“Simmering. It needs to barely move.”
She used a dropper to carefully measure out the tears. Fifteen. Exactly fifteen. There were two drops left in the vial.
She stared at the simmering potion. It looked flawless. Exactly the way it should.
Her hands shook slightly.
“Draco, I need a Calming Draught.”
He handed it to her without a word. She swallowed it in a single gulp. Her hands stopped shaking.
She added the tears. Even with Calming Draught, her heart was in her throat.
When the last drop was added, she stood frozen as she watched. The silvery tears slid beneath the surface, luminous, as though they were falling stars. They slowly turned blood red. The colour spread through the rest of the potion and held.
“Flagon.”
A silver ladle, dusted in powdered unicorn horn, transferred the potion into a glass flagon.
Hermione stoppered it and released a slow breath. “That's it.”
“That removes the Dark Mark?” Lucius said, staring curiously at the potion in her hands.
She looked over at him, and her stomach twisted. “No. This stops the curse from killing him after I cut his arm off.”
Lucius stared at her blankly before his expression grew murderous.
“You intend to maim my son?” He lunged against the bars of the cage as he sneered at her. “You claimed to be an ingenious healer and cutting off his arm is the best you can do?”
Hermione's heart was pounding painfully in her chest as she gripped the flagon and stared at him. A burst of heat flared in the pit of her stomach. “You may have noticed I don't have magic at the moment. It's been two years since I cast a spell, and the instant my manacles are removed, I'm on a countdown. I'll have twenty minutes to perform a procedure that should take an hour with a surgical team. I won't even have my own wand.”
Her hands started shaking violently. She set down the potion on the table. “If I had a better idea, I would be trying it. Do you think — I want to cut off his arm—?” Her voice was vibrating.
She wanted to scream at him.
She turned away and pressed her hands again her sternum, fighting to breathe.
She'd never performed an amputation on anyone whose limbs weren't entirely destroyed beyond all hope. The Phoenix tears had been such an impossible missing piece. She'd been so relieved to have them she hadn't fully processed the reality that she was about to cut Draco's arm off.
She felt as though she was about to be violently sick.
She could vaguely hear Draco saying something to his father.
Her throat was closing.
She stumbled across the room to the far wall and pressed herself against it as she struggled to breathe. She choked back a sob, smothering it with her hands, and stood shaking.
She felt fingertips brush lightly across her shoulder and flinched as the guilt almost shattered her.
“I'm so sorry, Draco. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.” Her voice was broken as she turned to look at him. “I swear if there was another way quick enough, I'd do it. I'm so sorry—”
Her voice cut off as she sobbed. “You have such beautiful hands. I always thought — you had such beautiful hands—”
Draco held her face in his hands, and she gripped his wrists tightly while she stood crying for several minutes. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders, and she sobbed and tried to memorise it.
“Granger, I always assumed if I escaped, I'd lose my hand,” he said in a low voice, dropping his head against hers and tucking a curl behind her ear. “If I could have, I would have cut it off myself years ago.”
She swallowed a sob and nodded. “I know. I just — I really did try to find another way. I really did. I don't want you to think I would if I had any other choice.”
She brushed her tears away, drawing a deep breath as she turned back.
She forced herself not to look at Lucius as she walked over and reviewed all the medical supplies, painstakingly laid out in the order that she needed them. She ran the procedure through her mind, verifying that she had everything she'd need.
Her manacles were burning around her wrists.
“I'm ready.” She turned to face Draco and Lucius, extending her hands.
Draco's face was expressionless, but his eyes were molten silver. He reached into his robes and withdrew Lucius' wand.
He extended it slowly towards his father, his expression growing dangerous. “If you—”
“If I harm her, you will undoubtedly blaspheme your mother's memory, torture me most horribly, and we will all die dreadfully. I am aware, Draco,” Lucius said, snatching his wand back. “Shouldn't you be focused more on your own wellbeing and impending maiming? You couldn't have fallen for a more competent healer?”
Draco just sneered at him before looking back at Hermione. He took her hands gently in his and pressed her inner wrists together.
“Hold the manacles like this,” he said.
As she studied his fingers wrapped around her wrists, her eyes burned, but she blinked the tears away.
Draco looked up at her. “Ready?”
She nodded without a word.
Draco and Lucius looked at each other and then extended their wands.
“Morsmordre.”
The Dark Marks slithered from their wands, but instead of traveling upwards, the green mist encircled Hermione's manacles and disappeared beneath the shining copper. There was a brief pause.
A quiet click and the manacles unclasped, falling to the ground.
Hermione gave a low gasp and nearly fell over as her magic suddenly came roaring back to her.
It was as though every cell in her body were glowing and the compulsions were jerked free of her consciousness.
She felt high. She hadn't realised how she'd adapted to the lack of magic until it returned like a tidal wave.
There was a sense of euphoria. She had magic. She could cast and cast and cast. She would bend the world to her will. Create and form, dissolve and destroy, and… save Draco.
She focused through the exhilaration rushing through her veins.
She pulled on her magic, and it didn't fade, or vanish, or turn on her. She wrenched it inward, drew towards her mind, and slammed her occlumency walls into place. Blocking out everything.
Cold. Crystal clear.
She picked up one of the wands and flicked it. It was like forcing something down a blocked channel. The wand gave a few halfhearted sparks. She tried the next, trying to find one that felt right. A wand that was responsive and attuned to her.
Nothing. Nothing. Very little.
Her shoulders grew more and more tense as she began running out of options. Draco even handed her Lucius' wand to try. Her stomach began twisting with dread.
She started to pick up the last wand and then hesitated, looking up at Draco. “This was your old wand from school.”
“It was. Hawthorn and unicorn hair. They don't turn to the Dark Arts.”
As her fingers slipped around the handle, she felt her magic stir, warming her fingertips. She picked it up and waved it through the air.
The room filled with lights.
There was an itching in her fingers to experiment; to cast something superfluous or transfigure a few vials on the table. She ignored the temptation.
She'd already lost three minutes finding a wand.
She conjured a twenty minute hourglass and flipped it, starting her countdown.
“Lie on the table,” she instructed Draco in a sharp voice. She flicked the wand and summoned several vials to herself. She felt a rush through her entire body but forced herself to ignore it.
“Take all of these. Then I'm going to stun you.”
“No,” Draco said in a flat voice as he downed the line up of potions.
Hermione didn't look at him as she summoned the bandages and cut off the entire sleeve of his shirt. “Draco, I don't want you to watch me cut off your arm.”