Chapter 33

Chapter 33

As soon as the compression of Apparition released him, Severus rushed to Hermione's bedroom door, only to hit an invisible wall. He rebounded, staggering back. Lucius caught him, releasing his arm when he regained his balance.

"Not that there was time, but I suppose I could have mentioned that she's warded us out."

"Indeed," Severus snapped, his eyes intent on the door. He drew his wand. "Finite Incantatem."

Lucius echoed him, and the joint casting struck the wards blocking the door together. Severus wasn't surprised when the only effect was that the wards briefly turned opaque before fading back into invisibility.

A dome. Surrounding the door, walls, and no doubt extending beyond both ceiling and floor. Most likely an Imperturbable. Knowing what it was would only help them so much, as countering it would take time. Time they likely did not have, with the manor's inhabitant harm alarm triggered.

Lucius swore under his breath. "What in the name of Merlin is she doing?"

"Arithmancy." That was easy enough to guess, but why was another matter. Because she wanted to help, undoubtedly, but she had promised...

'No, no, no...' No, she hadn't promised. All Hermione had done was drop the matter.

He couldn't breathe. In his mind's eye he saw the charred bodies of the research team's Arithmancers, recalled the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh. And Hermione suffering the same fate...

"Well, nothing we can do but break through. On three?" Oblivious to Severus's distress, Lucius raised his wand again.

Severus caught his arm. "No time," he rasped. Even if they somehow broke the barrier immediately, it would still be too late. The research team's Arithmancers had only been able to break the connection between themselves and the rest of the team; an Arithmantic equation could not be stopped once it was in progress, not even when it burned the hapless casters alive.

But he had to try. Even if he dreaded what he would find beyond that door, he had to get in there. Now.

"Fawkes!"

The phoenix appeared in his usual flamboyant flash of fire. He cocked his head at Severus, seeming puzzled. That in itself was reassuring: surely, if Hermione were in mortal danger Fawkes would be frantic, swooping in to catch hold of Severus, taking him instantly to Hermione. Instead, he waited for Severus and Lucius to grasp his glowing feathers before carrying them away in a disorienting whirl of flames.

Within a second they appeared inside Hermione's room, untouched by the flames dying down around them. In another flash of fire, Fawkes vanished. Severus staggered into Lucius, his legs shaky. Travel by phoenix was just as bad as by Floo.

The sight of Hermione in a crumpled heap on the floor spurred him into action. One moment he was leaning against Lucius, the next he was on his knees beside her, turning her over with shaking hands.

Not a charred corpse still smoking from her own magic backfiring. Still breathing. Pulse fluttering against his fingers. A gusting sigh of relief escaped him.

'Thank Merlin.' Just unconscious. Although... He frowned down at her. Her face was pale and drawn, dark shadows under her eyes that he was sure hadn't been there scant minutes ago.

"She looks like you did yesterday evening, but worse. Like death warmed up."

"No doubt for the same reason," Severus growled, narrowing his eyes at his idiot girl. "Magical exhaustion."

"Indeed." Lucius levelled his wand at Hermione. No, not at her, at a bit of parchment beside her. A sheet of parchment with glowing symbols on it, moving as if they were alive. The Arithmancy calculation. "Finite Incantatem! Incendio!"

Nothing happened. At Lucius's snarl of frustration, Severus sighed. "It can't be stopped. Not even the caster can do that. Why do you think those Arithmancers on my research team met their sticky end yesterday?"

"Then what can we do?"

Severus shook his head, his eyes intent on Hermione's face. "Nothing. Hope that magical exhaustion is all that the little fool has done to herself."

Lucius huffed impatiently. "When can we know for certain?"

"Fawkes would not have left if it was anything life threatening. I for one am not going to wait until she wakes up on her own." Severus laid his wand against Hermione's chest. 'Rennervate.'

Hermione groaned. She needed his help to move from floor to bed – she didn't even have the energy to sit up. In his arms she felt almost as limp as when she'd been insensate.

"I feel like I've been run over by a bus. What..." She trailed off as Lucius pointedly held up the parchment, ink still glowing and moving sluggishly, near complete.

"Oh."

" 'Oh'? Is that all you have to say for yourself?" Severus struggled to keep his voice – and himself – under control. She was in no shape to be yelled at, and deep down he knew he didn't really have a leg to stand on; in her shoes he would have done the same thing. That didn't mean he had to like that she disregarded the risks and his request, putting herself in danger dire enough to trigger the manor wards. It also didn't make it a good idea to do it alone...

"You stupid, stupid girl." He clenched his fists, resisting the urge to shake some sense into her. "You could have killed yourself, reduced yourself to a Squib..."

"I used Vector's test. It was safe enough. My magic's just temporarily drained, that's all."

'All?' Severus bit back another rant on her foolishness. Her voice was faint and slurred as if she was half asleep. She would need to rest to recover. His shoulders slumped. "Never scare me like that again." He cupped her cheek in his hand, eyes intent on hers.

"I won't. Not if I can help it."

Lucius snorted behind him while Severus raised an eyebrow.

Hermione tried and failed to sit up, indignant. "I couldn't help it! It had to be done."

All things considered, that was the best he could expect. And it was hardly as if she'd hurt him on purpose – that wasn't in her nature, at least not when he'd done nothing to deserve it. What mattered was that she was safe, if drained.

He bent down and pressed a gentle kiss to her lips. She returned it, but he couldn't enjoy the moment as he would if they were alone. Not when Lucius rudely cleared his throat mere seconds after their lips touched.

"Why?" Lucius snapped.

Severus exchanged a baffled look with Hermione. Whatever Lucius meant by that non sequitur, it was directed at Hermione judging by the way he was glaring at her.

"Why what?"

Lucius huffed as if it should have been obvious. "Why did it have to be done? If it would take an Arithmancy Mistress to predict how it would change, surely you didn't have that level of expertise?"

"No, I don't. But I think it was still worth ruling that out with Vector's test."

"Kindly do not put yourself in danger under my roof. And don't go elsewhere to do it, either, as at least here the wards let me know when you do something stupid."

"Vector's test isn't dangerous!"

"So you say, but you clearly did something to set off my wards. Something to do with this." Lucius crumpled the parchment in his fist. While Lucius couldn't do any real damage until the calculation was finished, it was clearly near that point, the ink's glow faint.

Hermione scowled at him. "Don't you dare!" She grabbed her wand, but to no avail as the parchment merely shifted slightly towards her in Lucius's grip. At least there was some movement; her magic was not completely drained.

Lucius smirked at her, mockingly waving the parchment at her. "Why not? It might teach you a lesson."

Severus rose to his feet and snatched the parchment from Lucius's grasp. "One that would be well deserved, I admit, but one that would be pointless. She'd just do it again, and I'm sure draining one's magic is not healthy even if it's not permanent."

"She is still here, you know!" Hermione struggled to sit up, her face even more pale and drawn at her attempt to Summon her parchment. Severus returned to her side and propped her up with some pillows behind her.

He handed the parchment to her. "What did you calculate?"

"How long there is until the plague attacks again." Hermione glared at Lucius. "Information worth a little stupidity, wouldn't you say?"

Lucius pouted. It made him look rather like an overgrown toddler. "No, I would not. You endangered yourself needlessly. We know it takes six months for the plague to return. Isn't that right, Severus?"

"Actually, she's right," he reluctantly admitted. "The increased speed at which the plague is mutating means that it could be well under that. Three instead of six, perhaps. Much as I did not want Hermione to endanger herself, it is useful information to know for sure."

"Ah. Yes. In that case, good idea, Hermione. With any luck it will be six months rather than three."

The parchment had stopped glowing, most of the ink vanishing with it, leaving just a few symbols behind, too small for Severus to make out from where he stood. Whatever it said, it could not be good news, as Hermione paled even more. If she lost any more colour, she'd surely faint.

"Shit." Lucius dragged a hand down his long, pointed face. "Don't tell me. It's three."

"Not..." Hermione sounded winded. "Not even two. Forty-eight days until the plague is active again. No! Less. Forty-six at the most."

'No.'

"Perhaps you made a mistake?" Lucius's voice sounded as if it came from far away. "It can't be very accurate if there's two days' worth of leeway."

Severus shook his head, his eyes riveted on the parchment. Breathe. He had to breathe. It could be worse. There was still time. "I might not be an Arithmancy expert, but even I know that a mistake is glaringly obvious, just as in Potions. If this was wrong, the parchment would be so much ash."

"Exactly. And there's two days 'leeway' because of what I calculated. I have a suspicion that the nature of the plague itself would require an Arithmancy Mistress to calculate anything specifically to do with it, but I had an alternative: when my heart stops beating if nothing changes."

"And the plague takes at least two days to kill, recurring within forty-six days as you said. My mistake."

Severus lifted his eyes to Hermione's face. They had forty-eight days left. Slightly less... a cure would need time to work. He could not fail. Not her. He would develop a working cure by... what was it? By the end of October. Halloween. The day Lily died, so many years ago...

'No.'

He would not lose Hermione. Not on that day. Not at all. Never. Not in his lifetime. Not if he could do anything to prevent it.

* * *

Forty-seven days, just under sixteen hours and counting...

Recovered from her magical draining enough to safely Apparate, Hermione left after dinner. The latest news was not something she should keep from her parents. Despite being at work when she'd discovered it, they would not be happy she hadn't barged into their dental practice to share it instantly, although to do so Severus would have had to take her in on a stretcher. Best that she'd waited until she'd slept most of the day and no longer looked quite so much like a vampire suffering from malnutrition.

Not that her parents were happy with her news anyway.

Hermione watched as her father dropped his head into his hands, his voice muffled when he spoke. "Next time you come to see us, is it too much to ask that there be some good news to share?"

'Like a working cure. Severus is doing all he can, but it'll take a miracle for him to manage that within a week.' "We can but hope... I promise I'll do my best to keep my birthday free of bad news."

"Oh, darling, the sort of bad news that comes at the moment is hardly anything under any of our control. We love to see you, even when you come bearing news like..." Her mother choked on a sob. Her father emerged from behind his hands in order to wrap his arms around her.

Hermione got up from her armchair and perched on the arm of the sofa so she could put her hand on her mother's back. "It'll be fine, Mum. Severus will find a new cure."

Her mother just sobbed harder. Her father grimaced and tightened his embrace, raising his head to look at Hermione. She flinched at the desolation in his grey eyes. "We all hope he will, dear. But less than forty-eight days really isn't much time. You're our only daughter. Our only child. And it's not fair on you or on Severus to demand you spend all of those days with us. Much as I want to."

Finally, her mother's sobs trailed off into hitching, deep breaths. "No, Will. We m...mustn't panic. Severus will have more time than that. He did the first time around. Remember? They put a Sleeping Beauty spell on Hermione and all those other patients. They can do that again. Buy more time. Isn't that right, darling?"

Hermione struggled to smile reassuringly at her mother, a leaden weight in her stomach. She couldn't – wouldn't – shatter her mother's fragile hope. But she couldn't outright lie. "I don't know, Mum. It should slow the plague down. It did before."

Except the plague had mutated since then and continued to do so at an alarming rate. Worse, what she'd calculated – if nothing changes – implied that the plague had mutated too much. So much that the enspelled coma would make no difference. And worse, the enforced comas had been used before. It wouldn't be a change.

'Severus will manage it. He will... won't he?'

"Forgive me if 'should' isn't very reassuring," her father muttered.

'Sorry, Dad. Difficult to be reassuring if I'm not reassured myself.'

* * *

Forty-one days, twenty-one hours and counting...

'Happy twentieth birthday, Hermione,' she thought bitterly to herself, watching her parents talk to Lucius, Severus still locked away working feverishly in his lab. She'd be with him, if not for her parents visiting. 'Enjoy the party; it might well be your last one.'

She grimaced. She couldn't let herself think that way. Severus would manage to find a cure, and he needed her to believe that he would. Bad enough that he clearly feared he would fail without her joining him in that. Oh, he hid it as well as he could during the daytime, but he couldn't keep his nightmares from her. At least it only interrupted their sleep once a night – thankfully it was reassurance enough for him to hold her close until he dropped off again.

"...may, of course, stay here. Provided the manor doesn't object too much. I'm afraid having Muggles here is not something my home is used to. It actually struggles a bit with having you here only a few hours, so I'm not entirely sure how it will react to an extended stay."

Hermione blinked, tuning back into the conversation. "But I live here. Surely Malfoy Manor can't object too much to Muggle blood."

Lucius turned to her. "You may be Muggle-born, Hermione, but you are still magical. And married to me, which also makes it easier." He turned back to address her parents. "I should be able to adapt the manor's wards, but it may take a while to do so."

"We have arranged leave from our dental practice, but that won't start for a week or two. It's all this uncertainty – we don't know for sure if this counts as a terminal illness..."

"It better not," her father snapped. "Sorry, darling, go on."

"It's all right, Will, we're all on edge. Anyway, as it stands, our leave has to come out of our holiday allowance for the year. And our patients deserve a little notification so that no appointments get cancelled completely out of the blue. We have the last four weeks of the... the..."

"Of the countdown off." Hermione guessed. For some strange reason it was easier for her to say. Perhaps performing the calculation that had provided the time limit meant that she could regard it with slightly more clinical detachment?

"Yes. And time after that, too, if need be. If we have no leave left for skiing, so what? You're far more important than falling down any snowy slopes."

'Thanks, Dad. I think.'

* * *

Twenty-eight days, twenty-three and three-quarter hours and counting...

"Go to the aviary if you want a treat," Severus snapped as he snatched the letter from the eagle owl at the lab window. The owl took off with an indignant hoot, but Hermione was sure that a majestic specimen like that would be fine amongst Lucius's owls. An owl like Pig, on the other hand...

'I wonder if that's why I haven't heard anything from Ron recently?' Regardless of the reason, it would be an idea to see him before the plague struck again. Just in case she didn't have the opportunity afterwards...

'No. Cannot think like that.' Especially not when the parchment in Severus's hands might be the news they had been waiting for with bated breath. Good news, for once, hopefully. Please.

Not that good news would benefit her at this stage, but it would still be a relief to hear. A relief that fellow Muggle-born girls would no longer be dying forty-eight hours after they were born. The Ministry had supplied blood samples from the dying Muggle-born babies within a few days of Severus requesting them, and in less than three weeks he'd been able to develop what they hoped would be a cure. With any luck, if that cure was successful, it would provide something for Severus to work from in regards to a cure for her and the rest of the witches.

If it was successful...

"Well?" she prompted.

His eyes scanned the parchment once, then again, as if he couldn't quite believe what he was reading. Hermione held her breath, hardly daring to hope.

At last Severus looked up. "It works," he said flatly.

Good news, then. Very good news. No more Muggle-born baby girls would be dying.

Hermione inhaled a shuddering breath, but it froze within her before she could release it as a relieved sigh. Severus did not look reassured. In fact, he looked just as tense and worried as he had before the news arrived. Something was wrong. "What is it?" She reached over to squeeze his hand. "There's something else, isn't there? Something you haven't been telling me."

He grimaced. "I should have known I couldn't keep it from you for long."

"Keep what from me?" She winced. For something she'd been aiming to say calmly, that came out coldly.

Setting the letter down, he held her hand in both of his. "You have to understand that I did not want to raise false hopes."

He looked so grim she couldn't help but jump to conclusions. "Oh, no. It's a completely different version of the plague affecting those Muggle-born babies, isn't it? That's why you always found something else for me to do whenever I suggested I compare the blood samples with mine."

Severus's eyes widened. "No! Quite the opposite. I did keep you from looking at those samples, but my reason was different. That I didn't want to raise false hopes. You see..." He led the way over to the Omnioscope, fiddling with the settings and gesturing for her to look.

She blinked. Why were there two identical samples of her own... Oh. Oh.

"As you know, the plague affecting the newborn Muggle-borns thankfully had no variants. Although the blood from the samples was of different types, the plague affecting them was the same. What I kept from you is that's not the only thing that is the same."

"Yes... I... I see." She raised her head to look over at him. "One of these is my own blood sample, isn't it? I'm familiar enough with that. The other..."

Severus nodded. "The other is from one of the Muggle-born babies."

Identical. Not the blood itself, of course, although both looked about the same to her. But the plague, visibly changing... It was the same. Mutating at the same rate, in the same way.

And the cure Severus had developed for the Muggle-born variant worked. The variant that wasn't really a variant. It worked.

If she hadn't been leaning heavily against the worktop, Hermione realised faintly, she would have fallen over. As it was, she felt light-headed.

Good news. Very, very good news. They had to share this with her parents and Lucius and...

Reality seeped in as a sinking feeling in her stomach. If it really was such good news, why was Severus not relieved?

Beside her, Severus braced his weight on his hands, standing so close to her she could feel him pressing against her side. "I tested the new cure on small samples from the samples. Including yours. It worked, at least the same way as the temporary cure did. There was no sign of the plague left. That it worked on a larger scale, curing the Muggle-born babies, is of course promising."

"But?" she croaked.

His hands curled into tight fists, his knuckles whitening. "There's no guarantee. That it's permanent. That the plague won't diverge into two variants as we originally feared it had. That the sample of your blood containing the plague is the same as the plague still mutating invisibly within you. Anything could go wrong."

"I can see why you kept it from me," she said faintly. She shook herself, repeating her mantra: cannot think like that, cannot think like that. "It should be fine. Even if it is just temporary, this cure works. If nothing else, it will buy time."

"Yes, you're right," Severus muttered. "The cure we developed adapts with the plague, personalised to the patient by combining it with their blood before administering it. It should work." Despite his optimistic words, Hermione couldn't help but notice that he didn't sound at all convinced, his body as tense as ever beside her.

"Severus?"

The tension broke with an almost audible snap. One moment Severus stood beside her, the next he took her in his arms. A split second later the squeezing sensation of Apparition pressed her just as tightly as his arms held her against him.

Then she was falling back against his bed, his weight on top of her, supported partly by his forearms either side of her head.

She opened her mouth to ask something – what he was doing? Obvious enough. Why he was doing it? Not so obvious. What was wrong? Besides the obvious, it still felt like there was something else.

Before she could decide what to ask, Severus closed the remaining distance between them. "I can't lose you," he breathed and crushed his lips to hers.

Her mouth was already partially open, making it so easy, so natural for the kiss to deepen. For a moment, Hermione just enjoyed the stroke of Severus's tongue against hers, her mind blissfully free from thoughts.

However, it took a lot for her brain to stop working, and something still nagged at her. Something about the tone of Severus's voice. About the desperation in it. About how desperately he was kissing her. The tension in his body before he pounced, which still underlined every move he made.

Joining up the dots, Hermione recoiled from the picture they made. She moved her hands from where they'd buried themselves in his hair to his chest and pushed. It took a few shoves for him to get the message, but Severus slowly drew back.

Holding his head between her hands, Hermione stared at him in the sudden fear that gripped her.

"Promise me you won't do anything drastic if... if the worst comes to pass. Promise me."

Severus met her eyes, the hollow look in them a knife twisting in her heart. "I cannot promise that."

"I really hoped I'd misunderstood you," Hermione muttered. What could she say to make him see sense? "You... you can't... You managed to live without Lily!"

He shook his head, lifting one of his hands to stroke her cheek. "Lily was an adolescent infatuation. Yes, I loved her. But I was never romantically involved with her. You are my wife. I'm in love with you. This is entirely different to that. Stronger. And I would remind you that I melodramatically expressed the wish to die to Dumbledore on learning of Lily's death. It was only at his insistence to ensure that her sacrifice for Harry was not in vain that I did not do 'something drastic'."

"And you're not being melodramatic now? The wizarding world needs you. I do have every faith in you that you'll solve this. But you need to stay alive for that. If, Merlin forbid, I do die, I don't want that to be in vain by dragging you with me, thanks to your suffering a fit of maudlin hysterics more befitting a teenage girl who thinks love is the only reason for living."

Severus smiled mirthlessly. "I'm afraid we'll have to agree to disagree."

"If it were you in my shoes, would you want me to kill myself if you died? Please. Promise me."

He scowled. "Very well." Severus lowered his head to seal the deal with a kiss.

'I think I'd better have a word with Lucius. A reluctant promise can't be the most reliable, especially not when it's quite probably to shut me up. That cure had better work, for all of our sakes.'

Severus rolled them over, freeing his hands from supporting his weight so that he could undress her. She reciprocated, pulling him free of his clothes.

Finally naked, she reached for him. And blinked. Come to think of it, she hadn't felt his erection pressed against her, despite his lower body having been resting on hers.

Grimacing, Severus took himself in hand, but to no avail. An incoherent snarl of frustration escaped him.

Hermione laid a hand over his. Not even a twitch, even at her touch. Swallowing her disappointment, she whispered, "It's all right. Later, when you're not as tense. Just... lie with me for a bit. Let me feel you."

He sighed and relaxed as Hermione stretched out beside him, pressed against him from head to toe. Skin to skin.

Minutes later, his breathing evened out as he dozed off. Hermione closed her eyes, concentrating on the feel of him beside her. On the sound of his heartbeat, his chest rising and falling under her head.

'Can't let myself fall asleep. Got to tell Mum and Dad the good news. And Lucius. And Harry. And Ginny. And Draco. Ron, too. And the other Weasleys. But don't want to risk... false hopes. Cure should work. But further tests. Make sure plague won't mutate. And hope against... hope... that plague outside me is same as... in me. Can't... sleep. Can't...'

Her thoughts trailed off, soft snores replacing them.

* * *

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