Dean Thomas appeared at Grimmauld Place a day after capture. His wand hand severed. He'd stolen a knife and sawn his hand off at the wrist in order to escape.
A week later Severus brought word that the shackles were being moved out of Sussex in order to expand production. They would now come in sets of two.
Draco brought Hermione a set of the prototypes one evening and watched her analyse it.
They looked almost like bracelets.
Hermione built an elaborate web of analytic magic around it, dissecting all the components; the alchemy, charms, the arithmancy, the runes set in the iron core.
She spent hours trying to find a flaw, until she fell asleep in the middle of it and woke to find Draco carrying her to bed.
“I can't — there isn't a way around them.” Her brain felt clouded by exhaustion. She was almost shaking with frustration. “There has to be something. Using imperio won't work, it shows up in the spell signature and cancels the incantation. I thought, just cut through them, but the core is charmed to explode. I'm just not — maybe I have to come at it from a different angle. My alchemy is all self-taught. Maybe I just haven't researched enough.”
She started to pull away from him and tried to go back toward the stacks of books she'd brought. Draco stopped her. He slid one arm around her waist and wrapped the other around her shoulders.
“You can't save everyone, Granger.”
She stilled and stared despairingly across the room.
“I don't know how we're going to win this war,” she finally said.
Draco was silent. There was nothing to say that wouldn't be a lie.
She lifted her hand and gripped his arm around her shoulders.
“I don't know how to save anyone. Everything I do just puts it off so that they die in a worse way. I wish — I wish I'd never become a healer.”
She'd never admitted it to anyone before. That she hated it.
She told him about the horcruxes. She wasn't supposed to. She hadn't been cleared to. She told him anyway. Everything she knew, about their creation and destruction, and all the Order's ideas about what they could be. About the Founders' lost items.
“We think there might be one in Hogwarts,” she said when she showed him all her research. “But I don't know how many he could have. There couldn't be more than five, could there? Splitting his soul like that — it's poison in the body. It will eat him from the inside out. His current form is the best restoration he could manage with a regeneration potion. It should have returned him to his physical prime, but his soul is so deteriorated making a sort of body was the most it could do. So there has to be a limit to the horcruxes. I don't think he can keep making them. If we can destroy all the horcruxes, he'll become unstable enough that even if no one kills him, eventually he'll just cease to exist. But we don't know where they could be. There's so little information about his past.”
“He gave one to my father during the first war?”
“When the Chamber of Secrets was opened during our second year, it was caused by the soul fragment possessing Ginny Weasley. Your father put the horcrux in with her books in an attempt to discredit Arthur Weasley.”
“If they were made during the first war, and he entrusted one to his followers — I'll look into it. You should have told me sooner.”
“I shouldn't even be telling you now.” She rested her hand over his heart. “I wasn't trying to add something else. I just — I don't have anyone to talk to. It helps me to think if I can talk aloud.”
He snorted. “If it ends this, it's worth it. What is the Order doing? Everything Moody and Shacklebolt assign me is just buying time.” His voice was vibrating with fury.
“Draco…”
He didn't say anything else, but his rage was palpable.
He didn't trust Kingsley or Moody or the Order. He was terrified if he died, they might sell her again to try to survive.
And she couldn't promise him that she wouldn't. She would do anything to win the war. He knew that. She suspected that fear drove him more than anything else.
He wrapped his arms around her, and she could feel it in his hands, in the way he touched her.
She rested her head on his chest and listened to his heart.
"You should get body-armor,” she said. “I was researching it. Ukrainian Ironbelly hide. It's lightweight, highly resistant to magic, and almost impenetrable to physical attacks. If you wear it under your robes, no one will even know it's there. It could save your life someday.”
He didn't say anything. He was still staring down at her research on the horcruxes.
Sometimes they didn't leave the shack in Whitecroft immediately. He'd arrive with so many injuries he'd be going into shock. Other times, she'd feel the tremors of cruciatus in his hands.
She'd heal him and then sit with his head in her lap while he stabilised. She'd treat the tremors in his arms and hands while he floated on the edge of consciousness. She muttered apologies to him under her breath as she tapped her wand tip across his hands, bending, and rubbing, and massaging his fingers until they stopped twitching.
You're killing him. You're killing him. This is because of you.
She let herself cry over him when he wasn't conscious to see it. She gripped his hands in hers and tried to fix him.
“I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry.” She said it over and over.
She'd wipe her eyes and banish all her tears before she rennervated him. She'd feel the tension tear through his body as he regained consciousness and then feel him breathe when he looked up and saw her.
He'd apparate them to a hotel and sleep with his arms wrapped possessively around her.
When even Draco's presence was insufficient to quiet her demons, she'd study his face and listen to his heartbeat, quietly promising him, “I'm going to take care of you. I swear, I'm always going to take care of you.”
Chapter End Notes
Illustrations by Avendell, follow her on tumblr and instagram.
Additional Illustrations:
The way she healed Draco by ectoheart.
"I'm always going to take care of you" by jaxx in a box.
Intimacy by katescreativecorner.
"I'll always come for you" by samadiw.
"Don't die." by samadiw.
Sleeping together by roselovesfanfic.
Don't Die Draco by peremeart.
Flashback 32
May 2003
It was near the end of May when the Death Eaters launched an attack on a Muggle town in Surrey. It was a trap. They didn't even bother to conceal the fact they were luring the Resistance out.
There was no need to. The Resistance would go anyway.
Hermione watched the Order depart to join the fight and worked with Padma to transfer the hospital ward down into the foyer and expand the walls of the sitting room. They called in several of the Resistance members who functioned as healers and nurses at the hospice safe houses.