Love Is The Darkest Art

Part 41: Mudblood/Pureblood

Scene 69:

Hermione wailed over the prone form of Draco Malfoy. Her protection charm had worn off but it hadn't been enough to save him from the cruel hands of fate. So all she could do was hold him close, clutching his head to her breast and cry. "No, no, no," she sobbed. "Please come back, Draco. Don't go!"

Harry stood there awash in the moment. It nearly made him cry himself, seeing his dear friend overcome with tears. It was no secret Draco Malfoy never cared for him, but this reminded him too much of last year. The Tri-Wizards Tournament. The Death of Cedric Diggory.

Ron wasn't on the edge of crying, but he was still sad, mostly for Hermione, who seemed to be taking Draco's apparent passing harder than he imagined she should. Just look at all the horrible things Malfoy had done to her over the years. Perhaps she blamed herself for whatever had happened out here before their arrival.

Hermione turned her pleading eyes on Severus Snape. "Please, Professor. Do something. Bring him back!"

Snape frowned, but one had to wonder if it was out of compassion or because he didn't want to be bothered helping any more than he had. He shook his head.

"Oh please," Hermione wailed with a fresh round of sobbing at his refusal.

"I'm sorry, Granger. I can't."

"Why not?"

"It is a dark magic that has stolen a piece of his soul. A piece that now puts him in this nonresponsive state. It is beyond me to restore it. It takes a darker art than I possess."

Hermione looked down at Draco's face. This can't be the end, she thought. I refuse to accept it. Snape was the darkest wizard at Hogwarts and if he didn't have the power to restore Draco, then who did? Who had it within them? What was the darkest art anyway? And then she remembered. All the places she'd been with Draco. All the things they'd done. Things they'd discovered and learned. Draco had given her the answer to his life. He'd already shown her the darkest art. They had lived in it. Felt it. Shared it together. Their forbidden love. She began to cry anew, and when a teardrop touched his face, it was like a drop of water in an ocean they had already swam in. And then the realization hit her.

Hermione looked at the hole in the ice. Then she looked up at Snape and tried to smile. "It wasn't my protection charm that made Draco rise back up from the lake," she said. "Was it?"

Snape said nothing. Hermione looked like she had just discovered an answer to a test. She looked at Draco once more. He'd been taken by the lost boys of the lake, thrown into its depths. She had loomed over the hole, trying to grab him. A tear had fallen from her cheek into the cold water. And the lake had released his body. It had been returned to her. Now, she knew how to get them to give up his soul as well.

Hermione threw herself at the opening in the ice. "Please give him back!" she shouted to the dark depths. Then somberly, "I know you may not understand. Just what people mean to each other. How one could care for another above themselves. I know you feel lost. Down there. Cold and lonely. I know it must be the most miserable thing ever. But that's the way I'll feel up here if you keep even the smallest part of him. "

The tears began to come, running from her eyes, down her cheek, to drop from her skin into the icy water. "I've never felt this way before," she continued. "Never wanted something so much that I would beg for it to remain. But the truth is, I can't bear the thought of Hogwarts without Draco. Of Slytherin, the house you came from, without Draco." She hesitated only a second. "Of me without Draco."  A burst of sobbing, brought on by this devastating thought, sent more tears into the water, ripples spreading, not outward, but down as they sank like stone into the fathoms of the lake.

She waited, but nothing happened. Her tears were not working as she thought they would. Hadn't she cried enough to let them know the depths of her heart were just as lonely as the lake's? Wasn't love the darkest art that could achieve anything with its mad, unpredictable magic? She looked at Snape, her eyes red rimmed and still leaking tears. "It's not working," she lamented.

Snape nodded as if he knew that speaking to ghosts achieved nothing, relying on one's own sorrow would bring nothing back. It would take more than shouting down into darkness. "Perhaps," he said, "you are imploring the wrong ones."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you really think the key to his soul and all its little pieces are in the hands of the dead?" He scowled. "Perhaps education is lost on you."

Hermione turned and looked at Draco's still form. She wiped her face and knelt beside him. She lifted his head into her lap. She closed her eyes to fight back a fresh round of tears. His eyes were closed too, but hadn't she'd seen them open a second before he'd been tossed into the lake?

"Please Draco," she said, her voice barely over a whisper. "Open your eyes. Come back. I'll be your soul, just come back."

Nothing. No fluttering of his eyelids, not a single twitch.

"Come on baby, you can do it."

Standing at the sidelines, Ron looked at Harry with a quizzical look. "Baby?"

"Draco Malfoy," Hermione continued, "you listen to me now, and you listen good. I'm your mudblood, okay? But you make me feel completely magical. You make me feel pureblood. You make me feel..." She stopped suddenly, lifted her head skyward as if muttering a prayer, then looked down at Draco again. "You wake up now, you little shit!" She pounded her fists against his chest. "Asshole! Don't you leave me! I'm not going to let you leave me without so much as a goodbye! Open your beady little eyes right now! Say something stupid like you always do."  She clasped her hands together and  began to push on his chest, trying to force air into his lungs and make him awake. This might have worked among muggles, but she knew he was already breathing. He was just trapped somewhere inside. She felt so helpless. She had to do something. She began to cry again in her desperation. The tears came much faster this time, dropping from her eyes and falling onto Draco's face. She soon followed her anguish and pressed her cheek to his. "I love you," she whispered. "I truly, really do. Our time together has been the most exciting, beautiful time of my life. If I can't have you back, then let me join you wherever you are." She let out a loud sob and she felt something against her cheek. Was that his eyelids twitching?

She pulled away to look at him. His eyes were closed, but something was definitely going on behind them.

"Draco?"

His lips trembled. Fingers moved. His eyes slowly fluttered open. Welled with tears of his own, they focused on her. "I'm so glad you don't ever shut up," he whispered hoarsely, the old mischievous look coming back into his eyes.

Her sob turned to a cry of joy. "Draco!"

He mustered a tired smile. Though his face had bern pale from the cold, a warmth seemed to coming back to his cheeks. "That's why I love you, you know. Those constantly flapping lips of yours."

She couldn't help but laugh. Her Draco was back. Whether she or her tears had brought the missing piece of  his soul back, or the dark denizens of the lake had just released it, she didn't know. In the end, it didn't matter. All that mattered was he was back, whole and complete. And this made her complete once more as well.

"I love you too," she said. She leaned down and kissed him. "So much." His lips parted, as did hers, full upon each other, as if they were the last two pieces of a puzzle finding where they belonged. And then came the memories. She and him in the library. The greenhouse. The astronomy tower. In the tent in the forest. The rain. Dancing unseen under an invisibility cloak. Cuddled up alone at Malfoy manor after a death eater attack. It washed over her like his kisses, making her forget everything around her. She put a hand to his face, just as his rested against a spot of bare skin just under her throat. The cold was forgotten. Death a never to remembered dream. They surrendered to the kiss as if they were alone, not noticing that Severus Snape was frowning at them, nor hearing Ron ask Harry, "Um, Did she just say she loved Draco?"