Roman Holiday

Chapter Fifty-Nine

She had a moment for shock, and another for triumph, glorious and unalloyed. And then the most powerful Dark wizard currently walking the earth crashed headlong into his sapphire prison, and brought along with his displaced atoms all the hatred and rage and sheer undiluted evil that one might expect from the Scourge of Britain, from Cedric Diggory’s murderer; all the homicidal intention and psychic sadism of the Killing Curse aborted.

Next to that, what Hermione had felt after the Trapping of the Initiates was mere petty teenage angst.

Clammy with cold sweat, gasping and retching helplessly with the misery of a thousand murdered souls, she reeled under the impact - and would surely have fallen, had it been a possibility.

At times, being tied to the ceiling could be distinctly advantageous.

She let the first wave of nausea steamroll through her, then fought off the second and forced herself to stand erect, to take deep breaths until the gut-churning sickness retreated and the screaming in her ears grew more bearable. Marvellously adaptive, the human body, her father used to say, and Hermione gave a mental shout-out to Dad: if she could get used to this, she could get used to anything.

Still wracked with fine tremors and verging on a second attack of physical upset, she bent her right wrist at another unnatural angle, ignoring her screaming tendons, and with the last of her strength managed to shake the sapphire charm so that it lay against the rope, and not her bare skin. The relief was palpable and immediate - she could still feel him in there, raging to be released - could feel the angry disbelief and the muttered promise of vengeance racing through her blood - but now it was a trickle, not a flood; arsenic, not nightshade.

She took a few moments to steady herself, then turned her exhausted attention to the next obvious question: what now?

And then she heard a tentative knock on the door, a wary “My lord?” - and knew suddenly, as if Sal himself were sitting on her shoulder, whispering in her ear - what she had to do.

“Come in, Lucius,” she called, modulating her voice into as fair an approximation of Voldemort’s cold countertenor as she could. The door creaked cautiously open, and Lucius Malfoy - in his own body now, not Draco’s, she was happy to see - appeared in the doorway.

He was in her peripheral vision; she let her head loll to the side, as if she was unconscious, and watched his grey eyes flick nervously around the room, his long aquiline nose wrinkle at the smell of fresh vomit. It took him a moment to realise that Voldemort was missing; by the time he’d checked all the corners again and whipped around to stare, unbelieving, at Hermione, she was ready for him.

“Imperio,” she said calmly, pointing the little silver wand, and immediately felt his mind in hers like its own living being, kicking and scratching for a few fractions of a second before his will subsided and hers took over. She couldn’t see his thoughts, but she could feel them, open to receive instructions - rather, she thought, like a quiescent, leash-trained dog.

So this was what casting an Unforgivable felt like.

For a minute, she was taken aback; she hadn’t expected it to work so easily. Possibly, she reasoned, being a Death Eater accustomed one to accepting the Unforgivables as a matter of course - his buried willpower didn’t seem alarmed, as much as it did resigned to its fate. Hermione remembered trying to fight Moody’s Imperius, back in her fourth year, but she wasn’t getting any resistance at all from Malfoy the Elder.

Maybe she was a stronger witch than she’d thought.

Or maybe, Voldemort’s lingering presence in her emotional slipstream was doing her some good, after all. Don’t question it too closely, she heard the Sal-in-her-head mutter - typical Slytherin advice, but she rather thought he had a point just now.

Don’t mess with success.

“Stick your fingers in your nose,” she said, just to test it, and stifled a slightly hysterical snicker as the dignified, sophisticated Lucius Malfoy obediently thrust a manicured index finger into each nostril, then looked at her questioningly as if for further instructions.

Excellent.

“Now take them out again,” she directed, “and tell me how many Death Eaters are in this house.”

“Two,” Lucius said in a hollow voice not quite his own. Hermione sighed in relief.

Just the two, and those two as thick as rocks. Her good luck was holding.

“Lock the door,” she said. “Now come untie me.”

**

She had a couple of bad moments, as the ropes came off and the sapphire brushed inadvertently against her bare wrist; immediately she angled her hand so that the jewel dangled harmlessly in midair, but she’d barely recovered from her last hit. She sat down heavily in the nearest chair, fighting a case of the shakes, and focussed on keeping the Imperius going - for a second or two, she’d felt it slip, and she couldn’t afford to let that happen yet.

Just a few more minutes. Just until she got back to Hogwarts.

Lord, she was tired.

“Give me my wand,” she ordered Lucius, half-afraid he’d refuse. He didn’t. “Give me yours, too.”

His she snapped, and tossed the pieces into the cold ashes of the fireplace grate - burn ‘em now or burn ‘em later, it didn’t really matter. Hers she used to immobilize Lucius and repair her ruined clothes. The moment they were on, she felt immediately better.

Gram was right. It was amazing what a really good brassiere could do for your self-esteem.

She finished dressing, carefully arranged the sleeve of her jumper so that it was between her skin and the charm bracelet, and looked over at the Imperius-free Lucius, Bound and propped like a large angry broom against the side of the hearth. He glared at her, but didn’t speak; Hermione imagined that he was still wondering where Voldemort had gone, and how she’d managed to score a wand with her hands above her head.

She allowed herself a small, tired smirk. That’d teach him to underestimate her.

She undid the clasp with nerveless fingers, took a few deep, relieved, Voldemort-free breaths, tucked her wand into her robes, and walked over to Lucius.

“Hospitable as you’ve been,” she said, linking one of her hands with one of his, “we really need to get going now. Ready?”

His only reply was an indignant wheeze, but Hermione didn’t care - she had already clasped the bracelet resolutely in her free hand and inserted the tiny silver key into the thirty-fifth page of the miniature Keyhole. If she’d had the energy, she would have clicked her heels together three times.

At that thought, she laughed, a tired old sound that barely seemed hers. “There’s no place like Hogwarts,” she said dimly, through a fog of mingled exhaustion and relief - and felt the tug of space and dimension against her skin and clothing that meant the Keyhole had worked.

Don’t drop the bracelet, whatever you do, she thought, and surrendered to oblivion.

**

“It’s my fault,” Draco said miserably for the thirtieth time since they’d arrived in Elysium. Severus sighed.

He’d been much, much more comfortable back in Dumbledore’s office, administering Veritaserum and extracting his pound of flesh from Rita Skeeter’s ample supply. This duty, on the other hand, wasn’t nearly so well tailored to him - exactly why Albus had assigned him Suicide Watch on Draco, he’d never know.

It’s because you understand, said the faint voice in his head that was his long-suppressed Better Nature. Growling internally at the unwelcome truth of that particular self-observation, he wrapped a grudgingly sympathetic arm around Draco’s lean shoulders.

Sympathy, in this case, came as naturally and inevitably as resentment.

Thirty-eight years old, at the top of his craft, as hard-boiled as one of Tutankhamen’s Easter eggs, and he wasn’t sure that he was equipped to deal with Hogwarts Minus Hermione. The very thought had him spinning saviour fantasies in his head, had him on his knees to Voldemort offering up his life for hers.

As if such a thing was possible. As if Voldemort would accept the trade.

As if, even if he found them, even if he got there, he wouldn’t be already too late. After all, she’d been gone now for nearly two and a half hours, and every tick of the clock was like a blade against his skin, a knot in the rope, a step up the stairs of the Astronomy Tower.

But if he, Severus, was grieving, then Draco was coming slowly apart from the inside.

“My fault,” he said again, and Severus shook his head.

“No.”

“It is.”

“Partly,” Severus said - there was no comfort, after all, in lies. “But not entirely.”

The young voice was choked with the beginning of more tears. “I left her alone.”

“We all did,” Severus said sharply. “Not just you. From Dumbledore on down, myself included. You’re not the only one to blame.”

Draco wasn’t listening.

“I was closest.” His voice thickened. “I was fooled - after months in her bed, months! - fooled, by that … that …” He jerked his body away from Severus’ encircling arm and paced over to the laboratory corner, where the chemistry set still lay in abandoned disarray.

“I thought that something was wrong,” he said jerkily. “She was too … too sweet. Too flirtatious. The things she did and said, Hermione would never do.” He spun on his heel and faced Severus, skin drum-tight over his skull, dry-eyed but utterly defeated. “I wanted it to be true,” he said hollowly. “I wanted to believe it - so I did. And now she’s dead, because of …”

He hesitated, then dropped his eyes. “Because of me.”

He’d been about to say something else, Severus thought, and mentally finished that first thought, still hanging in the heavy air: She’s dead because she didn’t love me.

He looked at Draco’s tortured face and resisted the urge to swear.

“We don’t know that she’s dead,” he said roughly. “Stop being morbid.”

“But I should have saved her,” Draco insisted, and those words - so close to what Severus himself had been thinking, just moments ago - snapped the frayed remains of his patience like rotten elastic.

“Open your eyes,” he gritted. “Do you even know her, this Immortal Beloved of yours? Since when has she ever needed rescuing?” He snorted. “She’s the most self-reliant person I know, and if she gets out of this mess it won’t be because of you, or me, or Albus or Minerva or the bloody Ministry of Magic - it’ll be because she’s cool-headed and gutsy and smart, a million times smarter than that syphilitic sleazebag Tom Riddle and his sycophantic cronies.”

He drew a deep breath, started to continue, then saw that Draco was staring at him open-mouthed and settled for a glare instead. “What?”

“You’re in love with her,” Draco said slowly, and it sounded like an accusation. When Severus didn’t reply immediately, he took a step closer. “You are. Aren’t you?”

Faced with those fever-bright, pain-filled grey eyes, Severus couldn’t bring himself to lie. “Aren’t we all?” he asked tiredly, and passed a weary hand over his face at Draco’s shocked look.

“What do you mean?”

Severus shook his head. “You. Me. Weasley. Even Sal, I think.” He grimaced. “Don’t take it personally. It’s only a matter of good taste, after all.”

At this, Draco flushed hotly and opened his mouth to reply - good, Severus was thinking, better brassed-off than ready to jump. But he never got the chance.

“How flattering,” Hermione said from behind them, and they both jumped and whirled to face her.

She was holding onto a tied-up, wild-eyed Lucius Malfoy with one hand and her charm bracelet with the other, and though her clothes and her skin were unmarked, she smelled of vomit and looked one step away from death. “You’ve got a real way with words, you have.”

He was fixed in place like a fly in amber, wanting to move but hopelessly, helplessly stuck, as she let go of Lucius, dropped the bracelet on the rug, and sank slowly to her knees.

“Don’t lose the bracelet,” she said in a voice that was trembling with exhaustion but perfectly clear. “Voldemort’s in there, and he’s not happy.”

And then she collapsed.

**