The Curse
13 May 1997 — Tuesday Afternoon
Hermione was halfway through the fifth-floor corridor up to the steps when she heard it—yelling, then a crash of metal and stone, echoing like thunder in the distance. A sense of dread bloomed in her chest. She quickened her pace, books clutched to her chest, wand at the ready. She didn't put any stock in divination but something was wrong.
She had been on her way to meet Draco but she wasn’t sure if he’d actually join her. Their meetings in the Room of Requirement had become few and far between, much less consistent since the night she saw his Dark Mark. He pulled away from her and she found little solace in the fact that he probably thought it was for her own good.
Hermione felt such dread wanting to help him, but not wanting to betray Harry and Ron, torn between what was easy and what was right. As Dumbledore had said once, sometimes, it's a much harder thing to stand up to your friends than your enemies.
She had reached out to Draco with a secret note, much like the first one he gave her to meet with him.
He had seemed tired lately in classes, taut with nerves, shadowed by something she couldn’t quite name. She knew they both had this afternoon free and thought maybe an early meet-up would put him more at ease with her again.
She trusted him and surely, as a realist, she figured it maybe it was her 17-year-old hormones and he was getting progressively more attractive by the minute. Not just his physical looks but now she knew his mind too and sometimes she was overwhelmed with the feeling that she didn't want to waste any more time being polite about it.
Hermione also was already in cahoots with him! She had to trust him—and in her gut, she worried that Voldemort had given him more to do than just fix the vanishing cabinet.
Then she heard it.
“Sectumsempra! ”
The word rang out like a curse against the soul, and her blood turned to ice. Her intuition told her he was involved.
Draco.
She broke into a run.
By the time she reached the entrance to the boys' lavatory on the sixth floor, cackling with dark magical energy, her lungs were burning, her heart pounding. She shoved open the heavy door and skidded to a stop on the slick wet tile floor.
What she saw nearly dropped her to her knees.
Draco lay on his side, eyes crushed in pain, his white shirt blooming red—deep, spreading slashes across his chest and stomach. Blood pooled around him in grotesque rivers, and he looked so fragile, so pale like he was already halfway gone.
Harry stood over him, wand out, face horrified.
“Oh my God—Hermione—” he stammered, backing away as she rushed past him, dropping her books and finally falling to her knees beside Draco.
“Draco, ” she breathed, her voice cracking as she pressed her hands to his wounds, desperate to do something, anything. “Stay with me. Please—please— stay awake. ”
His eyes fluttered toward her, unfocused and glassy. “Granger…?”
“I’m here,” she said fiercely, blinking back tears. “You’re going to be okay.”
He looked dazed, more confused than afraid, but his body jerked in pain, blood seeping through her fingers. She couldn’t stop it. Her hands were soaked.
She didn’t think Episkey would help and didn’t want to risk making it worse so she used a couple of bandaging charms to try and stem the blood flow.
She looked up at Harry, why was he still here gawking at them?! Panic now clawing at her throat. “Go get help! ”
“I didn’t know what it would do, I just—he was going to curse me—I didn’t—”
“GO! ” she screamed.
Harry turned and fled.
Hermione turned back to Draco. “You’re going to be fine. I won’t let you go like this.”
Draco gave a breathless sound that might’ve been a laugh, maybe a sob. “You’re… not supposed to care.”
“Too late,” she whispered.
Then, heavy footsteps—Snape burst into the room like a storm, wand already drawn.
“Move!” he barked.
Hermione scrambled backward, blood smeared on her palms, sleeves, and down her shins, she was covered in Draco's blood.
Snape dropped to his knees beside Draco without hesitation, muttering incantations she didn’t recognize, a pale green light glowing from his wand as he directed it over the wounds.
The bleeding slowed, and the gashes through his ruined shirt were knitting together like time reversing itself. Draco’s breathing eased, ragged but steadier.
She could finally breathe again.
Snape’s face was drawn tight with fury, not at Draco, but at the situation. Did he know it was Harry’s fault?
He turned sharply to Hermione. “He needs the hospital wing immediately. You— stay with him. ”
She nodded, too shaken to speak. She had no intention of leaving him.
Snape conjured a stretcher and levitated Draco onto it, Hermione grabbed his hand and tried to warm it with her other on top. She walked beside him as the stretcher glided through the corridor, her fingers laced in his even as they were streaked in dried blood.
His grip was weak, but present.
They didn’t speak, but they didn’t need to.
She wasn’t supposed to be the one who cared. He wasn’t supposed to be the one in danger. But nothing about this year had gone the way it was supposed to.
Hermione Granger wasn’t just kissing the bad boy, put up to a manipulative scheme by her best friends, as a blood war was brewing behind the scenes of their magical lives; She genuinely cared for Draco Malfoy’s life.
And in doing so, something between them had shifted irrevocably.
—---
13 May 1997 — Tuesday Evening
Gryffindor Tower
The door to the boys’ dormitory slammed against the wall as Hermione stormed in, cheeks flushed, hands still shaking, blotched with fading blood. Ron and Harry had just arrived, clearly not having expected her to get there so soon. Harry froze mid-sentence, talking about his detentions, guilt etched deep across his face. Ron looked between them, already tense.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Hermione snapped, the words out before she could temper her tone. “Sectumsempra , Harry? That’s not a silly jinx—that’s dark magic!”
“I didn’t know what it would do!” Harry shot back, but his voice lacked conviction. “I—he was going to curse me, Hermione! He had his wand out—he was going to use the Cruciatus curse—”
“You think he was,” she cut in, she didn’t think Draco had it in him to cast that, voice rising. “But that spell—what you did—it could’ve killed him! You didn’t even try to disarm him first! You just— reacted! ”
Harry looked genuinely shaken. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Intent doesn’t matter when someone’s bleeding out on the floor!” she shouted, her chest tightening. “You didn’t even check if he was alive—you just stood there!”
Ron moved to her side, awkward and hesitant. “Hermione, come on, it’s not like Harry meant it. And it is Malfoy.”
She turned on Ron, fire still burning behind her eyes. “Yes, it is Malfoy. The same Malfoy we’ve spent months using, manipulating, lying to—and who just bled out in front of me because Harry decided to try out a spell from a mystery textbook!”
Ron flinched but recovered with a scowl. “Alright, well, excuse us for not falling in love with him along the way.”
Her breath caught, and the room went still.
She straightened. “Don’t you dare reduce this to that.”
“You’ve been defending him since January,” Ron muttered, bitterness creeping into his voice. “Sneaking off, lying to us about what you’re doing. Don’t pretend this doesn’t mean something more to you than ‘strategy.’”
“I never lied about what mattered,” she said coldly, turning back to Harry. “I did what needed to be done to keep this school safe. We all did. But Draco trusted me. And now the Death Eaters might not even think the cabinet works without him as a contact—you might’ve ruined everything.”
Ron looked genuinely confused. “What do you mean?”
She could honestly pull her hair out. Gesturing wildly in aggravation with her hands as she glared at them.
“If the Death Eaters don’t believe it’s safe, they’ll never use it! Probably even blown his chances of spying for us too,” Hermione said. “Harry might’ve just taken out our entire advantage. All those nights working, hexing it, planning with him— gone. ”
Harry rubbed his forehead. “I wasn’t thinking about the cabinet—”
“Exactly,” she snapped. “You were chasing him around again, obsessing over every move he makes. What was the plan, Harry? Catch him red-handed? Get him expelled? Let him die?”
Neither of them had an answer, she knew they never thought enough steps ahead, even with all of Ron's chess strategy, he was very single-minded. Both of her best friends couldn't see the forest for the trees, that was her department. The silence filled the room, dense and uncomfortable.
Ron looked at her with something like hurt in his expression, but she met his gaze steadily. And for once, he saw it— really saw it.
Hermione wasn’t his anymore. Maybe she never had been.
Whatever had been between them—the missed moments, the jealous glances—it had faded. Something in her had changed, and she wasn’t looking to him for comfort or validation. She had outgrown him in a way that felt sudden and inevitable.
“I don’t understand how you can care about him,” Ron said quietly, hurting at his realization.
Hermione exhaled, some of her fire extinguishing into exhaustion. “I didn’t expect to either. But I do. And I won’t apologize for it.”
She turned toward the door, voice softer but still resolute. “He’s not who you think he is.”
And then she left them there, alone in the dormitory with their confusion, guilt, and the echo of her words.