Chapter Text
Lucius Malfoy woke up in a cold sweat as a now familiar nightmare disturbed his sleep. His eyes automatically focused on where his right arm used to be to confirm that it was truly gone. It seemed like a cruel joke when the mediwitch at St. Mungo's told him that it would be impossible to heal despite the fact that there was no indication of dark magic on the wound. They had no idea why the wound was slow to heal but he knew. More than that, the reason had been burned into his memory and was the cause of his lack of sleep. He slipped out of his bed and made his way to his stash of alcohol as he had for the past five nights. He picked a bottle and random in the dark and took a large gulp of the drink. When he was treated to the sight of flames spewing from his mouth he realized he had opened the firewhiskey that was meant to be a bribe for one of the Hogwarts board members. The magical fire lit up the room enough that Lucius could see his haggard appearance reflected on the window.
The attack on the campsite was meant to be an easy show of who was truly in charge of the wizarding world and to remind those upstart mudbloods that their place was under a pureblood's heel. They had bribed the Minister into reducing the security for the event and most of the aurors that were selected for duty were rookies who would have run away at the first sign of trouble. Unfortunately for Macnair, he had been unlucky enough to run into the one auror with some spine that night. He wasn't injured but definitely had his fun cut short.
Lucius had been in another part of the campsite, burning down several clover covered tents when who should appear but the Weasley daughter and, going by his son's description, Harry Potter's pet mudblood. It had been all too easy to disarm them in the confusion and a quick levitation charm had them dangling at his mercy. The mudblood was barely worth dirtying his hands for but the red haired witch would make a nice little toy. Her family might be blood traitors but she was still a pureblood and it would be so much more devastating for Arthur if her body were to turn up at the ministry in a few days bloody and broken.
Instead, he had to triple his bribe for the minister and relearn how to use magic with his non-dominant hand. He had to wash down the sensation of pain in his non-existent arm with the burn of his strongest alcohol. He had to-
His thought was interrupted by a flash of pain emanating from the dark mark tattooed on the inside of his left arm. The flashes of pain were becoming more and more insistent since the incident at the world cup and that could only mean one thing. The Dark Lord would soon return.
'Maybe Harry Potter's corpse would make an adequate gift to welcome him back.' Lucius laughed to himself at the thought before his mind went back to the night he lost his arm. Back to the sight of a furious boy-who-lived wreathed in magic so dense that he could barely breath, and the helplessness as his magic was smothered before it could even leave his wand. 'Then again, the Dark Lord always did like to take care of those that defied him … personally'
Hermione sighed in relief as she watched Harry and Ron flying together around the Weasley quidditch posts. Harry had been withdrawn ever since the attack at the world cup and refused to talk about what exactly what was bothering him. Even Hermione had only been able to glean a few extra snippets of information from her brooding boyfriend.
Ron had actually showed an impressive level of maturity during all of it, after he finished laughing at Malfoy's plight for several hours, and stuck to Harry's side. He would drag Harry out of their room if he seemed to be spending too much time alone and engaged him in games of gobstones and wizard chess. Now they seemed to be practicing for this year's quidditch season. Harry was zooming across the field on his firebolt taking shots with the quaffle while Ron practiced defending the hoops. With Wood gone, Ron seemed to be hoping for a spot as the new Gryffindor Keeper. Hermione heard a knock at her door and saw Ginny Weasley standing in the doorway.
"Mind if I come in?" Hermione thought that it was a bit odd since she was in the room she had been sharing with Ginny for the summer but just nodded her assent. Ginny walked in and sat down on the bed across from Hermione. She was seated so that Hermione had to take her eyes away from the window to face her but she figured that Harry would be still be there in a few minutes. She looked at Ginny expectantly while the redheaded witch seemed to be struggling with a sudden bout of nerves.
"Can you tell me stories about Harry?" Ginny must've seen Hermione's anger leaking through her expression and paled a bit before hastily trying to explain herself. "Not like that. I know that he hate's being known as the boy-who-lived because of his parents. I've been trying to forget all of that but its hard to make myself believe he's not some epic hero when he did actually save my life. I was wondering if you could tell me about well … Harry?" Hermione calmed down after Ginny was finished and couldn't help empathizing with her. But there were some things that weren't hers to share and Harry was too complex a subject to try and explain half-heartedly. But there was something bothering Hermione.
"What really brought this on?" Ginny looked down and shifted uncomfortably for a bit before whispering almost too low for Hermione to hear.
"The attack at the cup a-and … the diary." Hermione shivered a little at the memory of Tom Riddle's Diary but needed to press on.
"What do you mean?"
"When Tom was possessing me I was always afraid. At first I was afraid of losing the only thing I saw as a friend. Then I was scared of what was happening to me when I found hours of my life missing in my memory. Near the end of the year I had realized what was going on but couldn't do anything to stop it. I was terrified that I'd be blamed or worse yet, that Tom would actually manage to kill someone because of me. I thought it was all over when Harry destroyed the diary but it didn't go away. The next year, I heard someone talking about how it felt when a dementor was nearby. The coldness and fear. The feeling as if you'll never be happy again. I realized that the dementors weren't affecting me all that much because that was already how I felt."
Hermione's eyes went wide. Most Azkaban prisoners go insane within a couple months of exposure to Dementors. If it was really that bad then Ginny had essentially spent her entire second year feeling like a dementor was nearby.
"When the attack happened, I think there was a small part of me that was almost relieved that it would all end. The only thing I regretted was that you would also die. But then Harry came. Being wrapped in his magic at that moment, for the first time in a year, made me feel safe again. It was like he finally destroyed the last few chains connecting me to that monster. I honestly believe that if Harry hadn't helped me then I would have killed myself before I graduated."
Ginny was sobbing at this point and Hermione was feeling way in over her head but leaned forward and wrapped her arms around the younger witch who reciprocated with a grip that almost made it hard to breathe. It took several minutes for her to calm down and Hermione found herself slightly missing the hug as she pulled away. 'Maybe a few stories wouldn't hurt.'
"I met Harry on the train while looking for Neville's toad…."
Hermione and Ginny spent the next hour talking to each other. Sometimes talking about Harry but mostly talking about themselves or the upcoming schoolyear. Hermione helped Ginny think through which electives she wanted to take. At one point Hermione explained that she and Harry had started officially dating, a fact that Ginny took with surprising ease. Ginny soon admitted that she had stolen one of Harry's quidditch jerseys, though she didn't say why, and Hermione recalled the scene she had seen on the day that Harry arrived. Both girls were blushing like mad and avoiding eye contact. It wasn't the first time that Hermione had been reminded of that event as it would occasionally make itself known during one of her Harry fantasy sessions.
It had caused her some internal confusion at first since she had never considered the possibility that she might be gay or at least bi-sexual given how much Harry got her hot and bothered. She eventually decided that her admiration for Ginny was purely physical since she was very attractive nowadays but having spent the last while bonding with her she felt that she may need to change her perspective.
Ginny looked up eventually though Hermione saw that her eyes were focused more to her left where the window was positioned. She turned to look as well and noticed how late it had gotten. Harry and Ron were still flying though the hoops seemed to have been abandoned. Ron was just hovering in place while holding the quaffle while Harry floated a few feet away. Then Ron dropped the quaffle and Hermione felt her stomach drop with it as she suddenly guessed what was going to happen next. Sure enough, Harry began to plummet out of the sky, beelining for the falling quaffle. He caught up with it scant feet above the ground and reached out with both hands while simultaneously pulling up on the speeding broomstick with his knees. It was a perfect quidditch maneuver that would put most professionals to shame but as Hermione's concern was eased it was quickly replaced with rage.
"HARRY POTTER!" She was going to continue when Ginny rose up beside her and finished the thought.
"WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING!"
After Harry had been thoroughly scolded by his overwrought girlfriend and furious Ginny Weasley he had been, in his mind unfairly, banned from broom privileges for the rest of the summer. He was going to comment that neither of them could really enforce that when he saw the look on Hermione's face that somehow informed him that ignoring their orders would mean no kissing Hermione for a similar length of time and he rather enjoyed kissing his girlfriend. Instead he hung his head, hoping to look properly contrite, and agreed to no more flying. They went in for dinner and eventually made their way to bed. Harry knew that he didn't exactly have to sleep more than once a fortnight but once everyone else was asleep the only thing to do for entertainment was reading and he had already finished all of his textbooks. Ron had of course fell asleep as soon as he hit the mattress but Harry found sleep eluding him like it had for the past few nights.
Harry ignored Ron's loud snoring as he chose to stare intently at his hands. He could see his magic flowing over them under his control. But were they really under his control? Everyone kept on praising what he did to the Death Eater and saying that any one of them would have reacted the same way but none of them really knew what happened. None of them knew how close Harry had been to killing him. And worse yet, he felt absolutely no remorse for that fact. All he had been thinking was that someone had tried to take what was his, a sentiment he was sure that Hermione would not appreciate, and that they should pay.
Everyone had said that it was natural to hesitate on a battlefield so how could he tell them that he truly had every intention to end a life, to become a killer. It wasn't him but his magic that had let the Death Eater escape and now who knew who would be his next target. Maybe next time he would target Hermione again and Harry wouldn't be around to save her.
Harry laid back down and tried to fall asleep with limited success. All the while he couldn't help but feel that his magic was moving sluggishly through his body. It felt thick and heavy, leaving a phantom sensation of grime wherever it passed.
It felt like blood.