I coughed, sputtered, and my head spun uncontrollably as I gazed confusedly from Hermione to Malfoy. My heart was in my throat as I stared at the girl on the ground, and my hands wound tightly around the hem of her robes. I was sure she was dead, sure she was gone from my world forever, until I saw the slightest movement of her chest rising. Her breaths were shallow, I could see, but they existed and that was the main thing. Malfoy cackled as I sat there stooped, my shoulders doubled over in weakness and worry. I thought for a few moments that I would surely die, cursed by him as I tried to stand. But then I remembered that Ron was there, and I saw him advance on Malfoy with a speed I had never known in him. Malfoy turned away from Hermione and me, his wand still raised, and shook his head at Ron.
“Tsk, tsk, Weasley,” Malfoy sneered, “I told them not to trust you. I told them you would go back to your friends, but did they listen to me? No, they had to believe that you had turned completely. But you’re weak, aren’t you? You both are. Weakness stays with weakness, that’s all there is to it. Bet you love being back with him, don’t you Weasley? I have to say, the relationship you two share is a bit unnatural, isn’t it? But then that’s right…you left because the Mudblood loved him more than she loved you. After all the time you spent dawdling over her and loving her, she turned her back and fell in love with him…your best mate. And I’ve got news for you right now…it doesn’t matter what you do. She’s never going to love you.”
“You go to Hell, Malfoy!” Ron said, and Malfoy laughed again.
“I don’t think you’re in a position to be saying anything, Weasley,” he said. “Look at your hero.” He gestured towards me. “He’s dying. He’s dying, and both of you know it. It’s only a matter of time before he can’t walk anymore, can’t go anywhere. And do you know what’s going to happen then? He’s going to come for him. He’s going to come, kill you, and then fulfill the prophecy like it was meant to be fulfilled.”
“Nobody’s dying here, Malfoy,” Ron said. “Nobody.”
“Look again.”
He turned back toward me, his grey eyes flashing dangerously in the moonlight. Smirking, he gave a swift kick to Hermione’s back. She groaned, her eyes stirred, and then they snapped open, searching for something or someone. They found me but didn’t seem to recognize who I was. I released a cry of anguish and gripped her hand in my own, squeezing and trying to make her see. But they were rolling, unfocused, and she coughed again. Blood gathered on her lips, and I could see it then. I could see it as clearly as I could see her before me. The flower of death was blooming on her ashen, sunken face. From a distant land, the chill of mortality was coming to claim its next victim.
“NO!” I cried out as her eyes snapped shut again, and I summoned the strength in my body and stood up quickly. Ignoring the dull pain in my knees, I trudged towards Malfoy, my fevered hands gripped about the wand in my robe pocket. I spat in his face, and he wiped it away with ease and just stood there, the mirror image of the devil, a pleased and triumphant smile spread wide across his face.
“I’ll kill you,” I said to him, and my voice did not shake. “YOU TELL ME HOW TO SAVE HER, OR I’LL KILL YOU!”
“Watch your temper, Potter,” Malfoy ordered. “You wouldn’t want to create a crack in your mind for the Dark Lord, now, would you?”
And as he said it, the world began to swirl and turn white. Ron, who had been standing behind Malfoy only moments before, vanished, and now it was merely us and the musical, melodious voice standing there in the shining wood. Hermione’s body lay upon the ground, unmoving and still. And Malfoy seemed to freeze as the voice spoke out to me and me alone, as pure and refreshing as water.
“I can save her, Harry. I can save her and allow her to live a long and graceful life. All you need do is surrender, and she will be cured. All you need do is give yourself over, and her pain will end.”
I felt my eyes rolling into the back of my head, and my feet swayed. The voice spat me back out into reality, and as I withheld the sight of the forest once more, I saw Malfoy standing there with his hand out, as if offering to shake. Ron, his face confused, cocked his head in my direction.
“Harry, what did you see?” he asked me, and he seemed to be speaking from very far away. I answered him sluggishly, half of my mind still back in the realm of white.
“He told me to surrender,” I said. “He told me that he’d save her if I joined him.”
“But you’re not actually going to listen, are you?” Ron asked fearfully. “No, Harry! Don’t give into him! You told me, remember? It’s all lies with him, Harry!! All of it!! I promise you, once we move past this idiot, we can get her someplace safe! We’ll patch you both up and we’ll be able to…”
“I don’t have anything left, Ron,” I told him, subdued. My head bowed down. “The energy’s gone. And how do you expect to nurse us both back to health?”
“That’s right, Potter,” Malfoy cackled. “Do the right thing for her. Save her life…give us yours.”
“I have to do this, Ron,” I explained to him, and my gaze fell back to the unconscious girl lying upon the ground. God, how I loved her. I would do anything to make sure that she was okay. “It’s the only way to make sure she survives.”
“NO!” Ron shouted, and in an instant, his wand exploded with green light. Malfoy’s face fell as the curse hit him in the back, and I watched as his body dropped first to his knees and then directly to the ground. The fog of death drifted over his eyes, and he flopped to the earth like a marionette cut from its strings. Ron looked at his wand as though in disbelief, and he might have shouted a curse word. But I wouldn’t have known. For in the seconds that it took Malfoy to fall, I had slipped back out of the world yet again. I was standing now on the edge of a great cliff, looking down upon white shores and a white ocean.
“You were right when you said you have nothing left,” the voice said, and I hated it then. I could feel the emotions of the real me, stirring there in my heart. I wanted to defeat the speaker, to cast a Killing Curse so powerful as to wipe it clean away from space and time. But it continued to speak consolingly to me, and I couldn’t escape from its spell. “You can’t expect to save her in the direction that you’re going. But if you give your mind and your actions over to me, I will restore the strength in her. She will be the same girl that you knew, the same girl that you loved. All you have to do is say yes. Say yes to me, and her pain ends.”
“Harry!” a voice broke through the whiteness, and the voice growled. But it needn’t have worried. I had made my decision.
“Yes.”
Something laughed. The world grumbled and shrieked, and the whiteness blinked. The light became too powerful for my eyes, and I tried to turn away. But my actions were no longer my own, and so I stood with my arms stretched out as a beam of white light passed through my body. I felt it enter my chest, felt my mind cave in on itself, and then my feet were swept from the ground. I was suspended in air, and Ron was yelling from somewhere below me.
“NO! HARRY! GOD, NO!!!”
“Ron?” I tried to say, but I didn’t know if the word had left my mouth or not.
“NO! NO! YOU’RE NOT TAKING HIM OVER, YOU BASTARD!”
Though there was no hand anywhere in the air, I felt something gripping my left shoulder. There was pressure there; a desperate pressure, and then I felt a warm, sweet breath on the left of my cheek. I was still floating, still a prisoner in the world of white, the world that belonged to Voldemort, but he was losing his grip on me. The voice sighed, but it did not tense in anger. It was merely disappointed at having to submit to something, and then I felt myself falling. The air did not support my body anymore, and I was hurtling towards the ground, sure to make impact and die. I closed my eyes, shielded my face against impact and then…I breathed in a deep breath as the forest floor cradled me. There was sweat pouring down my face, gluing my hair to my forehead, and there was someone gripping my forearm in angst. Blinking, I tried to focus on something, anything…and I found myself swimming in chocolate eyes that smiled weakly at me. And there she was, standing before me and looking as beautiful as I had ever seen her look. I breathed out in relief and flung my hands around her neck, holding her to me.
“I thought that you’d…”
“So did I,” Hermione said, and her voice was clear, no longer tainted with disease.
“But how are you…”
Her eyes lowered in pain. “Harry, what did you promise him?” she asked me. I shook my head, unable to understand what she was asking me. There were tears forming in her eyes. I stroked her face gently.
“What?” I asked her anxiously. “What is it?”
“What did you agree to give to him?” she asked me anxiously, and she took both of my arms in her hands and looked at me. I swallowed and then answered her.
“I gave him me,” I told her. “I told him to take me if it meant that you would live. And he tried but…but you waking up beat him off, Hermione! I’m okay now, don’t you see that?”
She shook her head in anguish, and then looked to Ron. “No!” she shouted, and she pounded on my chest. “No, Harry! God, why would you do that?!”
“I couldn’t lose you!”
“You will anyway!” she shouted. “Don’t you see what he’s done?! He’s in control of you now, Harry! He holds you in his hands like a weapon…you’re health, your thoughts, all of them are his! He can kill you just by telling you to die! Don’t you understand?! By surrendering to him, you surrendered the world!”
“But I…but I came back because…”
“For now, Harry! He can’t fight this love right now! But as soon as you sleep, or as soon as your heart calms down from my being alive you’ll…you’ll slip back under his power! And now you’ve either got to defeat him in your mind or suffer under his rule! And when you go to face him, he’ll kill you on both fronts! He’ll make you wish you were dead, he’ll do everything he can to break you! And you will break, Harry…you’re strong, I know, but you’re not that strong! Oh…oh, Harry!”
She collapsed into me, and I held her there in my hands, allowing the scent of her to fill me up. And she was right. I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand the severity of what I had done. But I held her there as she cried, and there was a rustling from behind us. Ron, his feet crunching against the dead leaves that lay like corpses on the ground, brought himself around and placed an unsure hand down upon her back. She looked up at him, and then her face fell again.
“This is all my fault,” she said. “If I hadn’t…”
“No,” Ron said. “It’s my fault. I let jealousy get in the way. And I should have waited to see how happy you…you both were together. If I had known that you meant so much to each other, than I…I would have been able to let it all go. It was my fault that the epidemic was able to spread the way it was. And it’s my fault that you’re both sitting here like this and not someplace warm, friendly, and safe. But I’ll tell you something now, Harry…I think you can do this. I think you can fight him, and I think that you can win. And you’ve got both of us to help you now…just like it was before.”
“Well, I don’t exactly plan on dying,” I told them both, and Hermione pushed herself off of my chest to see me better. I gave a small cough, though it didn’t hurt as much now as it had before. “When have you ever known me to back down from a fight?”
Ron smirked, and Hermione gave an amused sniffle. I brushed my hand across her cheek and made to kiss her softly. When I let her go, she took a quick, pained look at Ron, but he merely shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m not going to tell you that it doesn’t hurt, because it does,” he said. “But I can’t make you come back to something that you don’t want.”
She hugged him gently around the neck, and then looked back at me.
“We need to get moving,” she said softly, "The longer we sit here, the more we risk. Voldemort can find you easier now, what with this new power and all. And there's a better chance of him taking you over the longer we sit." She stood up. Offering me her hand, she helped to pull me to my feet and I stood, feeling more like myself than ever before. I leaned in to kiss her, and she tasted like freedom. Her hands curled in my hair, and she stood on her tiptoes so as to hold me closer. Ron cleared his throat, and only then did we break apart.
"Sorry to break up the reunion," he remarked, "but it is getting dark. And everything Hermione just said is right. We need to move, and now."
"All right," I breathed, and I let Hermione go. "This should be fun."
“Oh, we’re heading into certain death, with a possibility of possession in your case, and the fate of the entire Wizarding World resting on our shoulders,” Ron said, and he gave a sarcastic shrug. “Sounds like a party to me.”