet, which he had nicked from Madam Pomfrey's office, out of a fold in his robes, and began to read.

MAYHEM AT MALFOY MANOR, proclaimed the headline; MANY CONFIRMED DEAD.