The Quality of Mercy

Chapter 23: Confrontations

A grotesque mask of livid bruises and dark, oozing blood almost obscured Pansy's face. Her black-circled eyes were almost swollen shut.

"Pansy!" Hermione exclaimed, and reached out as the young woman tripped on the front step and almost fell into her arms. "What happened?"

"Didn't know - where else to go," Pansy gasped. Her mouth was puffy and bruised as well, and fresh blood painted her front teeth red from a gash in her lower lip. "Lucius - "

From the younger Mrs. Malfoy's appearance, Hermione had already guessed the worst. The important thing now, however, was to get Pansy inside and cleaned up so that Hermione could get a better look at her injuries.

"Come sit down," Hermione said, half guiding, half carrying Pansy to the living room sofa.

Pansy was obviously too far gone to protest. She staggered across the room and sank down on the couch. "Have to help - "

"I know, Pansy, and I shall, but first I must see how badly you're hurt."

A violent shake of the head. "No time. Narcissa - "

"Narcissa is still back at Malfoy Manor with Lucius?"

Pansy nodded. "Went mad. She tried to stop him - "

Hermione knew she couldn't leave Pansy for a second. "Accio first aid kit!" she called out, and the little kit which used to reside in the trunk of Ron's car but now was kept under the bathroom sink came sailing into her hands. She opened it at once and pulled out one of the little alcohol wipes to clean the blood off Pansy's forehead.

"Leave it," Pansy said, and pushed Hermione's hand away. "There's no time."

"You'll be no help to anyone if you're blinded by your own blood!"

This stark retort seemed to quell Pansy, if only for the few seconds Hermione required to finish her clean-up. The majority of the mess on her face came from a long gash along Pansy's hairline. It wasn't particularly deep, but its edges were jagged. It kept oozing blood, and the alcohol wipes were not up to the task.

Still, Hermione managed to blot the worst of it away and slap a gauze dressing over the wound. Pansy probably should have gone to St. Mungo's for a patching-up; no doubt the healers there would take one look at her battered form and be all over her with Invigorating Draughts and Blood Replenishing Potions. But, as Pansy herself had said, there was no time for that.

"All right," Hermione said, once she was finished with her hasty ministrations. "So Lucius attacked both of you?" She couldn't help but let a trace of doubt enter her tone. After all, the last time she had seen Lucius Malfoy, he had been sunk so deep in a coma he apparently hadn't even noticed her sticking a needle into his arm.

"Yes," Pansy replied, then abruptly stood. "Narcissa was bending over him, washing his face, and suddenly he sat bolt upright in bed and let out the most bloodcurdling banshee scream. And then it -- the force that comes out of him -- roared out and struck her so she flew halfway across the room. I tried to go to her, but it picked me up and threw me into the wall. It has claws -- it caught my forehead -- "

Pansy raised shaking fingers to the bandage at her hairline, almost as if she needed to reassure herself that her hair was still more or less intact. "Anyway, I knew I couldn't stop it. I can manage a Shield spell, but I never really paid much attention in the Dark Arts classes. I didn't think I'd ever need it."

The flow of words stopped there. Perhaps she had thought that, as Draco Malfoy's favored companion, no practitioner of the Dark Arts would dare to lay a hand on her. Such short-sightedness rarely did anyone any good, but Hermione knew this was not the time to scold Pansy for such gaping holes in her magical knowledge.

"Let me get my wand," Hermione said. She also rose from the couch and went to fetch the slender ash-wood stick. Of course her own lovely vine wood wand was long gone, and she had abandoned Bellatrix Lestrange's borrowed wand as soon as she could find a suitable replacement. But the ash wand was quite powerful, and she'd come to appreciate its abilities.

She hoped it was up to the task which lay ahead of her.

She'd just begun to move toward Pansy when she stopped at the distinctive cr-ack! of a person Apparating. Severus popped into existence a few feet inside the front door, then stared down at his erstwhile charge in some consternation.

"Miss Parkinson?" Apparently Severus was surprised enough by Pansy's appearance that he'd forgotten to refer to her by her married name.

Pansy's eyes widened. "Professor Snape!"

"We have a situation, Severus," Hermione said. "Lucius -- "

"I see the situation must have degenerated," he cut in. "It is often thus, just before the end."

"The end?" Pansy repeated. "You can't mean -- "

His voice softened a fraction. "The mind strikes out once last time before it falls into complete ruin. We must go at once."

Hermione had thought perhaps to fetch her cloak but realized that would only be another costly delay. "How do we fight him, Severus?"

"I'll let you know when we get there. For now -- to Malfoy Manor."

He grasped Pansy by the arm and Disapparated at once, leaving Hermione to curse under her breath and then do the same. As she did so, she prayed he had the same destination in mind -- the front entry to the Malfoys' manor house.

Her prayers were answered. As she emerged a few feet away from those forbidding double doors, she saw Severus already standing on the top step, wand out. A quick "Alohomora!" and he was inside, Pansy at his heels.

As soon as they were standing in the foyer, Hermione could hear hoarse screams from somewhere above. Pansy's face went even more pale under its layer of bruises and blood.

"At least she's still alive," Severus said. "There must be some small part of his mind that remembers who she is."

"Severus, what are we to do?" Hermione asked. "Beyond casting every Shield charm we know?"

"That will do, for a start." His lips thinned. He lifted his chin, his nostrils flaring, like a hound scenting blood. "We must get her out of there."

"And Draco," Pansy said. "Who knows what he's done to Draco?"

Good question. Well, very soon they would find out.

Her fingers tightened around her wand. "Let's go."

The large bedchamber where Lucius and Draco were housed looked as if every poltergeist in a twenty-mile radius had gone on a rampage in there. The hangings had been torn from the beds, and broken bric-a-brac lay scattered over everything. Even the coffered ceiling overhead appeared gouged, as if enormous teeth had somehow gnawed at it.

All these details Hermione registered in a flash, along with a quick glimpse of Draco still lying in his bed, although the heavy bed-hangings had fallen on him and therefore hid most of his form. From her vantage point in the doorway, she couldn't tell if he still breathed or not.

Then she had no time to think of anything else, for the huddled mass of dark velvet in front of the fireplace, which she belatedly realized was Narcissa, moved and hissed, "It's coming!"

Without thinking, Hermione gasped, "Protego totalum!" Off to her left, she heard Severus do the same, Pansy's voice a hesitant echo of the unfamiliar words.

A gust of cold wind. Pressure, an agonizing weight that beat against the charm she had cast and somehow made the breath strangle in her throat. And a sensation of malice she'd never thought she'd experience again, now that the Dark Lord had been vanquished.

It was a contest of will against will -- Lucius' disembodied energy pushing against the mental shield she'd constructed. She'd quipped to Severus a few days earlier that she was the irresistible force and he the immovable object. Now she realized she faced a truly irresistible force. How long could she hold?

Long enough to fight back, she thought fiercely. "Confringo!"

A gout of virulent magenta shot forth from the end of her wand in the direction of the choking force. The pressure eased somewhat.

"Nicely done, Miss Granger," said Severus. He lifted his own wand and thrust it toward the disembodied entity like a fencing champion initiating a lunge. "Evanesco!"

An ear-splitting howl, followed by ominous silence. The sensation of being flattened by an impossibly heavy object disappeared.

Hermione sucked in a breath. "Is that it?"

Severus did not lower his wand. "We are in uncharted territory. None of my research ever revealed exactly how our forebears dealt with cases of advanced Scarbury's."

This comment was apparently lost on Pansy. She cried out, "Draco!" and ran to the bed where her husband lay, then flung aside the heavy velvet curtains that all but obscured him. He didn't move, but Pansy must have found some signs of life, for she let out a relieved little cry and laid her head on his chest.

Still wary, Hermione picked her way through the broken furniture and knick-knacks that littered the floor, and then kneeled down next to Narcissa. The older woman stared up at her through tangles of pale blood-matted hair.

"He's not gone, you know," she remarked, in tones so cool one might have thought she was discussing her preference for milk or lemon in her tea. "Did you really think it would be that simple?"

Choosing to ignore the question, Hermione said, "We're going to get you out of here, Mrs. Malfoy. Can you stand?"

"He broke my leg. I felt it snap when I hit the fireplace screen." These words were uttered in that same calm, dispassionate voice, as if Narcissa spoke of injuries not her own.

Perhaps she was so traumatized she'd broken with reality. Hermione knew such things could happen. She also knew that Narcissa should be taken to St. Mungo's, along with Pansy and Draco, and the hell with the need for secrecy that had kept them isolated this long.

It came then, a shrilling shriek like some sort of demonic train whistle. The hair at the back of Hermione's neck lifted and she whirled, wand out.

Severus was even faster. "Expecto Patronum!" he spat, and the graceful figure of a doe leaped into the air at the center of the room.

It hung suspended in mid-air for a second, and then Hermione saw it rocked by a massive blow that surely would have killed it had it been a living creature. But the Patronus held, acting as a shield between the fury of Lucius' Scarbury-destroyed mind and her. It did not escape her notice, even as she murmured another Shield charm just to be safe, that the unseen energy had targeted her, the Muggle-born, first.

"Get them out of here!" Severus rasped. His arm shook as he held his wand extended. Hermione felt rather than saw the line of power connecting the wand to the doe form that hovered in the center of the chamber.

"Severus, I can't leave you -- "

"You can, and you must. I cannot save Lucius, but Draco is not beyond help, and Narcissa needs a healer."

Hermione opened her mouth to protest one last time, then pressed her lips into a thin line worthy of Severus himself. Logic told her that although she might be highly skilled, he was the stronger wizard. And really, Disapparating didn't take all that long. She could be off to St. Mungo's and back here within a minute or so. Surely that would be all it took?

"Pansy," she called out. "Can you Disapparate to St. Mungo's with Draco?"

"I -- I think so," Pansy replied. Then she bent down and slipped an arm under her husband's limp form. Voice a little stronger, she added, "Yes. Yes, I can."

With a strength Hermione hadn't thought she possessed, Pansy lifted Draco and spun away, Disapparating into the night.

"They're away," she whispered to Narcissa. "We must go."

"Lucius -- "

"Severus will take care of Lucius." What exactly that meant, she didn't know for sure. She could only trust in her lover's strength and his immense capacity for survival.

Mimicking Pansy's movements, Hermione slipped an arm around Narcissa and staggered to a standing position. The older woman felt frail as a nymph, every bone discernable through her meager flesh. Hermione thought she probably could have lifted her even without magical assistance.

The Patronus still held, although its light had begun to appear a little less bright. Severus' face was taut with effort, the lines of his jaw in sharp relief against the high collar of his shirt.

"Severus -- "

"Go!" he roared.

Only time for a single despairing, "I love you," before Hermione clutched Narcissa to her and then Disapparated.

The shrieks ended abruptly, and the dingy waiting area of St. Mungo's materialized around her. Although the rest of the hospital was guarded by anti-Apparition spells, Apparating was allowed in the waiting room -- mostly because some medical emergencies were so dire that one simply couldn't afford to wait go through the process of addressing the faux mannequins in the display area out front. However, visitors were required to exit the normal way, through the front door.

"A little help!" Hermione called out, setting Narcissa down on one of the wooden chairs as best she could.

Across the room several healers were already clustered around Pansy and Draco. As she watched, one of them transferred him to a floating stretcher that waited nearby, while the second healer turned and came over to her.

"What do we have here?" he asked.

"Broken leg, other contusions," Hermione replied. She decided it wasn't necessary to explain that the damage had been done by a rampaging invisible monster driven by Lucius Malfoy's diseased brain. Although she'd only been in St. Mungo's for a scant minute, it already felt to her to be far too long. She had to get back to Severus.

"Damaged how?" the healer inquired, apparently deciding he needed to take a complete history right now.

"Look, does it matter? This is Narcissa Malfoy, and that is her son you've just carried out on a stretcher. They're both wizards and need to be admitted. And I have to go."

He opened his mouth once again, but Hermione had already turned away. She had just taken a few steps toward the exit when the other door to the waiting room opened, the one that led into the hospital proper. In strode the last person she had expected to see there.

Harry Potter.

For a second she could only gape at him. His eyes widened with surprise behind his spectacles, and he said, "Hermione! What are you doing here?" He looked past her and saw Narcissa being helped onto a second stretcher. "What happened?"

"There isn't time!" she snapped, her words an unconscious echo of Pansy's. Perhaps later she might ask Harry the same question. He didn't look overly worried, so she thought he must be here on Auror-related business, and not because something was wrong with Ginny or the baby. "I must get back to him!"

"Get back to who?"

"Severus! I left him there, fighting Lucius, and if I don't get back right away -- "

Harry crossed the waiting room in a few quick strides, then grasped her by the upper arms. "Why would Professor Snape be fighting Malfoy? I thought they were old mates."

The sneer in Harry's voice did little to improve Hermione's state of mind. She wrested herself from his grasp and said, "Because Lucius has lost his mind from Scarbury's!"

"From what?"

"The disease we were researching!" Oh, why did he have to be asking foolish questions? Every lost second could mean -- "Harry, I really don't have time for explanations. You saw the research we were doing. This disease has made Lucius dangerously mad, and I left Severus there with him to bring Narcissa here. I can't spare another moment!"

"So much worry over a simple research partner?" Harry inquired. His eyes looked very green behind their protective glass lenses.

"Yes!"

He stared down into her face for a few agonizing seconds. Then his own features twisted as he somehow caught the lie in her expression. Or perhaps he really had picked up a bit of Occlumency after all.

"You lied," he said. "You were lying when you told me you and Snape were only working on a cure together."

Goaded, she retorted, "Yes, I was lying! Is that what you want to hear? He's more to me than you could ever know. And he could be dying right now while you stand here and put me through the third degree!"

No time to stay and watch rage turn to disgust. At the moment she didn't give a pile of Galleons what Harry Potter might think of her relationship with Severus Snape. She turned and bolted for the door of the waiting room. There was an alley only a few yards away where she could Disapparate safely.

She heard feet slapping against the pavement, and looked over her shoulder to see Harry exit the building just a pace or so behind her.

Safely inside the alley, she said, "You can't stop me, Harry."

"Putting yourself in danger -- for him! Have you ever thought maybe you should just let it go? The world might be a better place."

The sound of her hand striking his cheek was shockingly loud. She hadn't even realized she meant to hit him until she had done so. He recoiled, even as she spat out,

"How dare you? How dare you even suggest I should just leave Severus to his fate? Have you completely lost your mind?"

He said nothing for a few seconds. The imprint of her hand stood out on one cheek like a pale red tattoo. He stared down at her as if really looking at her for the first time in a long while. Finally, he began,

"Hermione, I -- "

"I love him, Harry. I don't have time to tell you every reason why, but I do. So let me go, or do you want to force me to mourn the loss of another good man?"

A spasm crossed his features as she said the words "another good man," but he appeared to gather himself before saying, "No -- I -- No, I don't. But I don't understand -- "

"You don't need to understand," she replied, and stepped backward, giving herself enough room to safely Disapparate back to Malfoy Manor. As she left, though, she had the distinct impression she'd heard another cr-ack! just before she left the alleyway.

Her hearing hadn't betrayed her. She came down on the Malfoys' top step with a distinct thud, and then heard someone else fall into place behind her. Harry hurried up the stairs to stand at her side, then pushed the door inward. He gave her an incongruous grin. "Well, what are you waiting for?"

Relief surged through her -- relief that Harry had apparently decided to put aside their differences for now, and relief that she wouldn't have to face a rampaging Lucius Malfoy alone.

"Shield charms seem to work," she said, throwing the words over her shoulder as she hurried up the steps to the first floor. "Severus banished him for a bit with an Evanesco, but it didn't hold. And the Patronus works as a shield as well."

But for how long? She didn't know. It felt as if she'd been gone forever, but the Muggle watch strapped to her wrist told her it had only a little more than five minutes since she'd Disapparated with Narcissa in her arms. Still, a very great deal could happen in that span of time....

They burst into the room Draco and Lucius had shared and found --

-- nothing.

No sign of Severus. The room seemed in even greater disarray, if that were possible.

Hermione felt her heart lodge in her throat, but somehow managed to call out, "Severus!"

Silence.

Harry strode past her, looking from side to side. "Whatever happened, it looked as if they both put up a hell of a fight."

He couldn't be gone. She wouldn't let herself believe that. He had to be in here somewhere, hiding perhaps, or concealing himself with a Disillusionment charm to fend off the roving attacks of Lucius' broken mind.

"Hermione!"

She whirled and saw Harry standing over the bed that Lucius had occupied. "I think you'd better come over here."

The bed was only about ten feet away, but to Hermione it felt more like a hundred miles. She walked slowly, her booted feet crunching on bits of broken porcelain and glass. It couldn't be. She wouldn't let herself think that something had happened to Severus. They had to have come back in time. How could she face the thought that another man she loved might have gone down into the dark without her?

Harry had a peculiar expression on his face. Disgust? Relief?

"Look," he said, and twitched back the bedcovers.

Lucius Malfoy's livid face stared up at them. His sightless eyes seemed a sea of red; broken blood vessels obscured their true color. His face was likewise suffused with dark, dead blood, as if he had finally suffocated at the last.

"Is he -- " She didn't know if she trusted herself to say the word.

"Dead? Very?" Just to be certain, though, Harry reached down and laid two fingers against the pale bruised throat. He waited a few seconds, and shook his head, then immediately lifted his hand. "I have no idea what happened, but he certainly isn't a threat to anyone anymore."

Hermione couldn't allow herself to feel any relief. How could she, when Severus was nowhere to be found?

"Severus!" she called out again.

"Professor Snape!"

She and Harry shared a bewildered glance.

"I don't think he's here," she said. "But just to be sure -- "

Breaking off, she dropped to her knees and peered under the tall bed. Nothing to be found there but a few storage trunks. A few feet away, Harry did the same thing with the bed Draco had once used.

"Nothing," he said.

How could Severus have just disappeared like that? Worry was a rapidly rising sickness in her throat, but she choked it back even as she stood. It had to be something else, something she had overlooked. She refused to believe he was gone.

"Maybe he just left this room for some reason," she suggested. "Let's search the rooms on this floor."

Harry nodded. "All right."

They exited the bedchamber and went first to the room on the right, which looked to be Narcissa's. At least, the long pale hairs caught in the brush which lay on the dressing table seemed to be a telltale clue as to the room's owner. Everything was very neat and clean, a startling contrast to the disarray in the chamber next door.

No sign of Severus in the room beyond that, either, which under other circumstances might have been a pretty sitting room of some sort with tall windows designed to let in an abundance of sunlight. But of course now all that could be seen behind the diamond-shaped panes was a thin, uncaring moon and an expanse of black sky.

They had just emerged from the sitting room when the air split with a sudden cr-ack! and the Malfoys' house-elf materialized in the corridor in front of them.

"No visitors!" he squeaked, glancing around with terrified green eyes. "The Master is indisposed."

The Master is dead, poor thing, Hermione thought. She tried to make her tone as gentle as she could, and asked, "Withy, have you seen Professor Snape? A friend of your master's -- a tall man with black hair and wearing black robes?"

If possible, Withy looked even more frightened. "Withy did nothing to him!"

"Of course you didn't," she said, in reassuring accents. She shot a quick puzzled look at Harry. Now, why would the house-elf think they might suspect him of wrongdoing?

"That other man made me put him down in the dungeon," Withy squeaked. "I didn't want to -- I know the Master had been friends with him long ago -- but he threatened Withy, he did."

This jumble of pronouns did little to relieve Hermione's anxiety. "What other man?"

"The one who came to see the Mistress from time to time. She didn't think I knew, but Withy sees everything."

Narcissa's peccadilloes were of very little interest to Hermione. "But the black-haired man is down in the cellar? Can you take us there?"

"He -- he said not to go near him -- "

Harry spoke for the first time. "Withy, I'm Harry Potter -- "

"Master Potter! Who saved the family name?"

His eyes glinted with a sudden grim humor. "The same. Now, don't you think the person who put in a good word for your Master and Mistress has only your best interests at heart?"

Withy blinked. "Of course, Master Potter. This way, then."

And he led them down the steps to the ground floor, and then through the great entry hall into an equally cavernous chamber that must be the dining room. On past there to the kitchens, and finally down a dark, narrow stair. Hermione's pulse began to beat in a nervous little staccato as she descended the steps. The place smelled damp and cold, and all too familiar. Once upon a time, she had been held prisoner here as well.

The last cell on the left had its door closed.

"Alohomora!" Hermione cried, and the padlock that held it shut opened and fell to the ground.

Inside, in a crumpled mass of black fabric, Severus lay on the narrow wooden bench. A streak of dark blood trailed across his face.

She let out a cry and ran to him, sinking to her knees on the dusty stone floor. At her touch he groaned slightly.

Alive, thank God, even if he was injured.

"Severus, can you hear me?"

Another moan, this one in slightly affirmative accents. His hand reached out to touch hers, and he gripped her fingers with a touch that felt reassuringly strong.

"Careful," he said, and attempted to sit up.

"Don't," Hermione said. "Let me help you."

"No time." He pushed himself upright and looked past her to stare on Harry with unbelieving eyes. Then he blinked. "He could come back."

"He who?" Harry demanded.

"I believe he was referring to me," said a mild voice from the corridor beyond.

Hermione felt her own eyes widen. It couldn't be. It wasn't possible.

Miles Cornish, her supervisor, stood outside, watching them with a coldly amused glance, a businesslike black wand clenched in his hand.