Hermione,
Sorry it's taken me so long to write. To be honest, I needed to process some of the things you said at the Burrow. Of course, I was angry with Ron's reaction, it was completely absurd and he deserved the beating he got, but I understand his confusion. Whatever...developments you've experienced with the Slytherins hasn't been something we've shared, which is interesting because we've shared practically everything else since we were eleven. When you defended Malfoy the other day and even claimed you loved another Slytherin boy, I'll admit I was more than shocked. I'm not angry, I just don't understand. All I know of him is cruelty, so I find it difficult to trust there's been a change worth earning your friendship over the past six months.
That being said, I remember a time in our third year when Ron and I were terrible to you, and it was all over a stupid broom. We treated you like rubbish for weeks and looking back, I wouldn't blame you if you had walked away from our friendship entirely. Instead, you offered us forgiveness. If for some reason, your compassionate heart has done the same for Malfoy and his friends, I really can't blame them for jumping at the chance. You see, you've always been the best of us, the glue that held our trio together. I know you often have felt like a third wheel, like the 'second-best' friend for me, but that isn't true. I love you and Ron equally, just in different ways. I guess what I'm trying to say is I want you to be happy, and if that means you find a home in the snake pit...I would never try to stop you. You make people better, and the Slytherins surely need it.
We're taking care of Ron. You know how he is...he'll come around. Bill, Charlie, and George gave him a piece of their mind when Ginny told them what happened, and Molly is making him eat stale toast for every meal. He's a right prat, but I can tell he at least feels badly. It's not enough, but I'm sure he'll be apologizing any day now.
Send Ginny my love,
Harry
Hermione set down Harry's letter with a sigh. It was the first thing she saw when she entered the empty room, and her curiosity won out over her exhaustion. She ignored the other correspondences and hastily ripped open the parchment to see Harry's unruly script. She didn't know what to think about Ron, but she was grateful for Harry. Once she finished reading over it three times, she placed it back on the stack of correspondences and wrote a brief thank you to send back. Later, she would need to read the one from Hagrid–perhaps he was responding to her inquiry regarding creatures in the Forbidden Forest showing symptoms of blood curses. It could wait.
Hermione drifted wearily to the prefect baths. She wasn't necessarily qualified to bathe there, but she suspected most students would be in classes now anyway. She carefully pulled off her ruined clothing and unpinned her tangled mess of curls. Cleaning charms only went so far; although the physical blood, dirt, and sweat were vanished, the spell left a grimy film on the skin. She fully intended to soak in the baths.
Hermione always had felt that the bath was a wonderful place to think. Sometimes her brightest ideas were born in the steam, and today she meant to focus her contemplations on the avensegium allegiata spell. As she lathered soap into her hair, she mused. Draco's theory was brilliant. To combine both the locating spell, avenseguim, and an allegiance spell should work, especially if they wanted to develop magic that left Theo's healthy cells alone while attacking anything foreign and malignant. So why didn't it? Perhaps the spell simply did not know what it was supposed to be allegiant to–the caster or what it was being cast on. Hermione scrubbed at her arms, her mind drifting.
They were missing a key part, she just didn't know what it was. With a pang of sadness, she realized there was someone who would know exactly what to do. Snape. Although he almost always had an intolerable attitude, he was one of the most intelligent wizards Hermione had ever met. She would love to pick his brain on this particular subject. Surely the Half-Blood Prince himself would have an idea about creating an offensive biological spell.
She buried her face in her arms on the side of the bath and groaned. She needed Draco's mind; it was difficult to process the technicalities of spell development alone in addition to being this worn out. Lazily, she kicked her toes in the bubbles.
The door swung open suddenly, and Ginny stood frowning at Hermione's dripping hair. "Malfoy's outside the common room, and says he won't leave until he sees you."
Hermione took in her friend's pinched lips. "Is something wrong? We only just got back."
Ginny shrugged. "I've no bloody idea, but he was even more miserable to speak with than usual. Where were you two last night? You look terrible, even with a cleaning." Hermione winced at the blunt words and glanced down at herself. In the morning light, bruises were visible all over her body, and she certainly had dark circles under her eyes.
"Thanks a lot, Gin."
"Anytime. Hurry up though, would you? He's going to bang down the door, and the fat lady is having a meltdown." Hermione rolled her eyes and eased out of the bath. She quickly wrung out her hair and twisted it into a bun, sticking her wand through to hold it. She'd only brought a set of pajamas to change into. At least it was better than she had looked earlier. Ginny scrunched her nose but grabbed Hermione's dirtied clothing to take back to their dorm. "Honestly, you should just burn these. They stink as bad as Charlie."
Hermione padded down the hall, waving to Boris the statue as she left the fifth floor. Just outside the Gryffindor common room, Malfoy and the fat lady glared intensely at one another. Hermione cleared her throat from behind, and Draco made a rude gesture to the portrait before turning to face her. His scowl seemed to deepen.
"Something's going on with Theo. I don't know what, but he said he needed to tell me something and I ran to come find you. I figured you needed to be there."
Hermione was taken aback for a moment. She could only nod and hope he understood her thanks. She was touched that he instinctually included her and hurried after him down the countless staircases to the dungeons.
Before Draco pushed open his door, he turned and looked at Hermione hesitantly. His face was painted with worry, and his eyes drifted down her clean but clearly battered form, pausing below her collarbone where she knew the skin had turned shades of purple and green. "Just, erm," he mumbled, "prepare yourself. The room looks a bit odd." He pushed open the door.
Hermione was glad she had pasted a neutral expression on her face because the sight before her would have rattled her without the warning. For some reason, the floor was littered with empty potion bottles, and Draco was shoving them to the sides to make a pathway. Theo sat cross-legged in the center of the room, and while Draco worked on clearing the floor, Hermione crouched down and cupped Theo's cheek.
She searched his eyes for something, but he looked lost. After a second, he whispered, "I didn't want you to be here for this."
Hermione scrunched her eyebrows in confusion but didn't press the issue. Draco lowered himself next to her. "Alright, mate. We're both here to do whatever you need. Tell us what's going on."
Theo appeared so distraught that she reached for one of his hands and squeezed it. Beside her, Draco did the same. This seemed to calm all of them, and Theo took a breath before speaking.
"I don't know where to start."
Hermione met Draco's eyes in silent question, and it was Draco who answered. "Perhaps the vials?"
Theo shrugged before launching into a tale that grew more twisted with each passing minute. He described the discovery last term that doubling his doses took away the usual symptoms for much longer. He could go days without feeling weak or losing much blood due to coughing. When he tried tripling the doses, the sharp pain in his chest disappeared, and he wondered how he had never tried this before. Multiplying the potions created a lightness inside him that he had never known. For the first time in his life, Theo had felt relatively normal. He was just a teenage boy who loved his friends, went to parties, and doted on his girlfriend. He could play his music for hours on end, and on some days he could even run. Was this how everyone else had always felt? It was exquisite, it was addictive. As things progressed with Hermione, he had thought that this discovery would give them what he only sometimes let himself imagine–a future. For those first few months, it was bliss.
During the Christmas holidays, Theo realized he had made a mistake: he had run out of the potions sent from St Mungo's. He explained his trek down to Madam Zabini's basement, and Tilly sending more potions to his dorm. He assumed everything would sort itself out, but then he began feeling strange. A constant shaking seemed to follow him, and his fingers began turning blue-tipped.
At this point in the story, both Draco and Hermione inspected their friend's hands. Just as he said, the fingernails showed signs of cyanosis; dread began filling Hermione's stomach, but she shoved it away for the time being. She needed to hear the entire story before her anxiety took over. Theo was plowing forward in his narrative, picking up speed but losing volume. He couldn't seem to meet their gazes anymore and closed his eyes.
Theo spoke of a day recently when the coughs he thought he had left behind him came back with a vengeance. Over and over, he expelled blood as his chest wreaked havoc on his body. He had quickly grabbed for more potions, but the coughs didn't subside after two, three, or four doses. For the first time in a long while, Theo was terrified. He didn't know much, but he realized it was a bad sign if it took more than four doses of potion to quell the symptoms that had formerly disappeared after one. Maybe he had subconsciously known something was the matter; perhaps that was why he continued to grab his cane every morning despite feeling mostly fine. He couldn't stop though. He couldn't stop taking more and more of the potions, and now he was out again. The vials all around them were the result of him searching through all of his things for more. In a panic, he had set them all on the floor, forgetting that someone might walk in. He explained how ashamed he felt about the entire thing, but how desperate he was in the moment; he had felt wild, in a frenzy to take more and more potion, regardless of if he needed it.
His voice was hardly more than a whisper now, and he looked so broken Hermione felt part of her heart shattering. Theo heaved a shuttering breath. "What is happening to me?"
Hermione pulled him close, nestling her face in his shoulder. She didn't want him to see her face, because she was certain some of her horror was showing. She thanked him for being honest with them and reassured him that they loved him, and would do whatever they could to help him. She rubbed soothing circles on his back and Draco rose to vanish all of the vials in the room. When he was finished, Hermione schooled her face into a soft smile and dropped a quick kiss on Theo's lips.
"Draco?" She called behind her. "Can you take Theo down to Madam Pomfrey and tell her I'll be there in a few minutes? There's something I need to take care of." She then turned back to Theo. "Is it alright if we run some tests on you? We need to check on these fingers, and try to control your shaking." He nodded and Hermione stood. "Wonderful. I'll be down in a few."
The moment she turned, her smile fell and pressed into a thin line. When she met Draco's eyes across the room, they shared an uneasy glance. There was no need to say anything because they both knew–this was very, very bad. Hermione strode out of the room and kept her cool all the way to the second-floor girl's lavatory. She calmly approached the center sink that she knew so well, clenching the sides so hard that her knuckles turned white. She stared at the streaming brown eyes in the mirror, and almost couldn't recognize herself. No sound escaped her mouth but a soft gasp of pain. It wasn't a physical pain, so unlike what she felt only a few hours before. No, this pain was in her soul. It was the pain of something inevitable, but terrible. It was the pain of a home destroyed by a hurricane long predicted. The pain of seeing the flame on the stove and still reaching for the hot pan, only to be burned. The pain of knowing there was more pain to come.
Without looking away from the mirror, Hermione raised her wand. It took barely a thought for her to shatter it. She needed to hear it, needed to see the pieces fall down, needed a physical representation of what was happening inside of her. She turned to the next and shattered that one as well. Her bare feet stepped carelessly over the jagged pieces, and she found a sick sort of pleasure in walking over the damage she had done. She pointed her wand at the toilets, exploding the ceramic piping. Water filled the floor, and still, her face remained blank. She rotated, destroying anything in sight, never flinching as shards of glass or stone flew around her. Finally, she faced the door. Leaning against the doorway was the boy she had come to know so well, with a reproduction of the emptiness inside her in his own expression.
His eyes surveyed the damage before flicking his wand to restore the innocent utilities. "Are you quite finished?"
"For now."
Draco nodded, eyes an icy grey. "Maybe I'll join you later. This looks quite therapeutic. We're ready for you in the infirmary."
Hermione quickly healed the cuts on her feet and followed Draco out of the lavatory. Today was going to be an extremely long day.