Chapter Text
Hermione’s vision was blacking out around the edges and her ears were ringing. She wanted so badly to succumb to the sweet pull of unconsciousness, but she knew with a cold, hard certainty that if she gave in and closed her eyes, it might be for the last time.
She continued to convulse as the Cruciatus curse dissipated, leaving her body as if it were being dragged out of her with its claws still sunk into her flesh. Her jeans were warm and wet from having lost control of her bladder.
Vaguely she registered hissing, screaming. Something about a goblin.
She whimpered. Where were Harry and Ron ?
Bellatrix didn’t believe her about the sword. The witch was utterly unhinged, and Hermione knew she wasn’t finished with her yet. Instinctively she began trying to scabble away, trying to get purchase against the cold marble. There was nowhere to go but she couldn’t, couldn’t lay here waiting. Could she keep up the lie if Bellatrix came at her again?
Bellatrix’s screams became pitched, and in her periphery Hermione saw a flash of the mad witch, nearer again now, her wand in one hand and an ugly knife in the other. Other voices. Yelling. It was like everything was happening underwater.
Her eyes wouldn’t focus.
Was that her name she’d heard?
And then time, which had seemed like an infinite agony stretching out beyond reason, suddenly snapped. The volume of the world returned along with a bright jet of light. The murky darkness had just begun to resolve itself into recognizable shapes and outlines when her vision filled inexplicably with the figure of Draco Malfoy.
His pale eyes were wild, searching her face as he crouched over her. “ Granger .” She had expected a threat in his voice but found something akin to fear instead.
Draco grabbed at her shoulder and raised his wand. Panic gripped her anew. In a cataclysm of terror and instinct, she grabbed hold of it, thought of Tottenham Court Road, and focused with everything she had on apparating.
She knew immediately that it had gone wrong.
It was like being in a crushing vice, ripping her savagely through space. She could feel Draco jolting along beside her, thrashing. His wand had been wrenched from her hold, but she could still feel his hand gripping hard around her upper arm.
Then, suddenly, the magic released her, and she was sent sprawling hard packed earth. She groaned at the impact and heard Draco cry out from a few meters away. She struggled to sit, her head spinning as she tried to make sense of where she was. Her heart was racing and blood pounded in her ears.
Moonlight filtered eerily through towering trees all around. They were in some sort of clearing, ferns and low growing bushes obscuring the ground beyond its tiny expanse.
“Fuck fuck fuck!” Draco swore.
“Shut up!” she hissed at him, trying to listen for danger.
“My fucking leg .”
She went instinctively for her wand, cursing when she came up empty. Scrabbling around her, she found a heavy stick that she hefted as best she could. Not her first choice in weaponry, but at least it was something. Pure adrenaline coursed through her veins as she half crawled toward Draco, prepared to bash him over the head if need be, but he hardly seemed aware of her presence.
“It’s splinched,” he ground out, sitting hunched over in pain.
Trying to take advantage of his distraction she searched for his wand, squinting hard into the darkness. It wasn’t on the ground and she didn’t see it sticking out of his sleeve or pocket.
“Where’s your wand?” she demanded.
“You took it,” he snarled, glaring at her, “Bloody brilliant move by the way, grabbing someone’s wand while they’re apparating. Now I’m splinched and we’re clearly not at the lake house.”
“ You were apparating?”
“Did you think we got here by portkey?”
“ I apparated when I grabbed your wand.”
He looked at her like she was an absolute moron, “Why in the name of Merlin would you apparate us here?”
“I was trying to apparate myself to London. Why did you apparate?”
“Seriously?” Draco muttered another low string of curses and stuck out his hand. “Look, just give it back. It’s my wand, I can apparate us properly.”
Hermione’s heart sank and her whole body sagged. He really didn’t have his wand.
“What?” he growled.
“I don’t have it. I lost hold of it.”
No wands, no magic. She was a sitting duck who didn’t even know where she was sitting.
With Draco Malfoy.
She didn’t bother to pay attention to the diatribe that followed as she dragged herself away to the shelter of the ferns nearby, tears streaming down her cheeks. Once out of view she collapsed onto her back, trying to swallow her sobs as she pulled her beaded bag out from where she’d stashed it in her sock. After a minute of fishing around, she came up with a pair of Harry’s tracksuit bottoms. She closed her eyes against the humiliation of having to peel her urine-soaked jeans and knickers down her legs. Her whole body screamed in protest as she awkwardly bent.
God, she had fled . She had left Harry and Ron at Malfoy Manor.
Her heart felt like it was collapsing in on itself as she lay in the dirt, her every fiber pulsing with echoes of the cruciatus. She had no way to get back to them or even alert the Order to what had happened. She had spent enough time in the woods since their hunt for horcruxes had begun to know she was in a true forest and not likely to find her way out so easily, certainly not at night.
Lost in thoughts of what she couldn’t do and what she should have done, it took a minute to register that Draco was calling her name.
“Granger. There’s— there’s blood. I need—”
She gripped her hair at the roots at the absurdity. Obviously he wasn’t too badly hurt to argue and bitch. She could almost have laughed; Draco being a drama queen had an oddly comforting familiarity to it. At least he clearly wasn’t an immediate threat.
“Granger, my leg’s cut up—”
Exasperated, she dug into her bag and pulled out a shirt, tossing it in his general direction. “Wrap it up then, and stop whining .”
There wasn’t much in her bag, almost everything was in the tent now, but as she reached for the shirt, she also came across a couple thin flannel blankets that she pulled around herself. Her initial panic and despair had subsided enough to make her aware of the cold of the March night. Huddled in the blankets, she returned to trying to think of how she was going to fix this situation. Afraid to stay, afraid to go, but couldn’t imagine sleeping in such a vulnerable position.
The night was dragging on.
Earlier she had heard Draco moving around, cracking twigs beneath his feet as he took cautious steps through the trees, but now he lay near. She could hear him breathing, shaking and panting, rustling the leaves as he shook all over. Whimpering .
Hermione heaved a sigh and hugged her knees tighter to her chest, trying to stop her own shivering. The ground was hard and damp, and although she'd moved several times, it was impossible to find a spot without roots or rocks digging into her side. There was a convulsive sort of ache in her bones, her veins, her eyelids .
She honestly couldn’t tell anymore whether she was shuddering from the curse, from the cold, or from the horror. It felt like her nerves were misfiring.
The deranged face of Bellatrix Lestrange, angry and gleeful in the throes of Hermione's pain, swam before her eyes. She thought of Neville’s parents and what Bellatrix had done to them with the same curse. Their last moments of coherence had been filled with that same face. Cringing, she felt an involuntary surge of something disconcertingly like gratitude toward Draco.
She still had her mind.
She had survived. She would heal.
Grimly, she pulled her blankets more tightly about her. This wasn't at all like her previous months in the woods. No friends, no wards, no walls, no fire…
She sat up suddenly.
Maybe .
Every movement hurt, but she crawled out of the ferns and grabbed a few sticks without having to actually get up. Sweeping away the debris of the forest floor beside her, she dropped a small pile of dead leaves on the dirt then arranged her sticks atop it. She took a few deep breaths to focus and then extended her hand.
" Incendio."
The little pyre burst into flames and she let out a small whoop of victory, picking up more dead leaves to stoke it.
Groaning, she pushed herself to her feet to gather more wood. The light of the fire was too weak to reveal much, and the moon wasn't very bright as it filtered through the canopy overhead, but she was able to gather a couple good bits of wood and some thick, dry pieces of bark. More leaves.
She huddled beside the fire, blankets wrapped around her shoulders. It wasn’t giving off much heat, but even this little bit was heavenly. Rubbing her hands together, she was casting around for more fuel when her gaze caught on Draco's glare. Pale gray eyes reflecting fire.
She didn't look away.
With one hand he lifted a small log, his chin tipped in askance. A bargain proffered.
She didn’t acknowledge it.
"There's a dead tree just here" —he gestured behind him— "but I doubt you're in any condition to be able to make use of it."
Hermione felt a wave of revulsion.
The devil never makes deals in the days of milk and honey.
"Fuck you."
Her pride would survive her.
"I could just take it." He looked meaningfully to the fire and then back to her, speaking as if it were an observation rather than a threat. "I'm willing to share." As if he were the very soul of generosity.
In his dark shirt and tie, with pale hair disheveled but bright, and eyes full of flames, he could've sat for a portrait of Mephistopheles.
But she couldn't stop shaking and everything hurt and the dark of the forest was full of rasping screams. It was foxes, she knew, but her head was full of fresh horrors and half of her was convinced she was the one still doing the screaming.
She looked away, submitting to him with a dozen meaningless, half-formed justifications jittering behind her lips. She stared resolutely at the fire as he hissed and grunted in pain, dragging himself from the low circle of light to twist and snap dead limbs from a lifeless tree.
Slowly he built the fire up, laying a few gnarled branches aside for later.
Hermione laid down gingerly, huddling in on herself as near as she could bear to the flames. Her back was still cold, but the shivering subsided.
With eyes squeezed shut, she focused on the pulse of her pain, rising and falling like waves against the shore. She blocked out the eerie shadows dancing on the tree trunks, the screaming foxes, and the horrible, gaping hole in her heart where hope was meant to be.
Harry was alive, she tried to tell herself. Harry and Ron both. She would know, somehow, if Harry hadn’t made it.
She ignored the man now laying only a few feet away from her. The enemy. The enemy who had maybe, maybe saved her.
Her eyes fluttered open just before sleep took her. His pants, she noticed, were dark and wet, the fabric clinging to this thigh.
"You've bled through," she muttered, unaccountably irritated.
“Fuck it,” he grit out, staring through the flames.
When Hermione awoke, she was shaking with cold and the sun wasn't up. The dawn light glowed gray through the trees, and a low misty fog shrouded the underbrush.
She had never been so aware of her bones .
They were cold, they ached, they lay heavy and sharp against each other, stabbed pitilessly by the jagged tips of rocks and twigs. Her build had always been slight, but months on the run had leached her flesh practically to the tendons. Mentally and physically, she was now down to her essentials.
As the haze of sleep and pain subsided, she realized Draco was startlingly close, close enough to touch. He was still asleep, curled in on himself, but he lay in the very ashes of the fire. His breath stirred up little wisps of soot with every exhale.
He looked as gaunt as he had through most of sixth year, perhaps a little worse. Paler, certainly, though she reasoned that might be blood loss. His hair was longer and oddly unkempt looking in contrast to his tailored suit. He’d hardly loosened his black tie.
The corners of his mouth pulled down, as if he sensed her scrutiny.
Clumsily, she forced herself to get up on stiff limbs. She knew she'd be warmer if she started moving and, more urgently, she refused to participate in such a farce of intimacy as waking up with Draco sodding Malfoy.
Bent nearly double and feeling about ninety years old, she picked her way through the grassy, fern-filled underbrush until she was a dozen meters or so away. After relieving herself, she propped her back against a tree to survey her surroundings.
Based on the animal noises she'd heard and the density of the growth, it was clear they weren't in some suburb-adjacent token woodland. She hadn't seen or heard anything to suggest anyone might be nearby.
Without a wand, there weren't a lot of options. No apparating out. Even if she could cast a patronus, she couldn't do any better than notify someone she was in the woods. ‘I’m in the forest, come and find me! There’s a large rock’ wouldn’t do any good. She would have to trek out on foot and try to find her way to somewhere she could make contact with Harry and Ron or the Order, or possibly hop a bus and get to London.
She closed her eyes as she let her head drop back against the rough bark of the tree, breathing through her pain, trying to think.
"Granger?" Draco's voice was faint, groggy and confused.
Hermione slumped in defeat.
"Granger!"
Bafflingly, he sounded almost scared.
She pushed off the tree, wincing as the bark caught at her curls. "I'm here." Her back was straight, her chin up. Counterfeit confidence.
He began limping his way over. "What're you doing?"
Was there ever a more bizarre sight than a suit-clad Draco Malfoy, face smeared with ash and furrowed with concern, picking his way through the forest in quest of Hermione Granger? It was unnerving. She clenched her fists and balanced on the balls of her feet, readying herself for a fight or flight that she probably wasn’t actually capable of.
"I don't want to hurt you," he said carefully, raising his palms in a gesture of peace.
She scoffed. "Well there's a change."
He stopped when he was a few meters off. They stared at each other through a long moment with only echoing bird calls to break the silence. And then he spoke.
"What happened, with Bellatrix—"
Hermione glared.
"—I wanted it to stop. I just... I wanted it to stop."
She was shaking with the effort to maintain her posture, to keep eye contact.
"We're not in good shape here, Granger," he said, his head tilted one way then the other, evaluating. "And you look like hell."
"What do you want?" She couldn't unclench her jaw.
"To get out of here."
It was his tone, much nearer to that of an inconvenienced blueblood than of a temptor, that convinced her.
"Okay," she finally breathed on a long exhale.
"Okay?"
"Okay."
Keeping a cautious distance, they hobbled back to their clearing. Draco stooped periodically to pick up what was likely kindling.
"Could you?" he asked after dropping it on last night's dead embers.
Hermione snarled instinctively at the idea of taking orders from him, but it was still cold and she wasn't above demonstrating her magical superiority to the prince of the purebloods. " Incendio. "
They both sat down stiffly, idly tossing handfuls of dead leaves into the flames for a few minutes. "Your leg," she said with exasperation, noticing the thigh of his trousers was once again wet with fresh blood.
"Know any wandless healing magic?" he grimaced, looking at his leg with distaste.
"Why would I help you if I did?"
His shoulders dropped and she could see his jaw working as he seemed to struggle with something, but he metaphorically, and perhaps literally, bit his tongue.
"Rewrap it at least," she finally snapped, "You'll be useless if you let it go on like that."
"Why would you care if I was?" he mimicked her earlier tone, looking up accusingly through his pale blonde fringe.
"I don't."
"So stop nagging."
Hermione huffed and threw a twig at the fire hard enough to send up a shower of sparks.
She managed to bite her own tongue for a few minutes before the urge to insist on common sense overcame her. "For fuck's sake, Malfoy— deal with it ."
"How? With what?" he snapped back, flinging his arms wide.
"Clean it, rewrap it, something. "
"Again, with—"
Hermione actually growled, "Fine, fine! Let's see it then."
He arched his brow in a perfectly articulated and devastating appraisal of her sanity.
She rolled her eyes in return. "Don't be a baby."
Glaring at her all the while, Draco undid his belt and fly before shifting awkwardly to shove his trousers down to his knees.
The dark green boxer briefs, she noted, were very on brand. There was only a scant second to contemplate the strange reality of seeing him in his skivvies however, before she was confronted by the ugly sight of his bloody thigh. Two curved gashes intersected high on his leg, and layers of dried and fresh blood mottled his pale skin, matting the fine, sparse hair. The shirt he'd wrapped around it last night —one of Harry's, she saw now— was crusted with dried brown blood, bunched up down at his knee.
It wasn’t as bad as Ron’s arm when he’d been splinched; Draco had gotten off lightly, really.
"Happy?" he demanded, not looking at the wound.
She hadn’t thought he could get any paler, but somehow he seemed to have managed it. She bit her lip for a moment, considering. Tentatively, she extended her hand toward him. " Aguamenti."
A few drops of water trickled from her fingertips.
"Brilliant," he deadpanned.
Hermione flicked her wrist a few times and took a deep breath, closing her eyes. Ego was a powerful motivator. She visualized her magic running through her, bright and electric, coalescing to flow down her arm.
" Aguamenti ," she tried again. This time she conjured enough water to wash away the fresh blood, though it didn’t have enough pressure to do anything about what had already dried.
Draco untied the shirt on his leg, stretching it out of its stiff, wadded shape.
"Wait," Hermione began rummaging in her bag until she caught hold of a small bottle and pulled it out. "Don't get too excited, it's empty." She was able to conjure a little bit more water to fill it, before stoppering and shaking it, "There was dittany in here before, but I used it all up on Harry and Ron. Still, can't hurt…"
She poured the contents of the bottle over the gashes, and they both watched intently to see if it had any effect. It looked marginally better after a moment as the angry red edges softened and seemed to knit together at the ends. The cuts seemed shallow anyway. Just bloody.
They'd make for an interesting scar.
"It sort of tingles," he said dubiously, "Might be something."
Hermione snorted. "You're welcome, by the way."
Draco only hummed in response. He tied the makeshift bandage around his leg and righted his trousers. "So what else have you got in that tacky bag? Seems suspiciously capacious."
"Like I'd tell you," she scoffed, tucking the bottle back inside.
"Why are you being so difficult?"
"Is that a real question?"
His lips thinned and he regarded her as though she were a particularly petulant toddler. "It really is. As you may have noticed, neither of us is exactly a picture of vitality at the minute. We don't have wands. We could be in the backwoods of fucking Narnia, for all we know. And oh, yeah, there's a war going on. Do you really fancy going it alone? Because I don't."
She folded her arms. "A war that we're on opposite sides of, in case you forgot. How can I possibly trust you? You could lead me anywhere."
"Seriously?" he asked. "Like my master plan was to apparate you away from Death Eater headquarters where you were unarmed to do… what, exactly? Give me a little credit, Granger. You're supposed to be the brains of your hapless band of righteous twats."
In response Hermione only folded her arms and glared.
“Do you want to go it alone?” he pushed.
“Honestly?”
At that moment, an ethereal silver stag bounded through the trees and drew up proudly beside them. It shook its mighty antlered head and gazed down benevolently into Hermione’s wide eyes. Her breath caught in her throat, waiting to hear Harry’s voice give some reassurance, direction, information — something.
Nothing.
A small, spectral terrier followed a moment later, frisking around the hooves of the great stag. It was only a scant few seconds later when they both dissolved into the ether.
Draco gaped. “What—?”
Hermione burst into tears.
“Uhh...” He raised a hand then pulled it back.
“They're— they’re okay,” she gasped between sobs, “They’re okay.”
Of course they couldn’t say anything; they didn’t know where she was or who she was with. But Harry and Ron had let her know they’d made it. Wherever they were, they had wands and could cast their patronuses. They must have escaped or fought their way out.
She cried until she was laughing. Overwhelmed with relief, she buried her face in her hands, hiccoughing, blubbering, laughing hysterically.
When the emotional deluge subsided, Hermione laid back on the ground, chest heaving. She hadn’t even realized the weight that had been bearing down on her since last night. Not only fear for her friends, but the horrible, heavy, creeping knowledge that Dumbledore’s riddles, the horcruxes, Voldemort, all of it might be on her shoulders alone.
She never imagined feeling expendable could be so sweet.
Suddenly the sun was shining brighter and warmer. Yes, she was horribly sore, but she was alive, she would mend. Sure, she might be in the middle of nowhere, wandless, with a Death Eater, but that was fixable. Very fixable.
When she sat back up her hollow cheeks were mottled, her eyes were swollen, pine needles were clinging to her absolutely everywhere, and her hair was a holy mess, but her face was lit with an incandescent smile. "Let’s get the hell out of here."