Hermione didn't see Draco again for more than a day.
She forced herself to eat even though it made her stress nausea worse.
She started working out again.
A longer, harder journey. Multiple portkeys while pregnant.
The pregnancy guide had included a long section explaining the risks of displacement transport during pregnancy. Portkeys were preferable to apparition, but either form tended to make witches violently ill and could cause contractions or premature labour. A potion to settle the stomach and a dose of Calming Draught beforehand were strongly recommended if the use of a portkey was necessary.
Hermione had no idea how she'd handle portkeying. In a worst case scenario, repeatedly portkeying could send her into premature labour.
If she lost the baby in the process of escaping without Draco, she thought she would probably die.
It might make a difference if she were less physically fragile.
She started with basic lunges and crunches. She couldn't push herself off the floor to do a push-up, but she made herself begin doing regular repetitions of everything she could manage.
Three weeks. She had three weeks to come up with something better than Draco's new plan.
She just needed to get his Dark Mark off. If she could get it off, there would be numerous methods of escape available to them.
If they killed Voldemort, the Dark Mark would vanish. Potentially so would the only existing mechanism for removing the manacles. The manacles needed the Dark Marks to activate the release mechanism; without marked Death Eaters, everyone manacled might wait years before a way of overriding or recreating Voldemort's Dark Mark was invented.
It might save Draco though. However, Hermione had no idea how to go about it. Draco refused to discuss any ideas that endangered her or ran the risk of his cover being blown before her manacles were removed.
She didn't even know where Voldemort's castle was.
If she could just get Draco's mark off.
The anniversary celebration came, and the manor sat silent. Hermione spent the day reading, gnawing her fingernails to the quick, and doing exercise repetitions when she felt so anxious she thought she might start panicking. Draco had left the previous afternoon and not returned, that was all Bobbin knew.
Lucius had been back to the manor, apparently no worse off for having murdered Astoria.
Hermione knew because early in the morning she saw him standing in the path outside her window, staring up at the North Wing.
She'd ducked quickly out of sight.
The day of the anniversary passed without event for Hermione. Her room felt claustrophobic, as though she were going to suffocate while waiting there.
It was the middle of the night when Draco abruptly appeared in the room next to her door.
He stalked across the room and nearly collapsed on top of her as he wrapped his arms around her waist and dropped his forehead on her shoulder.
Hermione's spine bowed slightly as she held him up. The spent dark magic hanging off him was almost enough to make her gag.
“Are you alright? What's wrong? Has something happened?” she asked, her voice frantic as she ran her fingers over him trying to find an injury.
“Mmmfine.” His voice was muffled in her robes. “I'm just tired.”
He lifted his head and straightened as he stared down at her. “It was a long day.”
“Sit down.” She pulled him over to the bed, and he sat heavily on the edge of it. She studied him. He looked frayed. “What happened?”
He stared up at her, his expression was drained but there was a sort of cold triumph in his eyes. “The Dark Lord didn't take news regarding Romania well and over-exerted himself yesterday. He failed to appear at today's celebration.” Draco tilted his head to the side, and the corner of his mouth twisted up into a smirk. “There's blood in the water. If anyone had doubts that he's weak — it's all but confirmed now. He's facing the end — even he knows it.”
Hermione studied him. The light in her room was dim but he seemed ghastly pale, as though he'd been drained of colour. “But—?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “Well — I'm his supposed successor. I had to fill both roles in his absence.” The triumph in his expression faded into exhaustion. “It was a few more Killing Curses than I'd expected.”
He suddenly looked young. A flicker of boyish vulnerability appeared for a moment. “I don't know—”
He cut himself off and was silent for several seconds.
“I'll be fine. I'm just tired,” he finally said.
Hermione tangled her fingers in his hair. “Oh, Draco.”
She wondered sometimes if there would be an eventual point when the Heart of Isis would fail. Surely it couldn't function indefinitely. It was already absorbing all the dark magic that should have been seeping out of Draco's runes, that combined with everything else Draco regularly did—
Hermione banished the thought. He had a far more immediate fate to escape before she needed to worry about Dark Magic corrosion killing him.