Disclaimer: I do not claim to own any part of the Harry Potter Universe- that’s all the great and powerful JKR!
Hermione ran her fingers through her husband’s white blond hair. He had passed out, his head in her lap. Louisa was sitting quietly at her side, leaning into her embrace. She looked over just a few feet away to see Neville and Ginny trying to ease the pain of Narcissa’s burns.
They were sitting in the long hallway not too far away from the still-smoldering drawing room. Ginny, Neville, Harry, and Ron had burst into the room just as Hermione had crossed the fire with Louisa. It had been Harry and Ron who had held her arms, preventing her from crossing back through the fire for Draco. The fire was blazing so loudly and blindingly that she’d been unable to convey her intentions to her friends. They’d dragged her out of the room. Once in the relative quiet of the hallway, she’d been able to tell them that Draco, Narcissa, Parkinson, and Pettigrew were still in there.
Ginny and Ron had remained in the hallway and begun to work on Narcissa’s badly damaged body. Harry and Neville had gone back into the drawing room to find the others. All Hermione could do was hold onto Louisa and shush the child’s cries, while she herself felt like wailing, too.
She couldn’t understand the nature of that fire. Hermione had always prided herself on fires- she could produce a magical fire even in the wettest of conditions. She could also put them out. With her skills, she could have easily worked with Dragons or even the Ministry of Magic’s Emergency Protocol Department- either job would have made good use of her special expertise. Indeed, she had done a good amount of fire-related consulting work. But the fire she had just witnessed left her dumbfounded.
She’d been left to lie on the floor when Draco pulled his mother up away from Hermione. She saw him turn around and cast the Shielding Spell about the same time that she began to hear the buzzing noise. She wanted to protest against him tapping into so much of his own energy to Shield her. But she knew she couldn’t risk blowing his cover- not when she’d already realized what Parkinson and Pettigrew were doing with the three vials of blood. So she fervently hoped that he’d kept enough of his magical energy to stop the Blood Summoning Ritual.
She had been so sure that Louisa was now safe- and she was still positive that the Voldemort would never be resurrected in her daughter’s body. But she was terrified that she’d be summoned here just the same- summoned to a place full of angry Death Eaters. Hadn’t Lucius said that he’d wipe out my line? And he called her an ‘Abomination’! she thought.
A loud crash followed by shouting and moaning had brought her back her immediate dangers. Draco had been knocked to the floor and trapped under his mother’s body. Hermione realized that Draco must have been trying to stop the Blood Summoning Ritual when Lucius and Narcissa had taken him down. Parkinson was yelling and heaving over the table, clearly in the throes of the ritual. But Hermione thought she had a better chance of getting Narcissa off of Draco then she had of stopping Parkinson. She looked around, spying a small but heavy-looking ceramic vase. She didn’t have her wand but she was certain she could throw the vase hard enough to get her mother-in-law off of her husband! But she hadn’t been able to even reach the vase before the first blast of heat knocked her across the room.
She had quickly turned around to see the cause of such an explosion. But several things were happening in quick succession. Narcissa seemed to be lying in heap, pinned under an overturned chair, and extremely close to a rapidly growing fire. Draco had rolled out of the fire’s immediate path and had hurled some kind of hex at Parkinson and Pettigrew. She saw the stoneware basin that had been in front of the two shatter in a small explosion. Either the force of Draco’s hex or the blast from the fire- or perhaps both had knocked Parkinson and Pettigrew over the table. She barely could hear screaming over the roar of the fire.
The intensity of the blaze had initially overwhelmed her in the first few seconds. She quickly grasped that Draco’s Shield Spell was protecting her from the heat of the fire. Seeing Draco flailing around so close to the fire pulled her out of her trance. As adrenaline rushed into her blood, she was able to brave the fire and pull Draco to the far side of the room.
That’s when she saw Louisa. She had looked into the fire- and there- unmistakably was her daughter. Louisa seemed extremely calm as she stood in the middle of the flames, assessing the activities of the room. She had turned and looked at Hermione and Draco and then turned back to whatever was on the other side of the fire. Hermione watched the child cross over until she could no longer see anything though the towering blaze. That’s when she’d pulled Draco up and insisted that they get through to the other side of the fire.
Louisa whimpered beside her again, snuggling further into her embrace and jolting Hermione out of her reverie. She sighed and pulled her child closer to her. She wanted to ask her about the fire. Once Draco and Narcissa had made it across the flames, Harry and Neville had been able to put out the fire fairly quickly. The inferno that had been initially unresponsive to the Extinguishing Spell now was just a smoking ruin.
She wanted to ask to the child how she had appeared in the room- how she survived standing in the fire- if she had started the fire in the first place… her exhausted mind was literally buzzing with questions. But she couldn’t ask them now. It wasn’t yet safe.
Ginny had quickly levitated some old wooden furniture into a barricade of sorts in the hallway. She’d explained how they’d been ambushed by hired soldiers and a manticore. She’d also briefed Hermione on her theories about the situation on the outside- about the Death Eaters, Dementors, and Giants- and about how Remus and Tonks had yet to meet them on the inside.
Hermione looked around at the group. Draco was beginning to stir, his smoke-induced coughs coming less frequently now. Neville and Ginny had finally been able to get Narcissa stabilized enough to start a Healing Sleep. Harry sat on the other side of Hermione but with his back to her as he kept watch into the hallway. Ron sat in front of him, looking very pale from the blood loss he’d sustained from the manticore’s bites. Hermione knew that all they could really do was to wait now for their friends. Even if Draco did wake up, they couldn’t chance moving Narcissa- or Ron, Hermione thought ruefully.
Hermione felt her tired brain once again try to find sense in what had just happened. As she glanced down at the pale closed eyelids of her husband, she felt a pang of strong emotions- anger, relief, guilt, and love. She didn’t know exactly what had happened on the other side of that fire- but when she saw Draco coming across, totally unaffected by the flames and the heat, she quickly realized that someone had to have Shielded him. Without a doubt, she knew that neither Draco nor Narcissa would have been able to conjure the strength for that spell. That only left Parkinson or Pettigrew. Pettigrew had disappeared but Harry had found Parkinson’s burned body.
So when Hermione gazed at her husband lying peacefully in her lap, she knew that she owed his life to Pansy Parkinson. She looked down at the wet spots on his pale cheeks and recognized her own tears spilling from her face.
She tilted her head back against the wall and let the hot tears flow unchecked. She cried in utter joy for having both Draco and Louisa alive and next to her- she cried that her closest friends had found them and that they were all alive and relatively unscathed- she cried at the memory of Lucius-within-Narcissa’s vile transgressions on her body- and she cried at another woman’s sacrifice- one that she didn’t understand.
She didn’t stop crying until she felt soft fingers graze against her cheek and heard the accompanying murmurs of comfort. Then she looked down into Draco’s passionate dark gray eyes.
Slowly, he hoisted himself up in front of Hermione and Louisa. Saying nothing, he pulled them both into his arms. Hermione rested her head on his shoulder, tucked just underneath his chin. She felt Louisa next to her, wrapped in both her own and Draco’s arms. She felt the completeness of her life in those few precious minutes of the embrace.
She pulled away from the two of them then and scuttled away from the wall. She gently leaned Draco against the wall, positioning him between Louisa and herself. His coughing had finally subsided but he still looked exhausted. Hermione figured that whatever had actually transpired on the other side of the fire had probably been just as draining as the Shielding Spell he’d cast on her.
Slowly she slid closer to Harry as the rational and practical part of her mind began to take over.
“Harry, would you please try to Accio my wand? I have no doubt that it’s somewhere in the evil place,” she said.
He nodded in agreement, “Glad to have you back, Hermione.” Though her friend was covered in soot and looked as tired as she felt, his bright green eyes flashed at her. In them she saw compassion, loyalty, and love.
“Thank you, Harry Potter. Thank you for being here,” she whispered, putting an arm around his dirty robes. At that he chuckled very softly.
“What? You think I’m going to let Malfoy have all the fun?” And then more seriously, “And as if I’d ever let anything happen to you, Hermione- you, or your daughter, or any other loved one,” he said pointedly.
“And Hermione?” he started. “Is there something you’d like to fill me in on?” he asked, looking at her ring with a small smile.
Before she could answer, they heard a faint whizzing sound announcing the arrival of her wand. Her fingers closed around the hovering piece of wood while she welcomed the sense of relief and safety it provided.
Having her wand renewed her sense of purpose. She started with Harry’s robes and quickly had him cleaned up, taking care to heal his scratches and fix the small crack in his glasses. Then she moved on to both Draco and Louisa, cleaning them up as well. She spent just a few minutes more making sure that Draco’s lungs were no longer damaged from smoke inhalation. Though she couldn’t completely heal Ron’s mangled leg, she could set the bones right, reduce the swelling, and wrap it correctly in a proper bandage.
Neville waved her off when she approached him.
“Hermione, don’t worry about me,” he slurred through his bloody swollen lip. “I can wait- but she,” he gestured down at Narcissa, “really needs your help.”
Hermione took a deep breath and crawled over to where Narcissa lay. The woman was sleeping soundly with a tranquil look softening her sharp aristocratic features. Hermione couldn’t help but feel queasy at the vivid images flooding her as soon as she lifted the sleeping woman’s hand.
She was completely dumbfounded by Lucius’s apparent possession of Narcissa’s body. Draco had never talked about his mother with her so she really had no idea what to think. She wondered how much their current predicament could be blamed on Narcissa. As she assessed the woman’s injuries, she found herself growing angry. She felt a tug at her side.
“It’s going to be okay with her,” Louisa said softly. Hermione squeezed her daughter’s hand and then looked back at Draco. He had been watching her as she hovered over Narcissa. She locked her gaze with his for a few minutes before she saw him nod. The barest of smiles on his face spurred her back to action.
“Louisa, go back and sit with your father while I take care of Narcissa,” she responded tenderly, giving the child a quick hug.
Then she set about to heal Narcissa as much as she could, no longer feeling angry.
She hadn’t long left Narcissa’s side when they all heard noises coming up the hallway.
“Ah. There you are,” boomed Dumbledore. “And there you are, Miss Louisa. I suppose I am not surprised.”
The old wizard’s sharp gaze swept around the group. With a wave of his wand, he conjured stretchers for both Narcissa and Ron. Ron complained loudly but Hermione secretly thought he looked relieved.
Hermione saw Hagrid, Remus, and Tonks not too far down the hall.
“Yer never going to believe what we ran into,” Hagrid started excitedly.
“Oh, I think I know- and I pray to all that’s holy that you’re not going to adopt it, Hagrid!” Ron winced.
“Oi, Ron, needn’t be such a killjoy ‘bout it. I’ve never seen a real manticore, is all. I thought it might just be needin’ a good home and a little tenderness, you know,” Hagrid returned somewhat sheepishly.
Hermione turned back to Draco and Louisa. She offered her hand to Draco and helped him up from the floor. When she was sure he was steady on his feet, she turned back to Louisa.
But Louisa had already found a ride, so to speak.
“Louisa, I think you should start calling me ‘Uncle Harry.’ Is that okay with you?” Harry offered, as he picked up the child.
“Yes, I think it's most appropriate, Uncle Harry,” Louisa responded.
Hermione couldn’t help but to chuckle at the sight of her best friend toting her daughter. Louisa’s obvious delight at her latest admirer was too much not to enjoy.
So she was not surprised to hear Draco’s small laugh next to her.
“What a day, eh?” she whispered to him.
They were pulling up the rear of the group. Thus, no one immediately noticed when they idled in the hallway.
“That is some understatement,” he paused for effect, “Mrs. Malfoy.”
“Hmmm… that’s right. But I think I might fancy ‘Mrs. Granger-Malfoy,’ my love,” she returned.
“Is that so? Well, fine with me. Should I be a Granger-Malfoy, too? Louisa?” Draco said, his serious tone edged with just a trace of amusement.
“Of course,” Hermione replied, giving him a mirrored image of his own trademark arched eyebrow.
“What have I gotten myself into?” he mused, now wrapping his arms around her.
Hermione laughed, leaning her head into his neck to nestle closer to him.
“Draco, let’s have a proper date soon,” she said lazily before she seized the opportunity to plant tiny kisses on the inside of his neck.
“Hermione!” he whispered rather urgently. He pulled away from her just a bit, which earned him a pout.
“Not that look. I don’t think I can resist it. Of course, we’ll have a proper date. In fact, I think the three of us need some time to get to know each other. What do you think? Maybe a nice long vacation somewhere? France? Capri? Croatia? Wherever you like, love,” he murmured into her hair.
“Draco?”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too, Hermione.”
With that, she leaned further into his arms, tilting her face up to reach his lips and his kiss.