She brushed her fingers against his cheek. His skin was icy cold. In the moonlight, with his pale hair, skin, and eyes, he almost seemed like a ghost she was clinging to.
She was magicless. She had no spells or healing to offer.
“Go to sleep. You should sleep,” she said. “You'll feel better if you can rest.”
He gave a nod and slumped down.
She ran her fingers through his hair, twisting it around her fingers and watching it slip free. She traced along his knuckles, and then rubbed her hands against his, trying to impart some warmth from wherever it had leeched out of him. His hands spasmed from time to time when he moved his sleep.
He had such long fingers. In another life, he could have been a healer or a musician. He would have had the perfect hands for it.
Just another thing Voldemort ruined.
She sat beside him watching him sleep, feeling him grow slowly warmer.
He jerked abruptly awake, snatching his fingers away from hers and gripping his left forearm as he sat up. He pressed a kiss against her forehead and left without a word.
Hermione didn't see him again for two days. She read the Daily Prophet's recap of the anniversary celebration. Predictably Voldemort's absence was barely mentioned and heavily excused. There was more time devoted to Astoria's failure to appear.
Draco had killed seventy-five prisoners over the course of the day. Speeches and entertainment and then he was called up to kill traitors and resistance fighters. It had happened in three sets. Twenty-five prisoners all lined up for him to execute. Again. And Again.
It was an unbelievable quantity of killing curses.
The revolution in Romania was dismissed as a minor, local uprising, not related to Voldemort's regime at all.
Hermione read the paper through twice and then went back to her books, back to her exercise repetitions. While she was forcing herself to do any unbearable quantity of crunches on the floor, she refined and perfected the theory of the potion until it was flawless.
In another life, if she could have become a researcher, inventing the theory would have been a distinguishing success. Like the twelve uses of dragon's blood, even if four were entirely theory-based, the deepened understanding of magical theory would have been notable in its own right.
But Hermione didn't care about a theoretical potion. She needed a real one with ingredients she could actually obtain.
She had no idea how to get hold of phoenix tears.
Fawkes had vanished after Dumbledore's funeral at Hogwarts and never been seen again. Phoenix weren't even native to Europe.
The only two known domesticated phoenix in the last century were Fawkes and Sparky, the mascot of the New Zealand Quidditch team. Domestication had been more common a few hundred years before, but whatever the art of reliably earning a phoenix's loyalty was, it had been lost to history.
She lay in the middle of the floor, panting and thinking while she caught her breath. Her abdominals and legs were burning.
If Draco tried to run with her, they'd be hunted down. Voldemort could find him through the Dark Mark. They'd be hunted from refuge to refuge, and the travel would be more and more difficult for her as the pregnancy progressed. Assuming she didn't eventually miscarry from the stress of living on the run, there would later be a baby they were trying to flee with.
There was no place to run to. There would be few Wizarding countries powerful enough to deter Voldemort's pursuit that wouldn't immediately arrest Draco themselves. Draco might be collared, but he was one of the most dangerous Dark Wizards in history, and that fact had heavily emphasized in recent months.
It was as Lucius had said. Draco was Voldemort's hunting dog. He could utilise Draco better if he weren't so afraid of Draco usurping him.
“Why can't you travel alone now? Why are you restricted but not anyone else?” she'd asked Draco during one of the days before Severus had been killed.
He'd sighed and glanced away. “The Dark Lord began receiving reports that I was privately visiting the homes of Death Eaters and powerful allies. He assumed I was attempting to garner support in order to depose him. Leaving Britain again without express permission will be open treason, without exception.”
Her throat had tightened. “It was because you were looking for me.”
He'd just nodded.
Their attempts to hold onto each other had carved their hope for escape into a shard so narrow she sometimes wondered if she was imagining its existence.
No. She could save him, she was certain there was some way to do it, she just needed to figure out what it was. She'd never been a very good chess player. Even when she'd had occlumency, she'd never been able to stay detached about using people. That was where she and Draco diverged.
If she wanted to save Draco, she needed to be more ruthless. As ruthless as he was.