Hermione appeared in a nondescript hallway that she was sure in no way resembled the sort of entryway to which the Malfoys were accustomed. From what Hermione could see—brown floors, cream walls, furniture and décor serviceable but slightly worn—it looked like the sort of three-bedroom home that wouldn't be out of place in the neighbourhood where she'd grown up. That was probably, oh, a hundred or so rooms less than the Malfoys were used to? Of course, without house-elves to labour for them, they'd probably have difficulty maintaining a home the size of a small castle, so perhaps they saw the benefits to their situation as well as its disadvantages.
Hermione might disparage their lifestyle, but she knew that it had many fine or useful points, and it couldn't be an easy transition to make.
Not that she'd come to talk to them about that.
The doorway behind her was covered in wards; it looked as though Apparating with Order members was the only way in or out.
UnMasking herself, she strode down the hallway, peering into doorways—den, kitchen, dining room—until she found Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy in the sitting room. There was a fire burning in the fireplace, the curtains were shut against the night, and two of the most pure-blooded and snobbish people Hermione had ever met were seated on a settee to one side of the fire, reading.
Hermione wondered if they would ever have allowed anyone to see the two of them curled up as affectionately as they currently were, Narcissa nestled up against Lucius, head resting on his shoulder as she read the book in her lap. Hermione was momentarily stunned by this image and chided herself for nonsensically assuming that they were completely inhuman. She stepped into the room.
Lucius looked up and froze, his absolute stillness alerting his wife who lifted her head, eyes widening at sight of Hermione. They didn't appear to get a lot of visitors.
As Narcissa recovered slightly from her shock, she sat up properly and moved far enough away from her husband that no one could accuse them of impropriety. Hermione had been much more affected when they were seated affectionately.
They were watching her with wary eyes, and Hermione wasted no time.
Imbuing her voice with the strength of her convictions, of a feeling she knew even if she could not name its source, she said, "Voldemort is torturing Severus to death. Will you help me rescue him?"
They could not have looked more stunned than if she had announced that she had pledged her allegiance to the Dark Lord and was here to break them out.
She stared back impatiently, knowing the importance of giving them a chance to offer her a verbal response.
"There is nothing we could possibly do," Lucius said flatly, his voice not quite the cultured one she remembered from the World Cup nor the angered one from the Department of Mysteries. The edge of disdain was still readily apparent, however, as though she had missed the obvious, as he added dryly, "We aren't allowed to leave."
"The assistance I require does not necessitate your leaving the building."
They exchanged a long look, and she quashed the urge to impatiently tap her foot as she waited for their verdict. She didn't let herself clench her hands into fists, either, making sure they rested casually against her legs so that the Malfoys wouldn't feel as though she were threatening them into making a decision.
That was step number two, after all, the one which she hoped she wouldn't have to take.
They looked back at her. Narcissa spoke, the gracious tone of the hostess despite the circumstances. "Would you care to take a seat?"
There was a time and place for manners, and Hermione swore that this wasn't one of them, but she supposed it was their very proper contrast to their other possible response, which would likely have been something in the nature of "get out of this house, Mudblood whore".
Hermione therefore swallowed all of the invectives that were boiling up her throat and said politely, "I don't really have time."
They allowed the niceties to be abandoned, Narcissa speaking once more. "You rescued our son."
Hermione gave a curt nod, though she wondered who had made sure those details got to the Malfoys. Albus, she supposed, but it simply wasn't important enough to verify right now. It looked as though it had been helpful, anyway, and as though trying it the nice way first was going to work for the second time today. The Gryffindor in her was paying off.
"In what manner can we assist?" Lucius asked, tone carefully neutral.
"I need to see your Dark Mark."
And she'd managed to stun them speechless for the second time, three times if she counted her arrival. Lucius looked ready to protest, but Narcissa laid a hand on his arm, and he restrained himself with a visible effort.
They rose to their feet together and then Lucius shrugged out of his expensive-looking robes. He unbuttoned the cuff of his equally costly silk shirt and pushed the sleeve up, nearly grimacing as the fabric crumpled together at his elbow. They dressed well, apparently, in captivity, and being under house arrest didn't appear to have lessened his sense of what was owed his position.
She knew that her request seemed like a particularly daft one. For someone who had spent so long as an important political figure at the Ministry while pretending he wasn't a willing Death Eater, she was sure that this was more exposure than he was comfortable with—especially in front of her.
But she had known he was a Death Eater since the end of her fourth year, had seen it firsthand at the end of fifth year, and she was in too much of a hurry to explain herself now. Whatever Lucius and Narcissa were thinking, they evidently believed in paying back debts, even to people who they believed were normally beneath their notice.
To ensure that they didn't suddenly try to back out, she wasn't going to tell them any of the details of what she was about to do. She had simply decided that what she was about to attempt would work despite the fact that it was untested. She wouldn't recommend that anyone ever try it, but it was Severus's life hanging in the balance right now, and she would willingly give her life if that's what it took to save him.
She now felt precisely what had driven Harry to the Department of Mysteries at the end of fifth year, and she knew with a certainty that would have astonished her then that he would have gone even if he had known for sure that it was a trap and even if he knew there was no chance of his making it out alive; she and Harry cared more about their loved ones than themselves.
And this was what had brought her here, staring at the one object that linked all of the Death Eaters to Voldemort. Normally, of course, it was only when he Summoned them through the Mark that they were able to Apparate to his side. That connection enabled them to Apparate blindly, not knowing where they would be going but programmed to appear within relative proximity to their Lord once the Mark began to burn.
The assumption that she was operating under currently was that since the Mark was on their arms at all times, the connection was therefore actually there at all times. Voldemort activated it when he Summoned them, but it was never gone, they were never unconnected. And this meant, theoretically, that in the presence of Lucius Malfoy, Hermione had access to Voldemort's location.
This knowledge would be of no particular use to most people, but Hermione was a Pure Adult, she could see and feel magic, and she'd had more than her fair share of practice with various sorts of MindMagic. Tonight, she was going to use that to her advantage. Hopefully.
She drew a deep breath, let it out slowly, and reached out to grasp Lucius's left arm, ignoring his flinch. She couldn't tell if it was caused by the fact that she was touching him or because he was being touched on that arm, and she had more important things to worry about right now. She pressed three fingers into the dark tattoo, pressing until she could feel bone.
Closing her eyes, she slipped into the mental state which allowed her to fully view all the magic around her. She thinned out and then banished the shields that protected her core and barely heard the gasped, "Merlin," that had come out of the mouth of one of the other people in the room. She didn't have time to worry about that, either.
Withdrawing further inside herself, she concentrated all her energy and focus on her fingertips and the Dark Magic that they touched. She could feel it pulsing in Lucius's arm, mostly quiescent but still foul, binding to his magic and feeding off it to ensure that the link remained strong between him and his master; Voldemort, selfish and greedy as he was, obviously wasn't going to use any of his own magic to sustain the connection.
Opening her eyes, she saw Lucius only through the corona of his magic.
She was unsure if he deserved what she was going to attempt, but she believed in repaying her debts as well.
"Do you wish to be bound to him?" She didn't recognize her own voice, and whatever he saw when he looked at her, there was no mention made of the impertinence of such a question.
"No," he answered, almost voiceless, but steady.
"I've never done this before. I don't know what will happen."
He nodded.
"This may hurt," she warned a final time, but his gaze did not waver.
Closing her eyes again, she followed the strands of magic that led from the Dark Mark. These strands were internal rather than external; just looking at Lucius, she couldn't see the magic stretching off to Voldemort. It did so, however, and wherever she was that she could communicate mentally and see magical cores, she could see that connection, too.
Though she wasn't sure what made her certain, it was immediately obvious to her when she was beyond Lucius but not yet at Voldemort. She couldn't say where she was, but it was effectively a limbo between the two magically connected people. She'd been guessing that she needed to reach this point to ensure that she didn't pull Lucius along with her. If she entered Voldemort, she imagined that she'd be stuck in the visions of what he was doing, just as Harry had been so frequently in the past, and that would be of no use right now. She stopped where she was.
Gathering her magic to her, she prepared to Apparate, hoping her mind was still connected firmly enough to her body to make this possible. Her destination was the end of the magical link that she was following, which was more than the Death Eaters knew; if they could manage it, she could. In the frantic moments since she'd thought up this mad scheme, she'd been deliberating on it constantly, and she was certain that there was no one in the world right now who was more determined to get this right than she was.
She Apparated.
As she felt the squeeze begin to compress her body—or maybe it was her mind—she reached back and with all her magical strength, sliced through the bond that she had just made use of, severing the connection between Voldemort and Lucius. She couldn't stick around to see what happened, but with the Mark no longer connected to Voldemort, it didn't really exist, so she hoped that it would simply fade away, leaving Lucius unbound and with access to all of his magic.
Several immeasurable heartbeats later, she was back in her own fiercely aching body, gasping for breath on her knees on what felt like grass. Not, then, a form of travel that she would recommend.
It was dark, but she appeared to be on the grounds in front of the hulking shape of a building that looked rather like a Tudor manor house. She had been a little worried that she was going to end up right in front of Voldemort; from what Harry had described in the graveyard at the end of fourth year, the Death Eaters had arrived in a nearby inner circle.
Fortunately, the wards that Voldemort had erected at this location appeared to direct incoming Death Eaters to the edge of the grounds; she supposed it was less disruptive for him if they didn't pop in nearly on top of him, and making them trudge across the grounds and admire the splendour of the home in which he was hiding spoke to his status as well.
She paused to get her bearings. Her hurried assessment of the wards indicated that the manor house was Unplottable and had many wards to keep Muggles and Muggle-borns out (or at least make sure that they told no tales) as well as other wizards. All of the traps were fatal; it didn't seem that Voldemort cared much about rumours of disappearances.
She crept across the grass, fully Masked and silent as the night. There were two bored-looking Death Eaters at the main entrance. They clearly didn't expect anyone to breach this location.
The wards, she noticed as she continued past the indifferent guards in search of a better entrance, were well-constructed, strong and fortified and slightly opaque, preventing the Death Eaters from getting a glimpse of more of the countryside to try to locate themselves. It seemed that Voldemort remained an untrusting individual.
She supposed that after losing all the Malfoys, he might have a reason to be a little paranoid. It also suggested that he'd chosen this location for a long-term stay, and she hoped that by the time she'd finished tonight, he would be forced to find somewhere less comfortable.
Closer to the building now, she could feel the weight of its history. It was authentically Tudor if she could trust that sense of age, and this made it as much as five hundred years old. It represented an old family gone wrong or a recent murder; Voldemort had not come by it honestly.
After a moment's indecision, she made no attempt to modify the wards and figure out where they were. Her priority was finding Severus, and she wasn't about to risk tipping Voldemort off to her presence; it would take too long to make the adjustments with the proper discretion. Besides, assuming she was successful today, Voldemort wouldn't be sticking around.
She found a back entrance that was heavily warded but had no human presence. Working frantically, it took her fifteen minutes to tweak the wards such that she could get in and out without trouble and without easily advising Voldemort that any tampering had taken place; it was safer than disabling them, which would have tipped anyone off to an unwanted presence.
Given what she had seen so far and knew of the man, she doubted he would be performing his own rounds to ensure the impenetrability of the house. This meant her alterations should remain undetected for a little while, hopefully long enough for her to find Severus. Once she got him outside, she didn't care if she had to wake the entire house to break through the wards to Apparate them away; until then, every bit of caution was necessary.
Creeping inside, she wondered if the Death Eaters found the place as creepy as she did. The place positively oozed gloom. There was a heavy darkness, and she was left with a certainty that even full sun outside wouldn't help. It reminded her of how Grimmauld Place had been, especially that first summer; this house belonged to an old pure-blood family.
If she'd been in Hogwarts, she could have accessed the wards and found Severus in a trice. This was a foreign location, however, and given what she had learnt thus far, it was likely that the wards would object to Muggle-born interference. Wandering around in an attempt to find the magical centre of the building and hoping for the best seemed unwise at this juncture.
Instead, she followed the magic and the wards, heading for the larger concentrations of magic that existed downwards, believing that Severus had been tortured with spells that would be leaving traces and suspecting that such torture would take place in the dungeons. Her heart quailed at the thought of what he must be suffering, but she forced herself to concentrate as impersonally as possible on the task at hand. The lower levels were truly labyrinthine, or at least that was how it felt; she needed to concentrate, not lose her head with worry.
It remained eerily quiet as she traversed the building. Most of the hallways weren't lit, but she followed wherever the tug of magic led her, knowing that the route that she was compelled to follow was unlikely to be the one normally used by the inhabitants of the house.
She'd begun to grow rather used to having access to the wards at Hogwarts, and it was highly disconcerting to be in this large unknown house and not be able to feel how many people were here with her. She didn't have the slightest idea of the size of the force that Voldemort kept at his disposal at any given time. While it was possible that the two out front were the only others present, she had her doubts. From what Severus had indicated, Wormtail and Nagini tended to be around, at the very least, and Hermione imagined that Voldemort would want plenty of witnesses for the punishment that he was currently inflicting.
Periodically, she cast the softest of alarm spells and tacked them to out-of-the-way areas of the ceiling where people were unlikely to notice them so that she would be alerted if anyone was blocking her route of escape. This was one of the moments when she was most grateful that she was a unicorn; she didn't have to worry that she wouldn't remember how to get out of the bloody house again. If she thought of the exit, the twists and turns that she needed to follow rose up in her mind.
She crept around protrusions in the darkened hallways, dimly able to make out tapestries and pictures on the walls but sparing them no mind. The further underground she went, the more barren the corridors became until she finally hit unfinished stone which led to the dungeon proper.
The wards at the end were the brightest and strongest of all the wards she'd encountered save those surrounding the entire house. The stones here were dark with age and grime, rough-hewn, some covered with mould and decay that she could not immediately identify. Thick, close-fitting metal bars, rusted with age, guarded the entrances to all the cells. It seemed that whoever had designed this area had thought much as she had when she designed the containment area for the werewolves: it was safer to have both wards and bars.
Thankfully, none of the nearer cells appeared to have active wards, suggesting that Voldemort didn't have any other prisoners; now Hermione didn't have to battle with her conscience to work out whether she could really leave anyone else behind in her single-minded desire to save Severus.
The closer she drew to the far end of the room, the noisier it became and the more spell-light she could see and feel. She found quite suddenly that she was running even though she had told herself that it was essential that she keep the element of surprise if she didn't want to risk joining Severus instead of rescuing him.
There was an unmoving body on the floor being attacked with a flurry of spells, and Hermione didn't think, she just reacted; there was a flash of gold and the seven attacking figures were suddenly unconscious and piled up against one another in an untidy heap against the wall on the far end.
She knew it was Severus on the ground, but it couldn't be through recognizing him physically. He was a mass of lacerations and broken bones, and she took in the inventory of injuries with a sort of detached horror. He was barely wearing clothing, as most of it had been cut or whipped off of him or forced into the wounds in his skin. His fingers were all at crooked angles, his legs sprawled uncomfortably, and his hair matted to his skull in clots of blood and dirt. The odd patches of clear skin that she could see were pale as parchment. His bottom lip was fat, a cut beginning on his chin and slicing up to it. There were bruises all across his cheeks, and his eyes so swollen that it was unlikely he would have been able to see her even if he had been in a condition to try to open his eyes.
He was apparently deeply unconscious because even the shaking from torture by Cruciatus was minimal, and given what else they had done to him, she was sure that they had to have held him under the curse for a long time. The smell of blood, vomit, and excrement only got stronger as she flung herself down at his side, but her only concern was finding his pulse. She was shaking so badly that the task was made even more difficult, and when she finally managed it, she felt her own heart skip a beat at how irregular and faint his heartbeat was.
Her breath caught in her throat, little black spots dancing in front of suddenly burning eyes as she realized that he could die right here and right now in this horrid little cell. There was blood all over the place, he had more injuries than she could count, and if she wasn't the stupidest person on the planet, she would at least have thought to bring healing potions with her. But she had spent the whole bloody day with Harry and Draco and Ron trying not to make them suspicious. She had been concentrating on how to ditch them and get to Severus. And now she couldn't even see Severus's chest rising and falling, and she fancied that she could actually see his magic draining out of him, and she knew damn well what was happening.
"Don't you die on me, Severus," she snarled brokenly, tears starting to fall even as she tried to fight them back. "Don't you dare."
She had to get him out of here, had to get him back to Hogwarts where he could be treated, but it didn't look as though she had even that kind of time. He was mere moments from death, and—
"It will keep you alive, even if you are an inch from death."
She let out a sob of mingled relief and fury at her own stupidity, never more happy than in that moment that Harry had been crap at Occlumency and she had seen most of his memories before he learnt to block her out. Without hesitation or regret, she tore the necklace that she had worn for over a year from her neck.
Scooting behind Severus, she propped him up against her so that he was in a position to swallow the priceless liquid stoppered in her hand. He didn't want to open his mouth, and she finally had to force it. He made a particularly violent twitch as his jaw parted, and she suspected that it was probably broken and that what she'd just done had really hurt. She'd apologize to him later.
Her hands were shaking worse than his were, so she used magic to uncork the vial. Forcing herself to go slowly, she dribbled the silvery blood slowly into his mouth so that he wouldn't choke on it. Tears slid down her cheeks and dropped onto his face as she massaged his bruised throat as gently as she could to get him to swallow the unicorn blood that she willingly sacrificed for him as it had been willingly given to her. The last drop slid into his mouth, and she Vanished the vial.
She wanted a clear indication that the blood had done its job, but she knew that she wasn't really going to get one. Unicorn blood wasn't like phoenix tears; it didn't heal humans, it simply kept them from immediately dying. It was more like a sort of stasis, and it was temporary. That was why Voldemort, trapped with Quirrell, had been forced to feed more than once on the unicorns, and that was why he hadn't considered it a permanent solution. She had absolutely no idea how long it lasted.
Severus still had that weak pulse; the blood was working at the moment. He wasn't dead right now, and she had to make that advantage count and get them out of here. She'd never Stunned this many people at once before—if an uncontrolled burst of magic could be called Stunning—and she needed to make sure that she and Severus weren't still here when the Death Eaters woke up.
Taking out her wand since her control was shot to hell and something on which to focus was useful, she used the same spell she'd employed when she'd found Draco tortured in the Forest; it assessed the injuries and bound any that were in need of it. When the bandages had settled, even thinking really bad mummy jokes didn't help because she knew exactly why Severus was covered in so much cloth.
For a fleeting moment, as she rose to her feet and remembered the rest of the cell, she contemplated the other occupants. Then she cast a Mobilicorpus on Severus and pulled him gently out of the room. He was too important, too time-sensitive.
She hated every single one of them for what they'd done to Severus, but she didn't think she had that many Killing Curses in her, and she didn't believe that she could single-handedly kill Voldemort even if she had somehow wound up in this insane situation where she had inadvertently Stunned him because he had happened to be one of the people who had got between her and her mate. She and Harry had a plan, and since she couldn't execute it right now, wreaking some petty form of vengeance that might ruin the good plan seemed unbelievably daft. She'd no doubt get yelled at by someone later, but that seemed immaterial right now. Sensible or not, it was another one of those feelings; it wasn't supposed to be her, not like this.
So she re-warded the cell once she and Severus were on the other side, weaving in a sloppy name rune for Severus that meant Voldemort and the Death Eaters would have a lot of work to get out again and would be left hopefully very confused as to who had trapped them in there in the first place.
She hovered Severus at the appropriate height and then shifted into her Animagus form. Speed was now of the essence; Severus needed medical attention hours ago.
With a combination of wandless magic, luck, and desperation, she got Severus lying across her. Down several corridors, she felt the first alarm trip. Bugger. Why did they have to notice now?
She took off down the nearest corridor that went around her alarm and Masked herself so that she'd appear only as a dark horse, moving with all the silence that her equine species possessed, as well as its speed. She flew through the hallways, and she didn't pause when she crossed the path of another Death Eater and saw him blink at her in shock. Not risking a look back to see if he was pursuing because she already knew the answer, she just increased her speed.
Diving through the back door, she took off like a shot for the edge of the wards even as she felt the house wards behind her flare up in alarm, a sudden blaze of lights. Voldemort and those with him might still be unconscious and imprisoned, but the other Death Eaters were apparently hard at work trying to catch her.
She couldn't Apparate as a unicorn, so she shifted back into human form, somehow managing to get an armful of Severus and keep holding him. He was a dead weight sprawled across her.
The wards had grown even stronger when the alarm had gone off, and she was no longer travelling with the power of the Mark.
It didn't have finesse, but she was in a hurry; she gathered her magic to her in one big fiery ball, concentrating it down into something hard and lethal, and then she threw it at the wards that were blocking her exit.
They crackled and sheared away, the edges catching at her. She nearly went down in the backlash, but she couldn't let herself; she had to get Severus to safety. Throwing herself and her burden through the space she had created, she Apparated the second she was in free air.
Forgoing all the social niceties, she came directly to the Infirmary, knowing exactly which wards to manipulate thanks to Solace. She didn't care if Albus was angry or her secrets revealed. Severus needed help.
Poppy, who'd been crossing the room with a thankfully empty tray, let out a little scream and dropped what she was holding as they arrived with an audible pop.
"Hermione? What? How?" She seemed to realize, then, who was in Hermione's arms. "Merlin. How did you—?"
"Now is not the time," Hermione said, managing another wandless approximation of a Mobilicorpus so that she could carry Severus over to the nearest bed and lay him down as gently as possible. She tried to arrange his limbs into the least painful-looking position, but it looked as though everything hurt, and there was a thick constriction in her throat. "Right now I need you to save his life."
Poppy switched, thankfully, to professional mode and hurried over to cast her diagnostics, her expression growing graver with each passing moment. Suddenly, shock painted her features, and she turned to look at Hermione sharply.
"What have you done?" she demanded.
Confused, Hermione looked at her questioningly.
"To heal him," Poppy breathed.
"Everything I was able," Hermione said impatiently, thinking that now was really not the time to discuss her technique. "But he needs help."
"Does the headmaster know you're here?"
Hermione could have bashed her head against the wall; she was getting stupider by the minute.
Fawkes, she sent out urgently.
I come.
The phoenix arrived soundlessly but let out a musical cry of distress as soon as he saw the man in the bed. Poppy froze.
Berit. His voice was full of grief.
Please, she begged. I can't lose him.
The phoenix landed gracefully on the edge of the bed and walked several steps so that he was level with Severus's face. Her own tears started to fall again as she watched a big, pearly drop grow at the corner of Fawkes's eye before it dripped into Severus's mouth. Two more drops followed.
You should still do everything you can.
As Poppy started, Hermione realized that this was a prod for the mediwitch, not for her. Hermione's heart was still somewhere in her throat, and she felt that she had done pretty much everything of which she was capable.
Spurred into action, the mediwitch hurried away. The phoenix's tears had begun to take effect, and Hermione could see that Severus's visible injuries were already healing. His magic also seemed to be beginning to stabilize. The darkness surrounding his left arm dissipated slightly, which pleased her to no end, and she no longer felt that indefinable drain that told her she was losing him before her very eyes.
Poppy came back and administered the bone-mending, bruise-fading, burn-healing, and pain-relieving potions that she had on hand. Hermione had a renewed appreciation for all those detentions she had spent with Severus brewing potions for the Infirmary. It was lucky they weren't all contraindicated, or Severus would be in quite a difficult spot at the moment.
She wondered if someone had worked that out on purpose so that it was possible to heal people who had been tortured various ways without waiting for each potion to run its course. Part of her recognized that this was a totally ridiculous thought to be having right now, but she was keeping it together by a pretty tenuous thread.
Albus arrived at Severus's bedside, his expression very grave. He looked down at the healing Severus with a completely twinkle-free gaze.
"You should not have gone."
It took her a moment to realize that the headmaster was speaking to her and not the unconscious man he was looking at.
Her voice shook with suppressed emotion. "I would do it again in a heartbeat."
"It was dangerous." The headmaster sounded very disapproving.
"I don't care," she said flatly. How could she care more about her own safety than Severus's?
"Harry has been frantic."
Hermione thought this was a bit of a low blow and replied with an edge of sharpness that she had forborne earlier: "He would have done the same for Draco."
Almost as though speaking of them had summoned them, Harry and Draco were the next to arrive. She wondered, in actuality, if they'd been keeping an eye on the Map or if the phoenix had announced her arrival when she had failed to do so. She really should have alerted Harry on her own, she realized, but she'd had a little too much on her mind.
"Hermione!" Harry exclaimed the second he caught sight of her. "How could you just leave like that? How could you do it?"
"I had to save Severus," she answered simply. "I couldn't have brought anyone else."
Apparating as she had done had been difficult enough without adding a Side-Along into the equation. It wasn't as though they had a queue of Death Eaters to try her insane new technique with.
Draco was speaking now, but although she was aware of his mouth moving, she didn't hear a word of what he was saying as she saw a pulse of Dark Magic clouding around Severus's left arm just before he started to convulse in pain.
Voldemort, apparently, was awake and not best pleased. And unfortunately, he'd had the clever idea of torturing Severus through his Mark.
Without thought, she dropped into her core and reached out for Severus mentally and physically, wincing with him as he shuddered at her death grip on his Mark. She waded hurriedly out past the magic and energy that was Severus until she was in that metaphysical space between Severus and his master. She could see the link much more clearly now that Voldemort had activated it, dark strands of the same putrid colours that the Cruciatus had been comprised of. It might, she realized, be more difficult to break now that Voldemort was actively Summoning his minions.
This only served to make her more determined. There was no way that she was going to let Voldemort keep hurting Severus. It felt as though she was interposing herself between the two of them and then she attacked the link with the mental equivalent of a really powerful Cutting Curse.
For the second time that day, she severed the bond between Voldemort and one of his Death Eaters.
Whereas last time she'd been heading on towards Voldemort when the bond was quiescent, this time she'd deliberately put herself between Voldemort and Severus and tried to sever what was ahead of her; she'd wanted to protect Severus from as much of the magical backlash as possible.
As she was hit with what felt like the magical equivalent of a freight train, she hoped she'd largely succeeded. She was distantly aware of Severus's shudder but was concentrating on clinging to her body and not allowing her mind or magic to be torn away in the wake of the magical explosion that she had just caused.
She felt another presence wrap around to her and clung gratefully, reminding herself that it was far safer for Severus this way. It was over now, whereas Voldemort would no doubt have kept torturing him with the Mark forever had it remained on his arm.
She rather vindictively hoped Voldemort had difficulty explaining to all the followers he had just Summoned what he was doing locked up in a cell with no prisoner.
Of course, depending on how he took the severing of the bonds, he might expect that both Lucius and Severus were dead, but that would serve her purposes for the moment. She looked very much forward to disappointing him one day.
"Hermione Jane Granger!" Hermione's eyes snapped open as she was recalled very abruptly to the physical here and now. "How dare you do that to 'Dora?"
She didn't regret any of her actions that day, and she wanted to tell that to the raging Remus who'd just barrelled into the hospital wing, but she found as she opened her mouth that she'd reached the end of her magical and physical reserves.
She barely felt the impact of her body with the ground as the world went dark.
Hermione opened her eyes, blinking up at a momentarily unfamiliar ceiling. Then her time as a half cat came back to her and the medicinal smell of the place impinged, and she knew she was in the hospital wing.
Sitting up, she was pleased to find that all her body parts were in working order and that she was dressed in clean clothes that smelt nothing like the decay and death of the last robes she remembered wearing. She might not have been injured, per se, but lingering around the edges of her mind was an awareness that she had very much overexerted herself.
Her senses told her that almost thirty-six hours had passed, and she cast a Tempus to confirm it. It was a little hard for her to believe that she'd slept so long, given her current physiology, but she had to admit that she felt considerably better than she had before she'd knocked herself unconscious. Adrenaline must have been pumping through her veins like anything for her not to have noticed back when she'd first freed Lucius just how much magical power she'd expended, and she'd spent the rest of the evening doing so over and over again.
There were warning spells on the bed to alert Poppy to when Hermione awakened and if she tried to leave, but she simply disabled them before she climbed carefully out of bed and went to find Severus.
The Infirmary floor was cool against her bare feet, and she felt as though there were emanations of relief washing up over her. The castle, it seemed, was glad that she was functional again. So glad, in fact, that it led her in the right direction, and Hermione didn't have to search at all to find the private room where Severus had been tucked away. There were plenty of students still here over the holidays, and it wouldn't do for the wrong one to see him lying vulnerable in the hospital wing.
No one was with him when she got round the protective wards and into the room. He was still very pale, and she could see that he'd been put into a magical coma to ensure that he had time to fully recover. He was not, Hermione could well imagine, the most patient of patients. If she was assessing the spell correctly, he'd remain unconscious until shortly after ten o'clock that evening.
She didn't really think anything was going to go horribly wrong at this point, but she knew she was now going to be stuck worrying horribly for a good twelve hours. She conjured a chair and sat down at the head of the bed. Reaching out with gentle hands, she brushed dark strands of hair off his face.
She swallowed heavily, wondering why on Earth she felt like crying again when he was clearly so much better. Seeing his hand above the coverlet, she couldn't help clasping it gingerly. The bones were completely mended now, and it didn't look as though any permanent damage had been done. He wouldn't have been able to function properly as a Potions master without the use of his hands.
From what she'd seen herself and from Poppy's diagnostics, there'd been plenty of Legilimency attacks and bouts of Cruciatus. The physical wounds looked largely spell-inflicted, and she suspected that they'd spent a while hoping they could break him before they'd decided that it was a futile effort. Cutting off limbs didn't appear to have the appeal that driving someone insane with the pain from a spell did. She had a feeling it was a good thing that Bellatrix hadn't been there to take part.
Severus's Occlumency barriers had been damaged but intact when she'd found him, and he'd had the benefit of the unicorn blood to stop the deterioration as well as phoenix tears and most of the healing potions that the two of them had ever made. Plus he had the benefit of all his magic now that she'd severed the Dark Mark—and he had a lot of power, especially since February. Poppy'd had the good sense to put him in that coma, and that meant all of those factors could be working together to ensure that he was healed properly without him trying to do something daft like brew a complicated potion.
His face was very relaxed in this sleep. She railed yet again at the fact that the only time she got to see him relaxed and sleeping was after he'd been horribly tortured.
"You've got to stop doing this," she told him quietly, a smile that was edging into tears on her lips. "I keep seeing you this way, and I'm sure you must be annoyed with what it's doing for your reputation." She sniffed. "If only you wouldn't go and get yourself tortured, there'd be no need for me to help you heal."
Hard on the heels of this thought were two realizations: he would never have to go back to Voldemort and risk being tortured like that again, and without that reason for her to see him while he was sleeping, it was likely not an opportunity that she'd be getting in the future.
She stared down at him, memorizing his face as it slowly regained its colour, leaving her hands clasped in his because she was certain that when he was awake, he would curse her into next week if she attempted any such thing. Sniffing again, she reminded herself that all that mattered was that he was safe. If he still didn't care for her, at least he was alive.
His feelings weren't going to change overnight, and she'd be as loathe to accept forced gratitude as he would be to extend it. So he would wake up and be about as scathing as usual, and she would rejoice as best she was able and remember that a world with a disdainful Severus in it was much better than one with a dead Severus in it.
It was about two hours later when Poppy came to check on Severus and once again let out a squeak at sight of Hermione.
"What are you doing in here?"
Hermione frowned slightly, thinking it was perfectly obvious. "Waiting for Severus to wake up."
"He's in a magical coma," Poppy said shortly.
"Until ten o'clock this evening; I know," she answered and saw the woman's surprise. Hermione didn't much feel like explaining herself in wake of the aggressive stance that the matron was taking, so she remained silence.
"You shouldn't be out of bed."
"I'm fine," Hermione answered.
"I should have—"
"I disabled them."
The older woman's voice was stern. "You shouldn't be here."
Hermione was pretty sure that if anyone had the right to be waiting here to ensure that Severus was all right, it was her.
"I want to make sure he's all right," she offered quietly.
The woman's eyes were impassive. "You've done enough. I need to ask you to leave."
Hermione frowned. "I just want to sit here."
"Don't make me call the headmaster," Poppy threatened.
Hermione rose so that she could stand at equal height to the woman who was telling her she couldn't stay with her mate. "And what is it, precisely, that you think he could do?"
From the look of it, the woman was only just now recalling what Hermione had done the night before.
"Would he want you here?" she asked, indicating Severus with a nod of her chin. "Will he be happy to see you when he wakes?"
Hermione's chin came down as she contemplated this. No. She knew he wouldn't. He was always annoyed when he found her with him like this; if he felt he had to acknowledge what she'd done, it came out abysmally wrong. He didn't like anyone to witness his weakness, as he saw it, and he'd be much happier if he could quietly slink away and pretend that it was a miracle that he'd appeared healed in the hospital wing when the last thing he remembered was being tortured to near death by Voldemort and his Death Eaters.
Slowly, Hermione shook her head.
"Then I think you should go."
Hermione spared one last look at the sleeping Severus, glad that she could now see his chest rise and fall. She'd felt the steady pulse of his heart, too, and knew that this would have to sustain her for the rest of the day. She could look in on him privately once he was released from hospital. Coming to see him after he'd recovered had to be perfectly acceptable because they could both pretend that she didn't know what had happened to him if that was his wish.
She nodded to the mediwitch, wondering why the woman wasn't being a little more sympathetic. Poppy had always been strict with her patients, it was true, but it wasn't as though Hermione was a boisterous Quidditch team who was going to wake up the patient and disturb his healing process. She'd had every intention of sitting there quietly and not getting in the way.
It was only as Hermione left the hospital wing under the flinty glare of the mediwitch that it occurred to her that perhaps she had given too much away concerning how she felt about Severus. She hadn't given a second thought to it until now, but it had probably been as clear as day to everyone from the moment that Hermione had brought Severus back that she loved him. Everyone else had already known, but it must have been a shock to the mediwitch to see Hermione displaying such obvious affection for one of her professors. Perhaps Poppy didn't approve of such relationships.
Since Hermione could hardly go back and explain all the circumstances surrounding her feelings, she forced herself to keep walking away from the hospital wing. At least Severus had been unconscious. He hadn't been awake to see her blunder, and she was sure that she could trust that he'd make it abundantly plain to everyone in the near vicinity when he woke that he had no tender feelings for her.
Poppy probably had plenty of experience over the years with students who had crushes on their professors, and there was nothing in the behaviour Hermione had displayed that would have revealed that more had passed between them. Really, Hermione snorted sourly to herself, it might as well have been an unreciprocated crush that she was feeling because what had happened between them in February hadn't really counted, as Severus had told her very plainly.
She'd try to talk to him once he was awake, though, and see if they could be civil now that he was no longer a spy.
Her feet carried her to her quarters which seemed the most logical place to go under the circumstances. She wasn't in any fit state to revise, and she couldn't bear so much as the idea of having an ordinary conversation right now with any of the students that she might meet in the library.
Her quarters were safe from the intrusion of the vast majority of students, and she was perfectly prepared to simply sit there for ten hours until Severus woke up. It was all she would have done seated at his bedside, after all, and she really didn't feel up to much else.
She should, she realized too late, have had a better plan and hid herself in her bedroom. Poppy was not the only one to be displeased with her, and when Harry and Draco returned from lunch, they made no effort to hide this fact from her. She was recovered from her collapse now and in perfect health as far as they could see, and that meant that it was time for a free-for-all of questions and accusations and their collective list of all that she had done wrong when she'd left without telling anyone on Tuesday.
It only got worse as the day progressed because she was subjected to all the rest of them as well: Albus, Remus, Ron, and Tonks. Kingsley in his official capacity was even used as a threat with what she gathered was supposed to cause a great deal of alarm in her. They all demanded answers but didn't seem to be willing to give her time to actually respond; they had opinions that they wanted to share with her in elevated tones of voice, and she was becomingly increasingly uninterested in listening to them.
Given what she had just been through, she finally just stopped talking entirely and let them argue all over one another. It was chaotic and noisy, and she could feel her temper fraying by the second.
Draco and Remus had started arguing because each felt their significant other had been treated worse by her. Albus and Harry were arguing about who should have known that she was going to make a run for it. Ron and Tonks, who were furthest from her and hardest to hear, seemed to be arguing about what had happened when he'd left her at Tonks's office.
Finally, they were so distracted by what they were saying to one another that although there was still the occasional emphatic gesture in her direction, they weren't looking at her at all. Without regret, she Masked herself and slipped out of the room.
She headed straight for the nearest exit, needing to get out of the castle before the atmosphere choked her to death. None of them seemed to have recognized that she was still worried out of her mind about Severus, that her magic was still recovering, and that she couldn't bloody well talk when they were all screaming at her.
Given that her magical reserves still weren't in tip-top shape, she doubted it would be wise to change into her Animagus form. Instead, she just went to sit at the edge of the Forest, and it wasn't long before Castina came to join her.
You are troubled, little one, the herd mare said softly.
Hermione nodded. I have to wait until tonight to find out if my mate has survived, is going to recover properly, I mean, and everyone in there is busy being angry that I went out to rescue him on my own. I was not allowed to sit with him.
Castina frowned. Humans are very strange.
Hermione couldn't really argue with that one.
It was peaceful out here under the eaves of the trees where there were no other humans and no unreasonable expectations to plague her. Castina, unlike all of Hermione's human friends, didn't make the slightest attempt to force her to speak. The herd mare was a calming presence, and the lack of judgement was once again exactly what Hermione needed; everyone else she knew possessed judgement in spades when they hadn't even heard what had actually happened because they hadn't given her the chance to speak.
Hermione?
They'd finally noticed, it seemed, that she was no longer in the room.
Fawkes, Hermione said stiffly, I know how annoying this was when Ron asked me to do it, but would you please tell Harry that I'm fine but that if they think I'm going to go back into that room, they're out of their bloody minds?
Fortunately, Fawkes, like Castina, seemed to be on her side in this matter, or at least not against her, and he acquiesced without complaint and relayed the message to Harry.
Harry didn't miss the significance of Hermione choosing not to speak with him, and he sounded somewhat chastened when she caught his response.
Tell her that we'll behave.
Fawkes didn't bother to repeat the message.
I'm not talking to any of them until I can stop worrying about Severus.
This news, too, was duly relayed, and Harry, although unhappy, decided that pushing her further at this point would not assist matters.
She wasn't really sleepy, but there was a lingering lassitude that she hadn't felt immediately upon waking up. Compared to yesterday's magical exhaustion, she was great, but the longer she was conscious, the more she realized that she still wasn't up to her old strength. Although she'd hardly done anything all day, she still had plenty of emotional anxieties that were gnawing at her with very sharp teeth.
It took her a good hour to get back into the state of peaceful relaxation that she had begun to attain before Harry interrupted her. She couldn't garner all the benefits of being in unicorn form, but it remained beautiful and peaceful outside, and she allowed that to soothe her.
Although Hermione wanted to run back to the castle as soon as ten o'clock arrived, she knew it would be imprudent. If she found Severus awake in the Infirmary, she'd be liable to do something daft, like fling her arms around him in front of everyone, and he wouldn't want that. If everyone else was waiting to see if he was all right when he woke, it would also be crowded, and she'd risk the same sort of scene she'd been subjected to in her common room.
She would wait, as she had originally planned, until he was relocated to his chambers and alone.
Time slowed to a crawl, and she was very grateful for the wards which informed her of the inhabitants' movements within the castle. Severus finally got out of the hospital wing and she rejoiced, but Albus followed him, and they spent over an hour in his quarters together. By the time midnight rolled around, Hermione was positively itching to see Severus with her own eyes. She tracked the headmaster all the way back up to his quarters to ensure that she wasn't ambushed. Everyone else seemed to be in their proper locations, as well, so she bid Castina farewell and braved the castle once more.
Her plans were immediately derailed when the castle put out all the torches that lit the way to Severus's quarters. Hermione tried to step in that direction anyway and could actually feel the castle's reluctance.
Why? she demanded.
The castle didn't communicate in words, and it could only reiterate what it had already sent her: gross reluctance for Hermione to visit Severus right now. She desperately wanted to see him but knew that if anything was terribly wrong, if he was dying or something, Fawkes would have said. The castle had never done her wrong, so Hermione reluctantly bowed to its wishes, turning, instead, in the direction of her quarters. The relief the castle felt was palpable.
Harry and Draco weren't in the common room, and she was uncertain whether this was a courtesy or if they'd simply gone to bed.
Despite her entire day of non-activity and her worry about Severus and why the castle didn't want her to see him, her weakness lingered, and she fell asleep quickly.
Hermione awoke shortly after five and didn't need the castle to tell her that waking up Severus to ensure that he was all right was not the best of plans. Instead, she showered and went back out to the Forest. If she stayed in her room, she'd likely only be cornered by all the people who still wanted to yell at her, and she refused to go through that again.
Castina rejoined her, and Hermione thanked her for taking so much time away from her herd to cope with the upset human.
You are herd, Castina answered with a trace of amusement. Right now, you need my assistance, so I am here to offer it to you.
Hermione chose not to argue with this outlook, and they lapsed back into comfortable silence.
She felt better this morning. She still wasn't sure that she should transform, but she felt a little more connected to the world. She'd probably been in shock yesterday, she realized, still reeling over how close she'd come to losing Severus completely and all the horrid things she had seen and all the crazy things she'd done to get him back. It was starting to sink in now, which was probably a good thing, or she wouldn't be in any condition to get back to classes on Monday.
Less than an hour later, the peace of the morning was shattered.
"Hermione Jane Granger!"
She wondered why everyone seemed to feel it necessary to remind her that they knew her full name. She was quite aware of it and was perfectly able to answer to "Hermione" all on its own, as there weren't any others around with whom she might get confused.
She scrambled to her feet as she saw who was bearing down on her like a bat out of hell. It was such a relief to see him striding along just like normal that she actually felt dizzy with relief.
Severus still looked paler than usual, the bright spots of colour on his cheeks indicative of the anger that she was just now starting to process had been in his tone when he addressed her. His lips were compressed in a thin white line as he glared at her.
She saw the tendrils of the wandless spell reach out for her, and she was so surprised that she didn't make the slightest attempt to prevent her wand from being snapped out of its sheath and sent flying to land in the grass near Severus's feet.
Then he'd opened his mouth and was yelling at her again. She now fancied she had an inkling of what the castle had been trying to save her from the night before.
"I might have known I'd find you out here consorting with that beast! Was it punishment, is that it, for taking you up on your offer?" He levelled his wand at her, face contorted in rage. "I ought to kill you right now."
She lost control of her emotions in the onslaught of all that fury directed at her from the man she loved, and Castina reacted instantly.
Hermione did the only thing she could think of; light magic had very little effect on unicorns.
She threw herself between Severus and the charging Castina.
The world ground to a halt.
Castina reared back, and it was only as Hermione saw the blood on the end of the herd mare's horn that she realized what had happened. Being shorter than Severus had a material advantage today; if they'd been the same height, the horn would have pierced her through the heart.
Though the horn had not pierced anything fatal, something less tangible inside of Hermione had snapped.
Albus was angry with her for disobeying him and leaving the castle. Harry and Draco were upset that she hadn't informed them of her plan and had gone without them. Ron had been tricked by her and had sort of become an unwilling accomplice. Remus was spitting mad because of what she'd done to Tonks. Tonks had revealed an Order secret and had wound up Stunned and imprisoned in her own classroom.
Viktor had left without even saying goodbye because he was still so upset with her. Hermione didn't even know why Severus was angry, but after everything that she'd done for him, he had actually said to her face that he wanted to kill her. And now Castina had just tried to kill Hermione's mate and had, instead, wounded her. Looking down, she could see the blood that was beginning to soak through her robes. She was sure that it hurt, but her brain could only process so many pains at once, and it was overloaded with Hermione's emotional distress.
More than anything, she wanted to get away from all of them.
She wasn't sure whether Castina or Severus moved first, but Hermione stumbled back and away from them.
Stay away from me!
Given how close they both were, there was no need for that sort of mental volume, but she didn't care, she didn't care about any of it anymore.
She transformed. For an instant she stood there, flanks heaving, barely taking in Severus's shocked expression and Castina's troubled one. She could feel the blood oozing down her skin, knew that it would be silver now.
One of them was going to try to speak any second now, and she couldn't bear it.
She turned tail and fled.
Hermione had never seriously tried to outrun Castina before. Logically, she knew it was unlikely she could, but she wasn't really concerned about logic right now. Her only goal was to reach the limits of the Forest and keep going. She had never done so before, but she knew that Castina would not abandon her herd, and that meant that once Hermione made it out of the Forest, she would be beyond reach.
Berit—
She threw up all her mental and magical shields, blocking out Fawkes and anyone else who might try to contact her, Masking herself so that she was invisible and moving as silently as she had when she had sneaked in to rescue Severus. Castina and Fawkes had taught her well.
The speed with which she ran out of forest was mildly surprising; it seemed that in the past, no matter how much fun they had been having when they had run around and through it, they hadn't been putting nearly all their effort into traversing it as she had just done.
Without hesitation, Hermione emerged from the woods and continued to gallop away from Hogwarts.