Chapter Text
The roof had come down into the house.
It had taken most of the upper floor with it. Wet rafters lay across the rooms below, blackened at the ends. Rain had found every gap. One gable still stood, cracked above the window where the fire had taken hold. Its frame hung crookedly, one pane left in it, clouded by soot. The byre had folded inward beside the yard. Beyond it, rough grazing ran down towards the birches, divided by a low drystone dyke and a sagging line of wire. A stone trough lay on its side beside the gate, split through the middle.
Hermione stopped just below the ridge.
Her watch said it was early afternoon. The sky did not agree.
November in the Highlands could make noon look like something ending. Mist had dropped into the hollow, and rain moved through it in thin grey lines: steady enough to soak, too fine to see clearly. It gathered on her lashes and ran beneath her collar. The hem of her cloak was already heavy with water and peat.
She should have kept to the ridge path.
The packet had been delivered. Several miles behind her, Dunalastair House was disguised as ruins and warded again, or as warded as anything was now. Mrs Macnair – no relation, she had said sharply, before Hermione could fail to ask – had signed the receipt with shaking fingers, her wand hand wrapped in wool. Hermione had the return route in her pocket: three miles south-west to the Apparition point; avoid the lower track; no lights after dusk. Simple.
For a little while, Hermione was tired enough to believe in simple things.
Then her gaze moved over the yard in the wrong way.
It had become a habit, and a bad one. Whenever she came across a place like this – a ruined house, a scorched yard, grass flattened by someone else’s fighting – some part of her began to look for a sleeve she knew. A hand. Red hair in the rain.
There was nothing from where she stood.
The slope was slick underfoot, the peat yielding beneath each step. She kept to the firmer ground where the heather thinned and made for the gate.
The mud there had been churned and softened again by rain. Bootprints crossed and recrossed at the entrance to the yard. Some had sunk deep at the heel, as though whoever had made them had been leaning back or carrying weight. One set led towards the trough and stopped.
The grass beside the stone was dark. Blood, too much of it. Rain had thinned it through the grass and carried it into the ruts, but the stain remained where the ground dipped near the wall.
There was no body, though.
Hermione looked along the wall, behind the trough, through the grass beyond it. Nothing.
Near the byre door, something lay in the mud.
A wand.
It had been blasted to pieces. The handle was split open, the shaft broken into jagged lengths, the core trailing claret-dark among the splinters.
Hermione looked long enough to be sure she did not recognise it, then moved on.
The byre smelled of wet ash and spilled oats. A sack had split open across the threshold. The door hung inward from one hinge. A black score crossed the stone above it where a curse had struck.
Still no bodies.
She crossed the yard slowly. Up close, there were marks everywhere. Mud kicked high against the house wall. Something charred near the fence, too shapeless to name.
No one she knew. No one at all.
Hermione stood with the rain on the back of her neck and let the yard arrange itself into absence. The fight was over. The wounded had gone, or been taken. The dead, if there were any, had been taken too.
She had no reason to stay.
She went round the far side of the house, where the path climbed back towards the ridge.
She was almost past the corner when something pale caught her eye against the dark ground.
At first she thought it was cloth.
A shirt, perhaps, torn and left where someone had been dragged clear.
Then the rain moved through it, separating it into strands.
Hair.
Long, wet, almost white.
She turned back and drew her wand.
A man lay below the fence, half on his side, water streaming around one shoulder. His cloak had fallen open. The fabric beneath was dark with rain and blood, but unmistakably fine: not hill cloth, not work robes, nothing that belonged in a yard like this.
One arm was pinned beneath him. The other lay forward in the mud, the hand empty. Wandless.
His hair hid most of his face. She stepped down into the ditch and saw the silver clasp at his throat, bent nearly flat. Then the cut of his mouth. The long, sharp line of his cheek.
Lucius Malfoy.
There was a deep wound over his ribs and another high on his shoulder, with the robes scorched around it. His skin had a bluish cast.
She was still assessing his injuries when the cloth over his ribs lifted. Barely. Then again.
He was breathing.
For one clear, unpleasant moment, she considered how easy it would be.
One curse. Less than that, perhaps, given the state he was in.
Her wand was already in her hand.
The reasons came before she had to look for them. Yellow eyes in a mirror, the instant before her body turned to stone; behind that, a hand slipping a diary into a little girl’s cauldron. The Department of Mysteries dissolving into running feet and falling glass, Sirius alive at one end of it and gone at the other. The Manor floor against her cheek, Bellatrix’s blade opening the skin of her arm while the Malfoys stood and watched.
Then another memory came, unwanted: Harry at Grimmauld Place, grey with tiredness after the battle that had decided nothing, telling her and Ron about the Forest. Narcissa Malfoy bending over him. Her question. The lie that had let him live.
Narcissa was dead now. Hermione could not repay her.
There was only this.
She looked at Malfoy for what felt like a long time.
“Damn you.”
She raised her wand.
“Mobilicorpus.”
His body rose awkwardly from the ditch, his cloak dragging through the water, one leg hanging wrong until she corrected the charm.
The nearest Order cache was less than half a mile north, if the wards were still intact. A cave, technically, though Moody had once called it a hole with ambitions, and the name had stuck. The Hole had been used for message drops, emergency shelter, and, on two occasions, to hide people whose existence the Order could not officially acknowledge.
Hermione cast a Disillusionment Charm over Malfoy and began the climb towards the ridge.
By the time she reached the Hole, her shoulders ached with the effort of sustaining the charm.
The entrance was set behind a spill of rock and heather, invisible unless one knew which patch of moss was not one. Hermione checked the marker charm. It glowed a dim green: still working.
“Still waters,” she murmured, pressing her wand to it.
The wards recognised her, and the rock face opened. She slipped inside and dropped the Disillusionment.
Warmth met her first.
Then the smell of tinned soup.
Then Ron Weasley, standing beside the narrow supply shelves with a canvas bag in one hand and three packets of gauze in the other.
The face she looked for on every battlefield and dreaded finding there. One she had not seen in three months.
Rain darkened the ends of his hair, and there was mud on one knee. He must have come by the lower path, then. Supply run. They all handled them sometimes, but Hermione had thought that month’s requisition had already been filled.
Bad luck so pure it almost felt designed.
For a moment they only stared at each other. Then his gaze moved past her shoulder to the pale-haired body floating behind her.
His face changed.
“Hermione, what the hell is that?”
Hermione shut the entrance with a flick of her wand. “Move the blankets.”
“No.”
“Move the blankets, Ronald.”
He dropped the gauze onto the shelf.
“No, don’t ‘Ronald’ me.” He stepped forward. “You brought Lucius Malfoy into an Order safe house?”
“It’s not active for personnel. It’s a cache.”
“It’s an Order safe house.”
“He’s unconscious.”
“Shame.”
Their voices struck the low ceiling and rebounded.
Hermione lowered Malfoy more abruptly than she meant to, depositing him with a heavy thud on the edge of the blankets.
“He’s dying,” she said.
“He’s a Death Eater.”
“Yes.”
“He wouldn’t save you. He wouldn’t save any of us unless there was something in it for him.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because you’ve just carried him in here like—”
“Like a wounded man?”
“Like someone we can afford.”
Hermione said nothing.
Ron gestured at the half-empty shelves. “That’s dittany for our wounded. Blood-Replenishing Potion for people who didn’t spend years helping You-Know-Who. Bandages. Pain draughts. Food. Whatever you use on him, someone else doesn’t get.”
She had no answer to that. Not one that would change the arithmetic.
“For Merlin’s sake, Mione. What are you doing?”
She reached into her sleeve and drew out the list of names, wet but intact, then placed it in the sealed tin on the highest shelf. Her fingers were numb. She had not noticed until then.
“Narcissa saved Harry.” The words sounded smaller aloud.
Ron’s expression closed.
“Like that matters now. Harry’s dead.”
She flinched. Ron looked away, but did not apologise.
After a moment he said, “Whatever Narcissa did, it doesn’t make a debt to him. There’s no one keeping score.”
“I am.”
For a moment, Ron looked less angry than tired.
Hermione looked down at Malfoy. Blood had begun to soak through the blanket nearest to his side.
Outside, rain tapped against the hillside. Somewhere deeper in the cave, water fell at regular intervals into a metal basin: slow, irritating, exact.
Hermione reached for the dittany.
Ron watched her a moment longer, then swore under his breath and took the clean bandages from the crate.
“If he tries anything,” he said, “I’m hexing him first and asking questions later.”
“Good.”
They worked.
It was ugly, careful work. Ron held Malfoy still while Hermione cut away the scorched cloth and cleaned the curse burn as far as she dared. The first application of dittany hissed and smoked faintly. Malfoy’s body jerked beneath their hands, and Ron swore again, louder this time.
The ribs came next. A diagnostic charm showed two fractures, one pressing dangerously inward. There was neither time nor enough potion to do it properly – she tended to what would kill him fastest and stabilised the rest. The leg was broken after all, and it needed a splint. Ron found two lengths of packing wood and held them in place while she bound the leg between them.
His hands were steady. They always were when there was something practical to do.
That had saved them more than once.
The silence between them changed as they worked. Ron’s anger settled into concentration, and Hermione’s thoughts narrowed to wound, charm, pressure, pulse.
This, at least, they both understood. Not mercy – procedure.
Last, they searched him for a concealed wand or anything that might betray the cache. She checked one side, Ron the other. There was nothing.
Finally, Hermione sat back on her heels. Only then did she realise how cold she was.
Ron stood and wiped his hands on a cloth.
“You’re leaving him here?”
“For now. I have to report back or Moody will start a search. I’ll put a charm on him to alert me if anything changes. And I’ll come back after dark.”
“You’ll what?”
“I’ll come back and check if he’s stable enough to move.”
Ron looked at her as though she had started speaking Gobbledegook. “Alone?”
“I’ll be careful.”
“Oh, well, that’s fine, then. Nothing bad ever happens when one of us says that.”
“I need you not to tell anyone.”
His expression hardened at once.
“You’re asking me to hide Lucius sodding Malfoy from the Order.”
“I’m asking you to keep quiet until he wakes or until I can move him. A day at most.”
“But why? We patched him up, now let’s go and tell Moody.”
“This isn’t what Narcissa did for Harry.”
“So you’re letting him go?”
She only met his eyes and waited. After a moment, Ron looked away.
“Harry would hate this,” he said.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know him.”
“So did I.”
Water struck the basin again.
At last, Ron rubbed a hand over his face.
“A day.”
“Thank you.”
Hermione laid a monitoring charm over Malfoy’s chest and another across the entrance. She added a binding charm to his wrists, keyed to deliberate movement.
Then she extinguished one lantern, leaving only the lowest light burning near the medical shelf.
Ron lifted the canvas bag and touched his wand to the entrance stone.
“Still waters.”
The cave opened to the wet grey afternoon.
Hermione followed him out and sealed Malfoy inside the Hole.
Lucius woke because something was pulling at his hair.
Not sharply. Not enough to move him. A small, persistent tug at the nape of his neck. He became aware of it before the pain, which was unfortunate; pain disliked being made to wait.
It came as soon as he tried to breathe.
Something low in his left side caught first, deep enough that his body stopped the breath before it was complete. His shoulder followed, hot and stiff, the skin drawing tight as his chest moved. His ribs objected one by one.
His leg was held straight. He did not yet know by what.
He did not know where he was, for that matter.
Lucius did not move. The first rule of waking somewhere unfamiliar was not to inform the room that one had done so.
He let his breathing remain shallow while he took inventory of what little the dark would give him.
Stone. Damp. Water falling somewhere to his right, drop by drop.
A light burned nearby, low and yellow. Not daylight. Too steady for a wand tip. A lantern, perhaps.
Then came a soft shuffle to his left, followed by the click of glass.
There was someone in the room.
Lucius kept his eyes closed and reached for the last clear memory.
For some time there was only rain.
Not falling. Already fallen. In his hair, in his mouth, soaking through his robes until there seemed no layer left between him and the ground.
Before that—
Instructions.
He had been standing. That came first. Not where – only the strain in his knees from holding still too long, and the ache at the back of his neck from keeping his head inclined.
Verify the report. Order activity near Kinloch—The rest of the name would not come. Somewhere in the Highlands.
Yes, it came back now. The rain. The empty croft.
They had searched the place and found precisely nothing.
Bellatrix was bored. Dolohov was angry because there was no one to punish for the wasted journey.
Then there had been voices on the track. Two silhouettes in the rain: Muggles, a man and a woman.
Bellatrix had turned towards the sound with the bright, idle interest she gave to breakable things. She had lifted her wand, almost lazily.
The woman had dropped the basket she was carrying and drawn her own wand in response.
Not Muggles.
Not rumours, after all.
Dolohov had shouted. A spell cut across the yard and struck the stone trough hard enough to split it. The croft door opened. Two figures ran out, wands drawn. Another came from behind the byre. Rain thickened around the flashes of light.
Lucius remembered stepping back to give himself room to aim. The burning in his side. Seeing Dolohov Disapparate.
Then darkness. The distant sound of Bellatrix’s laughter breaking off. And—
“You can stop pretending,” said a woman’s voice. “I know you’re awake.”
Lucius let one more breath pass. Then he dropped the pretence and opened his eyes.
His surroundings resolved slowly: stone walls, shelves, marked crates. One lantern on the floor. A heap of blankets, some folded and some not.
His gaze travelled farther left.
Hermione Granger sat on an upturned crate beside the shelves, her hair wet around her face. There was mud on her trousers and boots.
She watched him with her wand resting across her knee, not pointed at him. Discourtesy, or confidence. Possibly both.
Lucius let his face settle into what long practice had made of it: expressionless. The muscles along his cheek felt stiff, and his mouth had gone dry enough that speaking required preparation.
“Miss Granger,” he said. His voice did not quite fail. That would do.
One of her eyebrows moved, perhaps a small acknowledgement of the effort.
“Mr Malfoy.”
His throat hurt. He swallowed once and regretted it.
“I confess this is not the reception I had anticipated.”
“I imagine not.”
Bandages showed beneath his robes. Clean ones. His shoulder had been treated. He could smell dittany now beneath the damp wool and blood. His leg had been splinted with packing wood.
He turned his head to see her better. Too quickly. The cave tilted and returned with malice.
At least the strand trapped beneath his shoulder came free and the maddening tug stopped.
He studied her for a moment.
“I am curious as to why I appear to have been assisted.”
“You were dying.”
He almost laughed.
“That has not always proved a compelling argument on my behalf.”
Her face gave him nothing.
“You’ve been unconscious all night, and then some. I don’t know how long before I found you. I’ve checked on you twice.”
All night.
That was enough time for a great many people to decide he was dead, missing, captured, disloyal, or all four in whatever order pleased them.
“Your wounds are dressed,” she went on. “The curse-burn in your shoulder should close if you don’t do anything stupid. The leg is splinted, not healed.” She rose from her crate. “There’s Blood-Replenishing Potion on that shelf. Water in the mug. You should be able to reach it once the dizziness passes.”
Lucius’s gaze moved slowly to where she pointed.
A bottle. A cup. No wand.
Did she imagine he would be foolish enough to drink anything she gave him?
He raised one eyebrow. It was an economical gesture. At present, economy suited him.
She gave a small shrug. “Drink it or don’t. It would be better if you weren’t here by nightfall.”
That got his attention.
He looked back at her.
“You intend to release me?”
“I never took you prisoner. I’m leaving you with enough strength to stand. There’s a Portkey in the tin beside the entrance. It will take you to a drop point just outside Inverness. What you do from there is your problem.”
“And what might the Order hope to gain from that?”
He almost missed it in the half-dark: the pause, the tightening of her shoulders.
How curious.
He tilted his head. “They do not know.”
“They’ll know tonight.”
“So you have hidden me in an Order cache without permission, treated me with Order supplies, and intend to inform them only once I am no longer here.”
“That’s the general shape of it.”
He felt one corner of his mouth raise.
“I had not thought you capable of administrative treason.”
“Then you haven’t been paying attention.”
Lucius considered her.
Something in her face settled. He waited.
“Your wife saved Harry’s life,” she said. “But I can’t repay her.”
For a moment the cave became very still.
He kept his face empty with the precision of a man closing doors in a burning house.
“No,” he said. “You cannot.”
“So I paid the debt where I could. That’s done now.” She picked up her cloak from the back of the crate.
Ah.
Slowly, he inclined his head.
Granger fastened her cloak and moved towards what he supposed was the entrance.
“Will you Obliviate me before you go?”
“There’s no point.” She waved her wand and one of the empty crates filled itself with bottles and sealed tins from the shelves. She picked it up. “I’m about to report this place as compromised. By midnight everything useful will be gone.”
He said nothing and watched her leave.
At the threshold, she paused.
“If I wanted you dead,” she said, glancing back towards the potion, “I had easier opportunities.”
He studied her face. “I imagine you did.”
She murmured some words he didn’t catch, and stepped out into the rain.
Lucius lay still and listened.
Boots crossed wet stone. A pause. The faintest thread of wandwork. Then nothing but rain and the steady drop of water into metal.
He counted to six hundred.
At four hundred and twelve, his side began to pulse with such precision that he considered moving his injured leg to distract himself from it.
At five hundred and nine, he thought of Narcissa. Her hand on Draco’s shoulder in the Manor drawing room, the night before everything narrowed to battle. Her fingers had been steady. Her face had not. She had looked at him across their son’s bowed head and said nothing, because there had been nothing left to say between them.
He would have saved her if he could.
At five hundred and ninety-five, he found himself noting that the Granger girl believed in debts. Or needed to.
Lucius understood the difference.
He reached six hundred, took a steadying breath and pushed the blanket aside.
Standing was a vulgar business.
He achieved it in stages. First the elbow, which reminded his shoulder of recent history. Then the uninjured knee, and the balancing act of hauling himself up. Then the wall. The world narrowed to stone beneath his palm and breath moving shallowly through his teeth.
Once upright, he kept his head bowed until the blackness at the edges of his sight retreated.
His hair had dried in a tangle against his face. He lifted one hand to push it back and discovered that his fingers were shaking.
He waited until they stopped.
The shelves were four paces away. It took him embarrassingly long to reach them.
He braced against the wall and uncorked the bottle. He held the neck beneath his nose and inhaled carefully.
Iron tang of unicorn horn. Acidic Mandrake. A dark sweetness beneath. Standard base. Not fresh, but viable.
He tilted the bottle and watched the liquid move against the glass. No silvering at the rim, no skin forming across the surface.
Blood-Replenishing Potion.
He looked at the bottle for a long moment. Then he raised it to his mouth and drank.