Hermione had read of sorcerers who used dark runic rituals to bind their servants. The brutal ceremony had been outlawed for over a thousand years.
Malfoy had been conscious as the blood and magic was invoked in his flesh; as each line was sliced into him.
The cuts of each rune were still raw, as though they couldn't heal, even though they were clearly weeks old. It reminded her of werewolf injuries. The Dark Magic had become visibly septicemic.
She lifted her hand but refrained from touching him. “What did he do? Draco, how did he do this to you?”
“Goblin-wrought silver blade, infused with Nagini's venom. I'm told that they may eventually heal,” he said in a wooden voice. “There's nothing you can do. Now that you've satisfied your curiosity, we should return to business.”
He tried to turn to face her but Hermione stepped around him, casting several different obscure diagnostic charms and inspecting them. Her magic was stable again, although sleep deprivation made her head feel light and hollow.
There were black tendrils beneath his skin from the mixture of the venom and dark magic. She could see the poison in his veins, halfway down his back, up over his shoulders and around his ribs like a poisonous vine. Crawling into him and sinking into the core of his magic.
She summoned her satchel.
“I'm so sorry. I — can't heal this. But I think I can help contain it. Please let me try.”
Malfoy eyed her over his shoulder but didn't try to step away from her again.
Hermione cast a complex spell and then, gently as she could, traced the tip of her wand slowly over one of the long black tendrils. Starting near his lowest rib she gradually forced the poison back toward the incisions and then siphoned the tiny thread out of the rune it had spread from. As she drew out the poison and contained it in a empty vial, she had to sever the connection between the thread and tissue with a sharp jerk.
Malfoy nearly dropped to his knees as he screamed. It was a nearly soundless, guttural rasp of someone intimately acquainted with torture.
“What are you doing?” he half snarled and half groaned. “Is this somehow not already a sufficient amount of pain for you?”
Hermione laid a hand on his arm, trying to hold him steady. “I'm sorry. I'm not trying to hurt you. I have to pull out all the excess Dark Magic. It's poison. If you let it stay, your body and magic will try to assimilate it. And — when you have dark magic in you at a cellular level like that — there's no going back. It just starts eating you from the inside. Magic like that is why your Dark Lord looks the way he does. And — with the quantity of runes — you'll have a few years at most. Either your mind or your body, Dark Magic exacts a price.”
“I am aware of how Dark Magic works,” he hissed, his hands were balled into fists and he was shaking slightly.
“Then please, let me try to fix this.”
Draco dropped his head slightly and huffed faintly as though he were laughing. Hermione studied him for a moment. He didn't say anything else.
She traced out two more threads. By the third Draco collapsed to his knees. He was deathly pale and his skin felt cold and clammy to touch.
She laid a hand as gently as she could on the front of his shoulder. She could feel the arch of his clavicle under her fingers, and see the mad, pained flutter of his pulse beneath his jaw.
“Do you want me to stun you?” she asked quietly. “I can do it faster than way. It won't change the efficacy. But you have to trust me.”
Malfoy went still. Apparently considering.
“Go ahead,” he said after a minute. “You're already more than capable of getting me killed any time you happen to feel like it.”
She braced him against herself, his head pressed against her diaphragm.
“
Hermione worked quickly. She had done the spellwork once before when she'd been training in a hospital in Albania. It had been a single, self-inflicted rune on an aspiring dark wizard who hadn't understood the Dark Magic he was trying to invoke until the poisoning nearly killed him.
With Malfoy unconscious, Hermione's guilt was able to strike her fully.
She should have realised. She should have come back sooner to check on him. She was afraid she was too late. The runes were set. Deeply.
She traced out all the dark magic until she had eight vials full of the mix of the curse and poison. She'd have to incinerate them in a magical fire.
She carefully laid a containment enchantment around all the runes on each shoulder. It was a spell Severus had taught her; he'd used it to contain the curse on Dumbledore's hand. Given that the magic was in Malfoy's back she was doubtful that it would have any affect, but she tried nonetheless.