“Fuck, fuck, FUCK!” someone cried. “Fuck I don’t… I can’t…”

“Theo, breathe . You can do this,” someone else said in a tight voice.

“Blood replenishing potion,” Theo snapped. “She needs… I need… fuck .”

There was a pulling at Hermione’s middle, the sensation of deep pressure mixed with agonizing pain. Her lids felt heavy and there was a strange weight on her chest that she wished someone would remove. It was hard to breathe.

A thick, coppery tasting liquid slid down her throat. Fingers massaged her neck to encourage her to swallow. She choked, trying to move, but something hot and sharp sliced through her side.

Finally, she blinked her eyes open. Theo knelt above her, blood speckled on his face and in his chocolate curls. She saw his hands, covered with blood up to his elbows, working over her in quick sharp movements with his wand.

“Hermione… love. Stay with me,” Draco begged from the other side of her.

His fingers touched her cheek and she could see her blood was on his hands too.

Theo’s hands shook as he chanted, the pain in her side intensifying until she screamed.

“Fuck, Hermione, I’m so sorry.” He looked at Draco. “Whatever curse he hit her with is stopping me from closing it with just a spell,” Theo panted, tears sliding over his cheeks and mixing with her blood. “Blaise, get my bag. The blue phial – no not that one, the other one. Yes.”

Draco’s lips pressed against her forehead and she was sure she felt the wet splatter of his tears hit her hair.

“You’re going to be fine, love,” he whispered. “Theo will sort you out.”

Blaise knelt beside Draco, pushing the phial into his hands before grabbing Hermione’s. Draco pressed the glass to her lip and she obediently opened her mouth, trying to swallow the foul, bitter potion.

Cold tingled at the tips of her fingers and toes and she wondered at the feeling. Wondered at the fact that she didn’t feel afraid or sad. Just grateful to be able to look up into Draco’s face.

“I love you,” she said after her last swallow.

Draco’s hand cupped her cheek, his thumb stroking her skin gently.

“Don’t go giving up on me, Granger,” Theo said, then continuing the chant in a strange, haunting melody that sounded like he was singing.

There was a strange feeling in her leg and stomach. An itching, pulling sensation that though began mildly, quickly turned uncomfortable. She gasped, trying to wrench away from Theo, but Blaise and Draco immediately held her down. The sensation grew worse, pulling a scream from the depths of her stomach until her agony rattled throughout the room.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Draco whispered again and again, trying to soothe her.

Finally, after long, agonizing minutes, the sensation slowly crawled its way back up her skin and into her abdomen and thigh until it was just a dull ache. Her body relaxed as she tried to calm her ragged breath.

“It’s closed,” Theo said, panting just as hard as Hermione. “It’s closed. It’s closed.”

He kept repeating it while tears spilled over his cheeks. She reached for Theo, pulling him down to wrap her arms around his neck. She felt the warm weight of Draco as he wrapped his arms around the two of them, and Blaise did the same.

Hermione didn’t know how long they stayed like that, their bodies trembling with the last vestiges of fear, but she knew she fell asleep long before any of them pulled away.

…

“Blimey, Mione, keep up!” Harry called as they made their way through the castle to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom.

She stopped herself from clutching her side. It had been a few days since the fight with Karkaroff and due to the fact that she was not supposed to be on secret missions for the Dark Lord in Italy she had been unable to go to Madam Pomphrey to get completely fixed up. Theo had done the very best he could – getting the wound to close at least to stop her internal bleeding – but she still felt weak and was running a low grade fever.

Climbing the last few stairs to the classroom, she felt a bead of sweat trickle down the back of her neck as she clutched her books tight to her chest. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Draco push away from the wall where he waited for Snape to open the classroom door, a look of concern on his face.

She gave him a small smile that she was about eighty percent sure came out as a grimace before she followed behind Harry and Ron.

“A few stairs got you winded?” Ron teased, looking over the sheen of sweat on her brow. He stood slightly too close for comfort, his breath swirling around her face as he touched her shoulder, his fingertips lingering too long at the skin of her throat. She shrugged, the movement, forcing his hand to fall.

Harry’s brows pulled together a bit in concern, taking in her pallid complexion.

“Are you feeling okay?” he asked, stepping a bit closer.

Hermione nodded, shifting her books slightly.

“Of course I am, just tired,” she lied, grateful when the door swung open and Snape beckoned them all inside.

Harry continued to question her all the way to their seats as she adamantly refused to go to Madam Pomphrey.

“Seriously, Hermione – you look ill. I really think you should go–”

“Mr. Potter, I realize it is difficult for your enormous ego to notice but we started class five minutes ago,” Snape drawled, slapping a rolled parchment on the desk to get his attention. “Ten points from Gryffindor.”

Harry bristled at his least favorite professor, who was looking over Hermione with mild concern that turned to coldness after a moment.

“In fact, let’s split up the golden trio so you’ll be more likely to pay attention. Miss Greengrass, with Potter, Mr. Zabini with Weasley, and Granger,” his black eyes pierced Hermione’s for a moment and she felt her shelves rattle. She allowed images of her fight with Karkaroff and subsequent injury to fill her mind and was a little taken aback at the look of surprise that crossed Snape’s features before he controlled it. “Go sit with Mr. Malfoy.”

She tried to school her features into indignation as she gathered up her books, parchment, and quill. Crossing the room to take the now empty seat Blaise has just vacated between Draco and Theo she almost sighed as she settled in. A cooling charm trickled over her skin as she arranged her belongings and she shot Draco a grateful glance under the cover of her hair.

“How bad?” Theo asked softly as he turned towards her to grab a quill from his bag.

“Not too bad,” she answered as she shuffled her parchment. “Though the stairs are going to be the death of me.”

Neither boy looked amused and Hermione immediately regretted the word choice. There had been a small moment in time, Draco told her the following night in the library, that they were unsure if Theo was going to be able to save her.

“Sorry,” she murmured, her cheeks flushing in regret.

Draco’s hand slid under the desk to grab hers. She sighed in the relief of their skin touching. After the soul bond had been invoked, there was this constant ache in her chest when he wasn’t around, a need for him that went beyond the physical. Through her research into the bonds, she’d read that once their bonds were magically sealed that ache would go away and she couldn’t help but look forward to that day as it took everything in her not to crawl into his lap and wrap her arms around his neck.

Class passed slowly, the throbbing in her side ebbing and flowing with her breath as she tried to pay attention to Snape’s lecture on non-verbal spells. It was something Lucius had already begun to teach them this past summer but she was always grateful to get another opinion on a subject like this, in case Snape mentioned something Lucius had not.

Finally Snape dismissed them, throwing a “Miss Granger please stay behind” over his shoulder as he moved to a small cabinet set against the far wall and opened it. She gave Harry and Ron a wave as they packed their bags, Ron appearing to dither as if he was planning to wait for her, but Snape turned to give him a glare that sent him running after Harry.

“Mr. Zabini, a word as well,” Snape said, stopping Blaise before he left.

When it was just Blaise, Draco, Theo, and Hermione in the room, Snape turned to them, crossing the room to hand Hermione three small phials of potion. With a flick of his wand he cast a silencing and locking charm on the room.

“The moment she was injured you should have brought her to me,” Snape admonished the boys. “Drink up, Miss Granger. This will help to repair the deeper muscles Mr. Nott was unable to mend.” He gestured to the first phial. “The purple one is a fever reducer and I am sure you can recognize a blood replenishing potion.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said, downing the first potion with a grimace.

Draco and Theo both looked stricken. A haunted look passed over Blaise’s face.

“We… We’re sorry sir,” Blaise said. “We panicked.”

Snape leveled a cool gaze on them.

“It is not me you should be apologizing to. Remember, He placed me here to assist you. If you do not learn to control your emotions the people you love will wind up dead, do you understand me?”

“Yes sir,” the boys answered with a nod.

“That being said… Theodore, you should be proud of yourself. Miss Granger surely would have died without you there.”

A small, sad smile graced Theo’s face.

Hermione choked a bit on the blood replenishing potion, Draco patting her softly on the back while she coughed. She would have thought that after all the potions she had been on after Dolohov’s curse it would have made her immune to taking them, but she couldn’t stop how her empty stomach sickeningly clenched around the potions.

“Now, tell me – what are your plans for your larger assignment?” Snape asked after Hermione had settled herself.

Draco shifted uncomfortably, his arm draping over the back of Hermione’s chair.

“Theo and I were discussing sending him a cursed necklace,” he said in a confident voice.

Snape merely stared at him.

“Do you truly believe that Albus Dumbledore, the wizard who defeated Grindelwald, would be daft enough not to notice a cursed necklace?” Snape said in his usual cutting tone.

Hermione could feel Draco bristle beside her. Internally, she agreed with Snape and had even said as much to Draco and Theo when they had first brought up the idea. She knew that the boys were trying to find a way of killing Dumbledore without having to physically be present.

After Karkaroff, Hermione truly couldn’t blame them.

Something inside of her had irrevocably changed when she’d killed him. A little piece of herself had broken apart that she couldn’t find – and wasn’t sure she wanted to. In the few days since, she’d felt a little colder, a little more removed from the world around her. She struggled to watch the girls in her dorm giggle over boys or listen to Harry and Ron complain about quidditch.

In her reverie, she missed Draco’s response and the old argument beginning between the boys as it always did. But she couldn’t find the energy to speak up, couldn’t find the energy to do more than wrap her hand around Draco’s and wonder if she would ever find that little piece of herself again.