Secrets and Masks

66. Your fault

She'd promised him that she was going to try and find a way to save herself and she had done, to begin with. She'd started to read books on dark magic and learned what she could, but her heart wasn't in it, not until he motivated her.

Granger wasn't selfish like he was. She was good and pure. She didn't want to die but she was willing to sacrifice her life if it meant everyone else could live. Her and her bloody Utilitarian bullshit.

She'd done awful things during the war but she was still a good person, and the thing about good people? They were easy to manipulate. There was always something that could be used as leverage. Always something that tugged on their heartstrings that could be used to wrap around their necks and hang them with, and Malfoy, he had just the thing.

He told her that if she died, he'd follow her.

It wasn't empty words, he'd been ready to copy whatever blood ritual the Dark Lord had used and bind his life to hers to prove to her how serious he was but he didn't need to. The threat alone had been enough.

He shouldn't have been so proud of it but he was. He'd done far worse in the past to get what he wanted. Blackmail, manipulation, gaslighting, he didn't care what it was called, he would have done anything to get her to try and save herself.

She'd been ready to die but when Draco's life was suddenly hanging in the balance? That changed things. The thought of him dying lit the match and burned the fight back into her. Suddenly, she was staying up all hours to try and figure a way out of this. Suddenly, she was fighting again, and it was a good fucking job that she was, because conquering death? Not fucking easy.

For all the might and power of the wizarding world, Malfoy thought that surely someone somewhere would have thought of a fucking spell to beat or trick death by now?! All these great scholars and wizards, and none of them - not a single fucking one - had gotten anywhere near figuring it out but no, there was nothing.

Draco searched and searched. He snuck into Hogwarts Library and stole books and scrolls from the graveyard that was once his school. He sacrificed sleep and he read until his eyes felt like they were bleeding, but despite his desperate attempts, he couldn't find anything on bringing someone back from the dead.

The resurrection stone was gone and unicorn blood was ineffective. He thought he was finally onto a breakthrough when he'd dreamt about phoenix tears. Pheonix tears could heal anything, so he'd thought - fucking prayed to Gods and Deity's that he didn't believe in - that those tears they had stored away in the cupboard could somehow - fucking somehow - might be able to heal that awful thing that'd attached itself and was poisoning the woman he loved but no, even they failed.

Creating a Horcrux meant tearing a person's soul into several pieces, and with each failed attempt to save her, Draco felt like his own soul was being torn apart.

The only other thing he could think of was possibly siphoning the Horcrux out of her and putting it into something else. That could work - he was sure of, was fucking clinging to like a dying man clings to a lifeline in a storm.

A Horcrux was dark magic but it was still magic, Granger had managed to siphon Draco's magic without even realising that she was doing it, there had to be a way to siphon the Horcrux out of her and put it into something else so that they could destroy it.

Granger wasn't convinced that it would work but she'd agreed to let him try. Agree might've been too strong of a word, he hadn't given her the option to refuse.

So that was how they'd spent their days over the last few weeks. Practising and practising. Placing their wands at different pressure points around her body and trying to pull the dark magic that made up the Horcrux out of her.