To Dance with the Devil

Chapter One

"How many?" Hermione Granger asked, hurriedly tying her hair back.

Susan Bones was a mess of ash and grime. Tear trails cut through the soot on her face. Her hands were the only part of her that was clean. She wrung them now as she spoke. "Fifty...maybe sixty. I'm not sure."

Hermione nodded. She was still trying to catch her breath, having sprinted to the Hogwarts greenhouses to collect a fresh supply of herbs. The infirmary stocks had been depleted for more than a week, and Hermione and her fellow medical staff were now relying on saplings and buds that had no business being used yet in the potions and salves they were making around the clock.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, Hermione reminded herself, as she quickly unbundled the youthful sprigs of asphodel from her apron and shoved them into Susan's shaking hands. "Give those to Poppy. And you know what to do with the patients, yes?" Hermione asked, giving the girl a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder. "Silver for minor, gold for serious. Black for terminal."

"But Hermione-" Susan shook her head, seemingly in protest of life in general. The girl was on the verge of hysteria. "Most will be black."

Not now Susan, Hermione silently bemoaned. We need all our staff in working condition. For Merlin's sake, don't lose it now.

Hermione took a step toward Susan, looking the other girl straight in the eye. "This is the worst of it. Whatever happens after, rest assured that this is as bad as it's likely to get. Now go. We have work to do."

It was a lie, and a rather bold one at that. Not even the best Seers in Britain could confirm when the end would come. The war was rapidly shaping up to be a case of Last One Standing, and given the sheer, inhuman determination of the Light and its many supporters, Hermione was confident the outcome would be favourable.

Convinced or not, Hermione's words apparently reached through Susan's panic attack. The girl nodded jerkily, swallowing back what would have probably been a mewl of distress. She removed her wand from her apron pocket and ran to see to the sorting of the new arrivals in the foyer.

It had been like this for three months; a constant, seemingly never-ending influx of injured, dying and dead. Hogwarts' infirmary was one of four triage hospitals that had been set up to receive casualties. And even though Poppy Pomfrey had seen fit to prepare beds and supplies well in advance, the sheer numbers were still overwhelming.

It was one hell of an introduction to practical Mediwizardy, Hermione thought, as she stripped soiled sheets from her examination table and laid down a fresh set. She had commenced her apprenticeship under Pomfrey following her graduation from Hogwarts the three years prior, the same year Ron had proposed. Of course, things like dating, engagements and other pleasant diversions with your fiancé all fell into the wayside once the war had begun. They were six months into the worst of the battles, and Hermione felt like she had aged ten yers.

These days, she considered herself lucky if she managed to see Ron a few times a month, and blessed if she saw him with all four limbs and his bright, red head still attached to his body. She had breathed a sigh of relief when Ron had finally been given his own small team of six freshly trained Aurors to command. Captains, even junior Captains, generally saw less battle time and thus, tended to live longer than the average new recruit.

Fledgling Aurors were usually the first to fall in battle, and Merlin knew Hermione had treated her fair share of young, injured Aurors over the weeks. Their lack of experience, exuberance and willingness to give in to fury and frustration made for easy pickings in battle. Hermione recalled how she had been a wet, snivelling mess when they had brought Harry in to be treated for a nasty, prolonged bout of Cruciatus during his first week in the field.

"All in a day's work," the Boy Who Lived had assured her, as she patched him up and sent him on his way to what she had then believed to be certain death. It was the first time she had ever experienced doubts about her chosen career.

Thankfully, Harry was alive and well, and doing well. By all accounts, her boys (as she was now fond of calling them) were making waves in the Auror Unit. Though Hermione couldn't help but wish they would do well for themselves in a profession that didn't involve dodging Unforgivables at every turn. It was nerve wracking thinking about the constant dangers they faced on a daily basis. Post-delivery at breakfast these days had thus become a tense affair. Every time an owl dropped an Auror-registered envelope in her lap, Hermione invariably lost her appetite.

Her reminiscing was abruptly put on hold then, as the wide doors of the infirmary opened. The first batch of patients for the day were floated in on stretchers and distributed amongst the on-duty medics, according to severity of injury.

Hermione's station was to receive the gold and black cases, the worst of the lot. Over the months, Pomfrey had taken note of Hermione's quick, efficient and effective hand in treating the more terrible injuries. Hermione was rapidly becoming a one-woman trauma team, and as with all other things she fully applied herself to, she had become exceedingly good at her job.

Her first patient that morning was an elderly man who had likely taken a fireball hex front-on. The trouble was that the patient was already dead. Had been for a few days now, in fact, judging from the stench.

Hermione might have been an exceptional Healer, but she wasn't quite that good.

"Wait," she called out to the men who had deposited their quarry and were shuffling back to the entrance. They were the Casualty Recovery Team, the same men that had once pulled an injured Harry from under a crossfire of curses. True heroes, in Hermione's estimation. And she reckoned she knew a thing or two about heroes.

They stood before her now with blank questioning looks. She sighed. "This man is already dead. You can take him to the Great Hall," Hermione gently advised. She Summoned a sheet from a supply cabinet and draped it over the deceased man.

This was roughly the third or fourth time they had brought a corpse to her station, and even though the urge to snap at them for wasting valuable time was strong, Hermione quashed it. If anyone had managed less sleep than her, it was the CRT. They had the look of skittish animals; wide, bloodshot eyes from too many nights spent sorting through macabre battle leftovers. Too valuable to the war effort to be given the odd day off.

Not that any of them had had a day of reprieve since the fighting had begun. There simply weren't enough resources to go around. It was a constant reminder of how small their community was, and how appallingly they had governed themselves to allow a civil war of such magnitude to erupt.

Months of exhaustion, stress and strain were rapidly catching up with Hermione. She wanted nothing more than to drag Ron from whichever trench he was dodging spells from, and Apparate them to some other place. Somewhere warm and safe, where thoughts of kill or be killed would not even enter the equation.

"Sorry, Miss Granger," one of the CRT men mumbled then, his voice completely flat. Hermione's heart went out to him, but there was little comfort she could provide. The CRT men took the body away, and Hermione waited for her next patient.

At Professor McGonagalls' behest, the entire operation was conducted ala Muggle assembly line. It was a sinister kind of factory, with the injured being Flooed or Apparated from all over the British Isles to be mended by the Hogwarts-stationed team of medics. But there was order in the chaos, as Pomfrey had routinely assured Hermione.

Arriving patients were segregated according to severity of their condition and placed in queues. Hermione and three other senior medics were seeing to the worst cases. Ginny Weasley and Remus Lupin, the latter who was recovering from a near death experience with a Dementor, had been posted in the foyer to see to the sorting of the arriving patients before sending them through to the Infirmary.

The dead were taken to the Great Hall, which was currently serving as a makeshift morgue. As cavernous as the hall was (more so when one remembered it as a young, Hogwarts student), it was now nearly three quarters full. A slow meandering crowd of people milled back and forth among the rows of dead, eager to locate a missing loved one, and terrified to do so at the same time.

The funeral pyres in Hogsmeade had been running non-stop for three weeks.

Presently, the CRT men brought Hermione's next patient, depositing the small form on her examination table. The patient in question was a small, blond boy, with a gold 'X' spinning steadily over his head.

"Mum?" he asked almost immediately, reaching out to grasp at Hermione's quickly working hands.

"Afraid not, sweetheart," Hermione replied, as she cast a blood staunching spell over the numerous cuts on the boys forearms. "What's your name?"

"Samson," was the boy's feeble reply. He had lost an alarming quantity of blood, due to contact with a skin-stripping hex of some sort. But unlike many of the other waiting patients, however, this one would live.

"How old are you Samson?" Hermione tilted the child's face toward her, and was pleased to note that he was able to focus his gaze on her. He wasn't crying and didn't appear to be distressed, which was moderately worrying to Hermione. From a medical standpoint, bawling would have been more reassuring.

"Seven and three quarters," said the boy.

Hermione smiled and nodded, smoothing back blonde bangs that were liberally dusted with soot. "Good. Do you hurt anywhere else?"

The child pondered the question. "My head. I banged my head when I fell. Where's my mum?" His blue eyes were growing wider and wetter by the second.

A quick prod at the back of the child's head revealed a sizeable lump. Hermione reached into the canvas utility belt she wore at her hips, and removed a fresh vial of pain relief ointment. It was her last vial, and she realised, with a silent curse, that her use of the ointment had been far to frequent to be conservative.

"I'm afraid I don't know where your mum is, Samson. But we'll do our best to locate her for you, won't we? Here, can you turn your head to the side so I can put some of this medicine on? Good," Hermione crooned, stroking his arm. "That's a lad."

The child scrunched up his nose. "That smells bad."

"Does, doesn't it?" Hermione smiled. "Works a charm though."

Ten minutes later, Samson was stabilised and moved to another section, after which Hermione sterilised her table in preparation for her next patient.

"Where are you finding these children?" Hermione asked, with more aggression in her voice than was intended, when the CRT men brought her yet another child. A girl this time, with short, curly black hair and half her face burned. The rest of her body was relatively untouched, however.

"Dumplington. Wizarding village about two hours broom ride south of 'ere. Got hit yesterday," reported the weary CRT chief, as he gently slid the stretcher from under the child.

Hermione clamped her teeth together in disgust. It was nothing new for Voldemort's forces to attack civilians. His tactics were terror tactics, after all. But Dumplington was a tiny but well-known, upper class, largely pureblood community, a merchant community. If anything, Voldemort might have had sympathisers there.

The attack was testament to the Dark Lord's increasingly erratic battle strategy. The man, if indeed he was mostly human, was a megalomaniacal zealot. It was difficult to second-guess the tactics of an insane commander. While his initial plan had been to simply 'get Harry', Voldemort had soon decided to expand his psychotic ambitions to taking over wizarding Britain altogether. It routinely surprised Hermione at the sheer number of idiots who signed up to become Death Eaters every year. There was nothing to be gained from chaos. Once Voldemort had burnt everything to the ground, what then? What and who would be left to rebuild their world? It was also extremely unfortunate that the British community's relations with other wizarding nations were so poor that only a trickle of support had been forthcoming from their friends and allies.

Really, if...no...when they won this blasted war, big changes were going to have to be made. Starting with the Ministry of Magic.

The doors to the infirmary swung open once more, and Ginny Weasley's voice could be heard barking orders outside, sounding far larger and meaner than Ginny's petite frame would have alluded to. A new batch of injured were sent through. To Hermione's relief, her third patient was no child. It was an adult. A large, long framed man, judging from the way his booted feet were hanging off the edge of the hovering stretcher.

"Set him here. Quickly," Hermione requested, as she hurriedly rinsed her hands in a small basin of disinfecting solution.

With the ease that came with three years of practice, she passed her wand over the patient and stripped him of his burnt, tattered clothing. It wasn't until she leaned forward to prod at his injuries, did recognition hit her with the force of a thundering mountain troll.

"Bloody, buggering hell," Hermione exclaimed, loudly enough for Poppy Pomfrey, who had been making a brisk inspection at a nearby table, to rush over. The Matron inhaled sharply as she set eyes on the injured man.

"Lucius Malfoy," said Pomfrey, in the hushed tones of the nearly disbelieving.

Hermione could only stare.

It took a moment longer than usual to recognise him, given the state he was in. One long-fingered hand hung limply over the edge of the cot, the famous Malfoy signet ring gleaming blood red and smooth. In fact, his hands seemed to be the only part of him that were untouched. They were fine boned, smooth and elegant, but not to the point of being feminine; hands that had caused an immeasurable amount of loss and suffering over the years, Hermione reminded herself.

Working on autopilot, she began her usual inspection. His clothing was almost entirely burnt off his body. Bits of wool still clung to his skin. Second and third degree burns, Hermione surmised, making a mental note on the patient charts she kept in her head. Two broken legs, a displaced shoulder, broken or fractured ribs, deep laceration on the side of his neck. One of his lungs was probably punctured, judging from the wet, gurgling sound of his shallow breaths. His left eye was blood encrusted and swollen shut.

Susan had determined his condition to be serious, judging from the gold 'X' that was spinning laboriously over him, but even as Hermione glanced up at it, the symbol abruptly halted, and turned to black.

He had stopped breathing.

Many of the other Muggle-born medics tended to prefer using direct resuscitation techniques where possible, but that would have been risky in Lucius's case. His chest cavity was too fragile. Making a executive decision, Hermione took a step away from the cot to cast the required spell, but was halted when Pomfrey stepped in front of her.

The expression on the Matron's face was one Hermione had never seen before. It looked oddly like grim satisfaction.

"Move it along, Hermione," said Pomfrey. "Next patient."

Hermione blinked, looking up at her superior with surprise and a growing unease. "This is my next patient."

"Leave him for Patil," Pomfrey said, pointedly.

What she meant to say was to simply leave him. They both knew that Lucius Malfoy would most likely be dead by the time he reached Padma's station.

And really, would that have been a waste? He may have absconded to the side of the Light at the last, crucial minute, but Lucius Malfoy was certifiable scum.

Everyone knew that.

"I've been informed that he walked into direct cursefire yesterday," Poppy chose then to reveal. She pursed her lips and looked over Lucius with a wholly dispassionate expression that had no place being seen on the face of a Healer. "He killed fifteen Death Eaters in the middle of it, granted, but he did not mean to survive, child. Best to leave it."

Hermione frowned, running a hand through her sweat dampened hair. Her fingers were clammy. The seconds were ticking by and Lucius Malfoy was dying.

Her patient was dying.

Pomfrey lifted her chin, seeming to sense Hermione's decision a scant second before Hermione did.

"Poppy, I'm a doctor, not a judge and jury," Hermione protested.

The Matron clucked the tongue. "It's your call, child. Make the decision." Pomfrey spared the unconscious Lucius one final, steely look, before walking away to resume her duties.

Hermione hands were shaking slightly as she set to work. "Mr Malfoy, can you hear me? Can you open your eyes?"

She pried open his uninjured eye with her fingers. His stare was blank quicksilver and his pupil was unresponsive.

"Come on Mr Malfoy." Hermione poised her wand over his chest. "Resuscitate!"

His body heaved upwards at the force of the spell, but he remained motionless and unbreathing. A small trickle of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.

"Resuscitate!"

No change. Not even after two more attempts.

"Damn." Hermione shoved her wand back into its holster and began performing Muggle CPR, pressing down as hard on his chest as his broken ribs would allow. She was aware that she might have been doing more damage that his battered body could handle, but at that point, it was hardly going to matter.

"Don't waste my time Malfoy. I have dozens of other, more worthy patients to treat today," she panted. "Personally, I have no qualms about pulling a sheet over you and sending you off to the Great Hall, but you'll forgive me for trying to maintain my sterling record. I haven't lost a patient yet this week..."

Several other Medics were now watching her as she worked. Hermione Granger was rarely, if ever, flustered.

"Resuscitate!"

Hermione resumed pushing down his chest, pausing every so often to cast the spell again. In frustration, she tipped his head back, clearing his oral passageway before sealing her mouth over his to force air into his damaged lungs. For six minutes, she alternated between jump-starting Lucius's heart, and trying to get as much oxygen into him as possible.

All your fault, Hermione silently seethed at him as she pressed down on his chest. You and your kind, waging war, bringing death and pain. By all rights, I should let you die.

But not today.

"Lucius, you bastard. Breathe!"

It had been nearly ten minutes now and her arms were starting to quiver from the strain. Hermione was about to concede defeat, when it finally happened.

Lucius suddenly spasmed and lurched upwards. He sucked in a great, deep lungful of air before breaking into a violent coughing fit, spitting up blood all over himself and Hermione.

Hermione was stunned into incapacity for a moment, before regaining her wits enough to cast wound suturing, cleansing and healing spells. When the most urgent injuries were seen to, she pressed her fingers against the pulse at the side of his neck and was pleased to note that it was beating strong and regular.

Grasping his chin in her hand, she peered down to inspect him. His gaze was watery and unfocussed. He seemed to be regarding her with something akin to bemusement. The silver of his eyes was bright, possibly too bright due to fever and infection. Her suspicions were confirmed when he smiled toothily up at her. The man was delirious.

She bit on her lower lip as she stared down at him. It seemed nearly blasphemous that something so tainted and evil was able to deliver a smile so startlingly in its beauty. But then, the Malfoys had never been lacking in beauty. Not even now, as this particular Malfoy lay freshly back from the dead, singed and broken, in a mess of blood and burnt clothing.

Yes, the Malfoys had their damnable beauty. Morals however, were another matter.

**

Lucius was confused.

He had been in terrible, indescribable agony after he had managed, much to his embarrassment and lament, to botch his own suicide. But then the pain from his injuries had abruptly vanished, and for a time, minutes, hours, days maybe - he really couldn't tell - there was nothing.

Sweet, blissful nothing.

Death, it seemed, was a simple matter of sucking in your last, rattling breath and endeavouring to keep it with you.

He blinked, looking up at the impossibly large, brown eyes peering down at him. There were tears, too many tears for such a pretty, benevolent countenance, and a look of pure, undiluted triumph that was staggering.

Dead then, Lucius reasoned with satisfaction, managing to smile up at the beautiful, avenging angel that had surely been sent to personally deliver him to Hades.

But then the dead do not feel pain.

No. No. Bloody no.

He was alive.

"Fuck," he managed to croak out, before blank darkness claimed him again. But even as he lost consciousness, his mind bellowed in fury, knowing that he was going to awaken.

**