XXI.
Hermione hid herself in Draco’s shower. She didn’t know how long she let the scalding water mask the sound of her sobs. She was furious. He pushed and pushed. What did he think was going to happen? She wasn’t going to rush into his arms and thank him for kidnapping her. She wasn’t going to sit there and admit that maybe Harry and Ron’s attention had always been in other places. Her greatest fear had always been being left behind by the two of them. Summers at the Burrow, holidays, she hated the thought of missing out on anything. She left school early to traipse around the bloody wilderness searching for Horcruxes with them! She’d always put her own ambitions and needs on the side for them. Hadn’t they seen that? Draco sodding Malfoy did. And he threw it in her face. She didn’t need reminding that Pansy Parkinson and Theodore Nott were better friends than Ron and Harry. She lived it every day.
She didn’t have her wand, so her hair dried in an obscene form. She missed her magic. She wrestled the locks into a braid and sat in Malfoy’s bay window. She glared at the glinting golden cuff around her wrist. She glared outside at the sunset. She couldn’t reconcile how Malfoy knew so much. How did he catch so many details of her life? Details she didn’t think any other person would ever know. He remembered a stupid waffle keychain.
She sat in the window for hours. From here, she could see the glinting form of the dragon in the maze. The twinkling lights illuminated the piece against the dark backdrop. She watched as he prowled around the tree and breathed its fiery water. She was glad Draco was defeated and shoved into the stars. He didn’t deserve to be the hero of the story. He was a pompous arse. A know-it-all. Egotistical. Spoiled. Stubborn. Insufferable.
Hermione screamed as she was ripped from her place in the window. She was suddenly seated at the head of a large dining table. The Devil’s Snare had returned to her arms and legs and locked her into her chair. A large tendril was also placed across her mouth, silencing her. She struggled in vain as the vines tightened around her. She looked up to see Blaise, Pansy, and Theo staring back at her. Malfoy was opposite her at the head of the table. He wore a deadly expression. His eyes darkened at her presence.
“Bloody hell,” Blaise said as he jumped at her sudden appearance. “Is that Hermione Granger?”
Pansy’s face maintained a neutral mask, but Theo’s eyes were wide as they looked over her.
Hermione tried to regulate her breathing. She didn’t know Malfoy’s plan here, but she knew it wouldn’t be good.
“We’re going to go with feigned surprise, then?” Malfoy asked.
They had their dirtied dinner plates in front of them. They’d been here a while. Malfoy glared over his wine glass at Hermione. She shot him a glare right back.
“Yeah, I’d say I’m pretty fucking surprised,” Blaise said. “You’ve had her this whole fucking time?”
“What is it you plan to do with her?” Pansy asked in a bored tone.
“Great question, Pansy,” he said. “Perhaps if I knew more about your plans with her, I could formulate my own accordingly.”
Pansy remained neutrally bored with Malfoy’s accusations. Hermione admired her ability to mask things so well. Theo was not fairing as well. He wore an anxious expression that dripped with guilt. Blaise looked back and forth between his three friends; his confusion was palpable. Hermione’s dread built.
Draco flicked his wand, and empty vials crashed on Nott’s plate. Her dreamless droughts. Nott stared at them. She could see the wheels working in his mind as he thought of some way to explain.
The necklace crashed into Pansy’s plate. It splattered some remaining sauce onto her cheek, and she casually brushed it off with her finger.
“So that’s what this is?” Draco asked. “A little coup? Pansy gathers intel. Blaise does the killing. Nott does the healing. Granger puppets the lot of you around.”
Blaise turned to Pansy. Hermione held her breath as she dreaded the position Pansy had put herself in. She was the one who wouldn’t involve Blaise. She refused.
“What the fuck is going on?” Blaise asked.
“If we don’t need her, I can just kill her,” Draco said.
The Devil’s Snare began to crawl up her neck and tighten. Her eyes widened as the hold got stronger, and her airways were restricted. A nervous sheen appeared on her forehead and chest as she struggled against the strengthening vines. He wouldn’t kill her, not like this.
A blast of light flew at Hermione’s neck. The Devil’s Snare around her mouth and neck vanished. Nott’s wand was pointed right at her.
“Fuck you,” Draco spit out. “You’re supposed to be my friends!”
“We are your bloody friends!” Nott shouted. “All of this is to protect you!”
“Theo,” Hermione and Pansy spoke at the same time.
“No! Fuck this. Fuck all this,” Theo said, shaking his head.
He pushed his plate away and ran his fingers through his curly hair.
“She’s fucking dying! And I can’t figure out the fucking potion. It’s over, Hermione. We’re finished. I can’t fucking do it.”
Hermione shook as Theo spoke. He looked like he was near tears.
“Theo,” she whispered, but he kept going.
“I am so sorry,” he said as he looked at her.
“You knew all this?” Blaise asked Pansy. “Don’t you fucking lie to me, Pansy. Not anymore.”
Pansy’s shield broke. Her eyes blinked rapidly as they tried to will away the incoming emotion.
“You would have wanted to fix the situation,” she said. “I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t risk losing you.”
Blaise’s face morphed into a deadly seriousness. Something Hermione had never seen from his natural, easy-going nature.
“Why?”
“Blaise…”
“Why were you helping Granger?”
“Pansy,” Hermione warned.
Malfoy’s eyes glowed with anger as he watched Pansy. Theodore offered Hermione a sad look before staring at his plate.
“Because we have an unbreakable vow.”
Rushing water flooded Hermione’s ears. Her chest felt like it was wrapped in even more Devil’s Snare. She gasped for breath.
“What?”
Malfoy’s voice was lethally quiet.
“Pansy-”
Hermione’s mouth was wrapped in a thick band of Devil’s Snare again.
“What was the vow?” Malfoy asked, not taking his eyes off Pansy.
Blaise’s expression hadn’t softened either.
“Granger crashed into our dumpsters one night. I found her. We got riotously drunk, and she told me everything. The Ministry has been turning former Death Eaters into Inferi. They’re calling it a Debt of Gratitude. They follow the instruction and will of the ones that turn them. Granger found a way to kill them and keep them dead. I told her I would help her if she promised to keep Draco safe at all costs.”
Tears poured down Hermione’s cheeks as Malfoy’s rage tore into a crescendo.
“You didn’t,” Malfoy said.
His voice shook with stifled wrath. But Pansy’s rage built with Draco’s.
“You are the only one with that mark that I care about keeping alive,” she snapped. “The Ministry is already abusing you, stringing you along, when you’ve requested several times to be pardoned from your service to go into research. The more you resist, the more likely they are to make you one of these bloody Inferi! And I won’t lose you, Draco! Not again!”
“So you link Granger’s life to mine? You tie her survival to my own? Of all the stupid and idiot things to do!”
“I won’t apologize for keeping you safe!”
“I don’t need you to take care of me! I can take care of myself!”
Blaise pushed away from the table and stormed out of the dining hall. Pansy, overcome with angry tears, threw her napkin on the table and chased after her husband. Malfoy pushed away from the table too. His chair flew backward and crashed noisily to the floor. He took out his wand and blasted the door straight off the wall as he walked through it. Only Theodore and Hermione remained.
He stood up and knelt beside her chair. He waved his wand over the Devil’s Snare until all of it vanished. Tears flooded down her cheeks. Theo stood up and pulled Hermione to her feet. He tugged her forward and held her as she cried into his chest.
“You’re all right,” he whispered into her hair.
He rubbed small circles on her back as she sobbed and hiccuped against him. They remained like this for an untraceable amount of time. Theo whispered quiet reassurances in her ear while he let her cry into his shirt.
Eventually, her tears dried. They were replaced with consuming dread. Everything was in shambles.
“You need rest,” he said.
Her mind had become a numb cluster of worries. What would happen now? Would Malfoy go to the Ministry? Would he turn her in? The uncertainties washed over her in droves.
“Come on, love,” he said and tugged her toward the broken door. “I’ll go find the sulking git and kiss and make up. You get some rest.”
She allowed him to lead her out of the dining room and to the stairs.
“What room are you in?” he asked once they reached the top.
She still hadn’t seen Malfoy and wondered if he’d gone to his quidditch field.
“I want to go to the library,” she said. “Distract myself.”
He nodded and turned down the hallway. They walked inside, and she was relieved not to see evidence of him in the library. She turned to Theo.
“He’ll get himself killed,” she worried aloud.
Theo patted her cheek softly.
“No,” he said. “We won’t let him. And Zabini knows now. He’ll kidnap him before he lets Draco do some reckless, self-sacrificing bullshit.”
Hermione nodded but worried about the impact of this on Pansy and Blaise. Would Pansy retaliate against Hermione?
“You’re safe here,” Theo said. “Get some rest. I’ll find princess and calm him down.”
“I’m sorry we involved you,” Hermione offered quietly.
“I’m not.”