Chapter 3: Tuesday afternoon, St Mungo’s

The Malfoy name counts for less than Draco had hoped, and the healer doesn’t start to take his demands seriously until Granger—left unsupervised for a moment—sits down on the floor and tries to take off her shoes.

“See?”

Draco crouches down beside her. “No, Granger—Granger—Hermione,”—she looks up at him—“you need to keep them on. Yes, on.” He refastens the buckles for her.

There’s the strangest feeling somewhere deep inside his chest, a fierce glow that’s fanned into flames whenever she looks up and gives him that shaky but trusting smile, and he suspects it’s how a father feels about his child.

He’s terrified he’s going to start blubbering.

“Very well, Mr Malfoy,” says the healer, who’s been consulting someone over the Floo network, “Healer Marchbanks can see her right away. Perhaps you’d like to wait—”

“No,” says Draco. “I’m going with her.”

...

Healer Marchbanks is a short, fat wizard with round, dark eyes that, together with his oversized spectacles and his crown of stiff blond curls, give him a permanently startled expression.

Draco’s not impressed, but he helps Granger climb onto the examination table, and makes her promise to lie still, and then watches, arms folded, whilst the healer casts a succession of diagnostic spells, repeatedly running his wand over her clothed body, and pausing between tests to commit the results to a sheet of parchment.

“Am I right in thinking that the condition’s progressive?” he asks.

Draco nods. “She’s getting worse.” He’s noticed that the healer’s wand seems to be returning again and again to a place on Granger’s thigh. “Are you going to look at that?”

“All in good time... You say that she was found at the scene of a crime?”

Draco repeats everything he’s already told the first healer—everything that Potter had told him.

Marchbanks makes more notes. “It’s not shock,” he says.

Draco swears under his breath. “I could have told you that.”

“Though shock may be a contributing factor.”

“Contributing to what?” Whilst they’ve been talking, Granger’s become agitated. Draco tries to persuade her to lie quietly, but finds he needs to exert his strength to keep her still. Without saying a word to him, Marchbanks picks up a broad strap and fastens it across Granger’s waist, tying her to the table. “What?” Draco cries, “No! No!”

“Mr Malfoy,” says Marchbanks, calmly, “I’m doing this for the young lady’s own good.” He ties two more straps around her wrists.

“No—give her something—a potion—calm her down. She’s not an animal!” He squeezes Granger’s hand. “Shh, shh, it’s all right, Hermione. It’s all right...”

“I would rather not use magic, at this stage,” says the healer.

“Why?”

“Let us look at her wound.”

“Wound? You mean the thing your wand kept finding?”

With complete, professional detachment, Marchbanks folds back Granger’s skirt.

She’s wearing sheer black stockings, which—Draco realises—are hideously inappropriate on the child-like creature she’s become and, when the healer reaches for her suspenders, he can’t bear it.

“No,” he says, “I’ll do that.” And, gently shushing Granger, who’s chafing her wrists trying to pull her hands free, he pops open the clip, and rolls her stocking down. “Shit,” he gasps. “What in Merlin’s name is that?”

On the front of her thigh there’s a dark bruise. It’s about three times the size of a Galleon, and it’s perfectly round.

“I believe we’ll find,” says the healer, who’s produced a magnifying glass from somewhere, “a puncture wound—yes, there it is, d’you see it?—right in the centre.”

“Is it an insect bite?”

“No.” Marchbanks sighs. “No, I’m afraid that this is a very bad business, Mr Malfoy... Yes—you may replace Miss Granger’s clothing now, and release her, and then bring her through to my office, if you would.”

...

It takes Draco a while to get Granger redressed, because he’s made the mistake of untying her first, and she keeps trying to kiss him—not as a fiancée would kiss her lover, but as a child might kiss her playmate—the way Pansy used to kiss him, when they were children.

When he finally gets her sitting in a chair, in front of Marchbanks’s desk, the healer leans back, and folds his hands over his stomach, and says, “I can do nothing for Miss Granger.”

Draco closes his eyes, and swallows hard, the better to control his panic.

“However, Mr Malfoy, I do have a colleague—of sorts—who may be able to help.” He pushes a small box across the table. “Don’t open it just yet. If you do decide to take my advice you will find, in that box, a Portkey, which will take you and Miss Granger to my colleague’s clinic. Once you’re there, the Portkey will act as something called ‘an appointment card’, granting you access to his consulting room. He will examine Miss Granger and—with luck—he’ll be able to tell you more about her condition—perhaps even cure her. Are you willing to consult my colleague?”

“Of course.”

“Even when I tell you that he’s a Muggle doctor?”

Draco looks at Granger.

At this moment, he doesn’t care about the Malfoy name; he doesn’t care about the wedding of the decade; he doesn’t even care if they can never have sex again; he just wants to stop her losing what little she has left of her mind.

“Yes,” he says.

“Then open the box, take out the first card, and touch it to Miss Granger’s hand.”

...

Draco feels the familiar hook attach itself somewhere behind his navel, and he’s just enough time to throw his free arm around Granger’s waist before they’re pulled into the tunnel.

Then they’re rushing in a howling wind, with swirling colours pointing to a misty grey future, and Granger’s screaming with laughter, and he’s hanging on to her for dear life because he knows that that’s what this journey means, for both of them.

...

They land in a long, dark corridor, with a distant square of light at each end and, for a moment, he wonders whether they’ve died. The place is surreal—full of muffled noises and strange smells—with dark grey walls and a floor that’s scratched and battered, though reasonably clean.

Draco has no idea which way to go, but he decides to turn right and, leading Granger by the hand, he walks until he finds what looks like a waiting area—a small, grey alcove filled with grey chairs. Directly ahead of him there’s a desk and, sitting behind it, a harassed-looking woman gazing into what appears to be a Muggle television set.

Draco clears his throat and, when the woman looks up, he hands her the Portkey.

The woman reads it, checks her television, and says, “That’s lucky! Mr Smith has had three cancellations this afternoon, and can see you right away.” She hands him a grey folder. “Miss Granger’s notes,” she explains. “Take them in with you.” She points further down the corridor. “Third door on the right—just knock and walk in.”

“Thank you,” says Draco.

It’s becoming a habit.

...

Mr Smith’s consulting room is smaller, darker, and greyer than Healer Marchbanks’s, but it’s essentially the same. The doctor’s a youngish man, with huge, wild eyes and a shock of messy brown hair. “So,” he says, “old Marchbanks sent you.”

Whilst Draco coaxes Granger onto the examination table, Mr Smith consults her notes, which—as far as Draco can tell—are just the results of Marchbanks’s tests, transcribed onto Muggle ‘paper’.

“Well then,” says the doctor, laying the folder down, “let’s have a look at you.” Granger reaches for his hand, but he wags his finger, smiling. “Someone’s injected you with something, haven’t they? I wonder what it was?”

“What does that mean?” asks Draco. “Injected?”

“Injected? Oh, it means he used one of these,”—Mr Smith picks up a small, transparent cylinder, with a plunger at one end, and shows it to him—“probably had it hidden in something like a walking stick—”

“A walking stick?”

“Or an umbrella. The syringe would have had a hollow needle in the top—he would have pressed it into her leg, pushed the plunger, and—”

“Sent the potion straight into her blood,” says Draco.

“Exactly.”

“What was it—the potion?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out. The symptoms don’t tell us much—”

Granger pulls up her skirt; Draco quickly pushes it down again.

“Typically,” says the doctor, “it would be some sort of poison—but I’ll have to run a few blood tests...”

“A poison?” Draco’s mind is racing. The doctor’s explaining what a blood test is—how he’ll draw some of Granger’s blood and use machines to test it for foreign substances—but Draco’s only half-listening. He knows of two general antidotes—the Antidote to Common Poisons and the Antidote to Uncommon Poisons—and then there are more specific antidotes—but this is a Muggle poison, and—Oh, if only Severus Snape were still alive!

“Will she… Could it be fatal?” he asks.

“Quite possibly.”

He watches Mr Smith use several of the ‘syringes’ to extract far more blood from Granger than he thinks is sensible, given her condition, but—Thank Merlin—from her arm, not from her thigh. He remembers he has some Blood-Replenishing Potion in his workshop at the Manor, and resolves to give it to her the moment he gets her home.

“There,” says Mr Smith, attaching a label to the final sample. “I would insist on keeping her here for observation, but I know you magical types—you never allow it. So I’ll just send the results to old Marchbanks when they’re ready, and get him to forward them on.”

He shakes Draco’s hand.

“Is that it?”

“All I can do for now.”

“Well... All right. Thank you.”

He takes Granger out into the shabby corridor, turns right, and follows his nose.

The building’s vast, and teaming with people, and there are hundreds of little waiting areas, and patients lying on trolleys, and temporary-looking cabins sitting in what must originally have been courtyards, and he and Granger see far too many elderly and injured Muggles wandering around in their pyjamas, but eventually—somehow—he manages to get them both outside.

They’re somewhere in Muggle London—he has no idea where—and Granger’s getting harder and harder to control. She’s like a precocious toddler, rushing off towards anything that catches her eye, with no awareness of the dangers that surround her.

She’s also being disturbingly affectionate.

In desperation, Draco holds out his wand hand and summons the Knight Bus.

...

They alight outside Malfoy Manor, and Draco leads Granger through the gates.

She’s had a mug of hot chocolate on the Bus, so she’s sleepy now, and much easier to keep on track. Draco pulls out his handkerchief and wipes away her chocolate moustache, and—suddenly overwhelmed by desperation—he finds himself hugging her, and then lifting her into his arms, and carrying her, along the drive, up the stone steps, and through the massive doors, which open as they approach.

His mother’s waiting anxiously in the entrance hall and rushes forward to help him; his father, standing at the top of the stairs, nods to him briefly, then disappears.

“She’s been poisoned, Mummy,” he says. “She’s very ill.”

He hasn’t called her ‘Mummy’ since long before he went away to Hogwarts but, if Narcissa’s shocked, she doesn’t show it.

She understands.

She’s always understood the depth of his feelings.

“Shall I help you put her to bed?” she asks.

“Yes...” He carries Granger up the sweeping staircase, along the corridor, and into her bedroom, which they’ve unofficially shared since the day they signed the Marriage Law Ledger and she came to live at the Manor.

His mother fetches a bowl of warm water and washes Granger’s face, then brushes out her hair, and ties it with a ribbon, whilst Draco selects a modest night gown. Together, they change her into it.

Draco sinks down on the edge of the bed, exhausted.

Narcissa squeezes his shoulder. “You know where I am, darling,” she says, “if you should need me.”

...

“Draco,” says Granger. “Handsome...” And her fingers start to roam.

“Not now, Hermione,” he whispers, catching her hand and kissing it. “Go to sleep now.”

She closes her eyes.

All that time, he thinks.

All that time I wasted, longing for her!

And when I finally asked her…

She was going to marry me, and be with me, for the rest of our lives.

We would have been together.

And now someone’s taken her from me.

He wants to smash the bastard.

He wants to knock him down and smash and smash and smash until there’s nothing left of him.

He wants to punch the walls, and break glass, and cast curses until all that’s left in the world is Granger, and him, and his anger.

But he can’t bear the thought of scaring her.

So, instead, he vows to keep her safe for as long as she has left.

He sets her hand upon her bosom, and gently smooths her hair from her forehead and then, slumping forward, he hides his face in his hands and, for the first time in a very long while, he weeps.