Blood Bound

Chapter 29 - Pando

She knew there was one in the bag somewhere. She hadn't been able to throw it away, so she'd tucked the last vial away in the bottom of her old beaded bag. It was intended as a 'break glass in case of emergency' failsafe. This was most definitely an emergency, and Hermione had broken the glass alright. She was literally kneeling in the remnants of an old astronomy telescope that she'd accidentally smashed while digging through her trunk.

The act of rummaging blindly through the contents of the bag; the small porcelain beads clicking as her movements caused them to bump into each other, and the opening of the bag chafing against the skin on the inside of her arm. It caused all her memories of the horcrux hunt, all the fear, to come crashing back in waves.

Her blood was pounding in her ears and she distantly felt the glass under her knees biting into her skin, her blood slowly pooling below her. Her scar from Bellatrix was searing on her forearm with near-blinding pain. It felt as though it were slythering under her skin, though this wasn't the first time she'd had phantom sensations from it. She scratched at it viciously in between reaching blindly into various corners of the bag.

"I know I left a fucking potion in here somewhere" she muttered madly to herself. The objects she was upsetting in her bag fell and crashed inside its depths. "Just one, I just need one to quiet his stupid voice just a little, just for a minute please." The end of her rant broke off in a wracking sob, her body curling in on itself as though to block out the noise coming from within.

How can I's be any quieter?  It hissed tauntingly I's in the mudblood's mind, no no no, not making any noise at all.

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Her voice came out almost like a screech, the sound foreign to her own ears.

The mudblood is not the boss, mudblood should not silence when I's only telling the truth, the truth the mudblood be knowing already. The s's were accentuated to a taunting hiss, and Hermione was ready to abandon her search for the vial in favour of, of -well Hermione wasn't quite certain what she was going to do- when her hand finally wrapped around a familiar-shaped glass bottle. Relief washed through her as she removed her arm from the bag, vial in hand. She held it up to the light, eyes not daring to look away from the container of blue potion lest it disappear.

She was attempting to un-stopper the vial -her hands shaking no matter how hard she willed them to stop- when a cold hand wrapped around her wrists, forcing her movements to stop. Furiously, she looked up to identify who the offending hand belonged to and her eyes met Draco's silver. The shiny depths were swimming with concern and confusion as they stared at each other, frozen, for what felt like decades but couldn't have been more than a few ticks of the clock.

"Love" his voice was soft, unlike the firm grip he had on her arms. "What's going on? What's the matter with you?"

--

Granger looked a right mess. Draco knelt in front of her on the cold stone waiting for an answer, acutely aware that the moisture seeping through his trousers was her blood. He scanned her face as he held her wrists in an iron grip, keeping the potion she clutched in one hand out of reach. Her honey brown eyes were dark, and her pupils blown wide in panic. There was sweat beading around her hairline, her breathing was short and uneven, and the skin of her forearm was bright red with claw marks around her 'mudblood' scar. Her hands were shaking, even in his grasp and when he met her eyes again, she flinched and averted her eyes quickly.

"I-" she started to answer him, but whatever her words might have been they died in her throat, replaced by a pitiful whimper as she weakly attempted to wrestle herself out of his grasp. Draco wasn't even sure if she knew who he was, her gaze was unfocused, like she was looking right through him. Unsure what to do, unsettled by the witch's behaviour, and frankly a tad annoyed; he opted to give her a hard shake in an attempt to jostle her out of whatever state she'd put herself in.