Archive of Our Own

Draco’s entire body was aching when consciousness slowly began to return, his blurry vision starting to clear, his extremities tingling. Coughing, he tried to sit up, only to groan and drop back to the ground. Blinking the dust from his eyes, he looked around, trying to figure out where he was and what the hell had happened.

Finding himself in a dusty cavern, his memory returned and a curse passed his lips. He was in the underground lab the corporation had built specifically for dangerous experimentation. He and Marty Lam had been studying the effectiveness of raising the orb’s power levels --

His thoughts trailed off, and despite his pounding head and protesting body, he sat up straight, his hand instinctively moving to clutch at an area of his abdomen that was hurting like all hell. Ignoring it, he used the workbench behind him to pull himself to his feet.

“Lam?” he called, taking in his surroundings, the devastating mess of the room causing him to mutter, “Fuck.”

Draco removed his wand from the light around the glowing orb. “Power up five percent. Do it again,” he instructed his young partner.

“Evinxi magus radix,” Lam incanted, his wand held loosely in his hand, aiming in the general direction of the target wall that was hooked up to a scroll to monitor spell strength.

Malfoy watched a thread of light shoot from the orb and wind itself around Lam’s mid-section. “You’re hooked, go,” he told him.

Lam nodded and took more precise aim at the target. “Reducto.”

A red bolt fired from the tip of his wand and impacted the target, the charms on it stopping any expected explosion and absorbing the blast. Lam cancelled the spell, the tether tying him to the orb fading. He walked over to the scroll and nodded.

“There’s a definite increase in the power of the blast,” he told Draco, who stood beside the workbench taking notes. “We’ll have to compare it to the other two tests to be sure by how much.”

Draco nodded and made a mark on his parchment. “Don’t disconnect the target just yet, I want to push the power up by a significant amount to see if the blast power goes up proportionally.”

“I don’t know, Malfoy,” Lam said, a frown marring his face. “The orb is still unstable. We don’t know enough about it to raise its levels too high.”

Glancing at the other man, Draco shrugged. “We need to prove that it actually does what we told the boss it does. We need sure numbers to show that the orb, once connected to a wizard, increases their magical power levels.”

Lam continued to frown. “This thing,” he said, pointing to the orb, “is an unknown, Draco. Charging it too high could blow the balance completely. If the calculations are wrong … you could overdo it. It would explode.”

Malfoy glared at him. “My calculations have never been wrong before, Marty. Besides, that’s why they put us in the cavern. This room is heavily protected.”

“It may not affect anywhere else if it explodes, but we’ll die,” Lam pointed out grimly.

Straightening from the workbench, Malfoy looked his partner in the eye. “We’ll be careful, and when we can prove that we’re right, Langford will get off our arses.” Then he gave a slight grin. “Anyway, don’t you want to see what this baby can do?”

Lam shook his head, but acquiesced. “Fine, but no more than thirty percent.”

“Agreed,” Draco said and then turned back to his notes. After quickly finishing up his observations, he concentrated on the calculations for the next test.

He was confident in his abilities; magical equations had always been a strong suit of his. The numbers came together so easily. Still, Lam had been right, one slight mistake and both of them could die, so he took extra time to ensure it was correct.

Once done, he handed the calculations over to Lam, letting him see them for himself. Marty Lam was five years younger than Draco and had received impressively high results in Arithmancy at Hogwarts, the subject that was closest of the curriculum to the work they now did.

When the director of the Freelance Magical Experimentations Corporation had hired him and assigned him as Draco’s lab partner, the older wizard had despised the arrangement. He worked better alone and did not require any assistance. Charles Langford had been unwavering however, insistent.

In the beginning, they only worked well because they wanted to outdo the other, but after two years, Draco had come to appreciate Marty’s insight, and trust his judgement. So when Lam signed off on the calculations that he’d written, Draco didn’t foresee a problem.

They set it up, Lam taking his place in front of the target and Draco monitoring the orb, making the necessary adjustments. Just before Marty had fired, however, the orb’s power levels had began to rise past what Draco had set them at, and only a few moments later, the room had started shaking.

The last thing Draco knew was a sharp pain to the side of his head.

No wonder his head was throbbing, he realized as he paused in his efforts to remove the rocks that concealed both Lam and the exit, and raised his hand to the wound just above his right ear. When he drew it away, there was blood on his fingers. 

He took a minute to try and figure out how long he’d been unconscious, an effort that went unassisted by his shattered watch, and then swore at himself and turned back to the rocks. Marty was under there, his partner was buried alive and he couldn’t waste a moment that could be used finding him.

Lifting one heavy boulder after the other, he was beginning to get discouraged by the difficult physical process, when he was nearly startled out of his skin by a very familiar voice sharply stating from behind him, “Oh, for Merlin’s magic! You are the proudest pureblood I know – find your damn wand and haul those rocks like a wizard would!”

The chunk slipped from his hands, narrowly missing his foot, and Draco hurriedly spun around and gaped like a moronic gold-fish for a whole twenty seconds. Impossibly, he’d found himself face to face with Hermione Granger.

“How the hell did you get down here?!” he managed to demand after regaining his composure. 

She tilted her head and arched an eyebrow at him, but didn’t say a word as she moved to one of the workstations, brushed off a chair and sat down, primly crossing her legs. Then she continued to stare at him with a penetrating stare.

A disconcerting thought ran through his head; is she a Ministry spy? Was she down here the entire time, monitoring our progress? But he quickly shook it off and continued to stare at her in disbelief. She was completely untouched by the chaos that surrounded them. Her frizzy hair was in a neat bun atop her head, with only a few loose curls, her blouse and skirt were crisp and clean and there wasn’t a trace of dirt on her. She’d not been here when the cave-in happened. There was no chance of that. 

In fact, oddly, she looked exactly as she had the last time he’d seen her, when they’d passed each other in the halls of the Ministry a week or so ago.

“This room has both anti-apparition and anti-portkey wards. And there’s no floo. So how in hell did you manage to get down here?” As angrily as he’d voiced his words, he was also aware that they were shaky and not quite said, as much as stammered. 

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Is it too much of me to ask that you take a moment to think?” she questioned, exasperated. “You and I both know that I’m not actually here, Draco. You’re hallucinating.”

He opened his mouth to hotly protest the claim, but then stopped himself. That would make sense. Still, he wasn’t that badly hurt. He made his way to her quickly and then reached down and poked her in the shoulder, making a solid connection.

There was a small amused smile on her lips as she glanced at his jabbing finger and then looked back up at him, quirking her eyebrow again. “A very real hallucination, but a figment of your imagination, nonetheless.”

And he knew she was right. There was no other explanation for her presence. He must have hit his head a lot harder than he originally believed. Moving away from her again, he shook his head and glared at her.

“Well then, would you mind explaining why in Merlin’s name I would hallucinate you, of all people?” he questioned, growing even more frustrated when her smile widened.

She shrugged and stood, moving her way through the wreckage to stand quite close to him. “I can only imagine that your subconscious summoned me in your hour of need because I’m the one person in the world you know is smarter than you are.”

He was unable to restrain a snort of disgust in response to her answer. “That’s bullocks. I happen to be well aware that you are not smarter than me. The idea of it is mad.” 

Hermione slipped past him and then moved through the mess again, seeming as if she was looking for something amongst the dirt and rock on the ground. “Mad? You’re one to call anyone mad, Draco Malfoy. Keep in mind that right at this moment, you are having a two-way conversation … with yourself.”

The smile she gave him was positively mischievous and then something caught her eye and she stopped, staring downward. He was glaring at her, far past irritated and into full blown rage, but her actions had piqued his curiosity.

“What?” he grumbled through a locked jaw.

She didn’t answer verbally, merely pointed to a place on the ground. He made it a point to force his tiring body to stomp its way to her and look bored as he inspected the area she indicated. He wasn’t able to stop his eyes from lighting up, however, when he spotted his wand.

Wanting nothing more than to hex the smug smile off her imaginary face, he snatched it up, briefly examining it for damage and being infinitely relieved to find little more than a small scratch. 

“This doesn’t mean you’re smarter than me,” he snapped at Hermione. “You are not smarter than me.”

He turned back towards ground-zero of the cave-in and made his way closer, not managing to stave off a wave of guilt when he remembered Lam could very well be dying under that mound while he had been wasting time quarrelling with someone that was all in his damaged head.

Draco was already levitating a large rock when she spoke again, “If I’m not here to help you out, then what?” She took on a sarcastic tone as she continued, “Wait, let me guess. I’m your fantasy girl and since you very well might die down here, you summoned me to fulfil your lustful desires.”

With irritation rushing through his bloodstream, he barely thought before he swung the rock backwards. She faded from sight, only to reappear a meter to the left as the piece of earth passed right through where she’d just been.

A small sound of outrage came from her lips as she glared at him. “That was uncalled for! If I weren’t an hallucination, you could have done some real damage.” Her hands found a place on her hips as they shot daggers at each other with their eyes. “And I’ll have you know I’m a very attractive woman! You’d be lucky to get a shot with me.”

He rolled his eyes. “Oh yes, you’d be a real wild cat, I’m sure.”

In an instant, her anger faded and that amused little smile of hers was back. “You know what they say, Draco, it’s the good little girls you have to watch for.” Laughing, she moved back to the chair she’d occupied earlier. “Besides, I’m you, moron. I wouldn’t be calling myself attractive unless you’d noticed, even if only subconsciously. Too bad for you that the idea of us together –“ Her face scrunched up as if she’d just tasted something particularly sour and she shook her head, “– Ick.” 

Suspicion tingled up his spine. “Hang on now,” he said, studying her form sceptically. “Let’s face it, I’m a pretty attractive guy. If you’re really a part of my subconscious, wouldn’t you be drooling for me right about now?”

Her eyes rolled so far that for a moment he couldn’t see her irises. “You are so full of yourself. Do you call your own name during sex? And just to clarify, no, I would not be ‘drooling’ for you. Your subconscious is well aware that the real Hermione Granger never would.”

Sneering, he turned back to his work, removing the rocks one by one. Time seemed to pass infinitely slowly and while Draco knew he was making progress, it was hard to get upbeat about it. The counterfeit Granger was silent while he continued to clear the way, but he could feel her behind him, knew that while she wasn’t really there, she was there, watching. 

He had no idea how long it took, but as he moved a rock, a flash of something caught his attention. Skin. He could see skin. He called Lam’s name, getting nothing in reply, and honed in on the area, hurriedly lifting rocks out of the way, until a bloodied arm had been revealed to him. 

When he touched the flesh of his partner’s wrist, he almost withdrew the skin was so cold. Still, he closed his eyes and felt. No pulse. Lam was dead and probably had been for some time. 

Grief and rage surrounded him and he spun to Hermione in a tragic fury. “He’s dead! He’s fucking dead! If you hadn’t distracted me, maybe I would have gotten to him sooner!”

There was sadness in her imaginary brown eyes as she studied him sympathetically. “You can blame me, Draco, but you’d be blaming yourself. Perhaps because that’s where you feel the blame really lies?”

Guilt reached inside and tightened his chest. His legs almost crumbled beneath him as he dropped to the floor, limply stretching them before him and looking up at her with glass eyes. 

“He didn’t want to up the power,” he mumbled; to her or himself, he didn’t know. “My calculations … no, they were right. We both agreed on that. But maybe … maybe he’d been right. He said the orb was too unstable.”

His eyes drifted to the orb itself, magically bound in place in the middle of the room. It was no longer glowing, though the damage it had sustained had been minimal. He’d been so excited by the chance to study it and now, that excitement was responsible for his partner’s – his friend’s – death. 

Anger rushed to his head as he painfully pulled himself back to his feet and stormed towards the orb, his wand gripped tightly in his hand, ready to blow the thing to hell. Before he could, however, Granger was in front of him. “Don’t be rash, Draco.”

“That thing killed Marty!” he growled, glaring at her. He could feel his body trembling with a myriad of emotion and all he wanted to do was hurl something, to unleash everything, all the grief and frustration and guilt inside of him.

She looked back at the device and shook her head sadly. “It’s very old and very dangerous, Malfoy. It’s probably responsible for many deaths.” Then she pinned him with a look, hardness in her brown eyes. “Do you want it to be responsible for yours as well? Look what it’s already done to this place; do you really think blasting at it is such a good idea?”

Drained, his body slumped. “What am I supposed to do, then?”

“Find a way out of here,” she responded. “Find a way to save yourself.”

Draco shook his head. “Not necessary. The wards would have registered the cave-in. A rescue team is probably already digging.” She didn’t look so sure. “What?” he asked roughly, wondering how his subconscious thought this day could get any worse.

The imaginary Hermione looked around at the disaster of a room and then looked back at him, her face worried. “This room can’t be safe to be in anymore. I’d put money on the fact that the orb’s overload shot the reinforcement on the walls. The roof could come down on you at any moment.”

Looking up, noting the cracks in the rock above him, he had to agree. “It probably could, but it’s not like there’s a back door. There’s only one way out and it’s past that mountain of rock,” he said, gesturing to the rubble, but carefully not looking in that direction, lest he get sight of Lam’s cold skin.

He shook his head again. “No, my best option is to wait for the rescue team.”

“If they make one false move … move one piece of rock too hard …” She trailed off, but Draco knew what she meant. Them fiddling about out there could be just the jolt the ceiling needed to come down on him. It was lucky it hadn’t already, the way he’d been flinging things around.

“What do you suggest then?” he asked, angry at his predicament and taking it out on his hallucination. 

He watched as her eyes danced over to the orb, uncertain, and then back at him and began to catch onto her thinking, even as she told him. “Maybe … maybe you could use the very device that caused this to get yourself out of it.”

Draco stood suddenly and then winced as his midsection protested violently. He put a hand on it, but pushed through the pain and moved closer to the orb. “Yes … yes. It’d be bloody risky but perhaps I could …” He squeezed his eyes shut against the pain, and forced his mind, into action, to think of something, anything. It was only a moment before he latched onto an idea. “Yes! I could use it to boost my magic and then perhaps I could break the anti-apparition ward and apparate out.”

Granger was nodding. “It could work.”

His excitement fizzled as he looked at her. “It could, yes, but … like I said, it’d be bloody risky. For a start, this is a high security lab, that ward is lethal. If I can’t break it and I apparate, I’ll be shot straight back here, nothing more than a splatter of human remains on the floor. There’s also a chance that the orb will overload again. In fact, the amount of power I’d need, it probably will overload. If I’m not gone before it does, I’m crushed.”

Furrowing his brow, he thought over his options furiously and then sighed. “No. It’s probably best if I wait for rescue. They’ll be a few hours at most.”

The hallucination huffed and crossed her arms, glaring at him. “Malfoy, I’m not real and I can feel the pain that your body is in right now. What makes you think you have a few hours to wait?”

He pulled his stool off the floor and put it back on its legs, sitting down with a groan. “I’ll be fine.”

She moved over to him and he was surprised at how warm her touch was when she laid her hand on his arm. “Draco …” she started, and then waited until he met her eyes. “I think you’re bleeding internally.” She hesitated for a long moment, and then continued, “I think you need medical attention as soon as possible.”

“You don’t think anything,” he snapped. “I do!”

“Then listen to yourself!” she shot back with just as much venom, throwing her hands in the air. “I’m here to help you, Malfoy. I wouldn’t suggest this unless a part of you thought it was the best course of action.”

He stared at her suspiciously. “Maybe you’re just trying to kill me.”

She looked at him as if he’d gone mad; then, considering he was arguing with himself, that might not have been far off. “I’m in your fucking head, you great dolt! Why would I want you to die?”

“Maybe you’re the part of me that just wants it over with as quickly as possible,” he suggested with a sneer. “Maybe you’re the representation of my cowardly side.”

Granger rolled her eyes. “Because of course, in your warped little mind, it’d be oh so fitting to have your yellow streak represented by a Gryffindor.”

He shrugged. “Irony is a bitter bastard.”

“I think you’ve pinned the coward’s title on the wrong person in this room, Draco Malfoy. Why won’t you just save yourself?!”

“Why do you want me to do it so badly?” he shot back.

“Because you’re dying!” she yelled and he stopped dead, any rebuttal that may have been on his tongue drifting away. Her eyes softened when she looked at him again. “You can feel it; you’re just trying to suppress it. You’re getting weaker by the minute. You don’t have a few hours to wait for a rescue team, Draco and I wouldn’t be saying it if somewhere inside of you, you didn’t know it.”

She was right; his body was still shaking and he no longer thought it was because of his emotions, but rather that his physical strength was slipping away. Not to mention that the pain in his chest was getting worse, the throbbing in his head intensifying and though he tried to blink it away, his vision now had a soft grey border. 

Surprising even himself, he blurted out, “I think Astoria’s pregnant. She hasn’t said anything, but …”

“You’ve been noticing things,” Granger continued when he’d paused for a moment too long, nodding. Then she stepped right up to him and lifted his chin so he could see her eyes. “You’ve got a lot to live for.”

He couldn’t stop himself from smiling. “I hope it’s a boy. Though I admit, I wouldn’t mind a little girl.”

The image of Hermione smiled softly in return. “She’d have you wrapped around her little finger.”

Despite the pain, Draco laughed, but it abruptly turned into agonizing coughs. When he withdrew his hand from his mouth, it was in an almost absent way that he noticed the blood on his fingers and the bitter taste of iron in his mouth.

“I’m terrified, Granger,” he whispered, ashamed of the admission. “I don’t want to die. There are so many things I want to do; I want to get something named after me … maybe they’ll name the orb after me.” He thought for a moment, then shook his pounding head. “No, they should probably name that after Marty.” He paused, deep in thought, images of the people he loved swirling in his mind. “I want to be a better husband. I want to watch my child come into this world, watch him grow … I want him to be able to say that, whatever else I was, I was there … always there when he needed me.”

He paused, and then met her eyes, telling her honestly, “I want to make up for my mistakes. Not just hide from them, but really make up for them. I want to tell you that … I’m so terribly sorry for making your life a misery. I was awful to you and though I know we’ll never be friends, I just want you to know that I really do regret anything I did or said that caused you pain.”

Granger looked at him sympathetically, but shook her head. “I’m not her, Draco. I can’t absolve you for that.”

“I know, I just wanted to …” He shrugged.

She nodded. “You just wanted to say it. I know.”

“I really don’t want to die down here, Hermione.”

Determination built in her eyes. “Then let’s get your arrogant arse out of here, shall we?” There was a glint of her earlier mischief on her face. “Find yourself some parchment and a quill. An ink bottle shattered on the desk, it should still be useable.”

When he pulled himself off the chair, he couldn’t help but groan as the pain washed over him. “Fuck me,” he muttered, holding himself steady until it had passed.

“I thought we agreed that wasn’t what I was here for,” his hallucination quipped with an amused upturn of her lips. 

He glared at her, but it didn’t hold any heat anymore. “Fuck you,” he said and then slowly took the few agonizing steps to his workbench. A bit of searching and he had himself parchment and a quill. 

The numbers and words of the equations were blurring in his mind. His focus was way off, but he pushed himself through until he thought he had it right. Granger was reading over his shoulder and even though she was all in his head, he showed her what he had. 

She nodded. “Looks right. Even if it’s not, I don’t think you have the strength to keep working on it. You’re running out of time, Malfoy.”

“I know,” he responded, already heading towards the orb, his wand in hand. 

Who would have thought that just a few meters could be so difficult to traverse? By the time he got there his wand hand was shaking so badly he thought for sure he’d screw things up. Granger was still beside him and she laid her hand over his, steadying it somewhat. “Take a deep breath and focus,” she told him. “You can do this.”

With patience he knew might cost him, he carefully adjusted the orb’s power output to the highest level he could without it exploding. Then he looked at Hermione and nodded. “Now or never, eh?”

She gave him a small smile. “Good luck, Draco.”

“Evinxi magus radix,” he incanted and then watched, still fascinated by the process, as a whispy tendril moved out from the orb and wrapped itself around his stomach. 

A rush of power ran through him, like nothing he’d felt before. It overrode the pain and made him feel as if he could do anything, simply anything. Shaking from the force of it, Draco closed his eyes and concentrated on finding the ward. It was there, solid and strong, so he pushed his new found power towards it, weakening it bit by bit.

The imagery of it in his mind, that of an impenetrable wall, slowly began to crack. In his ear he could hear Granger’s voice, “Hurry, Malfoy. The orb’s destabilizing. The roof is going to come down any minute,” but he couldn’t bring himself to focus on his physical surroundings. 

He pushed against the ward harder and harder until in a crumbling blur, he felt it give way under his magic. Without even thinking about it, he apparated and when he opened his eyes, he found himself in the Corporation’s medical wing, Healer’s staring at him in disbelieving shock.

They hurried to work when he dropped to his knees, surrounding him, one of them shouting out commands that he couldn’t hear. He was levitated to a bed, a painfully bright light put in his eyes and then Granger was back, smiling at him from above. “You did it,” she told him. “You’re going to be fine, Draco.”

“Does this mean you’ll bugger off now?” he groggily questioned.

Her laughter echoed around his mind as she faded from his view and just before he passed out, he was able to get a glimpse of the Healer’s looking at him as if he’d lost his marbles. Slipping into the warmth of unconsciousness, Draco found himself thinking that if his sanity was all he had to sacrifice for his life, it was probably worth it.

Bright and early, as usual, Hermione Granger made her way into her office at the Ministry. She said a cheery good morning to her secretary and then opened her door, surprised to find a beautiful arrangement of assorted flowers in a vase on her desk. 

“Gladys,” she said, drawing the attention of the old woman who practically ran her life by keeping her busy schedule in order. “Where did these come from?”

Ron was a wonderful husband, but he refused to buy her flowers. “Find me one that lives forever and it’s yours, love,” he’d tell her. “Otherwise, they just die and we’ve seen too much death already.”

Harry would surprise her with some every now and then, but never anything so grand, usually just a single bloom, something pretty, slipped in her top drawer or somewhere where she’d get a delightful surprise.

“The flowers?” Gladys questioned. “I don’t know. They were delivered this morning. There’s a card.”

Hermione walked in and searched for a moment until she found it. Opening the small envelope, she slipped the card out. It wasn’t signed, but the handwriting was oddly familiar, though for the life of her Hermione couldn’t remember whose it was. And she simply did not know what the words could be referring to. What had she done recently that would merit such a gift? There was nothing she could think of.

On the card, it simply said: Thank you.