Hysteria

A/N: As always, my eternal gratitude goes to Softobsidian74 for alpha reading and feedback and to robs55 for the fantastic beta!

I am terribly sorry for the long wait! My muse seems to have stayed in England and then other things happened... But since chapter 8 is coming along swimmingly, I think I am back on track :)

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Semotus

The hallucination came back. He came back.

That was strange.

Or maybe she had come back from wherever it was she had drifted off to.

Malfoy was standing next to her bed, wearing the same white healer’s robes he had worn every time she had seen him since she had become his patient. His hair looked slightly out of order, as if he had raked his fingers through it repeatedly. That was also strange.

But then, hallucinating about Malfoy was strange in itself. It made her nervous.

“Granger? Can you hear me?”

Hermione looked at him, uncertain as to how she should respond. She tried a small nod, completely forgetting that he had removed the bit from her mouth.

He reached for the leather binding at her right-hand wrist.

And removed it.

Hermione lay frozen in the afternoon-nap silence, her breath coming in short pants.

This was new.

New was a scary, frightful thing. New usually meant bad.

The hallucination seemed oblivious to her distress and ploughed on, pushing her into a state of petrified anticipation.

“I need you to sign this, Granger. Now.” He was glancing around very quickly, as if he expected someone to come in and interrupt.

She felt something vaguely familiar pressed into her unbound hand. Her fingers tested the textures of feathers and shaft.

How cruel.
She closed her hand around the quill, nearly breaking it with white-knuckled force.

Still her hand rested on top of the opened leather strap in its position near the metal bed frame.

“Granger, we do not have much time. If you want me to help you, you need to sign this.”

With slow, stilted movements she lifted the quill to the parchment that Malfoy held out in front of her.

For a few heartbeats she feared that she had forgotten how to sign her own name.

But the quill moved in an automatic, practiced motion that seemed to come straight from her subconscious.

Malfoy released the breath he had been holding with relief, and stowed the newly signed parchment in his white healer’s robes.

She let her hand fall back onto the duvet and fully expected the binding to wind itself around her wrist again and for Malfoy to vanish leaving her alone in the quiet ward once more.

Instead, he swiftly moved to the foot of her bed and undid the straps at her ankles, then her left wrist.

Hermione had to close her eyes. Everything was so confusing.

Malfoy peeled back the duvet. The difference this time being that he did not fold it back simply to reveal her lower body. This time it was almost completely removed. She was fully bared, with the duvet left covering only the very tips of her toes.

The lack of instruction was extremely unsettling to her. Usually they told her what position to get into as soon as the obstruction of the duvet had gone. Hermione squinted at Malfoy, the urge to draw the duvet back on top of her ever mounting.

Deciding that the best course of action was to mimic the other times healers had come to her, Hermione bent her legs at the knee and let them fall apart.

Closing her eyes she waited for something to happen; a touch; the vibration of a wand; the probing of her sex. Anything to set her back in familiar territory.

When for a long time nothing happened, she opened her eyes again. Maybe he had gone to get... instruments?

Malfoy was still standing at her bedside looking at her, his expression solemn.

Meeting her gaze he gently pushed her legs closed.

“I do not think that is necessary at the moment.”

Her face must have shown her confusion because he did not dwell on the subject. He simply slipped one arm under her bent knees and the other under her shoulders and hoisted her up with a small grunt.

Reality crashed down on Hermione with the force of a collapsing building, only in reverse. It was like life was reassembling itself around her; the knowledge that she was actually lucid; that Draco Malfoy was truly with her, carrying her. Carrying her where though? She hardly cared. Realisations built themselves up like bricks. Walls were falling into place to construct a new world.

Malfoy was carrying her toward the double-winged doors of the ward. Any second, she would be out of this place. Having spent much of her stay unconscious, she had never seen what was behind these doors.

It suddenly occurred to her that her knee-length hospital robe had an open back and its sides were hanging freely. She was bare underneath.

At a time like this it was indeed ridiculous to feel shame or be concerned about propriety but she did fear what may lie beyond the doors to the ward. Her mind constantly conjured images of busy corridors or even rows of desks for administrators and doctors alike.

Maybe that little glimmer of hope that was growing stronger and stronger inside her would be snuffed when she arrived at just another treatment room for yet another round of therapy. Taking a fistful of white healer’s robes she turned her face into Malfoy’s shoulder, grateful that he wasn’t levitating her stiff as a board in front of him.

The sound of a hurriedly pushed-back chair scratching over the cold stone floor made her peek from her hiding place.

She found herself in a small ante room that housed a lone desk with a filing cabinet next to it, and a startled nurse who was now standing in surprise at their appearance, wringing her hands.

“Healer Malfoy! What are you doing?”

Malfoy stopped abruptly and awkwardly levitated the signed parchment from his pocket to mid-air. Another spell duplicated the document once, then again, and had both copies zooming forward; one smacking the startled nurse in the chest, the other filing itself into the light gray metal filing cabinet behind her.

“Miss Granger has sought me out in regard to alternative treatment. I am transferring her to my clinic with immediate effect.”

The nurse’s eyes shifted nervously between Malfoy, the witch he was carrying and the door to the ward.

“But healer de Belleme... hasn’t he... she is a Ministry ward, isn’t she?”

Malfoy obviously did not want to waste any more time and started to walk through the ante room toward another set of doors.

“You will find that she is not. Check the documents, call healer de Belleme if you wish; I haven’t got time to linger.”

No! Not de Belleme, not now that hope had just started to timidly blossom.

She must have tensed at the possibility that the nurse might indeed send for the sadistic healer. In response Malfoy’s started to draw tiny little circles on her shoulder.

Hermione could hear the nurse hurry after them, spluttering in indignation.

“But you must wait! Healer de Belleme is at a press conference for the announcement of his new book! I have no means of reaching him for another hour or so!”

Malfoy turned sharply and Hermione dug her nails deeper into his robes.

“Is he now? How very... unfortunate. Do give him my regards. He may call on me during surgery hours.”

As he turned again, Hermione felt a surge of magic release and the doors to the ante room burst apart, hitting the walls of the corridor with a bang.

Malfoy moved quickly. Striding forward, he did not stop for anyone even when they called out to him.

Hermione was acutely aware of the air swirling over her bare skin beneath the open hospital robes, a spectacle on display for anyone who happened to pass them.

Malfoy stopped and adjusted her weight in his arms.

“Granger,” he whispered. “I need to put you down for a second. I can’t throw floo powder into the hearth while holding you.”

She nodded into his shoulder and he lowered her feet to the cold ground. His hand drew her robes together at her back and steadied her in a discreet way as the fire flared green.

“Malfoy Manor, clinic reception.” He announced clearly.

Just as they stepped through, Hermione saw a burly man with a bouquet of flowers in his hands at the other side of the Floo room. His slightly out-of-date formal tweed robes were stretched taut over his chest, several buttons straining desperately against every breath.

Their eyes locked for a nanosecond. Flowers fell from his grasp, rose petals like blood spilling across the polished marble of the floor.

Like so many times before in his life, the keeper had been too late.


***


Stepping through the floo was like stepping through the looking glass into a parallel world.

A bright reception room with several comfortable-looking arm chairs, a fire place tall enough to floo in and out upright and a wide honey-coloured desk revealed itself as they stepped out. A nurse, who had been busy writing in an open file, stood at their entry.

“Helia, Miss Granger has transferred to us as of today. A copy of her file should be arriving within the next few minutes. Is room five available?”

“Yes, healer Malfoy. Should I...”

“That will not be necessary,” he cut her off. “I’ll take care of it.”

He took a few steps in the direction of a door but then stopped and turned back.

“Helia, Miss Granger’s former healer might not be too pleased about the transfer, please cancel all appointments for today and secure the entrances and all floos.”

With that he once more approached the tall, white door, opening automatically in front of him to let him pass.

After a short walk, another door opened for them and he lowered her onto a hospital bed not unlike the one she had escaped minutes earlier.

This room had little in common with the forgotten ward at St. Mungo’s; the walls were a pristine white and sunshine streamed through a tall window to the side

But it was a hospital room nonetheless.

Malfoy busied himself with pouring a liquid into a shallow metal bowl of sorts, like the ones she used to see on Muggle hospital programmes.

“This is a healing potion for the skin chafings,” He explained. Short lengths of thickly folded cotton-gauze compresses were immersed in the bright orange liquid. Malfoy lifted one of her hands and turned it a little to see all of the damage. “It will not hurt.” Slowly, so as not to frighten her, he covered the inflamed area and wound some more gauze loosely around the treated wrist.

She did not say anything, did not protest or question his actions but her eyes never left him as he proceeded to move to one of her ankles now.

“No questions, Granger? You are scaring me.”

The teasing question was meant to brighten the mood, but the lack of any lightness in his tone betrayed the truth in his words.

Hermione did not know what he wanted her to say so she stayed silent, staring at him all the while and trying to read his intentions.

After a few moments he averted his eyes and went on to the next ankle.

He seemed to take a long time, treating her wounds meticulously.

When her left wrist was wrapped in gauze, Malfoy straightened and trained his eyes on a point above her shoulder before forcing his gaze to her eyes.

“Will you let me examine you? A nurse can be present if you wish.”

She shook her head; there had already been too many spectators. Hermione drew up her knees and opened up. For a while nothing happened, then she heard Malfoy clear his throat.

“Right.”

She could hear the telltale sounds of thin latex gloves being snapped on and fingertips touched her very, very lightly.

She could not prevent the automatic flinch and he immediately withdrew.

“It is not as bad as I had feared. This is very good news. Has somebody been giving you aftercare?”

At first her voice did not work.

“A night keeper. He... did things.”

At last she dared to look up into his face and saw that he had gone very pale and expressionless.

Things.

Oh gods.

“Would you like a bath?”

Blue lips.

A canvas cover making escape impossible.

Cold water numbing her skin.

He seemed to read her thoughts as he hurriedly amended.

“A warm bath with healing potions. And bubbles. Would you like bubbles?”

At that she smiled; an unpractised expression.

“I would like bubbles very much.”


***


Later she was warm and dry, dressed in a nightgown that actually had a back and drowsy from the cup of chicken soup that had been waiting for her on her bedside cabinet when she returned from the bath.

The nurse bustled around the room, drawing curtains, collecting instruments and helping her lifting her legs into the bed before tucking the duvet around Hermione.

Malfoy stood near the doorway, fidgeting and opening his mouth several times as if to speak but each time thinking better of it.

Finally the nurse was standing in the doorway, waiting for the healer to leave so she could turn out the lights.

“Good night, Granger. If you need anything, anything at all, call me straight away.”

Hermione nodded mutely. He had shown her the small globe at her bedside that she only needed to touch to set off an alarm that would summon the healer to her. She had immediately recognised it as similar to the one de Belleme had touched that very first day in his office.

She would not touch it if she could help it.

“Right.”

Malfoy fidgeted again while the nurse waited patiently, but she was starting to draw her eyebrows together in a frown.

“Right,” he repeated and turned to leave. Nearly out of the door, he turned back to Hermione. “We will talk in the morning. After breakfast.”

The light extinguished and the door closed.

The pale blue curtains let some of the moonlight filter into the silent room, her breathing loud. The night was not her friend.

Very slowly, Hermione moved her arms and legs so her ankles and wrists touched the bedframe.


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