Revenant

Disclaimer: I own nothing, I claim nothing.

Revenant

Chapter Ten: Re-emergence: Draco uses the ‘F’ word many times, Hermione begins to Have Suspicions, and Snape is still Not at His Best.


Hermione recoiled from the screaming form of her ex-professor. She pulled away from him violently, a part of her raw with his pain and panic, as if somewhere along the line she had swallowed a heavy stone that had broken outwards into rough and jagged razors in her belly. His voice echoed in her ears, filling her head with a heavy and brutal sound until she was forced back on to her haunches, crouching over a bare spot of earth while saliva and bile dripped from her gasping lips.

“What the fuck have you done?” Draco pushed her roughly aside, unnecessarily sending her sprawling to the broken stones of the cavern floor. She tried to push herself up from the ground where she had fallen, but all she could do was gasp and gag helplessly as the unremitting screaming continued and continued and continued. Draco threw himself onto the convulsing body of Severus Snape, his pale hands sinking into the screaming figure’s dark hair and darker robes; Hermione was reminded of pale minnows disappearing into a dark current.

“Severus! No! Sev, please!” Draco flung his body full onto the thrashing man even as he struggled to still him. He pulled upwards seeking to protect the other man’s head from where he had been convulsively slamming it into the stones below.

And throughout, Snape kept screaming in a voice that ripped Hermione’s will and heart to shreds.

“Gods damn you Granger! What have you done?” The blonde man shrieked over his shoulder at the crouching Hermione. Snape’s voice gave out with a sudden hoarse gasp, stranding Draco’s cry in the air.

The silence was heavy upon her, a deep pulsing that she could feel in her veins; the tooth aching-absence of great pain, so great and heavy it left her wonder what sort of pain she had been carrying all this time. Her muscles felt cold from the sudden release of pressure and she looked back at Draco with confusion clear in her face. “I don’t…. I don’t know… what just happened...”

Draco had already turned away from her and was inspecting the battered form of the man he held onto so tightly in his arms. Snape lay quiescent within the other man’s grasp, his breathing so slow and shallow that the poor light masked whether or not he was even breathing at all. His hooded eyes reflected the light as tiny bright sparks, glittering and mute as he stared unblinkingly upwards.

Draco levered himself up from the professor and leaned forward to speak, his voice soft and hesitant where he choked upon the words. “Severus? Are you- are you awake? Sev, please-”

Hermione pushed herself away from the floor and moved her suddenly aching body over to where the two men were. Snape’s eyes were numb again, and Hermione wondered if she had imagined that spark of life in her professor’s eyes just a moment ago. “Draco, he’s not-”

Draco spared a derisive and tear stained glance for her before turning back to the Professor. “What the fuck did you do Granger?” Draco spat out.

“Nothing, I-” Hermione began.

“What. Did. You. Do?” Draco repeated, venomously enunciating each word.

“Draco, I didn’t… I didn’t even touch him.” Hermione looked up at Draco with disbelief in her eyes. She spoke slowly, carefully. “One minute I’m bound to an altar, the next we’re running through these tunnels, and then Professor Snape starts screaming. I didn’t do anything.”

Hermione looked back down and Snape, who was cowering beneath Draco, his breathing shallow and quick, and far, far, too harsh in his lungs.

“Draco, we need to get him out of here, he’s-” Hermione reached out her hand to find the pulse at Snape’s neck, but before she could touch him he flinched violently away from her, his eyes still tightly shut.

Hermione lips pursed a question, but before she could utter it Draco slammed her body away from Snape’s and the two of them crashed into a pile of mossy rubble. “Don’t you fucking touch him!” Draco screamed at her. “I don’t know what the fuck you did, but you don’t fucking touch him, you hear me?”

Hermione landed harshly against the broken rocks and statues, and stared in incomprehension as Draco screamed at her. One of his hands, Hermione couldn’t tell which, was lashed tightly around her throat, and she couldn’t breath, and she couldn’t cast any spells. Instinctively she grasped at his hand; struggling to pull him off of her, or to at least get a good enough grip on him that she could turn, or move, speak or something. Panic welled up inside her as she saw Draco’s other hand raise up in a balled fist.

At least he wasn’t holding his wand, she thought cynically to herself.

Draco’s red-rimmed eyes had the same hateful glint they’d had when they were in school, and Hermione was reminded of the Graphorn Incident in their Seventh Year.

It had been just before the war had openly broken out, and he’d been even more miserable towards others than usual. While other students had been stressed about the end of year NEWT exams and the imminent outbreak of war, Draco had collapsed into an evil-minded despondency; and all his pranks had taken on an aura of peril and danger to them.

Immediately after the Graphorn Incident, so immediate that the blood hadn’t even clotted yet, she had come face to face with Draco in the corridor. She’d only had a moment before Lupin and Hagrid had come barrelling forward to see if she and the three Slytherins were unharmed. While Crabbe and Goyle had been trying to stifle their laughter at having seen the Mudblood so scared for her life, Draco had stood there calmly as he scrutinised her. He had stared at her so hungrily as if in some way, if he looked hard enough, he might find a clue as to how she had survived.

His gaze had troubled her, not only because it had been cold, but because it had seemed, underneath it all, to be so hungry with both satisfaction and despair. It was that night, as she had been musing through the events of the day, that Draco had become a real person to her. He was no longer just a childhood nemesis, but something else. She could no longer recall what her conclusion had been, but while Draco may have become more real to her, it had not stopped her and her friends from slowly making Draco’s life more and more uncomfortable.

She had only developed more of an insight as how to go about it.

And it was that same look that she could see in his eyes as he crouched over her, pinning her to the ground. A look of utter hopelessness, mixed with that satisfaction and misery, as if the inevitable had finally come, and he welcomed the release.

“Don’t you fucking-” Draco began; spit foaming red at the edges of his mouth. Hermione’s eyes widened as she looked over his shoulder, and his look of surprise mirrored hers as he was pulled forcefully off of her. He crashed against the ground and looked up at his assailant, stunned.

She scrambled to her feet and stared before her. Professor Snape stood between the two of them, his chest heaving as he struggled to breathe, his head down, chin almost touching his breastbone. He swayed on his feet, and Hermione realised he was slowly rocking himself. His head was hanging down from his shoulders, and Hermione could see him as he was labouring for breath, panting and reminding her of a dog she’d seen hit by a car when she was little.

The dog had squealed as it had gone under the tires, but it had staggered away from the accident and made it all the way to the pavement, its head hanging as low as the professor’s. It had stood there shaking and panting with deep- deep breaths, coils of red foaming at the corners of its mouth and dropping with long ropes of saliva. A young Hermione had run towards it, but before she could reach it, it simply collapsed, panting so heavily that it seemed to the young girl that ALL the dog could do was pant… as if life itself would flee should the breath become still.

In the end her mother had pulled her away before she could see anymore, and Hermione found herself suddenly more fearful of Snape’s condition than she ever had been before.

She hesitantly reached forward to steady him, but he flinched away again, not looking at her or otherwise acknowledging her existence. She let her hand drop and spoke to Draco, her eyes never leaving the man that stood before her.

“Draco, we need to get him out of here. He looks like he’s not doing so well-”

She barely had enough time to lunge forward and grab the Professor as his strength finally gave way. He collapsed against her and she felt Draco reach around them both to gently lower Snape to the ground. Snape hissed wordlessly at the both of them, and when his flailing hand came into contact with Hermione’s steadying embrace, he recoiled as if he’d been stung. He struggled to pull away from their grasps, but he was too weak. With a final animalistic hiss he fainted, and Hermione and Draco gently lowered him to the pebbles that littered the shore of the lake.

Draco looked up and met Hermione’s worried gaze. He looked away, abashed, and Hermione could see where all of Draco’s anger had melted away, leaving only misery and helplessness behind.

He turned away from her and sank against the cool rock wall, the sharp edges plucking at the dark Death Eater\'s robes that he wore, tugging at them and pulling them into an odd puddle that swallowed his pale form. After a moment, he began. \"I\'d thought that he\'d... I thought he was back. Earlier. That he\'d just... come back. I guess that he just… something in him is just spelled to where he has to protect you. It’s not him at all, is it?\"

Hermione looked back down at the comatose form of the professor. His breathing had a shallow quality to it, still that of an animal mortally injured, but who was still going through the motions of life. His breath hiccupped and spasmed after each elusive breath.

“I thought that you had done something to him, something to make him scream. I don’t know what, but… he was there Granger. He was back, for a moment -I swear it- he was back and he was himself again.” He shook his head, the fine blonde hair floating around his face.

She wanted to hear the apology in Draco’s voice, but she knew the Slytherin too well, she knew that she wouldn’t get anything more than what he had just offered by way of an explanation; so instead she knelt down and felt for Snape’s pulse, finding it rapid and fluttering at one moment, and then slow and sluggish the next, with no apparent rhythm or pattern.

“He was just standing there while they were… while they were summoning that thing. There was nothing I could do, the bindings were too tight. But he…” Draco swallowed and looked out across the darkened lake. “He just stepped forward. Like the bindings could no longer hold him.”

He looked up at Hermione, and she almost thought that she could see a defenceless earnestness in Draco’s eyes. It made her uncomfortable, but she forced herself to maintain the eye contact. “I swear he was back Granger. He stepped forward, and I saw him smile, right before he destroyed those wards.”

Hermione felt something inside her go cold. She looked down at Snape, where he lay partially curled into himself. Her mind raced.

“Fuck!” Draco swore, his fist bouncing down upon the jagged masonry. Hermione pulled her gaze away from the comatose professor and thought she saw a dark smattering of blood oozing out along Draco’s fist, but Draco paid neither her nor it any mind.

Hermione shook her head clear of her thoughts, promising herself to come back to them later. For now, they needed to get away from here. She pushed herself back to her feet and raised her wand high. \"We need to get him out of here Draco.”

Draco\'s face was harshly lit by the blue light of her upraised wand. \"What\'s the point really?\"

He shook his head again before looking back up at Hermione. “I told you that Clovewall was a bad idea. You remember that, right?”

“Draco-”

“He’s not back is he? I mean, I thought- when he moved forward and destroyed those barriers… I thought he’d come back. That maybe, somehow, the ceremony had activated some hidden thing inside him…” Draco shook his head ruefully. “I thought maybe, that the Key might have been inside him all along, and that all we would have to do would be to remind him of it.”

Draco picked up a small pebble from the ground and examined it before throwing it harshly into the misty lake beside him. “Fuck me.” He said quietly. The pebble bounced off the surface of the lake, faint ripples dancing outwards where it had touched the lake repeatedly before disappearing into the darkness. “Fuck all of this. We’re never going to fix any of this. He’s lost, and so is my mother. Fuck.”

“Draco, nothing’s been ‘lost.’ However, we still need to get out of here. We can’t solve anything down here, and there’s… there’s… that thing up there, and I don’t know what’ll happen with it. I wouldn’t be too surprised if it follows us down here when it finishes with those other wizards.” That would be just fitting really, she thought to herself. Nothing had gone right since this whole bleeding war had started, or ended for that matter, and why should this be any different?

Draco looked back up at her, a serious expression on his face. “Granger… You know damn well those things weren’t wizards. I don’t know what the fuck they were, but they weren’t anything even remotely close to wizards.” He shuddered. “Even the feel of their magic was…”

“I know.” Hermione agreed quietly. Their magic had felt like the essence of all dark magics, with little of wizarding or witching in them; they had been something else, primitive and raw. She looked back at Snape and felt for his pulse again. “And that’s why we need to get out of here.”

“How? Not like we can apparate out of here, not with him.” Draco sighed. “Fuck.”

“Draco, we could always-” Her voice ended in a sharp gasp, and Draco looked over at her, far more concerned for Snape than what she’d been about to say. Snape was resting as peacefully as he ever had, and above him Hermione was crouched, staring passed Draco’s shoulder with a mixture of surprise and awe upon her face. Draco turned, and it felt to him that he moved slowly, that everything had been slowed down.

Behind him, all the reflections of starlight in the lake had risen, and were glimmering in a blue, wand-lit haze; thousand upon thousands of small winking stars hovering within an arm’s distance. The light wavered and lapped at Draco’s upturned face, and he felt for a moment as if he were underwater, staring upwards through an endless ocean of space.

Entranced, he reached a hand out towards the nearest sparkle of light and felt something silky and wispy sigh against the back of his knuckles where it caressed him. A breath caught in his throat. Behind him, he heard Hermione get up to her feet in an undignified scramble of gravel.

“Draco… do you know what these are?” There was wonder and awe in her voice, as if she was seeing something she’d read about, but never expected to see in her mortal life.

A small gossamer point of light careened into Draco, swirling around him like a miniature sun in a gravitational well. It continued on its narrowing eclipse until it tangled into his hair, changing the blonde into silver where it passed through the silky strands. Draco gasped in surprise as the light’s soothing touch brushed passed the nape of his neck. “So beautiful…” He murmured. The light sailed dreamily away from him, still intent on its strange orbit, and Draco stared after it longingly, smiling ruefully to himself. “I never knew it could be so beautiful.”

“Draco?” Hermione pushed her way passed Draco, her hands outstretched in supplication before the miniature stars. “Do you have any idea what we’re seeing? All of these lights-”

“-Are souls.” Draco shook himself free of the wonder that swirled around him and took a step towards Hermione. He laid a gentle hand upon her arm, and drew her away from the lake that lapped quietly at their feet. “Yes Granger, I know.”

“I thought they were just… stars… reflecting.”

Hermione tilted her head to face Draco. Hermione’s eyes narrowed in supposition as she regarded the gentled youth beside her. Draco’s hand lay loosely upon her arm, not in the bruising grasp she’d come to expect from him in the last few hours. He seemed to be calmer now, and somehow, she knew that whatever tension he had been carrying with him -carrying with him for so long that she’d never even noticed its presence- had been purged from him. That brief touch of light had healed him in away that nothing else had been able to diagnose much less cure-

With a shocked breath of inspiration, Hermione twisted away from Draco and moved to kneel beside the professor once again. She levered his shoulders up and started to drag him towards the dark waters of the lake and the glowing stars when Draco stepped into her, halting her motion.

“What are you doing?!” There was a hint of panic in his voice that over-rode the dreamy calm that had settled upon him with the soul’s touch.

Snape’s weight, slight as it was, jarred her shoulders, almost wrenching them loose as Draco stopped her momentum. “I’m… I’ve got a plan…”

“What plan? Don’t tell me that you’re going to toss him in that water-”

“Draco-”

“No! Absolutely not!” His grip tightened on her hands and his other hand snaked around her back and grasped her other arm, pinning her in his arms. “You do not know what’s in there! For all you know it could be a very literal up-welling of the river Styx!”

“Malfoy!” Snape was growing heavier and heavier in her hands, as if Snape’s unconscious body also was protesting the plan that she had vaguely formed in her mind. Hermione pushed backwards against the other man’s grip, but his body seemed to be made stone as he leaned into her, his superior weight keeping her from moving towards the lake.

“I’m deadly serious Granger, you don’t know what’s in there and-” Hermione shoved again, interrupting his rant midway. However, instead of pushing against him as he’d braced himself for, she pushed her weight away from the lake. The sudden change of direction staggered Draco off-balance, and with a heave that Hermione knew would leave her shoulders and back aching the next morning, Hermione tossed the inert form of her ex-potions professor into the inky black lake….

…where he sunk without even a bubble to mark his passing.


[A/N:

-the dog lives, for those of you that get attached to fictional creatures. A kind and goodly person quickly took it to the local emergency vet, where the doctors were able to save it. The elderly couple that saved it later ended up taking the dog home with them (it even had one of those humorous lampshade collars for a while,) and they named it “Lucky.” Lucky now has three cats that all take turns mock-attacking him, and at night they all curl up on the sofa (where they’re not normally allowed.) All in all, it’s not a bad life for a fictional dog that got hit by a fictional car.

-Required Scene: “So beautiful… I never knew it could be so beautiful…” I added the second “so” because I liked the way it sounded.