He felt a sharp crack somewhere in the region of his right elbow, and coldness swarmed over his body. The bang of the ward door hammered through his head, every echo driving the ache deeper into his mind. He opened his eyes and harsh yellow light flooded his vision.
“Heavens! What’s going on?!”
“It’s alright, ma’am, nothing to panic about…” the voice was gruff, menacing. Draco blinked upwards, and managed to make out the blurred outlines of two broad-shouldered men in dark uniforms, one conversing in low tones with a white-coated nurse, the other taking pounding steps towards him.
He tried to push himself upwards, but his hand slipped on the icy tiles. He shook his head. For the first time he was very conscious of the fact that he was only wearing a thin night-shirt, and tucked his bare feet under himself as he slid backwards on the floor.
“Had a bit of a nightmare, did we, sonny? Fell out of bed…?” The man’s patronising tone made Draco’s skin prickle. He reached up a shaking hand and grabbed hold of the white bed sheet, once more trying to heave himself to his feet.
The man crouched down in front of him, a sneer stretched above a square jaw, his voice lower this time. “Not at all like you’re used to, is it, Mr. Malfoy?”
Draco flinched, sitting there with his dyed hair, the lenses in his eyes - they would never have worked, never been as powerful as magic. He suddenly felt very stupid, a feeling he did not embrace.
“I - I don’t know what you mean…”
The man let out a very false laugh. “Want me to explain it, do you?” he said, his voice even lower. “You’re nicked, sunshine.”
The squeal of a door hinge interrupted Draco’s panic as Alice came running into the ward, eyes blazing. “What the Hell’s going on? What are you doing here?!” She crossed to the bed topped with crumpled sheets and devoid of occupant. “What have you done with him?!”
“I’m here, Alice,” came a trembling voice from floor.
The police officer stood up, his sneer now a condescending grin. “Ah, Miss Reynolds. It’s nice to see you again.”
Alice gave him an ugly scowl. “Don’t know what you mean by that.” she retorted. “Never seen you before in my life! Dra- I mean - Joe, you alright?” She ran round to the side of the bed where the boy was huddled against the wall. He rolled his eyes, and something flashed before them.
Flames.
A piercing yell forced its way out of his mouth, and every other patient in the room was torn from their sleep. Instantly, Alice sprang backwards. “What have you done to him?” she shrieked, as the two officers strode towards the boy’s thrashing form.
“Leave me alone!” he screamed. “I haven’t done anything! I couldn’t - I tried, but -!”
The splintering of a broken door.
“Please!”
An arm hooked under Draco’s shoulder and dragged him upright. Anxious muttering from the nurse, another curse from Alice, and a punch in the gut from the officer to his left. His eyes spun back into his head.
Silver-blonde hair in the firelight. A shriek that froze his blood in its tracks.
“Don’t touch me!”
Another clout, this time to the side of his head, and he felt bile rise in the back of his throat. Alice was shouting something, gesticulating fiercely, but it sounded muffled, too far away. There was a sound as though someone had clapped their hands, and suddenly she stopped. The nurse screamed. Someone opened the door to the ward.
From the vague outline he could determine that the newcomer was a girl. She had been carrying a bunch of flowers, though they were now scattered across the floor, dropped as she had thrown her hands up to her face in shock.
Draco shook his head again, desperately trying to stifle the hammering in his ears.
“Draco… you are not a killer…”
“It’s alright, Miss Granger, why don’t you go and sit in the waiting room.” The nurse’s voice was shaking, and her fear must have been obvious to the newcomer, who was now pointing straight at the boy held suspended between two brawny police officers.
Frustration bubbled through his veins. No matter how many times he tried to clear his head his vision remained blurred. Something flickered in the back of his mind. Miss Granger…?
“But, my grandfather -” A girl’s voice, late teens perhaps, intelligent.
“I’ve told you - go and wait in there and I’ll call you when it’s ok to come back in.”
“What happened to that girl?”
“Look if you could just -” The door to the ward clicked shut. Draco blinked, though it was pointless. Had she gone?
There was an apologetic murmur from the newcomer. Then -
“Petrificus totalus!”
In an instant, Draco found himself being thrown to the floor as the two men beside him leapt forward. He hit the tiles with a thud and felt his arm go numb, looking up just in time to see the girl point a wand at the officers and yell out another curse. Both fell down with a smack.
The next moment, the girl was bent down beside Draco, lifting him to his feet and breathing in his ear, “I panicked. I should have used silent curses - someone could have heard us - we’ve got to get out quickly.”
“What…?” He felt himself being dragged towards frosted glass panels providing an even more blurry view of the waiting room, bare feet sliding over the linoleum. No shoes again.
Hermione pushed open the door and banged it shut behind them. She was still muttering only loud enough for him to hear. “We can’t apparate. Don’t ask me to explain now, but it would be a bad idea. Not that you’re even well enough to stand on your own, by the looks of things.”
He felt nylon carpet beneath his soles, and his knee knocked against the wooden leg of a chair. Hermione Granger. Hermione Granger was holding him by the arm, hauling him out of hospital. Hermione Granger from Hogwarts… the friend of Harry Potter… the mudblood.
She’ll take me to the Ministry. They’ll try me for murder. They’ll send me to Azkaban. But I didn’t do it! I couldn’t!
“I’ll call for a taxi. It’ll take five minutes, there are always black cabs around here.” She was gripping his arm rather tightly, and suddenly Draco realised she had her wand pressed against his side.
“Don’t try and run,” she whispered. “I really don’t want to use magic again; that mess back there will clear itself up, but this will be harder to conceal.”
The fresh air stung his nostrils as they passed through the automatic doors into the hospital car park. Draco’s vision was clearing, and so was his mind. By the time they reached the road, the cold wind whipping his bare legs, the dizziness that had clouded his mind for the last few days seemed to disperse in seconds. He wanted answers.
“What do you mean - that mess? What are you doing here? And why can’t we apparate?”
“Ssh!” she hissed. “That curse wasn’t one of my best - they’ll be unfreezing any minute and then they’ll come looking for us. Now,” she loosened her grip on his arm. “I’m going to get my phone out of my pocket, but I’ll keep my wand out. You won’t run, will you?”
He stared at her, partly in disbelief, partly in complete amazement. He had only ever seen anxiety or defiance in those brown eyes, but now they were utterly serious. There was a scar on her left cheek, and something that might have been a burn mark on her forehead. He lifted a foot as though to step away from her, and she raised her wand.
“I mean it,” she said. He placed his foot back on the ground.
It took only two minutes for Hermione to pull a mobile phone from the pocket of her cord jacket and call a taxi, and another one and a half minutes for the car to arrive. The entire time Draco had stood, shivering, conscious of the wooden stick pointed straight at him. Hermione had offered him her jacket to keep him warm. He had bluntly refused.
“Alright,” she whispered, once both were seated in the back of the black cab. “Back there in the hospital, I’d gone to visit my grandfather, but he wasn’t in your ward like I told the nurse. Actually, I’d seen the ‘policemen’ go in and recognised them.”
Draco blinked at her, but the threat of being silently frozen when he was already chilled to the bone was enough to keep him from saying a word.
“I hope the Ministry figure it out,” she muttered. “The thing is, they’ll be watching all magical activity in Muggle areas, and when they see what’s just happened they’ll send someone into the hospital to sort it out. I really hope they recognise the Death Eaters for what they are, and consequently they shouldn’t believe a word they say about us -”
“Death Eaters!?” Draco blurted out, and the taxi driver turned his head ever so slightly towards them. Hermione suddenly gave a very fake laugh.
“Oh yeah - that was funny wasn’t it? I loved the bit at the end when…” she trailed off as the driver’s head faced forward once more. “Will you keep it down!” she said through gritted teeth. “Yes, they were Death Eaters - I’m surprised you didn’t recognise them. And we couldn’t apparate because the first thing the Ministry will do if they don’t find the culprit where the magic took place, is trace the last apparition from there.”
Draco looked away from her, staring into his lap. He suddenly realised he was breathing very heavily, and instinctively reached a hand to his neck. The bandages were gone.
“Someone will notice I’m not there,” he said quietly. “The nurses or something…”
“No they won’t.” Hermione said. “I used a memory charm on the nurse before I left, and on the receptionist. Didn’t you notice?”
He said nothing. She threw a glance out the window. “Yes, just here please.”
Draco stepped out of the cab, closed the door behind him and followed Hermione, almost blindly obedient, across a strip of grass to a grimy block of flats. His head was reeling. Death Eaters in the hospital? Hermione Granger rescuing me? And what about Alice, what did they do to her? What would happen to her now?
“It’s just up here,” Hermione said, leading him through a shabby door to an even shabbier hallway. It began to rain outside. She unlocked a red front door, pushed it open, and ushered him inside.
The moment he stepped over the threshold, he found himself shoved against a surface of scratched wallpaper, a hand about his shaking throat. His vision was suddenly obscured as he came face to face with a pair of fierce green eyes shielded behind cracked glasses, a wand pointing directly at his chest.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you.”