April 2003
Draco called her. Often.
Sometimes, his duties in Voldemort's army came to an end in the late evening, but most of the time he called her in the early hours of morning. Hermione would work in her potion cabinet or research until her ring burned. Then she'd slip out of Grimmauld Place and apparate to Whitecroft.
She'd barely step through the door before Draco would appear, snatch her up, and apparate them elsewhere. Always a hotel. Rarely the same one, even from one night to the next.
He'd kiss her, cradling her face in his hands, and it felt felt like he was breathing her in.
Then he'd step back enough to look at her.
"You're alright? Are you alright? Has anything happened to you?" He'd run his hands over her to check as he asked.
Every time the same question, as though he didn't believe it until he'd verified it personally.
She hadn't expected him to be so obsessively worried. She'd observed his immediate arrival at Whitecroft over the months; the careful way he'd run his eyes over her after she'd been attacked in Hampshire. She hadn't considered how deep the fear cut into him.
She'd feel herself unwinding under his touch as his fingers ran down her arms, over her hands, and up her spine.
"I'm fine, Draco. You don't need to worry."
The words never seemed to have any effect. He'd turn her face up towards his and stare into her eyes as though he expected to find something in them.
She'd look up at him and calmly let him reassure himself.
Whatever had happened to his mother, Narcissa had never told him fully; either because she couldn't, or in an attempt to spare him. Withholding it had probably been the worst choice.
Draco was like her. He obsessed over what he didn't know more than anything else.
She'd meet his eyes, "Draco, I'm fine. Nothing has happened to me."
When he was certain she truly was wholly uninjured, it was like a tension inside him would finally break. He'd gather her in his arms, sighing with relief while he rested his head on hers.
You did this to him, she reminded herself, and she wrapped her arms tightly around him. You guessed where he was vulnerable, and you exploited it.
She'd run her own fingers over him, trying to detect any injuries on him before he kissed her again.
"Draco, let me heal you."
She never had and never would heal anyone else the way she healed Draco: in his arms, pressed against his body. She'd slide her hands along him and press open-mouthed kisses on his shoulders, hands, and face while she muttered spells. She'd check him over meticulously until he plucked her wand from her fingers and flung it across the room. Then he'd push her down in the bed and take her slowly.
It was nearly always deliriously slowly. He'd stare into her eyes until she almost felt their minds touching.
Other times, he'd arrive drenched in Dark Magic. It would cling to his clothes and skin. When he was like that, he was always more desperate. Harder. Faster. Trying to lose himself in something he could feel.
Against a wall. Or just on the floor of the hotel room where they landed.
His kisses tasted like ice and sin, and Hermione drank them in until she was gasping.
"You're mine. You're mine." He'd repeat the words over and over like a mantra. "Say it. Say you're mine."
"I'm yours, Draco," she'd promise against his lips, or staring into his eyes.
He'd entwine his fingers with hers and press their foreheads together, and sometimes his whole body would shake. She'd wrap her arms around him and press kisses into his hair.
"I promise, Draco. I'm always going to be yours."
There was a possessive terror in his eyes when he stared at her—in the way he touched her—as though he always expected it to be the last time he ever saw her.
On the days he didn't summon her, she'd walk through Grimmauld Place feeling as though she couldn't breathe until she felt her ring burn.
Then she was the one who would desperately demand to know if he was alright.
"Don't die, Draco."
It was always the last thing she said to him.
The moment before he apparated away, as he stood in his Death Eater robes, she'd say it rather than goodbye. She'd catch his chin in her hand and stare up into his eyes. "Be careful. Don't die."
He'd dip his head forward and kiss her palm as his cool, grey eyes locked onto hers. "You're mine. I'll always come for you."
He always did.
Each day felt as though the odds were being pushed higher. Steeper. She wasn't sure how far the runes and his own determination could take him before it reached a point of utter improbability and everything came crashing down.
She could feel it.
He was walking a razor's edge.
When he slept, she stared at his face and willed him to survive the war.
They'd run away when it was over. Far away. So far no one would ever find them. She promised herself she'd find a way. She promised it to him: that there would be an after.
There were moments when they almost forgot the war around them. Eating breakfasts ordered by room service. Arguing whether food from a greasy spoon constituted as actual food. Taking advantage of the unreasonably large bathtubs that his hotel suites always had. Kissing him.
She could spend a decade kissing him; feeling the burning reverence in the way he touched her.
The moment their lips touched, he'd crush her body against his. His hands would slide along her throat and back to the nape of her neck, tangling his fingers in her hair as he deepened the kiss. He'd cradle her cheek in the palm of his hand and then slip it down along her body.
Then, when she was gasping for breath, he'd pull his mouth away and start kissing along her throat. Sucking on her pulse point while he pulled at her clothes. She'd barely notice her clothing sliding off and falling to the floor as he stripped her and explored her bared skin. As she unbuttoned his shirt and slid her hands along his body.
He'd twist the clasp of her bra, and then jerk it off before his hands would dart up to palm her breasts and tease her until she was whimpering. His mouth would glide along the juncture of her neck and shoulder as he kissed and nipped his way across her skin.
"Perfect." "Beautiful." "Mine." "Mine." He'd breathe the words against her body as he bared her to himself. As he pushed into her. When he gripped her against himself. As she came apart in his arms or under his mouth. When he entwined their fingers, and she felt his hold tighten as he came.
"I'm going to take care of you. I swear, Hermione, I'm always going to take care of you." He'd mutter the words against her skin or into her hair in such a low voice she could barely hear them.
One night at the beginning of May, when she was wrapped in his arms and half asleep, she heard him repeating it; as though it were a promise he were making to himself again and again. As though he couldn't make himself stop saying it.
She lifted her head and held his face between her hands so that she could look into his eyes.
"Draco, I'm alright. Nothing is going to happen to me."
He just stared at her with the same bitterly resigned expression he worn while training her. He was bracing himself, waiting for what he regarded as inevitable.
The war was twisted around them like a nest of thorns they couldn't escape from.
He subsided and rested his head against her chest, wrapping his arms around her while she tangled her fingers in his hair.
She could still feel him repeating the words.
She hesitated for several minutes before she spoke.
"Tell me about your mother, Draco. Tell me everything you could never tell anyone."
He stiffened and was silent. She slid her fingers over his shoulders and traced along the scars from the runes. "Using Occlumency is just hiding it. You can tell me, I'll help you carry it. Tell me about your mother."
He didn't speak or move for such a long time she wondered if he'd fallen asleep. Then he turned his head just enough that she could see his profile. His expression was carefully closed, but she could see him considering.
"I'd never seen anyone tortured before," he said at last. "She was—the first person I ever saw tortured. He—," Hermione felt his jaw roll as he hesitated, "—he experimented on her and let—a few other Death Eaters contribute ideas about what to do to her. To punish the Malfoys."
As he spoke, his eyes gradually grew wider and his expression unmasked. He stared across the room, his eyes far away.
Hermione watched, and she could see him, just sixteen and home for the holidays.
Home. Walking unknowingly into a nightmare that he would never, never escape from.
"I thought—," his voice was suddenly younger. Boyish. "For a while, I thought that if I killed Dumbledore soon enough that somehow she'd recover. That I could fix it—if I could succeed. But—she was a shadow of herself when I returned from school. I think—she had tried to hold on over the summer, when I was being trained. But when I was gone, she broke—"
He was quiet for a moment.
He started to speak again but then pressed his mouth shut. His lips twitched as though he kept choosing and then discarding what he was going to say next.
"It wasn't even a month. I wasn't even gone a month," he finally said.
Hermione laced her fingers in his hair. He closed his eyes and drew his chin down.
"It was supposed to all be reversible, to motivate me, nothing to physically maim her. But he wrecked her mind. Using legilimency for torture is his favourite technique. She had seizures, mostly small ones, but occasionally they'd be severe. Especially later. She just—wasted away inside that cage. When she was startled, she'd close her eyes and start rocking and making these whimpering noises inside her mouth. She wouldn't stop for hours, and I couldn't—couldn't always stay with her—because I had to train."
He wouldn't look at Hermione as he spoke. He kept staring across the room. His voice was low and it wavered.
"The day I killed Dumbledore, the Dark Lord demanded we have dinner with him. To celebrate—he said we were celebrating my success. She'd been released for only a few hours, and he wanted her play hostess. Her tremors were so severe she could barely hold the silverware. Her fork kept rattling against the plate, and then she'd drop it and panic when she tried to pick it up. Apparently the noise was distracting. So the Dark Lord took a steak knife and drove it through her left hand and into the table. Then he left her there, bleeding, until he retired. I was seated across from her, and she just looked at me the whole time, shaking her head to warn me not to do anything."
He gripped Hermione's hand. "I couldn't—do anything. I tried to shield her. I kept her in her rooms as much as possible. I brought in healers to help her recover. The mind healers couldn't do a damn thing. I should have had her treated sooner. That's what they all told me. That I should have gotten her treated sooner."
Hermione squeezed his hand and slid her fingers across his runes. Unhesitating, cunning, unfailing, ruthless, and unyielding; driven to succeed.
To avenge his mother. In penance for all the ways he felt he'd failed her.
"I'm so sorry, Draco."
He was quiet. He closed his eyes and drew a sharp breath.
"Then—" his voice cut off. He tried again. "Then—" Draco's mouth twisted, and he went silent for several seconds.
"Then—she'd just started to recover a bit, and I hesitated at the Finch-Fletchleys. There was a little girl; she couldn't have been in primary school yet. Unforgivables—there's no cheating with them. You have to feel it. You have to mean it. I was ordered to use the cruciatus and I couldn't—I couldn't make it work. She was—so little."
He swallowed. "Bellatrix cursed me and the girl before letting Fenrir Greyback have her instead. He—enjoyed children. When my failure was reported, the Dark Lord took it as a sign I wasn't committed or motivated enough. He had my mother brought out so he could demonstrate how to properly perform the cruciatus."
There was a long silence.
"She'd—just started to get better when it happened."
Hermione suspected that her hand would have bruises where their fingers were entwined.
"Bellatrix did care for her sister, in a way. She never spoke against the Dark Lord, but she did try to keep me from failing. The summer before I returned to school, and when she realised that my punishments would be meted out on my mother, she poured everything into getting me to a point where it happened rarely. I asked her to teach me everything she'd learned from the Dark Lord, and she did."
His voice had shifted. It grew more familiar as the story moved through his life. Traces of his hard, clipped tone started to emerge.
"I tried everything to get my mother away. To get her out. But I couldn't run with her. I had everything prepared—but I couldn't convince her to leave without me. I considered trying to imperio her, to make her to go. But I knew her. If I got knocked out or died, the second it dropped, she would have come back to find me. And I couldn't lock her away somewhere so that she couldn't. I wasn't—I didn't want to be someone who caged her. I didn't want her to feel trapped again."
His voice grew deadened. "When she died—I arrived to find Lestrange Manor in ruins. I didn't know what had happened until I was summoned. It was barely mentioned that she'd been there—that it counted for anything that she'd died. Dumbledore's wand had split in half. Something to do with Bellatrix somehow. The wand was the only thing that mattered. He killed every Death Eater who survived to report back. I was standing there, surrounded by the bodies, trying not to start screaming."
He fell silent and didn't say anything else for a long time.
Hermione shifted out from under him and sat up. There was a dull, tearing sensation in her chest as she stared down at him.
His eyes were guarded as he looked back her.
She touched him lightly on the cheek. "Draco—I am not your mother."
He flinched and started to open his mouth, but she continued without letting him interrupt. "Moody and Kingsley are not going to hurt me if you fail an assignment. They are not going to torture or endanger me to punish you. I'm not a hostage. I'm in this war because I choose to be. I am not fragile. I am not going to break. Please," she brushed her thumb over the arch of his cheekbone, "believe that about me."
"Let me get you out. Please, Hermione. I swear to god, it won't affect my aid to the Order. Let me get you out."
She shook her head. "I can't leave. I am loyal to the Order. I'm not going to run while everyone else is fighting. We fight this war together. Let me help you. You don't have to do everything alone."
His eyes flickered, and she saw the despair and resignation in them. It tore at something in her.
"Draco, you can't ask me to run away from the war."
His lip curled and he sneered. "Why not? How have you not already done enough for them? They sold you. What if I'd—," his voice cut off. He looked away from her. "The same offer from someone who'd meant it. You would have still—and if I hadn't trained you, Potter would have still left you on your own in that field."
She traced her thumb across his skin. There was the barest, faintest line of a scar there, from where she'd hexed him. "I agreed to it, Draco, all of it. No one made me. We don't get to choose when we've done enough and then leave others behind to bear the consequences. That isn't how a war like this works."
He clenched his jaw and stared up at her bitterly.
He didn't care. He didn't care whether anyone survived the war but her. They could all die, and he wouldn't care.
He'd made an Unbreakable Vow. Even if he could get his Dark Mark off, he couldn't run, not as long as the war continued. He'd trapped himself in heart of it.
Hermione gave a sad sigh and dropped her head, burying her face in his shoulder. He wrapped his arms tightly around her.
She was almost asleep when she heard the faint whisper of his voice begin once again. "I'm going to take care of you. I swear, I'm always going to take care of you."
The rescues ground to a halt. Kingsley put them on hold until more was known about the trace from Sussex. Early prototypes of the shackles were being rolled out to all the prisons.
The Resistance was almost entirely driven underground and into the Muggle world. There were so many dark beings and Snatchers it was difficult to move.
Kingsley began leaning even more heavily in his reconnaissance team and utilising Draco within Voldemort's army. Misinformation. Sabotage. As though the Death Eater army were a machine to be deconstructed. The envelopes with orders kept growing thicker every time Hermione delivered them.
Draco rarely mentioned what he did, but she could tell he was on the verge of breaking from the pressure. He grew steadily more and more desperate each time he saw her.
It burned in her. To watch him eroding under everything he was expected to maintain and produce for both sides.
Almost all pressure on Hermione from the Order vanished. She was a collar around Draco's throat; Kingsley and Moody had nothing more urgent to ask than that she maintain it.
She was simply left to live with it.
She felt like a caged animal inside Grimmauld Place. She travelled from safe house to safe house just for a change of scenery.
When she wasn't healing or caring for Ginny, she poured her energy into research and experimental magic. She went further into researching Dark Magic than she ever had in the past. Maybe the Order wouldn't use it, but Draco might.
She tried to find a way around the shackles. Draco regularly brought updated scrolls of analysis for her, and she pored over them, trying to find a flaw, something to exploit. They were ingenious. They were a work of art.
They horrified Hermione with their rapid evolution.
In addition to irremovable traces, Sussex began experimenting with shackles intended to suppress magic. Tungsten inlaid with iron. Tungsten plated with copper or aluminium. Shackles with wand core materials.
She'd barely sleep unless she was with Draco. The rest of the time, she'd just lie in cold terror at the thought of what would happen to anyone captured. The Order might not ever be able to save any of them.
Death Eaters were already being given the shackles to carry in order to more easily apprehend members of the Resistance. Once closed, a shackle couldn't be reopened without two bearers of the Dark Mark performing an incantation variant of the Morsmordre.
Dean Thomas appeared at Grimmauld Place a day after capture. His wand hand severed. He'd stolen a knife and sawn his hand off at the wrist in order to escape.
A week later Severus brought word that the shackles were being moved out of Sussex in order to expand production. They would now come in sets of two.
Draco brought Hermione a set of the prototypes one evening and watched her analyse it.
They looked almost like bracelets.
Hermione built an elaborate web of analytic magic around it, dissecting all the components; the alchemy, charms, the arithmancy, the runes set in the iron core.
She spent hours trying to find a flaw, until she fell asleep in the middle of it and woke to find Draco carrying her to bed.
"I can't—there isn't a way around them." Her brain felt clouded by exhaustion. She was almost shaking with frustration. "There has to be something. Using imperio won't work, it shows up in the spell signature and cancels the incantation. I thought, just cut through them, but the core is charmed to explode. I'm just not—maybe I have to come at it from a different angle. My alchemy is all self-taught. Maybe I just haven't researched enough."
She started to pull away from him and tried to go back toward the stacks of books she'd brought. Draco stopped her. He slid one arm around her waist and wrapped the other around her shoulders.
"You can't save everyone, Granger."
She stilled and stared despairingly across the room.
"I don't know how we're going to win this war," she finally said.
Draco was silent. There was nothing to say that wouldn't be a lie.
She lifted her hand and gripped his arm around her shoulders.
"I don't know how to save anyone. Everything I do just puts it off so that they die in a worse way. I wish—I wish I'd never become a healer."
She'd never admitted it to anyone before. That she hated it.
She told him about the horcruxes. She wasn't supposed to. She hadn't been cleared to. She told him anyway. Everything she knew, about their creation and destruction, and all the Order's ideas about what they could be. About the Founders' lost items.
"We think there might be one in Hogwarts," she said when she showed him all her research. "But I don't know how many he could have. There couldn't be more than five, could there? Splitting his soul like that—it's poison in the body. It will eat him from the inside out. His current form is the best restoration he could manage with a regeneration potion. It should have returned him to his physical prime, but his soul is so deteriorated making a sort of body was the most it could do. So there has to be a limit to the horcruxes. I don't think he can keep making them. If we can destroy all the horcruxes, he'll become unstable enough that even if no one kills him, eventually he'll just cease to exist. But we don't know where they could be. There's so little information about his past."
"He gave one to my father during the first war?"
"When the Chamber of Secrets was opened during our second year, it was caused by the soul fragment possessing Ginny Weasley. Your father put the horcrux in with her books in an attempt to discredit Arthur Weasley."
"If they were made during the first war, and he entrusted one to his followers—I'll look into it. You should have told me sooner."
"I shouldn't even be telling you now." She rested her hand over his heart. "I wasn't trying to add something else. I just—I don't have anyone to talk to. It helps me to think if I can talk aloud."
He snorted. "If it ends this, it's worth it. What is the Order doing? Everything Moody and Shacklebolt assign me is just buying time." His voice was vibrating with fury.
"Draco..."
He didn't say anything else, but his rage was palpable.
He didn't trust Kingsley or Moody or the Order. He was terrified if he died, they might sell her again to try to survive.
And she couldn't promise him that she wouldn't. She would do anything to win the war. He knew that. She suspected that fear drove him more than anything else.
He wrapped his arms around her, and she could feel it in his hands, in the way he touched her.
She rested her head on his chest and listened to his heart.
"You should get body-armor," she said. "I was researching it. Ukrainian Ironbelly hide. It's lightweight, highly resistant to magic, and almost impenetrable to physical attacks. If you wear it under your robes, no one will even know it's there. It could save your life someday."
He didn't say anything. He was still staring down at her research on the horcruxes.
Sometimes they didn't leave the shack in Whitecroft immediately. He'd arrive with so many injuries he'd be going into shock. Other times, she'd feel the tremors of cruciatus in his hands.
She'd heal him and then sit with his head in her lap while he stabilised. She'd treat the tremors in his arms and hands while he floated on the edge of consciousness. She muttered apologies to him under her breath as she tapped her wand tip across his hands, bending, and rubbing, and massaging his fingers until they stopped twitching.
You're killing him. You're killing him. This is because of you.
She let herself cry over him when he wasn't conscious to see it. She gripped his hands in hers and tried to fix him.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry." She said it over and over.
She'd wipe her eyes and banish all her tears before she rennervated him. She'd feel the tension tear through his body as he regained consciousness and then feel him breathe when he looked up and saw her.
He'd apparate them to a hotel and sleep with his arms wrapped possessively around her.
When even Draco's presence was insufficient to quiet her demons, she'd study his face and listen to his heartbeat, quietly promising him, "I'm going to take care of you. I swear, I'm always going to take care of you."