June 2005
She pressed her hands over her mouth as she kept crying and crying.
Draco didn't touch her. When her sobbing finally slowed, she sat slumped against the wall, her shoulders still shaking.
She heard him inhale slowly.
"You don't need to do anything. I'm not expecting anything of you," he finally said in a quiet voice. "I won't approach again. Wait here, I'll call Topsy."
He shifted and turned, but her hand shot out, and she grabbed the hem of his robes. "No. No, don't leave."
Her hand shook, but she didn't let go.
"Don't go. I don't want you to go."
He stood beside her while she tangled her fingers in the fabric and kept leaning against the wall.
It took her half an hour before she could stand up and walk the rest of the way to her room. She paused in the doorway, her chest still hitching.
"How many wards?"
He was silent for several seconds.
"About eighty now."
She made it across the room and dropped on her side onto the bed, burying her face in the fabric of his cloak. It smelled like him. Cedar, oakmoss, and papyrus.
He pulled the coverlet up over her shoulder. She caught hold of his hand and gripped it. His skin was as warm as she remembered it. She pulled his hand against her jaw, her eyes tightly closed, and gripped it for several minutes.
She slowly let go of him. "You have to come see me so I know you're alright. Otherwise-I'll worry."
The next day Topsy brought a strengthening potion.
Hermione walked slowly around her room and then into the hallway, trailing her fingers along the wall.
Her head hurt less than it had in over a month, and her memories of Draco were growing clearer. They still felt distant, as though she were viewing them through a telescope in the back of her mind. The gaps in her recollection slowly closed. She remembered Severus' Unbreakable Vow and how she'd managed to trick Draco into leaving for long enough for her to go to Sussex.
It was increasingly clear why he'd been so paranoid about inspecting all her memories and ensuring in exhaustive detail that he knew precisely what schemes she had. She'd tricked him once; as Severus had said, Draco never intended to trust her again.
The realisation felt like an additional weight in her chest.
He wasn't using legilimency on her, but he still skimmed her mind using the manacles. He kept her under constant supervision.
He was still lying to her.
She'd suspected it for days, but now that she was able to think coherently, she was certain. She thought it was partly to keep her calm and partly to manage her.
She mulled it over, trying to sense the holes in the new, carefully crafted narrative he'd started feeding her since she'd regained consciousness. Where were the gaps? What were the inconsistencies?
She sat down on the bottom step at the staircase landing, deep in thought.
She heard footsteps, intentionally audible footsteps, and looked up as Draco came around the corner. His expression was carefully closed.
She stared at him. He was in wizarding robes, all black. Since she'd arrived at the manor she'd never seen him in anything but black. He looked as though he expected to have his picture taken.
Ever since he'd been announced as identity behind the High Reeve, the papers had grown rabid in their curiosity and coverage of him. Voldemort's protege. He made appearances at the Ministry, at fundraisers, abroad...
He was traveling frequently. Short trips, usually less than a day, with a noticeable escort.
Draco stood at the landing, looking at her. She'd wrapped his cloak around her shoulders before venturing into the hallway, and his eyes flickered when he noted it. He stared at her for several seconds as though he were re-memorising her.
She studied him in the same way, trying to understand the new version of him.
"I thought you were out," she said when the silence grew oppressive.
"My plans until noon were cancelled." He was studying her carefully, his eyes flicking down to her feet and her hands. "Are you strong enough to walk? I wanted to show you something."
Hermione swallowed. "How far is it?"
"The closer side of the main wing."
Hermione hesitated and then stood, her curiosity piqued. "I think I can walk that far."
He maintained a conscientious distance from her as they walked slowly through the manor. It should have been only a ten minute walk, but it took well over half an hour. He made a convincing job of walking at a glacial speed and didn't say anything when she had to pause along the way and shrank towards the walls when the hallways widened and grew larger.
She studied him the whole way, noting the edge, the precision. He was carefully exacting to an extent that he hadn't been before.
It was his runes, she realised with slow horror. They'd carved him away. They'd ground him down and reduced him until there was nothing to interfere with them.
Unhesitating, cunning, unfailing, ruthless, and unyielding; driven to succeed.
He'd spent sixteen months trying to find her. He'd hunted for her across Europe, all the way to Australia. He'd used genetic traces, repeatedly, despite the fact they were enough Dark Magic to occasionally kill wizards.
He'd known she was somewhere. He'd let himself disappear in the process.
She and Draco came to a stop outside a familiar set of doors. A doorway that had always been locked to Hermione as long as she'd been in the manor.
There was a fluttering sensation in her chest as she recognised where they were.
Her throat tightened, and she looked down, biting her lip. "I can't touch your books anymore; they're hexed," she said.
"I had the elves restore them all."
Hermione looked up sharply.
He was looking at the doors. "I intended to bring you sooner, but you were bedridden."
"Astoria-"
"I'll deal with her if, and when, she comes back. You can come here as much as you want or take books back to your room or somewhere else if you prefer. The house-elves will transport them."
He opened the door to the library and stood back to let her enter.
Hermione peeked inside, taking a hesitant step forward until she stood in the doorway, and drawing a slow, deep breath as she took it in. It was the same. The same library she'd visited two years before, brimming with books she'd longed to read.
She'd been so bored for so long, and here it was, and she could touch them, read them-
She stepped eagerly forward-
Into the cavernous room.
The hair on the back of her neck prickled, causing her to look upwards. The ceiling was shrouded in darkness. It was so high up she couldn't make it out. As she tried to see it, her throat tightened and her fingers twitched.
She felt as though she were shrinking. The room was enormous, the ceiling and walls and shelves stretching up higher and higher...
She was small, and the room was so very big. She was pregnant. She wasn't able to use magic, and she wasn't allowed to defend herself. She couldn't panic, or she might hurt the baby.
Her chest contracted painfully as through there were iron bands clamped around her ribs and crushing her.
She inhaled very slowly through her nose.
It was just a library. She'd been there before with Draco. Topsy would be nearby.
"I have to go now." Draco's voice cut through her thoughts.
He'd been watching her stand in the doorway for several minutes.
He glanced into the library. "You don't have to worry. I re-warded the room, and the estate won't allow anyone to enter while I'm gone."
Hermione wavered a moment longer and then stepped away from the door.
"Maybe-we can come back later."
Draco stared at her, his eyes running over her in a rapid catalogue. Hermione reached out and rested her fingertips in the wall, feeling the wallpaper as she nervously wet her lips.
She tilted her head to the side with a quick jerk. "The-the ceiling is very high. I had forgotten-that the ceiling was so high. I didn't notice that-before." She looked down at her shoes, and her fingers spasmed, causing her nails to scratch audibly across the wall. "I might-I don't-"
Her words stalled as she struggled to articulate it.
Draco's eyes flickered, and his hand moved towards her. "Hermione-"
Her chest and throat contracted, and she twitched, moving incrementally closer to the wall.
His hand dropped.
Hermione pressed her right shoulder against the wall and then crossed her left hand to rest it against the wall too, dropping her chin down.
"I know being afraid because a room has a high ceiling is illogical," her voice was shaking. "I'm trying. I know. I know-I'm trying-I am trying-but-"
Draco stepped away. Her stomach dropped, and her fingers twitched against the wall again.
Too far.
Too close.
Too far.
Draco looked down at the floor near her feet. "You aren't required to do anything you don't want. I should have realised the ceiling might be an issue. When I get back, we can set up a smaller room with the ones you want. If there are books or any subjects that you want today, the house-elves can bring them to you; as many as you want. I'll walk you back."
Her legs were trembling with exhaustion. "No. You should go. I'm getting tired. You'll be late if you walk me all the way back."
He released a breath, giving a short nod. "Right."
He started to turn away.
Hermione reached towards him and then withdrew her hand. "Draco-"
He stopped and turned to look back at her. She swallowed and managed a wan smile.
"Be careful, Draco. Don't die."
He froze.
There was a pause as they both stood looking at each other.
Then the corner of his mouth quirked with a ghost of a smile. "Right."
He stared at her a moment longer and then vanished silently.
Hermione stood, tracing her fingers along the faint texture of the wallpaper in the hallway. She felt so tired she was tempted to slide down the wall and lie on the floor.
She drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders before she slowly turned to make her way back to the North Wing, turning everything over in her mind.
It was past nightfall. Hermione was seated in her chair, staring out the window and studying the hedge maze, when she felt the air shift. She turned and found Draco standing at the door.
"You didn't ask for any books." He was studying her carefully.
She shook her head. "I've been thinking."
She saw his eyes flicker and his expression grow more reserved.
"When I think about it, there are things that don't add up for me."
"Not all of us have your dazzling intellect." His tone was light. He hadn't moved from the door. Hermione studied the space between them and bit her lip as she hesitated.
"Today, you didn't say you'd always come for me. You used to say that to me before you left. Whenever-" she looked down and wrapped the hem of his cloak tightly around her fingers so they wouldn't twitch visibly. She furrowed her eyebrows, trying to recall a clear memory of it, but unable manage. A bleeding pain started to spread up from the base of her head. She gave up and looked back at Draco again. "I think-I think I remember that. Whenever you had to go, you'd promise to come for me. Didn't-you?"
Draco froze for a split second. Then he blinked, and his mouth twisted into a bitter smile as he looked away. "Well-I thought it was a rather empty-sounding promise at this point."
Her throat caught, and her hand started to move towards him. "You looked everywhere. That wasn't your fault."
He gave a short, barking laugh and stepped back as though struck. The abrupt sound made Hermione start.
He stared at her for a moment, and then his eyebrows arched upwards.
"Right," he said slowly. "Everywhere. I looked everywhere." He rolled his jaw as though he were feeling the shape of the word inside his mouth. "Except the one place that mattered-where you were-but everywhere else, certainly. I suppose I deserve credit for my effort if nothing else."
There was something cruelly familiar in the relentless intensity he spoke with. Her stomach curdled.
"Poor little healer, with no one to take care of. No one who needs you, or wants you."
She couldn't remember when he'd said it. Was it a memory from during the war? No, after-in the Manor.
Draco gave another laugh, and it startled her from her reverie.
She stared at him.
His expression was twisted. "-not my fault?" he was saying. The words were so clipped it was as though he were biting off the end of every one of them. "Is that how I should think about it all? That nothing is ever my fault? Not my mother. Not Dumbledore-or really anyone I've ever killed. If I rationalise enough, I had no choice in any of it, did I? What about you? Is what's happened to you not my fault either? Should I blame you instead? Or the Dark Lord? Or perhaps the world in general?"
He was breathing through his teeth, the words pouring out of him.
Then he seemed to abruptly catch himself. His mouth snapped shut, and he just stared at her for several seconds.
"If Potter hadn't mattered, you wouldn't have either."
Hermione blinked away the memory, her heart in her throat when she tried to swallow.
Draco sneered and laid a pale hand over his heart. "Would embracing eternal victimhood somehow make me feel better?"
His voice, beneath the caustic tone of sarcasm, was vibrating with suppressed rage.
Hermione looked down at her lap, breathing in slowly through clenched teeth. Her fingers kept trying to spasm nervously. Her whole body was tense as she tried to stay focused.
There were so many things she was trying not to think about or panic over that, it was like trying to keep her face above the surface before she drowned in the morass of her mind.
Her memories wouldn't come back with any kind of clear order. She had hundreds of memories of Draco, but she couldn't tell exactly what sequence they were supposed to go in. They were distant blurs and then flashes of clarity; things she knew but couldn't quite pull together into anything sufficiently cohesive.
Instinctively, she felt certain there was something more to what was happening and Draco was hiding it from her; something he didn't want her to know. If she just knew him better-if she could remember more clearly-she'd know what it was, but she couldn't pull it together clearly enough.
"That's not my point. I'm not-trying to talk about that yet," she finally said after spending several seconds trying to focus herself. "The part I don't understand is if everyone in the Order is dead now, and you can't kill Voldemort, how exactly are you going to defeat him and cause the regime to collapse? That doesn't make any sense to me."
She glanced up. "You aren't planning to have me kill him, are you?"
Draco stared at her and didn't even dignify the question with a response.
Hermione nodded to herself and looked down. "If you and Severus remove my manacles, Voldemort will know. Even if he doesn't know that Severus was the one to help you, you're responsible for me. If I escape, the blame will fall on you. There's no way for me to leave Europe without Voldemort realising you betrayed him."
Draco said nothing.
Hermione stared up at him, a cold sensation creeping over her as the pieces of information she'd gathered over the months finally snapped into place. "That's the plan. Voldemort's dependent on you. You're the lynchpin, the thing stabilising the regime. That's why you exposed yourself as High Reeve, so that he couldn't try to replace you with someone else." Her mouth felt dry, and she swallowed, her fingers rolling the fabric of his cloak between them. "Have you-have you found a way to remove your Dark Mark then?"
Draco stood immobile by the door as his mouth curved into a smile. "Of course. Once your manacles are off, I'll be able to remove it."
He reminded her of the New Year's Party. Every motion was so perfectly practiced. Despite how much she'd hated him, she'd still watched him; noticed details whose meanings had eluded her. Now, fused with her past knowledge of him, she could see the glimmers of Draco underneath. The person she'd known, ground down under his runes. He'd almost vanished, but there were still traces of him left.
She tilted her head to the side. "How?"
He gave a smooth shrug. "Severus figured something out. He did work with Dolohov for years."
There was an unnaturally long pause.
"You're lying," she finally said.
He cocked his head and studied her. His freezing, mocking intensity suddenly surfacing. "Really? Do you think you still know me well enough to tell?"
Defensive. He was always cruelest when he was vulnerable.
The corner of Hermione's mouth quirked up sadly. "Yes." Her heart felt like lead in her chest. "You used to be mostly truthful-to me."
His mouth twisted into savage smile. "Yes, I was."
Hermione tried to breathe and found herself drowning in raw grief. There was a sea around her, and Draco was standing fifteen feet away.
Her heart was beating faster and faster. She took a slow breath, and she met his eyes.
The fanfare is in the light, but the execution is in the dark.
"You're lying to me. You aren't going to remove your mark. You're not even intending to try. You're planning to die. You exposed yourself as High Reeve so that when Voldemort kills you for letting me escape, the regime will destabilise and collapse."
Draco stood staring at her for a moment before his lips curved into a smile bitter as poison. He sighed, and the facade fell.
"I had hoped the library would preoccupy you for at least a week." He looked disappointed and tired.
Hermione waited for him to say something else, but he didn't.
"That's your plan?" Her voice was shaking with disbelief. "Two years and your plan is still to hide me somewhere, get killed as a traitor, and think that I'll-I'll be alright with it?"
Draco was silent for several seconds, then he gave a low laugh. She felt it in her bones.
"Do you have a better solution this time too?" His tone was freezing. "After all, not every single horror that I've ever imagined has happened yet. Losing you and spending sixteen months trying and failing to find you. Finding you tortured and broken. Keeping you as a prisoner in this house. Raping you." His voice was growing raw with grief and rage. "Having to hold you in my hands, and feel you in my head while your mind was ravaged. Finding someone raping you in my garden-"
"He didn't," Hermione said quickly, her chest constricting. "He didn't. You got there in time."
His eyes flooded with relief, but his mouth sharpened into a razor-edged smile. "Well, there's that."
He gave a short laugh and looked down at the floor. "Where was I? Ah yes. Finding you with your eye nearly gouged out because my wife had attempted to blind you. Finding you bludgeoning yourself against a window. Watching you waste away because I'd gotten you pregnant. Arriving to see you collapse and then learn that the damage from your occlumency and the foetal magic was so severe you might not ever wake up-that I might have killed you."
He had turned white. His lips thinned as his mouth twisted and then curved into a sneer. "Is that not enough? There are, undoubtedly, still unexplored depths to the potential misery between us. Should we endeavor to achieve all of it?"
He released a sharp breath, and his expression closed again. "If I removed your manacles, instead of having you taken to safety, I could put a wand in your hand and apparate you, pregnant, into the Dark Lord's Hall. It's been two years since you used magic, you can barely manage to walk up the stairs, and you still hardly eat anything, but never mind all that. Surely fighting for the greater good counts for something at some point."
Hermione flinched.
Draco's expression could have been carved from marble. "If I took you there, there's a marginal chance that if I were protecting you, or Severus and I both were, that you might be able to kill the Dark Lord before he summoned other Death Eaters. In which case, we would all die immediately because the paranoid monster has his castle cursed to collapse upon his death; one of his innumerable safety mechanisms."
He cocked his head back. "Or, more likely, we'd fail to kill him, because I've already tried dozens of times, and no matter who I sent or what method they tried, the attempt always failed. In which case I would have the option of killing you myself or watching as you were captured again and they locked manacles around both our wrists. Do you suppose he'd kill us quickly?"
Hermione shook her head, her throat too tight to breathe.
"No." Draco's eyes were ice although his expression remained carefully contained. "He would make it last. I've seen him do it-when he has an example to make of someone. He's drawn it out for weeks on occasion. He brings in healers to keep them alive until he's done."
She could see the terror in his eyes. He looked away, over to the portrait of Narcissa. His eyes wouldn't stay; his gaze swept on.
He stared almost blankly at the far wall. "He'd kill you first. He'd have our history by then; I'm sure he'd use my mind as a reference. I've had more than two years to imagine all the things that could happen to you. All the things I thought might have been happening to you." His voice was almost deadened. "I'm sure he would make a point of doing all of them."
The edges of the room were blurring. Hermione tried to swallow, but her throat wouldn't work.
He gave a low sigh and rested a hand against the doorframe. "This isn't a new opportunity for you and your Gryffindor obstinance to try to save everyone." He sighed. "Believe me, I would run with you if I could. I always would have-" His voice faded for a moment.
"That was never an option, now was it? 'Aid the Order in defeating the Dark Lord to the best of my ability.' Moody didn't include an expiration date or any exemptions on that." He gave a bitter smirk for a moment before growing cold again. "The Dark Lord is on borrowed time. He has no hope of living more than a few years. The Wizarding world is sufficiently disillusioned with his ideology and reign, particularly with the spectacle he's now made with a repopulation program. When things destabilize, the regime will fall, and the International Confederation will step in and claim credit the way they usually do." A smile ghosted across his face as he looked at her. "In a few years, you may get that world you wanted. That-I can try to give you."
"No!" She said it forcefully.
His eyes were silver, and they flickered as he stared at her. "You always said you couldn't choose me over everyone else. I'm chained to a sinking ship. You cannot expect me to take you with me."
"I was lying-!" Her hands were shaking, and she was holding herself so rigidly she'd started rocking as she tried to breathe and not start crying. "I wasn't going to-Draco-"
She dropped her head down and pressed her hand against her sternum as she forced herself to inhale, gasping raggedly. The air burned in her lungs, and she kept gasping again and again, faster and faster.
Draco's hard expression faded, and he crossed the room.
He knelt down in front of her. Hesitantly, as though he were approaching a skittish animal, he reached out and rested his hands gently on her shoulders.
"Granger, breathe. Breathe. You have to breathe." His expression was open and pleading.
She gave a low sob and dropped her head down until their foreheads touched.
"Breathe, please breathe." He kept saying to her. The heat of his hands sank through her clothing and into her skin as she squeezed her eyes closed and forced herself to breathe slowly until her chest stopped spasming.
"Draco-there has to be another way." She reached out, hands shaking, and touched his face. "I need you to live. You're mine. We said we'd run away together. Remember? Somewhere no one would find us."
His expression froze, and he glanced down, blinking repeatedly, before giving a hollow laugh under his breath. His hands slipped up from her shoulders, and he tilted her face so he could look into her eyes. "I would try to do anything you asked if I could."
The wistful way he said it cut her to the quick.
"Then please-" She traced across his cheekbones and captured the curve of his jaw with her fingertips. His face was only a breath away from hers. "Draco-there has to be another way. We can find it. I can-now that I remember-I'll help you."
Her voice was low, and it wavered. "I know-I'm not the same as I was, but you promised-I need you. I need you to live. Even at Hogwarts-when I thought you must be dead-I kept holding on because I'll never go without you. I'll never leave you behind. You have to find another way."
He released a short breath and pulled her closer, pressing his lips against her forehead. "Granger-Granger, this has been the plan since the day the Dark Lord assigned you to me."
Hermione started and stared in horror as he continued.
"If I'd found you, I might have been able to manage something else, but once you were a person of interest to the Dark Lord and he wanted you assigned to Severus or me, there wasn't any means of getting you out that didn't involve compromising one of us. Severus couldn't take you to Romania without violating the terms of his Vow. It had to be me."
"No..."
He brushed his thumbs along her cheeks. "I can't kill the Dark Lord; Severus and I have tried. I can't run with you, even if I could remove my mark. This is defeating the Dark Lord to the best of my ability. It will get you out. You'll be safe after this."
Hermione gripped his hands. "I don't want to be safe. I want you to be alive. Make a new plan."
He sighed and met her eyes. "Whatever I wanted if I saved Ginny. Granger, you promised. I want you to live, leave this world behind and live. That's what I always wanted for you. You have promises to keep. You have to take care of Ginny. You swore to Potter that you would."
"I promised to take care of you first. Always. I promised you always," she said fiercely. Her voice was shaking and she couldn't stop crying. She could feel her tears collecting against his fingers. "You weren't even going to tell me, were you? You said February. You were going to send me away, and I wouldn't have even remembered you yet. I wouldn't have even known until it was too late-And last week, you said I'd see you again."
The corner of his mouth twitched. "I'm supposed to keep you calm, and I don't trust you, even without magic." His voice tightened. "The last time I was honest with you, you disappeared and never came back."
She flinched and her breathing stalled again. "I tried to come back," she forced the words out. "I tried-I tried to-tried-"
His hold tightened. "Breathe. Breathe. You don't have to tell me, I know. I read the report. You levelled half of Sussex and killed nearly everyone inside the wards. You wiped out almost the entire Dementor population in Great Britain. You killed fifteen werewolves, twenty vampires, and half dozen hags. After you lost your wand, you killed another werewolf, hag, and stabbed Montague twice before he managed to stun you. I know you tried."
"Then-you have to try too."
"Granger, I have tried. This is the best I can do." He sighed. "We have a long goodbye in front of us now-I don't want to fight you through it."
She shook her head. "Let me try to find another way. I can-research. Maybe I can find a way to get your Dark Mark off. Please-let me try."
Draco paused for several seconds and stared at her. After a moment he nodded resignedly. "I'll provide you with what you want for research under two conditions: One, if your panic attacks increase because of it, you'll stop, and two, when Severus arrives, regardless of how close you may think you are to a breakthrough, you will stop and leave without making me force you. You won't try to trick me or manipulate me, you will say goodbye and go."
He stared at her, his eyes intent and exacting as he spoke. "Agreed?"
Hermione pressed her lips together and swallowed. "I promise," she finally said.
She reached out and her fingertips traced lightly along his face. She watched his eyes turn from quicksilver to grey before he looked down, pressing his jaw against her hand
"Don't lie to me anymore, Draco." Her voice was pleading and she drew him closer and pressed her forehead against his, breathing him in, feeling him close to her again. "Please don't lie to me."
He gave another hollow laugh. "I won't."