Contradictus Totalus

Contradictus Totalus - Chapter Eight

A scream tore itself from Draco Malfoy's throat before he was even aware of it. It was unrestrained, uninhibited, and very much everything that Malfoy would have thought impossible to escape from between his cultured lips. The ice-cold water that ripped through the thick canopies of leaves splattered against his face and rolled down his cheeks into his wide-open mouth.

Malfoy was suddenly turned upside-down. His scream died out abruptly as he choked on water that had slipped down his throat. He stopped scrabbling at the squid's tentacle for a moment, and instead concentrated on just trying to breathe. But he could not: the tentacle was squeezing him with such a tight grip that he could not even cough. For one dreadfully long instant, he saw fiery red spots in the darkness.

His eyes were squeezed shut tightly. He instinctively beat his fists against the rubbery, slimy tentacle that had wound itself tightly around him. When this did not yield any result, he tried to pull the tentacle away from him. His fingernails sank into the spongy flesh of the squid. Viscous slime that had leaked from the squid's tentacle oozed out between his fingers. It engulfed his hand completely in a greyish sludge. But perhaps he had underestimated his weak effort at resistance. The squid loosened its grip on him just fractionally enough for him to give a quick series of coughs. Right when he could breathe easily again, the squid tightened its hold again, so he could not breathe anymore.

However, the respite from screaming had somewhat cleared Malfoy's head, at least enough for his mind to whir back into action. His wand. He needed his wand. Where was it? Tucked in a pocket in his robes. Malfoy fumbled at the opening of his robes, trying to find his wand. There! His fingers made a brief connection with that magnificent rod that would save his life. He wrapped his fingers around it and pulled it out triumphantly.

It was so dark that Malfoy only knew which was up and which way was down by the way rain rolled down his face. He pointed his wand at what he fervently hoped was the tentacle that was gripping him tightly. Ignoring the feeling of blood rushing towards his head, and ignoring the slime that was hurled in his eyes, he yelled out, 'Relashio!'

A jet of angry red sparks flew out of the tip of Malfoy's wand. They served two purposes. As the fiery sparks struck the rubbery surface of the tentacle, Malfoy felt the vice-like grip around his torso loosen just enough for him to take a deep breath. As well, the sparks served to illuminate his surroundings long enough for him to see where the tentacle holding him was located. Without wasting a second, he cried out, with the intention of severing the tentacle holding onto him, 'Subseco!'

It worked. Malfoy felt himself falling. His hand batted against a rubbery object, covered with mucus and scores of suckers. Malfoy ignored the severed tentacle falling alongside him and, gritting his teeth, prepared to land into the water.

But the squid was too wily to lose its prey so easily. Food was not easy to come by in this area of the forest. The squid had learned that to survive, it had to tenaciously hold on to any creature that managed to stray into the range of its tentacles. Responding to years of conditioning, the squid sent another tentacle towards its prey, and caught him by the ankle.

'No!' Malfoy yelled in frustration. He raised his wand again, but another tentacle came swooping in. Before he could react, it wrapped around him so that both his arms were pinned to his body, and his wand was now pointing uselessly at his feet.

Hermione looked up when she heard Malfoy's frustrated exclamation rise above the churning of the water and the relentless drumbeats of the rain on the surface of the lake. She had stood rooted to the ground. That unrestrained scream that had come from Malfoy's throat not five seconds ago was the essence of fear, and Hermione had been transfixed by it.

Malfoy's desperate cry that held so many emotions in it - desperation, panic, alarm, and most of all, fear - finally spurred Hermione into action. Drawing her own wand out, she ran to the water's edge.

She held her wand up high, trying to sift through the many layers of darkness to catch sight of Malfoy, caught tight in the grip of something that would not easily let him go.

'Malfoy! Malfoy!' Hermione yelled his name with all her might, and tried to listen for a response. For once, she was actually hoping that she would hear Malfoy's voice - a considerably large change from all those times back in school where she had longed to shut his mouth. Even more, Hermione was disappointed that she could not hear his response to her call.

'Malfoy! Malfoy!' Malfoy heard Granger's voice float above the hellishness below him. For once, Malfoy was glad to hear the Gryffindor's voice. 'Granger! Where the bloody hell are you?' he bellowed. In another bolt of realization, he yelled 'Lumos' and 'Nox' repeatedly, in an effort to signal to Granger where he was.

The light did more than just help Granger find where he was, however. As the light from his wand glowed straight down, Malfoy looked down. He caught his first glimpse of the thing that was holding him.

Malfoy was being dangled right above the wide open jaws of the giant squid! His call of 'Lumos' died as he realized that he was about to be dropped into right into the depth of the creature. The teeth he could now see - they shone a dim white in the darkness. But it was not a comforting dim white that one would associate with peace, angels, or faeries and the like, that he saw in those many rows of teeth. No, the white shining out at him that Malfoy could see in the teeth of that squid was the white of bones. Human bones. Bones that had been unjustly exposed to the air when the flesh covering them was ripped away, and left to fester for several years in a rotting, stinking grave of earth and mud, oh, not that his bones would ever be exposed to the air of course, because his bones would never even get the chance to break free of their prison among decomposing weeds and half-digested fish heads, and they would never float above the surface of the murky brown water to see the light of day -

Oh Merlin. This was the sort of trivial, insignificant, undignified death that Malfoy had always secretly feared. The kind of death that happens when one least expects it. Dying because of an allergic reaction to a Flobberworm bite. Dying while wanking off under the covers at midnight. Dying by being digested by a squid.

Oh Merlin. At his funeral, where there would be no remains of his body - everything would be at the bottom of the lake and no one would go through the trouble of looking for the bits and pieces of his undigested bones - at his funeral, with all of the people there to mourn him - oh, provided there were people. Who would show up? Crabbe, Goyle, Blaise ... - all of the people there surrounding his coffin would stand around in silence - with their heads bowed, of course, because at such solemn occasions, the head must always be lowered to show respect; this was what Lucius had taught Malfoy as a child - until someone - perhaps Blaise; Zabini seemed like the type to pull a stunt like that - would let out a snort and a snicker and then everyone in the room would begin laughing uncontrollably, standing around in a circle around his coffin.

Oh Merlin. This would be the result of his untimely death. His death by cephalopod attack. This would be the yield of his trivial, insignificant, undignified d-

And then it happened. It happened in sickeningly slow motion, so that Malfoy could register the feeling of every single one of those disgusting suckers moving along his arms, as the tentacle loosened ever-so-slightly ... as it loosened even more ... as it loosened to the point where Malfoy felt himself slipping through the grip of the tentacle.

And then he was falling. His body was flipped about, buffeted by wind and random tentacles. His arms instinctively shot up towards the air, his fingers clawing the emptiness that was the dark sky, his hands reaching up, up, looking for something, anything that he could hold onto, to keep him from dropping down into the mouth of the beast.

But no matter how much his body screamed 'up', he still ended up falling down. Down, down, down, inevitably heading straight towards the jaws of the beast that had laid claim on his body since its tentacle first grabbed him.

* * * * *

As Hermione saw the blinking light, no doubt being emitted from Malfoy's wand, she felt a faint glimmer of hope, despite the darkness of the situation. He had not plunged into the greedy mouth of the squid yet.

Now that she knew where Malfoy was, more or less, Hermione didn't hesitate to act. She had been sorted in Gryffindor for a reason, and this very reason could be seen right now.

Hermione pointed her wand towards the general direction of where she had seen Malfoy's wand blinking on and off. With an impatient flick of the wrist, and a desperate-sounding call of 'Ancoralis iaculari,' Hermione's wand sent a single thin, coil of rope shooting out into the darkness. She hoped with all her might that it might connect with a tentacle.

Ah! Her wand was almost torn from her grasp! Her wrist cracked as she struggled to keep the squid from pulling her wand away. Now was the time to act.

She took a deep breath, and threw caution to the very wind that was stinging her wide-open eyes. Taking a running start, she leapt into the air, allowing herself to be carried forward. She depended completely on the grip of her two hands to her wand, which was being carried by that thin length of rope, which was somehow attached to a tentacle. She felt her body rising in the air, as the tentacle the rope was attached to was raised. The squid had probably been alerted to this new disturbance within its grasp, and was holding whatever it was closer towards its undiscriminating jaws. She felt wind whistling through her ears, and as she travelled through the air, she felt the rain, which had seemed only like thousands of pricking needles earlier, begin to positively tear at her skin.

Throughout it all, Hermione had one thought that was foremost on her mind. Where was Malfoy? The light, which had been blinking regularly, had abruptly stopped shining one second ago. No - he could not have fallen into the jaws of -

A second thought that concerned her much more directly forced its way into her mind. Oh no. She had started off her flight, dangling precariously from her wand, gripping as tightly as possible with her two hands. But somehow, during her brief flight, she had begun to slip. It was hard to tell whether it was from sweaty palms or from rainwater that had somehow managed to worm its way in between her fists and her wand, but somehow, her hands had slipped down the wand, so that they were both gripping the very end.

Hermione gritted her teeth. She must not let her wand leave her gr-

But before she could think anything more, she felt nothing between her hands but a long thin column of air that was in the exact form of her wand.

And then without preamble, she fell. She plummeted towards the lake, towards the giant squid, perhaps even towards its eagerly awaiting jaws - no doubt, the squid would be duly surprised at the unexpected appetizer.

WHAM!

Hermione fell against something that did not feel like what she'd have expected the teeth or the scaly palate of a giant squid to feel like. Opening the eyes that she had unconsciously screwed shut in her freefall, she found herself looking straight into eyes that she hadn't seen since perhaps ten seconds ago. (Oh, how long those ten seconds really seemed!) Not the monstrous, blood-red eyes that she had seen on the monstrous squid, but the very normal, very grey, very human eyes that she had seen on Draco Malfoy.

They were just as wide with that very human emotion of fear, and they became impossibly wider when the owner of those eyes realized that his intended course - straight into the jaws of the squid - had just taken a detour.

Hermione felt her body changing direction as its path had just been interrupted by the body of Draco Malfoy. Feeling herself sailing through the air (and hoping with all her might that it was as far away from the squid as she could get), she felt herself instinctively clutching Malfoy's body tighter towards her own. It was a mark of how tense a situation they were currently experiencing, in that Malfoy failed to utter a disgusted remark. Instead, he wrapped his arms tightly around her body as well.

Hermione and Malfoy flew through the air, just the two of them, face-to-face, the bullets of rain shooting into their backs instead of their faces, for perhaps a few milliseconds. In those brief few snatches of time, Hermione came to the utterly perverse and out-of-place thought: Compared to the darkness that surrounded them, Malfoy's eyes seemed to be so much less colder, or darker, or -

And then they both plunged into the dark, murky water together. The force at which they had been sent through the surface of the water pushed them even deeper together. Their arms fell apart from each other at the impact, and they both windmilled their arms as best they could to try to gain stability in the new environment.

Hermione instinctively tried to grab Malfoy's hand - all of her instincts told her it would not do to be separated again from each other. Where was he? He kept moving, sinking deeper and deeper into the depths of the lake. There he was! She lunged in the water, trying to grab his wrist and keep them from floating away from each other. No! She fell a few inches short! She had grabbed his wand instead. Shit! She missed Malfoy's hand! He was floating farther and farther away ...

And then, Hermione felt the impact of a tentacle breaking through the surface of the water. Hermione felt waves buffet her as the tentacle fished about randomly. She tried to regain her stability in the chaotic environment, but before she got a chance to, she felt something wrap around her foot and jerk upwards. Hermione stared at Malfoy, connected to her by a thin bridge of wood. His eyes were wide with disbelief and awe and ... fear. But then, the seemingly indomitable tentacle overcame the force of gravity, and yanked her sinking body up. The little sliver of wood was separated from Malfoy's grip and came with her. Hermione's wandless hand stretched out towards Malfoy in a last attempt to keep them close to each other, but she needn't have bothered.

He was already out of her view.

* * * * *

Malfoy reeled in shock. Shit! Granger had been dragged away by the squid, and she had taken his wand too! He began swimming up towards the surface, but with every stroke, he felt yet a little bit more air escape from his body. He felt his limbs grow heavier and heavier, as if he had chains dragging him back down towards the bottom. He began to see spots in front of his eyes now, the same fiery red spots he had seen earlier when he had been unable to breathe. But this time, there was no way he could escape. It was not until after he felt the last bits of oxygen in his body get squeezed out did he realize that he could not make it any further towards the surface. His legs stopped moving, and he stopped propelling himself upwards towards where he last saw Granger. His final move was to extend one arm up. But this futile, last-ditch attempt to resist what seemed to be inevitable was batted aside by the more powerful forces at work, and he sank back towards the bottom of the lake, already beginning to lose consciousness.

For Draco Malfoy, the fight was now over.

* * * * *

She was a mouse caught in the clutches of a cobra as she wriggled around in midair. Her brain screamed at her as she was whisked further and further away from the Slytherin wizard. Malfoy was wandless and too deep to swim to the surface. What was she going to do? No, she had to worry about herself right now. But it was so damn hard knowing that he was left down there. Hermione's mind was swamped, and angry tears trickled down her face.

Hermione had to do something. She twisted her body around, and pointed Malfoy's wand near her foot. Oh, what if Malfoy's wand wasn't compatible with her? Then - no, she tried not to think about that. Trying to hold her hand steady, as she pointed Malfoy's wand into the darkness, she yelled, 'Relashio!'

To her relief, a stream of sparks shot out of the wand. They weren't as strong as she would have liked, but they did the job. She heard over the drumbeats of the rain the sound of something tearing open - it had the sickening sound of a head cracking open on concrete - and then she felt herself sailing back through the air and landing in the water again.

She dove down deeper into the depths of the lake. As she tried kicking her legs to head back to where she had last seen Malfoy's glimmering hair, she pointed his wand at herself and called out the incantation for the Bubble-Head Charm. A bit of water went up her nose as she uttered the spell, but the unpleasant sensation of it was ignored as Hermione suddenly felt cool air circulating around her head. Hermione gulped in breaths of air that never felt so sweet, though they had all been tinged with the peculiar scent of the swampy lake.

Heartened by the realization that she really was able to use Malfoy's wand, she cried out 'Lumos!' as well.

But she could not waste time. She had to find Malfoy. Holding his wand in front of her, she began paddling to where she had last seen him. She looked down, her heart sinking in the way she was certain that his body was.

There! She had almost missed it, but out of the corner of her eye, barely illuminated by the shaft of light emitted from the wand, she saw Malfoy. One arm floated upwards, the hand dangling limply, as if he had made a last-ditch effort to pull himself up out of the mire. His body was motionless, except for his arm that was now dropping like the broken mast of a sinking ship. As he sank lower into obscurity, a cloud of mud and silt came rushing up to meet him eagerly. The cloud billowed up around his body, wrapping around him completely the way an assassin might wrap a noose around his sleeping victim's neck. The miasma spread impossibly fast, soon circling around Malfoy's body like chains, so that Hermione could see no sharp outlines of him, only a vague, smoke-like mist that gave no indication of the human being it had hidden inside.

Her breath fogging up the bubble around her, Hermione strained her eyes to keep track of Malfoy's body, chained by the darkness. There! Pale blond hair billowed up towards the surface. Juxtaposed with the gloom of the shadows, it looked bright and out-of-place. Clouds of mud moved in and out among each bright and silvery tendril, threatening to engulf the last bit of Malfoy that Hermione could see.

Struggling to keep Malfoy's hair in her vision as a reference point, Hermione pointed her wand at the shapeless haze that held Malfoy trapped inside. 'Ancoralis iaculari,' she called, her voice sounding hollow and empty in the confines of the bubble surrounding her head. A rope shot out of the wand. It flew through the shadows of the lake, broke through the invisible walls surrounding the cloud of mud and silt, and wrapped itself around the boy hidden deep inside the haze of darkness.

Hermione turned, and began swimming up towards the surface, dragging Malfoy, bound by her ropes. She kicked with all her might, disrupting the silt and mud starting to settle on him. She ignored the haze that flew against the barrier created by the charm, just as she ignored the leaden weight of her arms and legs. She only concentrated on pulling Malfoy to the surface, even forgetting about the presence of the squid, still thrashing on the surface of the lake, looking for other potential victims who cooperated more.

Ten metres, five metres, two metres ... Her feet could now touch the soft, muddy ground.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she fell over the edge of the lake. Exhausted beyond belief, she didn't bother to stop to ponder the sheer amount of luck that had been with her and Malfoy so far. She dragged Malfoy up onto shore, and made for the shelter. It was easy to locate, even among the dark shadows and gnarled trees surrounding the lake, due to the campfire there that still burned, despite the fact that she had stepped in it.

As soon as Hermione entered the shelter, she felt a bit of warmth seep back into her body. She pulled Malfoy up close to the fire, where she could see his whole body illuminated by the glow of the fire.

'Malfoy. Malfoy,' Hermione said tersely, dropping to her knees next to him, prodding him in the chest gently. For the first time in her life, Hermione wished for Malfoy to open his mouth and say something. Why did he have to continuously lie there like he was Stupefied?

But despite all of her hopes that he would suddenly open his eyes, and spit out a nasty insult or two, this did not happen. Malfoy lay still on the ground, as unmoving as a corpse.

A corpse? Oh god ... Hermione grabbed his wrist. Was there a pulse? Please, please let there be a pulse. A pulse that would assure her that he was still with her. That he had not died. Her eyes closed, and her mouth twisted down in a grimace, she placed her fingers on his wrist, waiting to be affirmed that he was alive ... or dead.

A faint movement. A weak, half-hearted jump that have Hermione a little hope. She felt her heart skip a beat - it didn't matter how weak it was, for it was still a sign that he was alive. Feeling heartened, she lowered her cheek to his chest, expecting to feel its comforting rise and fall. After all, he could not possibly have ...

She whipped her head up. He was not breathing.

It was alright still. A simple spell was all she needed. Class number thirty-seven of Survival Defence Against the Dark Arts. The Breath-Giving Charm. Hard to master, difficult to cast, but everything was still alright. She had performed it in class a few times, she could manage. Hermione raised Malfoy's wand, pointed it directly at his chest, and enunciated very carefully, 'Aspiratio donum.'

She sat there, her knees sinking into the muddy ground, waiting for Malfoy's mouth to open wider and for him to begin coughing. She sat there waiting for Malfoy's eyes to shoot open, waiting to see his grey eyes widen in surprise to see himself covered in mud and dirt, sprawled out on the forest ground. She sat there, waiting for him to see her holding his wand, and then berate her for having the nerve to sully such precious Malfoy property. She sat there, poised, waiting for his body to jerk and his chest to expand as his lungs took in the precious life-saving oxygen that she was sending him.

But milliseconds - god, they really did seem so long - went creeping by, and none of the above happened. Malfoy remained as lifeless as before.

It was at this point where either the world sped up, or else her body slowed down. Her brain, however, kept whirring around at top speed, throwing around a mess of scattered thoughts. Malfoy was dead? Malfoy's wand was falling her slack grip. Malfoy wasn't breathing? The wand was rolling down to rest at her feet. But who would she compete with now? Malfoy's wand was lying half submerged in the mud. Would Harry and Ron really cheer upon discovery? He wasn't that nasty a person, only spoiled. Was Malfoy dead? Malfoy was dead. Did Malfoy's family have a clock like Mr. and Mrs. Weasley had? Malfoy would be livid if he saw his wand in the dirt like that. Why hadn't she hurried faster to get Malfoy? But they had both made such an effort to escape from the squid. If Narcissa saw the clock right now, would she see Draco's arm pointing to 'In Mortal Peril'? No one deserved to die at the hands of a giant squid. Why was he dead? But Malfoy was so stubborn and spoiled. Ha ha, 'hands of a giant squid'? Tentacles, more like! Or was the Draco Hand pointing to 'Deceased'? God, what a horrible way to die. How could Malfoy die? Malfoy was dead. Oh, Malfoy ...

Over the buzz of thousands of incoherent thoughts in her brain, her muddled mind knew of one last thing to do. Really, it was the only thing she could do at this point. Muggle First-Aid was the only alternative left. What a sad situation she must be in if it came down to that! Trying to ignore her hysterical thoughts, Hermione tilted Malfoy's head back, and checked his mouth for obstructions.

She took a deep breath. Ignoring the leaden sensation of her arms and legs, the unbearable weight of robes on her back, the slight chattering of her teeth, the errant drops of rain rolling down her cheeks and dripping onto Malfoy's cheeks and onto his slightly parted lips, and yes, even the giant squid that floundered in the lake behind them, she lowered her head towards Malfoy, and pressed her mouth over his.

Rain kept falling as she kneeled over Malfoy's body. A few obstinate drops of rain trickled down her face, mingling with rebellious drops of tears that had escaped from the corners of Hermione's eyes without her knowing. The cool, chilling rain mixed with the salty tang of her tears. The grey dripped down Hermione's cheeks, past her mouth, onto the face of Draco Malfoy. It fell on his pale skin, rolling down his high cheekbones. It landed on his closed eyelids - the fusion of tears and rain was the same grey as the eyes of Malfoy that Hermione wanted so desperately to see, yet could not. It was suspended on the eyelashes of Malfoy that Hermione had never seen so close-up and so still. It left trails which lingered for more than a fraction of a second on his cheeks, before being washed away by the seemingly all-powerful rain.

Her mouth sealed to his, and her fingers pinching his nostrils as she remembered from her first-aid classes, she exhaled directly into his mouth, giving two deep breaths. She looked intently at his chest, willing it to rise. But in a fit of obstinacy, it refused to use her life-giving air.

Willing herself not to panic, she bent down again and exhaled deeply again into Malfoy's mouth. Looking up for the second time, Hermione could see that it still was not working.

She couldn't do it. She was going to fail. What would people say? Hermione Granger had failed. What would Malfoy say? No, Draco Malfoy wouldn't be able to say anything. Draco Malfoy was going to die. Draco - no ... she couldn't think about that. She couldn't think about how Malfoy would remain completely stiff and unmoving. But she was going to fail. She had failed already. Maybe if she had tried harder, or had gotten there earlier, or thought a bit quicker, or hadn't ... what would she do when Malfoy died? Should she just leave his body here, snug among the wet grass and earth? Should she - Oh, what was going to happen! What was she going to do?

No. She bent her head down again towards Malfoy. Among everything she had learned at Hogwarts, one choice tidbit, nestled between the Goblin Rebellion of 1867, the Twelve Uses of Dragon's Blood, and the Leg-Locker Curse, was the most important piece of information at the moment. She had learned over the years not to give up prematurely. It would not do to give up before the game was over. It would not do to continue questioning herself. Not thinking, and not wanting to think, she pressed her mouth over his tightly. She breathed out again.

But it seemed to be a lost cause. Many breaths passed, and Malfoy was still not breathing. Hermione entered a state of consciousness where the only things she focused on was the air being expelled from her mouth into his and slowly flowing into the stiff, unmoving chest of Malfoy. She felt her heart sink every time she looked up and saw Malfoy's motionless body. But she kept going - no one, no, not even Draco Malfoy, deserved to die when she was here to give the best effort she could to keep him alive.

It seemed that even Hermione could not succeed all the time, though. As Hermione kept breathing into Malfoy, his chest lay discouragingly unmoving. The liquid fusion of her unknowingly shed tears and the rain still dripped down the sides of her cheeks to land on Malfoy's face. He did not breathe.

Hermione may have learned many lessons so far in her life, but one she still had trouble comprehending was that concept that life was not always fair, and not all efforts were always rewarded. This seemed to be the case, because she was positive that Draco Malfoy was dead.