Chapter Text
The first light stirred the mist from the damp ground. It reached pale fingers through the branches and leaves, spilling its warmth stringently, tentatively, to the tortured souls that huddled close to fend off the night chill.
Hermione and Harry shared a little warming spell, watching the periodic movement from the clump of thick vines. Andromeda had wrapped her nephew in her charmed shawl, the two dozed leaning against each other after taking a turn at the watch. The night had been long. The wolf had almost managed to chew its way through the devil’s snare a few times, but eventually tired from the unrelenting pressure.
As the tendrils of sun curled around the vines, the devil’s snare shrunk immediately as if burned.
“Narcissa!” Hermione jumped up as she saw the wolf, with her final few seconds, emerged and stumbled away, all the while her limbs shortening and fur disappearing, body morphing into the fragile, porcelain of a woman. She could not get far.
Chasing after her, she found Narcissa slumped against a fallen tree.
Human again.
She was bare, looking so… thin, and broken. Her hair was tangled and damp with sweat, pale gold stained darker in places. Her face was bloodless, lips parted. Her fingers were curled around her side where an angry burn streaked across her ribs.
Hermione’s knees hit the ground, “Narcissa.” She took off her robes to wrap around the witch.
Long, golden lashes fluttered at the pleading sound of her own name. Narcissa’s eyes opened a fraction.
Blue, the same shade of the boundless icy water of the Arctic ocean. Still blue. Still her.
Hermione exhaled a sob that did not fully form. She pointed her wand at Narcissa’s wounds, healing the nasty burn that looked like it was about to weep from the blisters.
Draco made a sound behind her, an inhale with a broken quality. Hermione heard him kneel too. She couldn’t bear to look at the man’s expression.
Narcissa’s gaze drifted, unfocused, then, sharpened slightly as if she recognized the voices among the ringing in her head.
“Hi.” She rasped.
“Hi, I’m here,” Hermione said through a tearful smile, “we’re here. It’s okay now.”
“We’ve got to get her home.” Andromeda approached to help them prop Narcissa upright.
“I’ll apparate us.” Draco gathered his mother into his arms, holding her as if she weighed no more than a feather. “Meet us back at Grimmauld’s place.” With a pop, they disappeared.
Looking at a disheveled Harry and Andromeda’s sleep deprived eyes. Hermione sighed. “Go back to the safe house, Harry. And Andy, Teddy’ll probably ask after you soon.”
“Find out what happened, Hermione.” Andromeda said gravely. “The first night is always bad. But this? This is most definitely not normal.”
Nodding, Hermione conjured the lovely sun-lit sitting room in Narcissa’s home to the front of her mind, and apparated away.
Back at the house, Draco had already tucked his mother in bed. Narcissa was passed out.
He gave Hermione a glance when she came through the doorway. Shaking his head, “don’t. She’s too weak to speak right now.”
Hermione, though feeling a little jabbed, understood he was coming from a place of protectiveness, rather than malice. “I know, Draco. I just want to be by her side.” She said with honesty. She was too tired to deny her own need to be close to the blonde, to feel her breathe, to warm her up.
Sniffing, he acquiesced, and shuffled a little to make room for her at the side of the bed. Hermione took Narcissa’s hand in her own, rubbing gently at the pale, cold skin. She rested her cheek on her other arm, and let the pit of utter depletion consume her.
With a hand on her shoulder, she jolted awake. Squinting at the bright sunlight, she took a beat to recognize Draco’s tall figure.
“Relax. She’s still sleeping.” He pointed at the side table with his chin, “I found those in the lab. They should help.”
Blood replenishment, salve for wound healing, lotions to reduce scarring, and a wideye potion, likely meant for Hermione. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
“We had a long night.” He shrugged. “I wish I could stick around, but you see, Astoria was worried and she’s gotten some cramps. Likely they’re Braxton-Hicks, still, I need to be there.”
Hermione blinked, seeing the concerned, doting husband side of this man. “Of course. Go. Don’t worry.” To demonstrate, she slammed back the wideye potion. “I’ll take care of her.”
“Owl if she needs anything.” He bent to give his mother a kiss on her forehead. And a concerned, doting son.
Before he left, he paused, turned, and regarded her with an unreadable expression, “thanks, Granger.”
Huh, who knew, Draco Malfoy did contain multitudes.
Finally alone with Narcissa now, Hermione eased herself beside the sleeping witch, careful to not jostle her. She could see the faint bruise starting to solidify under her collarbone, and the dried blood flaking off from the sealed laceration along her hairline. There would be more injuries, more signs of the beating that Narcissa took.
But she was doing so well…
In her slumber, Narcissa’s fingers twitched weakly, grasping a handful of Hermione’s shirt. She whimpered, her brows were knitted together, lost in a bad dream.
Gently shushing her, Hermione put as much light magic as she could behind a kiss at the blonde crown. Right now, finding out what happened didn’t matter. Right now, what mattered was nursing Narcissa back to health.
For two days, Narcissa slept more than she was awake.
Hermione took off entirely from work. Funny how the blonde had been the sole reason for all her absenteeism since they’d collided into each other’s orbit. But she found that she did not mind it at all.
So she hovered, in the spaces between breaths, between sips of potion and applications of salve, between the quiet moments where Narcissa sat up against the headboard, deep in thought, her hand still subconsciously reaching out to Hermione’s.
On the third day, Narcissa was finally strong enough to be up. She even received a visit from Andromeda and Teddy, and owled Draco to ease his constant letters of worry.
Once the chatter of the young boy faded through the floo, she brewed another pot of tea and found Hermione, who scribbled with a fierce concentration in her notebook.
“You’re working too hard, darling.”
Looking up from her writing, Hermione showed her the page. “Just a few thoughts for research.” In her detailed recount of the events of Narcissa’s transition, there were a few words in small print that she had not revisited without eliciting the feeling of panic right before chaos broke out. She knew me, I’m sure of it. Her mind had been lucid. She was still in there.
Despite her own need to make sense of it all, Hermione had not pushed Narcissa to remember. There was something fragile about her ever since the full moon.
After a few beats, Narcissa lowered herself into a chair opposite of the desk, “I ran, didn’t I?”
She nodded, and asked carefully, “how much do you remember?”
“Enough.” Blue eyes became misted with apology, “it must’ve been frightening. I’m sorry, darling.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“It felt like it was.” Narcissa sighed, “I had control. You know I did.”
So, she indeed had preserved her human mind. Hermione felt the stone of suspense drop behind her breastbone, the tiniest sense of relief. “There was a howl, from a very far away place, and something… something compelled you to run.”
“I don’t recall the specifics. But yes, it was a compulsion. My body… the werewolf was acting on a strong pull, and I could merely watch… like…”
“Like you were in the passenger seat of a car crash?” Hermione supplied.
Narcissa gave her a blank stare.
Realisation hit her, “you’ve never been in a car, have you?” Hermione giggled. “I should take you on a ride, it’s fun.”
“I do get the analogy, my dear,” Narcissa smiled too. She loved it when Hermione’s face lit up with a mischievous idea. “Muggle transportation with questionable safety aside, I was going to say, it felt like a hook.”
Hermione’s smile faded. She closed her notebook gently, as if any sudden movement might spook the thought away. “A hook,” she tested the word on her tongue, “tell me what you mean.”
Narcissa stared at the steam curling up from her untouched tea. “It wasn’t pain, at first. Not mine.” She paused, brow furrowing as she searched for precision. “It was… pressure. Like barely keeping your head above water while something is trying to pull you down.”
Hermione leaned forward, elbows braced on the desk. “Logan?”
Narcissa nodded. “Yes, Logan. I felt him before I heard him. His… distress.” Her fingers combed through her hair.
“It’s like pack magic. I’ve only read it in theory.”
“It’s real, Hermione. The pull to one’s own, especially when they are in immense pain.”
Hermione swallowed, “you felt him suffering.”
Narcissa’s mouth pulled taut into a thin line, “not in any comprehensible words. In sensations. Pain. Rage. Fear.” Her voice shook slightly. “Agony.”
Her chest ached, for the boy, and the witch. Hermione reached across the desk to cover Narcissa’s hand with her own.
“He was being… suffocated,” she continued quietly, “submerged. Like someone holding him under water and refusing to let him surface. Every instinct in me – every instinct, needed to find him.”
Hermione nodded, “that’s why you ran like the devil.”
“Yes. It wasn’t bloodlust. It wasn’t hunger. It was… rescue.” Narcissa let out a small, humourless breath. “And that’s what frightened me the most. It felt right.”
Hermione’s fingers tightened slightly, “and her?”
Narcissa hesitated. “That part was different,” she said at last. “Logan’s mind was in pain. Raw, honest pain. Hers was… calculated.” She closed her eyes briefly, “the moment I turned toward him, I felt her notice me.”
Hermione went very still. “Notice you how?”
“Like cracking a door she hadn’t known was there. Once she saw it, she pushed, hard.”
“Like Legilimency?”
Narcissa shook her head slowly. “Not in the way I know her. Not like slipping into water, like how we were taught. There was no finesse, no ask. It was force, and pressure. A wedge between thoughts.”
“She tried to invade you.”
“Yes.” Narcissa opened her eyes again, blue sharpened by sadness. “And I fought her.”
Hermione gripped her hand tighter, “you held her off?”
“I tried to….” She inhaled carefully. “I wouldn’t let her see – not clearly. But containing my… connection with her took everything. I could feel your magic trying to stop me, but I was no longer in control. I was being pulled, in opposite directions yet somehow they all lead to the same…”
Mind racing, Hermione pieced the fragmented thoughts together. “A part of you was reaching for Logan, the more animal part, I suppose, while the human part tried to resist Bellatrix. It would be convenient for her to get a hold of you. Cissa, it could all be a trap.”
“Premeditated or not, Bellatrix’s learned things. Not everything. But enough.”
“Enough to know pack magic worked on you, and she could exploit it.”
Narcissa nodded, lifting her gaze to meet Hermione’s with a nervousness. “And…” she hesitated, but forced herself to continue, “something else she could use against me.”
Hermione felt the familiar cold bloom in her stomach, spilling from her core to her limbs. “Me.”
“I don’t know how much she sensed.” Her voice was laced with guilt. “I hate the idea that she might’ve brushed against my thoughts of you.”
Hermione rose from her chair and in one smooth motion, she came around the desk to kneel in front of Narciss’s chair. She took the pale face between her hands. “Listen to me, Cissa,” she said, firm, “you didn’t betray anything.”
“I should’ve been stronger.” The redness that tainted her eyelids made the cerulean of her eyes extra blue.
“No.” Hermione shook her head immediately. “You were extraordinarily strong. Cissa, you resisted a horcrux while transforming under a full moon. Your first full moon. That is not weakness.”
Narcissa leaned into the brunette until their foreheads touched, letting herself be comforted by Hermione’s steadfast reassurance.
“And I don’t give a damn that she saw me, love. She’s got no power over me anymore – you made sure of it, alright?”
Love, the term of endearment slipped out so naturally that Hermione seemed to have missed it. Not Narcissa. Warmth filled her chest like no hot tea could, and she closed her eyes to savor the sensation. Miraculously, against all odds, despite her complicated self, regardless of every terrible event, Hermione might love her. She wanted, with some level of animalistic instinct, to bury this treasured moment in a special place, a place in the safest garden of her mind palace, a place that is full of sunlight and green things, a place so far from… her eyes snapped open. “She showed me a place,” she said suddenly, as if afraid to lose the thought if she didn’t speak it now. “Or, Logan did?”
Hermione straightened, “what kind of place?”
“It’s in fragments, and hazy.” Narcissa replied, tapping her temple to try to remember, “a forest. Old.”
“Like the Dark Forest?”
“Much older. There were stone ruins. Snow, or… perhaps ash. And water, running water, bending sharply, like a snake. I couldn’t… see clearly. Every time I tried, she’d attack me from a different angle.”
Hermione summoned her notebook into her hand and jotted down the description of this place.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t give you more.”
“You gave me plenty.” Hermione leaned forward and placed a kiss on her cheek, “this is a good starting point.”
Later, when Hermione climbed into bed, eyes glazed from the strain of scanning maps, Narcissa turned to her. “Now that I’ve given it some thought, I’m not opposed to taking that car ride with you.”
It made her pause, confused for a second. Then she bursted into laughter that lit up Narcissa’s world.
******
The days that followed settled into a rhythm that was… placid.
Hermione wrote new legislative bills, mostly from home. Narcissa was back in her potions lab, catching up on the wolfsbane potions that so many relied on. They researched, discussed, debated in careful stretches.
They worked together. They laughed. They slept in the same bed.
And yet.
Hermione felt it in the way Narcissa no longer reached out first. In the way she kept her kisses light, chaste, glancing only for a second. In the way she woke up in the night and lay very still, as if afraid that moving, touching, on purpose or by accident, might stir something else entirely.
Hermione didn’t say anything at first. She waited, and watched, and learned the shape of Narcissa’s retreat.
It wasn’t rejection. It was vigilance. It was a defensive mechanism that she had seen before. It was the ice shell that had always served the blonde in the hard times of her life. She, in the most un-Gryffindor fashion, waited for Narcissa to acknowledge it first.
On the night of the new moon, something fell quietly into place.
Hermione had fallen asleep first, curled on her side, hair spilling across the pillow, breath warm and even. Narcissa lay awake, perfectly still, cataloguing the familiar sensations – the weight of Hermione’s arm across her waist, the scent of parchment and soap, the slow cadence of sleep. She, once again, denied herself the luxury of sinking into the younger witch.
She was doing it again.
The realisation did not arrive with panic, but clarity. The old instinct, to step back before being stepped away from, to protect by absence, had risen without permission.
You promised yourself you wouldn’t do this again. Narcissa closed her eyes. You promised her.
Hermione shifted in her sleep, murmured something unintelligible, and tightened her grip reflexively.
Narcissa inhaled slowly. She did not pull away.
The next morning, Hermione sat cross-legged on the bed, poring over maps, when Narcissa spoke. “I need to talk to you about something.” Her voice was even, but a sliver of anxiety still made its way in the timbre.
Hermione put down her pen and looked up, “alright.”
Narcissa sat opposite her, hands folded loosely in her lap. “I’ve been… pulling away.” She fidgeted with the edge of her robes, but did not avert her gaze. “It’s not because of anything you’ve done, darling. I think… I think it’s me preparing to disappear.”
The brunette blinked, surprised, not by the truth of it, but by the fact that Narcissa was saying it so plainly.
“And I realised… that this is a habit.” Narcissa continued, “a habit that hurts people. Hurts you…”
Hermione reached out and gave her knee a reassuring squeeze, but she didn’t say anything. Again, she let herself settle into a patience, something she was starting to trust in Narcissa’s presence.
“I’m trying not to.” Narcissa said, “I’m just… scared of the silence in my own head right now.”
“You told me Bellatrix pushed at your mind,” Hermione finally spoke, “your thoughts must feel very precarious right now.”
Nodding, Narcissa agreed softly, “they are. I can feel… I can feel the cracks. She’s… she knows how important you are to me. And… I don’t want her to see more of you.”
“It feels unsafe to be intimate.” Hermione mused.
“That’s the point,” Narcissa covered the hand on her knee with her own, “it doesn’t feel unsafe. It feels… vulnerable. There’s a difference.”
Hermione felt a quiver of relief in her heartbeat. She smiled despite herself. “There is.”
Narcissa exhaled, tension easing from her body. “I didn’t want to wake up one morning and find that I’ve retreated from someone I love – again – without even meaning to.”
Hermione’s breath caught. Before she could respond, there was a strong gust of wind that rushed through the half-opened window.
Both of them jumped and turned.
Draco’s house elf, DeeDee, clambered down the windowsill, with trembling voice and glistening eyes, she delivered the news, “Astoria est en travail. Veuillez vous rendre immédiatement au refuge!”
Astoria was in labour. And Draco was asking for her to go to the safe house.
Narcissa went still.
For a second, Hermione thought she’d smile, joy blooming instantly, and overpack in under five minutes.
Instead, Narcissa’s shoulders sagged as if an invisible weight had settled onto them. Her voice came out quiet and defeated. “Je ne peux pas.” She gave DeeDee no room to argue, and the house elf disappeared with a bow.
Hermione’s heart cracked a little. “Cissa–”
“I cannot risk it.” Narcissa said, her eyes a stormy blizzard of conviction mixed with sorrow. “I’m already risking you. I cannot put a newborn in her line of sight, or all the other children, not until I can be sure that door is shut, forever.”
“You’re protecting them.” Hermione whispered, understanding. She cupped Narcissa’s face gently, “you’re doing what’s right, Cissa. Still, you’re allowed to grieve that.”
Narcissa’s composure broke, so did the strings of tears. “I should be there. I should be holding my grandchild.”
“You will be.” Hermione said. “Just not today.” She stayed, still cradling the blonde’s tear-streaked face, brushing away the warm droplets before they could cool against her skin.
Narcissa leaned her forehead against Hermione’s shoulder. “I didn’t expect it to hurt like this,” she admitted, “I thought if I understood the reason, it would feel… easier.”
“Knowing why doesn’t make it smaller.”
Narcissa breathed out, “no, it doesn’t.”
They remained like that for a while. The room fell hushed, as if the house itself was guarding them against further intrusion.
“This,” Narcissa pulled back just enough to look at her, “is where I would normally excuse myself, tell you that I’m fine, thank you for listening, and go be alone with it.”
If not for the tear streaks on Narcissa’s face, Hermione might’ve laughed at her gentle self-deprecation. Instead, she affirmed quietly, “but you won’t.”
“No. Not with you. Not anymore.” Narcissa’s fingers wrapped around Hermione’s wrist, not grasping, more anchoring. “Even when staying feels frightening.”
“You are not alone with it.”
Narcissa’s voice softened further. “That’s… new for me.”
Hermione smiled, “you’re doing well.”
Narcissa studied her face. The steadfastness, the patience, the bravery, the way Hermione had held her, the way she trusted with all her heart to be held by her. The words surfaced before she could weigh them. “I love you. I have for some time.” They landed softly, a truth that she had already accepted.
Hermione didn’t move at first. Her eyes flickered, filled with a light warm and bright. “I know,” she said, “I love you, too.”
Neither of them spoke after that. There was no need.
Somewhere far away, a new life was arriving into the world.
Here, Narcissa stayed. Present, grieving, in love, and she did not disappear.