Love and Other Misfortunes

Chapter 16

Hermione was screaming.

She knew but she couldn't stop herself as Draco fell into her arms, his transformation shifting away as she caught him.

"No! No! No!"

She shook him. She pushed in towards him through the bond. It felt cold already, like touching a corpse.

She shuddered but kept pressing.

It wasn't severed and she wasn't dead.

There was still a chance.

"Draco. Draco. Come back. I need you. Please come back."

She was saying it both aloud and through the bond as she kept reaching. Further and further in, and it still felt of nothing but death.

She tried, with shaking hands, to perform a diagnostic charm but her magic refused to cooperate, as if she'd run out of it.

Her fingers searched for his pulse, pressing against his inner wrists and below his chest.  She realised—now that it was suddenly gone—that she had been able to sense his heartbeat through the bond.

She kissed him. Again and again.

"Come back. Please come back," she kept saying over and over as she gripped his body in her arms and kept trying to find anything that indicated there was still a spark on the other end of their connection. "I haven't convinced you that I love you yet. I need you to know it. You can't go anywhere until you know. Please, please come back. We still have to misuse chocolate. I'm not done being angry with you. And I need you to know I love you."

She was sobbing as she kissed him. Her tears made his lips taste bitter with salt.

She kept reaching and finding nothing.

She thought, if she could reach far enough, she'd find some glimmer of him that she could bring back.

But there was nothing.

No matter how far she reached.

It was just more and more death until she felt dredged in it. Like it was seeping into her.

Finally she stopped.

Resting her forehead against his, she wanted to die.

She couldn't bear this. She couldn't carry it with her for the rest of her life. The guilt. The loss.

It felt like a hole swallowing her.

Surely she'd die too. She wouldn't be left with this infectious, corpse-like connection in her mind.

She felt her friends approaching, hands resting on her shoulders. She flinched them off. She didn't want to be comforted.

She needed to find a way to fix this.

He couldn't be dead.

They were bonded and she was still alive.

So there must be some way to bring him back.

...unless she was going to die of a broken heart. She wrapped her arms more tightly around his shoulders.

She had always thought the expression was absurdly over-dramatic, but perhaps it wasn't an exaggeration in bonding.

The feeling of his death inside of her, if it didn't eventually fade, she was sure it would drive her to follow him.

What if, she shuddered, living meant she'd experience the bond rot away as Draco did?

She forced down the bile that rose up in her throat.

She couldn't—

She couldn't give up yet.