Chapter 28

Chapter 28

AN: As with the previous chapter, sensitive readers beware. Similarly dark content is mentioned ahead.

* * *

Hermione awoke suddenly, even more abruptly than when she’d fallen out of bed. Yet she hadn’t – she was still in bed. But she’d definitely felt like this before … She frowned, perplexed, as the niggling sense of déjà vu mingled with confusion.

A movement beside her caught her attention: Severus, dropping his wand on the bedside table. Had he used Rennervate on her again? That would certainly explain why she’d jolted awake.

But why would he have needed to do so? Come to that, why was she in bed, dressed (undressed, even) in her nightie? Hermione blinked and looked around. The familiar surroundings of her bedroom did nothing to lessen her disorientation: they’d slept in Severus’s room last night.

The last thing she could remember was getting up to go to St Mungo’s. No, arriving in St Mungo’s to meet with that intractable director again. There was something else, too … a foggy memory of an immense library-cum-storeroom? Had she finally gained access to their archives?

Wait. A foggy memory … That was a problem she’d had before. But when?

Hermione’s breath caught as she remembered. Her memories immediately prior to the ones affected by the cure-induced amnesia had also been foggy.

It would certainly explain why there was no light to be seen around the drawn curtains; why she was missing some time. That hours, if not days – or worse, weeks – had passed.

No. It couldn’t be. For that to be the case, she’d need to have been given the cure again, and for that to happen …

Hermione looked back at Severus. At his pale, drawn face. And the look in his eyes … fear. That scared her more than anything.

“Severus?” She swallowed hard in an attempt to steady her wobbly voice. “What happened?”

He didn’t answer her. Instead, he cradled her face in his hands, lowered his head down to hers and kissed her. Tenderly. Deeply. Desperately.

She responded automatically to the familiar sensual pleasure of his lips on hers. But if he’d been trying to reassure her, it failed, as her fear ratcheted up another notch. Something terrible had happened for him to kiss her like that, as if she was about to slip away at any moment.

Hermione gently pushed at his shoulders with both hands. Severus got the message and drew back, breaking their kiss. His hands slipped down to rest on her shoulders.

She worked her mouth, speechless as she struggled to find the words to express herself. “What the fuck is going on?”

Severus hesitated. His fingers twitched as if he would have a white-knuckled grip if he wasn’t holding onto her. Then he told her. Everything. The steady monotone of his voice belied the raw pain in his weary eyes.

Her collapse, six hours earlier. That, as she feared, the plague had returned. And worse, that it had mutated into an even more lethal form. The acceleration of the symptoms; shortness of breath, an elevated temperature and the pain on the same day, regardless of the patient’s blood ‘purity’. That every witch on the planet would fall ill again within a fortnight. Or less, if the plague was even more aggressive than Severus feared.

‘No.’

That the cure barely worked this time, although it still stole twelve hours of her life: the hours of unconsciousness plus those affected by amnesia. That the cure wouldn’t work at all next time. And there would be a next time – the plague still mutated, even dormant and undetectable within the victims. Within her, inside her own body, her own blood.

‘No…’

And worst of all, the limitations of the cure. And what that meant for the fertile witches. Hermione was no fool; she didn’t need to see the Prophet’s headline in St Mungo’s to confirm what she already knew. That Severus’s gender selection potion meant that every witch in the country who could be pregnant already was.

‘Please, no.’

That all of those children … all of those girls would never live to draw breath. And if not for the sterility potion – if not for the addendum stipulation forcing Severus and Lucius to take it – it could have been her. Her child.

What was crueller? To dread the miscarriage wrought by her fertility issues, or for the plague to steal away the potential new life?

Hermione struggled to swallow past the lump in her throat, her eyes burning with unshed tears. She couldn’t feel any gratitude that her sterility had a silver lining. To her, it was tarnished.

She didn’t want the addendum to work, but … not like this. Miscarriage was something she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy, let alone her closest friends. Harry. Ginny. Ron, too, must have married by now.

Bitter tears spilled down her cheeks. Severus pulled her into his arms, his hands sliding from her shoulders to her back.

“No … No! There has to be something the Healers can do.”

His silence spoke volumes, as did the way his arms tightened around her.

But Severus was no medical expert, surely? There might be something he didn’t know of. Yet even as fragile hope blossomed, it was crushed when she recalled that horrible day of her check up in St Mungo’s. The Healers could do nothing to prevent the miscarriages predicted for her. By that logic, they could do even less for those caused by the plague.

“They tried,” Severus murmured, so softly that his voice was almost more audible by the way it vibrated through Hermione. “Back when the plague first appeared. Witches were dropping like flies; nothing could be done for them. But for those pregnant witches as yet unaffected they hoped to at least save the foetuses, even if it meant that they would be born Squibs.”

“It didn’t work,” Hermione stated flatly.

Severus nodded, his chin shifting against her shoulder. “I did not know the full details at the time, but it must have been that magical bond between mother and child. All attempts to complete the pregnancies elsewhere failed. From what I heard, fatally so.”

He sighed. “With what you learned from that Healer at the Wizengamot session before … before that elf tried to kill you, I can make an educated guess as to what went wrong. Moving the foetus severed the connection between mother and child with a lethal backlash, which must have killed both surrogate and child.”

But for that to be the case, why hadn’t it been mentioned at that Wizengamot hearing? Was it considered irrelevant? Or perhaps St Mungo’s only released the bare minimum of information; they certainly took security seriously.

“What about the bond between father and child?” Hermione suggested half-heartedly. Even as she said it, she doubted it would work. Men were not built to carry babies.

Severus froze, his body rigid against her. “I think they tried that. It would explain why some wizards also died early on during the plague. The official verdict was suicide. I think it was nothing more than desperate fathers-to-be trying to save their children.”

Hermione sniffled, swiping at the tear tracks on her cheeks with one hand as her other kneaded at the tense muscles of his back.

“All that can be done is to eradicate the cause; to permanently wipe out the plague.”

If it could be. Otherwise within six months the wizarding world would be just that: only wizards, witches extinct. No. Severus would find a cure. It was inconceivable that he couldn’t, even if her own life wasn’t at stake.

And she’d be right there by his side doing whatever she could to help him. It wasn’t as if there was any point in continuing with her campaign at the moment. Not when there needed to be surviving witches for the marriage law and its addendum to be an issue.

Hermione frowned. Severus had explained everything that she’d missed. Yet why did she still have a nagging suspicion that she’d forgotten something? Whatever it was, it must be something vital judging by the strength of the feeling.

But what? It couldn’t be Crookshanks; she could hear him snoring under the bed. If Lucius had any sense, he’d be sound asleep in his own bed. Severus was sitting beside her, so—

Her parents. Did they know? Surely not, or they would be right there with Severus, even if it was the middle of the night and during the working week.

“Has anyone told my parents?”

Severus jerked back, his face stricken. Apparently not, then. But Severus did have an airtight excuse. The plague, the cure … he’d have been run off his feet since she collapsed hours earlier.

“Oh, shit. I … I’m sorry. I don’t think it occurred to Lucius, either. When he returned from Grimmauld Place I sent him to St Mungo’s with the batch of cure I brewed, and when he returned he was up here keeping an eye on you, until I sent him to bed. In his defence, he had a lot on his mind.”

What could Lucius have had on his mind? Worry for her, obviously, and a nasty reminder of how he’d lost Narcissa, but—

“The only silver lining is that I gather Draco is finally turning to him, no doubt due to facing losses that Lucius has already suffered.”

Losses? Hermione frowned. If not for the fact that he’d specifically stated it as plural, not singular, she’d assume that Severus was referring to the possible loss of a wife.

“Lucius probably didn’t mention it to you, did he?” Severus asked, his eyes fixed on her face.

“What is it?”

“It’s not really my place to tell you, but to have Lucius do so at the moment would be nothing less than cruel. He and Narcissa suffered several miscarriages before Draco. It seems she had very similar fertility problems to you.”

“What does that have to do with—” Her voice was strangled to a halt by painful realisation. Losses indeed. So it might be Draco’s child Ginny was soon to lose, and like every other witch Ginny’s life was in peril.

“There’s nothing we can do,” Severus murmured. “It is best to focus on that which we can act on. Your parents do need to know, but it’s too late to do so until the morning. They need their sleep, as do we.”

He rose to his feet and undressed, resorting to a spell when his weary fingers struggled with the myriad buttons. Naked, he climbed into bed beside her, leaving his clothes in a pile on the floor. Ordinarily she’d complain at the extra work for Dilly, but … not after the day he’d had.

Hermione tugged her nightie over her head even as Severus reached for the hem. It seemed he wanted the same thing as her: nothing but skin between them.

* * *

The next morning Hermione Apparated into her childhood bedroom, as soundlessly as she could manage when lacking sleep. Neither she nor Severus had slept well due to the stress and worries caused by the events of the day before. That and the nagging sensation that she’d forgotten something hadn’t gone away, despite her attempts to put it out of her mind. As if she didn’t have enough to worry about already!

Hopefully seeing her parents would put that niggling demon to rest, although that was bound to be too much to hope for.

Hermione opened her bedroom door and walked downstairs, automatically avoiding the creaky floorboards. Entering the kitchen she found her parents finishing their breakfast.

Her father’s grey eyes widened as he caught sight of her. “Hermione! What a lovely surprise!”

“We were expecting you on your birthday, dear,” her mother attempted to look at her watch to check the date without being obvious.

“Don’t worry, Mum. You still have a week or so to find me a present.”

The elder Grangers both breathed what they thought was a clandestine sigh of relief. Hermione had spent too much time with two Slytherins for their mock coughs to fool her.

“Breakfast?”

“No thanks, I’ve already eaten.” And it was just as well that they’d just finished eating. What she had to tell them was bound to affect their appetites.

“Cuppa?”

Hermione shook her head. The universal panacea wouldn’t be able to touch the crushing weight she felt bearing down on her.

“Is something wrong?” her mother asked, frowning in concern as she reached over to take one of Hermione’s hands, and gently tugged her arm until she sat down.

Hermione sighed heavily. “Very much so.”

* * *

By the end of Hermione’s explanation none of them were dry eyed. Her mother was mopping at her cheeks with a hanky, while her father brushed away the few that had escaped his eyes.

There was no relief in sharing the bad news. It was painful to go through it again, and all the more so to know that she put her parents through the same emotional rollercoaster she’d been through the night before. The miscarriage aspect must hit them even harder than it had herself, due to their struggles to have a child.

And there was nothing she could say that would make it better. She could promise that Severus would find a permanent cure, but the fact that she’d be by his side while he did … She’d be taking herself away from her own parents when there was a chance that she wouldn’t survive.

“Shit.”

Hermione blinked, wide eyes focusing on her father, shocked. He never swore.

“We wanted so much to be wrong,” he continued.

“What?” Hermione blurted, wrong-footed. They reacted with sadness, yes, but the complete lack of their surprise implied by that statement was unexpected.

Her parents exchanged a grim glance. “You’re not the only one with bad news to share, and, well …”

“We think they’re connected.” Her mother completed her father’s sentence.

Just when she thought things couldn’t get any worse … “Out of the frying pan, into the fire,” Hermione muttered.

“Indeed. While the plague doesn’t affect Muggles any more than it affects wizards, it …” her father trailed off.

Hermione felt as if she’d breathed in lead. It didn’t take a genius to guess what Dad was driving at. “Muggle-borns.”

“Yes,” her mother sobbed, before noisily blowing her nose.

“We don’t know for sure, but we think your Ministry managed to keep it quiet at first, until there were no Muggle-born children left alive. Then … they must have forgotten, what with all the adult witches dropping like flies and all—”

“Please get to the point, Dad.” Hermione’s throat was tight with fear. She had a horrible suspicion that she knew what was coming.

“I am, I am … It’s in the news, now. Cot death, they call it. But from what you told us, I think we have a better name for the main culprit.”

“The plague,” Hermione said, hollowly. It wasn’t just the lives of unborn babies of magical parents that would be stolen. It was newborn Muggle-borns, too.

“Quite. Only it’s not so much returned as never left. The Times reports a year of increased cot death, but it’s actually a year and a half now, according to our friends among the medical doctors.”

Could the cure be given to babies? Hermione almost didn’t want to know the answer, sickened by the possibilities.

“We guess that it’s cot death rather than miscarriages because the baby is insulated by the Muggle mother while in utero. But afterwards …” Her mother sniffed, her voice wobbling.

“One thing that made us wonder if the plague could be the cause was that while in most cases it did take sixteen days for the newborn to die, which was the life expectancy for infected Muggle-borns, it … it gradually decreased, until now it’s two days.”

Hermione swallowed hard. Even if the cure could have been given to the babies, it was bound to be useless by now: the plague must have mutated for the timing to change so drastically.

“But with what you said about the plague mutating, this must be connected. And …” He grimaced, hands white-knuckled.

“What made us think of the plague more than anything else is that almost all of them are baby girls,” her mother said softly. Both of them had to be imagining themselves in the place of the parents of one of those poor children. Or thinking that it could have been Hermione herself.

“We were going to tell you about this when we saw you on your birthday, but now is better, really. That way we won’t blight your special day.” Her father reached over to pat Hermione’s free hand.

“And I can do something about this sooner rather than later.” Hermione pushed her chair back and got to her feet.

Her mother tightened her grip on Hermione’s hand. “Wait, dear. You can’t confront anyone about this until you have concrete proof that these really are Muggle-born babies dying.”

Hermione resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “I know. I’m not about to go off half-cocked. While the Ministry might have records I can use to check things, I’d rather they didn’t have any advance warning. If it’s true, there’ll be no sweeping this under the carpet.”

“Where will you go?” Her father asked as he stood up and began clearing the crockery into the dishwasher. “St Bungles, or whatever your magical hospital is called? You were trying to access their records, last thing I knew.”

“Not St Mungo’s, no. I think I did manage to gain access before I fell ill yesterday, but the Director would tell the Ministry what I was up to. If I go to Hogwarts instead, I think I can keep things quiet.”

“Of course!” Her mother squeezed her hand. “They must register all magical children, including Muggle-borns, to be able to send all those letters at the start of the year.”

“Exactly. I don’t know who’s Head at the moment, but I think I can sweet-talk my way in. I wasn’t teacher’s pet for nothing.”

“Let us know what you find out.” Hermione’s father kissed her cheek. “We’ll see you on your birthday, then?”

“Yes, will do.” After pecking both of her parents’ cheeks, Hermione closed her eyes and focused on the gates of Hogwarts as she concentrated. Apparating to Scotland in one Apparition jump was not for the faint-hearted. Particularly not when Side-Along—

‘Side-Along?!’

That realisation came too late, and the squeeze of Apparition closed around her. A second later Hermione could feel the cool air of late Scottish summer on her face.

Hermione opened her eyes and mentally counted to ten. Then she turned to the gaping woman clinging to her hand.

“Mum! How many times do I have to tell you, let go of me before I Apparate!”

* * *

AN: Many thanks to Kribu, JunoMagic and Septentrion for betaing.