He looked up at her instantly. His silver eyes were intent, filled with the same possessive, desperate adoration she'd seen in face of Lucius. She swallowed. “Draco, you have to care about her.”
He stared at her blankly.
Her heart caught in her chest. “You — you can't be the way your father was.”
His expression closed in an instant, and she gripped his hand more tightly. “You have to care,” she said fiercely. “The way you are, you have to decide to care because if you don't, you won't, and she'll know.”
Draco's eyes flickered with something unreadable.
She sat up and kept staring into his eyes. “She has to be someone that you decide to care about. Someone that matters to you. I don't—” her throat caught, “I don't know how — how I'll be in the future. If something goes wrong — you have to be the one who loves her for me” —her voice cracked slightly— “the way I would love her. She has to be important to you.”
Draco had turned white, but he slowly nodded. “Alright,” he said.
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
She nodded. “Alright.”
After months of revolutions breaking out in Death Eater controlled countries, the International Confederation announced its intention to “intervene” in the European situation in October of 2005. Europe's instability threatened the statute of secrecy and endangered the worldwide magical community.
Voldemort barely had the troops to attempt even a semblance of a resistance. The Death Eater army had always relied heavily on the support of the Dark Beings, and with Voldemort's alliances in tatters, he hardly had an army to mount. Even the Death Eaters had no confidence in their ability to win another war. Minister Thicknesse gave weak speeches about British Sovereignty, but despite the dutiful propagandizing of The Daily Prophet, the wizarding world was tired of war and no longer frightened of Voldemort.
There was too much discontent and too few Death Eaters. Without Draco as High Reeve, there was no one who could inspire the same terror.
The International Confederation landed in Denmark in late October and swept down from Northern Europe in a curve towards Britain.
Watching the International Confederation's Liberation Front effectively crush Voldemort's regime had all the feeling of vindication, but there was also a profound sense of betrayal to see how differently things could have been if the International Confederation had been willing to aid the Resistance during the war.
A nauseating sense of pain and rage welled up in Hermione's chest every time she thought about it. There wouldn't need to be a Liberation Front if the MACUSA and International Confederation hadn't left the Resistance be wiped out, imprisoned, and raped for several years.
Harry and Ron and everyone else might have been alive then.
Every time they received the newspapers, reading was a flood of both relief and poisonous grief.
Hermione devoted most of her time to creating a better prosthetic for Draco. It was like building a several thousand piece puzzle. She had to make all the components herself and fit them together in a way that didn't interfere with the other elements.
She finished it in November. Draco studied it as she detached the metal prosthetic and then clicked the new prosthetic into place. Draco hissed and then flinched as all the nerves connected to the new prosthetic.
“How did you—?”
She traced her fingers along the porcelain plating, a smile playing at her mouth. “You can feel it then?”
He nodded. He unfurled his fingers and closed them. There was an almost indiscernible metal whirring sound inside.
Hermione held the prosthetic in her hands, brushing her thumbs across the palm and watching the fingers twitch in response. “See the swirls? The porcelain is laced with silver threads. A sensory aspect on metal plating would have had trouble with variance and interfered with the other components, but by using threads of silver, I could lace them through the external plating of the hand and arm like real nerves. They're concentrated on the fingers”—she stroked her fingers up to the fingertips, and he curved them precisely to catch hers—“so you should be able to feel most things now. The internal mechanisms of this are stronger than the last ones. My plan is to upgrade them every week or so as you adapt.”
“Clever. Although,” he picked up a pencil and twirled it between his fingers before rotating his wrist and observing how the hand moved, “you could have just given me a silver hand. It would have been quicker.”
Hermione gave him an incredulous glare. “You really think I was going to give you a hand that slowly sucked out your life-force? You already have enough Dark Magic being constantly drawn on through your runes, you don't need a silver hand doing it too. Even if it would have been faster, those are incredibly unreliable, I researched them, there are cases where they strangled—”
Draco chuckled under his breath, and Hermione cut herself off and stared at him for a moment before rolling her eyes.