Ascent

Chapter Thirteen

Hermione woke to a cool, wet cloth being pressed to her fevered forehead. She shivered violently and clung to the blanket. She thought she saw Remus through her eyelids, but when she opened her eyes there was Wormtail, his pale, nervous face showing nervous concern. It was like time had not passed at all, and she was the girl with the collar and the pillow between them.

She jerked away reflexively, her head throbbing painfully in protest. Wormtail held out a hand to cradle her head as it settled back onto the pillow. She wanted to flinch again, but her body just wanted to rest and quiver with cold sweat.

"I'm sorry, I know you don't... I'm just here while... she asked me to help. The D-dark Lord told her to ask me," Wormtail tried to explain. His voice was muffled, like he was speaking through wool. The candlelight hurt her eyes, but she looked around the room toward where Wormtail was staring, beckoning desperately. Katherine stepped into her field of vision. Hermione felt her shoulders relax, felt herself melt into the floor as Katherine took the cloth from Wormtail and knelt beside him.

"Is he...?" Hermione croaked. Merlin, when had been the last time she was this sick?

"The Dark Lord is still adjusting, just like you," Katherine murmured, pulling Hermione's hair from her neck and pressing the cloth there. "You should be well enough in a day or two to tend to him. These sympathy sicknesses always fade eventually." She sat back on her heels. "Thank you, Wormtail. Your efforts are appreciated. You can return to your lord now."

She waited for Wormtail to shut the bathroom door behind him before she leaned over to stroke Hermione's hair gently. "This was the first time you've ever had a reaction to your client's pain, isn't it?"

Hermione nodded. "Eve, my first client, a little blind girl... I sometimes had moments of disorientation. But... never sick."

"You're inexperienced," Katherine said. "But you learn quickly, don't you, Hermione?" She dipped the cloth in a bowl of water and cooled Hermione's forehead again. "Unfortunately, you have to suffer through this the long way, since the reaction is empathetic in nature. You'll grow accustomed to it and be able to control yourself in your fever."

"My neck hurts," Hermione whispered.

"Your shivering must have kept your neck tense for too long," Katherine said. "Try and stay still."

Hermione forced herself to relax - she saw the fire in the hearth, the tidiness of her work station, the smart leather of her books, and her body went limp.

"Very good," Katherine said.

Black clouds narrowed her vision to the fireplace. She felt like she was half in a dream, like time had no meaning, and all she wanted to do was sleep.

"You've done well," Katherine said quietly. "You did the right thing for him. You were the right choice for the Dark Lord, Medicus."

But Hermione did not have any concept of ethics as cool water trickled down her forehead and into her hair, as she settled into something halfway into unconsciousness before finally falling into an unsatisfying sleep.

***

Voldemort sat in one of the armchairs, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He had a dull headache, but it did not seem like his own - Voldemort felt a twinge of sadistic pleasure when he thought that Hermione must be feeling at least half as bad as he did.

As Voldemort shivered in his chair, his mind kept going back to Hermione forcing him to take the last two vials of potion, her hand on the back of his, keeping him steady in the midst of an almost immediate magical unraveling. The way she helped him lay down and covered him in his comforter. The way she even addressed Nagini's concern. The way she stumbled from the room - and yet she left a part of herself behind, almost as though when she left his magical body, she literally shed a thin layer of herself so that her body overlapped with his away - and maybe that was what made her so sick. He wanted to sweat her out through his pores. If he could, he would vomit her into the fire. But the presence was fading with time, and all he could do was wait for this alien form shifting uneasily inside of him to leave.

There was a knock at the door, and Voldemort pulled the blanket tighter around himself. "I told you, Wormtail, I do not need or wish for your assistance."

If Wormtail never had to take care of him again, Voldemort might actually consider dying happily. While Voldemort accepted Wormtail's cowardly loyalty, the man needed no more fodder for believing his master to be weak - Wormtail was more than capable in the few things that he did well, and Voldemort would hate to kill him just because he tended to him one too many times and believed that he could only benefit from his lord's suffering. Then again, Wormtail had always possessed a healthy fear of Voldemort even in his most weakened state.

But that did not change the fact that Wormtail was useful and tolerable at best, and Voldemort no longer depended on him, having vowed never to need him as much as he had in that pathetic body before the mistake in the graveyard upon finally acquiring his old body again.

"I'm not Wormtail."

Now there was a voice that Voldemort had not heard in a considerable amount of time. "Come in."

The door opened, and Carmen floated in. His robes were ripped, showing a cut on his shoulder, but it was not deep, and one more scar on his body would not make a difference.

"You've never called a sick day before, my lord," Carmen said, looking up cautiously. "Especially not when you've ordered an attack. Not everyone notices, but how could I not?"

"I've said so many times, Carmen, you are too perceptive for your own good, and you don't know how to control your tongue," Voldemort said evenly. But he was not angry. "Your lack of tact in the face of great power will get you killed one day."

"Hopefully not by you," Carmen said. "I would hate to see our friendship end on such bad terms just because I have a mark on my arm."

"That mark on your arm was a choice," Voldemort replied. "With it comes certain changes."

"I avoided the Mark for so long because I enjoyed my freedom in the support I had for you - there was little choice when I was nearly murdered in my own home because of my quiet loyalties," Carmen said. "You said upon my acceptance of the Dark Mark that nothing would change, only a formality. You lied spectacularly to a man I was confident you never lied to."

"Naïveté from you?" Voldemort asked. "One would think that your age would bring wisdom."

"If what you want from me is another subservient arsehole without a brain, I can be that," Carmen said. "But I guarantee that my admiration for you, and perhaps even my loyalty, will wither."

Voldemort let the blanket fall to the sides as he stood, braving the cold. "That is a dangerous statement to make, Carmen. You know that."

Carmen lifted his carpet so that he was eye to eye with Voldemort - he would not lower himself for such a critical matter. "I am old, Lord Voldemort, and unlike you, I am not afraid to die, no matter how I love my life. War has been my life, and although my loyalties lean toward its continuation, it would be a mercy to see it end."

Voldemort took his wand from his robes and raised it as though it were a conductor's baton, just a hair's breadth from Carmen's cheek. Carmen had no wrinkles - his scarring was so extensive that his age was almost indeterminable - and his eyes were still strong.

"Is a solid voice, an unhesitant opinion, so threatening to you?" Carmen asked.

"It can be," Voldemort said. "Not yours specifically. But your Mark is not just a sign that you are against Dumbledore. It means that you are my servant. It is part of your contract."

"Is holding my tongue and avoiding you what you want?" Carmen asked. "I do not fool myself into believing that I am indispensable, but if you want to look at it strategically, perhaps you need at least one person in your ranks who can speak to you plainly. With subservience comes dishonesty, Lord Voldemort."

"Hermione is enough on that front," Voldemort replied.

Carmen's hard-planed face softened as he smiled. "So the lady's found her claws. I trust she was the one who had you confined to your room." Voldemort curled his lip, and Carmen yielded temporarily to Voldemort's sensitivity regarding his Medicus. Then Carmen's eyes narrowed. "You don't look well. I thought that the sick day was simply a reason for you to spend time with your Medicus for what ails you. But you look..."

"Hermione has hardly found her claws," Voldemort said, lowering his wand. He was not even sure if he had planned on using it anyway. "If I were to let her loose among my Dark Arts books again, she would fall prey to them almost instantly. Her mind, however, is all I need, not her emotional maturity."

"Because you, Voldemort, are the master of emotional maturity," Carmen said.

Voldemort raised an eyebrow. "I never said I was."

"Shouldn't she be here if you're sick?" Carmen asked. "For you, you look awful."

"You're pushing limits."

"Intentionally."

"Fine," Voldemort said. He settled into his chair again, and Carmen's carpet settled into the chair opposite. "She's also sick. That werewolf's Medicus, she's taking care of Hermione."

"Is it contagious?" Carmen asked, looking at himself pointedly.

Voldemort laughed, but it turned into a cough, straining from the shivers. "It's not an illness. One might call it a... weakness."

Carmen was quiet. "You would not have told that to any of your other Death Eaters."

Voldemort did not reply.

"Where did this... weakness come from?" Carmen asked. "It is Potter - has he found a way to come through the link between you?"

Voldemort snorted. "That boy? I haven't felt him in years since I made the connection subtler. No," Voldemort murmured. "Hermione did this to me."

Carmen's head jerked up in surprise. "I thought she couldn't. I thought she couldn't hurt you."

"Even a needle needs to pierce the flesh before the medicine can reach the blood," Voldemort said quietly. "An antidote can be painful. No one else could have done what she did. Not even me."

"A weakness..."

"I can do things she cannot do," Voldemort said. "She is not the weakness. My own ineptitude at healing myself of the more arcane transfigurations might be considered my weakness, although it is not applicable for the present."

"So what she did," Carmen said slowly, "was meant to heal you. This is a side effect?"

"You might say that."

"She is sick as well because you are in pain," Carmen said, working through the riddle Voldemort gave him, "in spite of this weakness being beneficial." He was not going to press Voldemort for what his weakness was - the confidence itself was remarkable. Like their conversations used to be, perfectly neutral.

Voldemort nodded. He felt the thin husk of Hermione inside of him finally writhe and disperse so that it was just her mind hovering in his. He had not anticipated how much colder the loss of her made him, and he pulled his blanket unconsciously around him again. He felt his head begin to ache more sharply, and he knew Hermione was awake.

"Tell me about the attack on Scarborough," Voldemort said. "Give me something to warm me on these cold nights."

"The woman in the other room could probably do that if you persuaded her well enough," Carmen said.

"I was wondering when you would return to that insanity once I gave you permission to speak relatively freely," Voldemort said.

"The galleries are burning, the castles walls have fallen. The dementors were given free reign of the South Bay, the werewolves and Black Paws were given the North Bay after night fall. It all occurred under the Muggle radar, and the media only found it when all that was left was the aftermath. I think they may have found one dying werewolf, but if it was left behind, its wound must have been fatal."

"Any notable casualties on our side?" Voldemort asked.

"None," Carmen replied. "You've either taught them well or put the fear of the devil into your followers - I've never seen them so cooperative or well-trained. How ironic that it happens when your ranks swell into a population that should have dissolved into chaos."

"Word of mouth," Voldemort said. "The more I become a man they never see, the longer I stay alive in spite of the Ministry's and the Order's efforts, the more myths are made about my abilities. Even with Hermione here, which made the media and wizarding world wonder whether I was as strong as I initially seemed, my followers are determined to prove them wrong, as am I."

"If you want to continue to convince your followers, you may consider making an appearance," Carmen said. "Your absence has been causing gossip - in such close quarters, things never stay quiet. You know this."

"Firsthand," Voldemort said. He sighed and pushed away the blanket again, trying to adjust himself to the cold. His skin seemed to shrink away from the air, but the fire made it a little more tolerable at last. The stiffness began to slither down his arms and legs. "I suppose that I can manage a dinner with the Death Eaters. The worst of the side effects passed this morning. Which is probably why Hermione is awake and waiting just outside the door wondering when she should interrupt."

"I'm not even going to ask," Carmen muttered as Hermione opened the door and raised an eyebrow at Voldemort.

"You look more awake than I'm feeling," Hermione said as she entered the chamber, closing the door behind her. "So I trust you're well enough for another evaluation." She braced her hand on the wall for a moment before making her way across the room to the fireplace. Carmen graciously lifted his carpet and took his place floating between their two chairs so that Hermione could sit down.

"Have you tried anything for the headache?" Voldemort asked.

"It's a side effect of your pain, so yes, I've tried, no, it didn't work. I could use a drink, though." Hermione looked to Carmen. He nodded and flew over to the liquor cupboard. "No, just water, please." She leaned her head back against the fabric of the armchair and closed her eyes. "You take magic for granted," she muttered, half to herself..

Carmen poured her water in a wine glass and stole a look at the both of them. They were probably the most comfortable together that he had ever seen, and the only thing Carmen could think was different than any other time was that they were both suffering each other's pain. He wondered about the benefits of routinely hitting Voldemort with a blunt object, then dismissed it as a suicide mission. "Romantic notions" would be his epitaph. Carmen floated back over and handed Hermione her water. She offered him a strained smile and pressed the thin glass against her forehead before taking a drink.

"My fever broke some time around when yours did," Hermione said. "Same with the stiffness. Are you feeling anything else differently - do you see things from an odd angle, do you feel lighter?"

"You were going to do an evaluation," Voldemort said, a tightness around his jaw.

"I am, but it would help if you gave me a brief description of how you're feeling," Hermione said. She looked pointedly at Voldemort. "It would make the evaluation easier."

"I'm still a little stiff, and I'm cold," Voldemort said, his eyes focused on the fire. "I have your headache, of course."

"Aren't we a pair?" Hermione muttered.

"Indeed," Carmen whispered almost under his breath. Voldemort heard him and sent a short Asphyxiation Curse his way. Carmen could not repress a smile.

"Here," Carmen said, back to his usual charming self. He extended his hand, palm up.Hermione looked tentatively at Voldemort before placing her hand in Carmen's. "You know the trick with most pain?" he said. "It's giving it a distraction."

His fingers pressed strongly against the palm of her hand in just the right places to make her wince.

"Your body is connected in ways you wouldn't imagine," Carmen muttered, massaging her hand just too hard.

"I'm a Medicus, remember," Hermione said with a small smile.

"You can feel things in your feet that originate in your stomach, if you're attuned to your body. That's why an orgasm curls your toes," Carmen said.

"Carmen, stop trying to seduce my Medicus," Voldemort said. "You don't have toes to curl."

Carmen's eyes were flickering and playful as they caught Hermione's. "Doesn't mean that my knees don't want to curl."

"Carmen..."

"Ow." She clenched her teeth as Carmen pressed harder and more forcefully around her hand. It wasn't until Carmen floated back into his position equally between them that Hermione realized that her headache was fading.

"Have you ever felt your heart in your hand?" Carmen asked. "Or the places around your joints where you are particularly sensitive, and the nerves sing all over your limb? All you do is redirect the pain, take control of it, and it disappears."

Voldemort ran a hand over his forehead. His hand did nothing to warm his skin, and that was disquieting. But Hermione's headache had already dissipated under his skin.

"Where did you learn that?" Voldemort asked.

Carmen grinned. "Sarah taught me. The Harem has its own aches and pains."

Hermione flexed her fingers. "I know of the theory, but I've never had to implement it before - my reactions were never so violent, and none of my clients needed alternative means of relief." She lifted her head to meet his eyes again. "Thank you. I'm afraid you'll have to leave during the evaluation, but thank you."

"My pleasure, Lady," Carmen said, bowing. "What should I tell the Death Eaters, my lord, about when you will meet them?"

Voldemort brought the blanket closer and stared into the fire. Hermione noticed that he kept avoiding her gaze. But when she looked closer, she discovered that he was not staring into the fire, but through the fire. Into the library. The thought made her shiver, and she almost thought she heard the whisper of the books beyond the hearth.

"They have been regrouping from Scarborough," Voldemort said. "I suppose a feast a week from yesterday would not go amiss. You will attend, of course, Hermione."

Her stomach twisted, but her anxiety by no means equaled that of when she first arrived. The Death Eaters and Voldemort's other followers, particularly the younger Death Eaters, had finally become more comfortable with her presence, even if some of them were not pleased. And with Bellatrix and Rodolphus's support alone, she imagined that eating with the Death Eaters again might be less strained than the last time. But she still had to tread carefully.

"Yes, I'll go," Hermione replied.

"That was not a request," Voldemort said.

"I know," Hermione said. "But you could not force me to go to a dinner I did not or could not attend due to applying myself to your needs or mine."

Carmen bit his tongue but could not quite catch the snort of laughter that came through his nose.

"Carmen, I believe you have somewhere to be," Voldemort said, the hollows above his lower jaw tightening.

"Yes, my lord." He floated his way out of the room with one last wink in Hermione's direction.

"If I were you, Hermione," Voldemort said, his voice too controlled, "I would not challenge my authority in front of a Death Eater, even such a one as Carmen."

Hermione crossed her legs. "You don't have supremacy over me, Voldemort. If your Death Eaters believed that you did, they would treat me that way. And Carmen is insubordinate enough for the both of us."

"We have an understanding," Voldemort said, staring at the door. "But I lose my temper with him when he crosses a line and forgets that he is mine now."

"Then I recommend you rein in your temper around me," Hermione replied, her voice colder than she wanted it to be. His breath hissed sharply through his teeth.

"There may be a day when you require more of me than I am willing or able to give," Voldemort said, just as coldly. "I will not stand by and let you flaunt what control you have over me."

"Then why should I?" Hermione asked.

"Because your position is not so precarious," Voldemort said, pushing the blanket away and walking nearer to the fire. Hermione could feel the aches in his muscles, but he moved as smoothly and elegantly as he always had. "I have had to struggle to maintain my followers loyalty for me with you by my side. My influence was tenuous enough when they heard that I needed a Medicus, even more so when they found out that the Medicus was you. And the more you fight my control, the more my less loyal followers wonder whether they can do the same. You threaten my political position over my own followers, and this is perhaps only slightly less dangerous for you as a Medicus."

"I won't be what I was to you," Hermione said. She was half-shouting, and she vaguely realized that she had stood up in anger. She closed her eyes for a second, felt the tension in her shoulders and spine trickle down. "I won't be that again because I'm not. I'm not your slave anymore, Voldemort. I can be careful around them, but I won't take orders. I'm your servant, but you're mine, too. And no matter how afraid you are of me, that isn't going to change. You're just going to have to open your mind to me and trust that I'll help you as well as I can, trust that I can hold my own against any Death Eater that attacks me or presumes that you are weak because of me. Whether I want to be here or not no longer has any bearing on things - we're too interconnected now. You feel that much at least. Your welfare is mine. Those followers of yours who are so narrow-minded that they believe that I am your weakness... they will know better. But I will not act a part that I'm not, not when it means going back to a past I left behind long ago, and you will not mold me into someone less than competent for you."

Voldemort felt the flames on his skin under his robes, but they barely pushed through the chill. He reached out and touched Hermione's hair, like he had when she was a pet. "If Severus could see you now," he murmured. "You think you're beyond what I have done to you?"

She ducked her head just enough for his hand to fall from her hair. "I'll never be beyond it," Hermione said. "It never leaves my head. It colors every inch of my life. But I can work through it, Voldemort. Being here is... tense." She touched her temple.

"If you've worked through it so well, why do you still flinch?" Voldemort asked. One finger on her forehead, just like when he had burned Harry through their own connection upon his rebirth. She took a half-step back.

"I'm still Hermione," Hermione said. "But part of Hermione is you."

She looked like she did not quite know what she meant, but Voldemort understood.

"Then you will show my Death Eaters that you are not a Medicus to be trifled with?" Voldemort said. At the thought, he was almost amused.

"If it comes to that," Hermione said. "I don't think it will."

"You have my completely nonpartisan permission to challenge whoever decides to rebel against me or attack you," Voldemort said. He thought that the time would come sooner than later - he knew his Death Eaters and his other followers far better than Hermione knew.

"Good to have your completely nonpartisan permission," Hermione said, with a half smile. "Not that I needed... oh. I suppose I did."

Voldemort nodded. "Your own precarious position. You're the Medicus of a political figure."

"And politics are too ingrained in my interaction with you," Hermione muttered. She walked away from the fireplace, which was warmer than was comfortable. She did not know how Voldemort could stand it - it was not usually stoked so high. "I forget when my world is almost exclusive to these four rooms."

She was headed to the bed, and Voldemort knew it was time for the evaluation of his condition now that the immortality spells had been removed. He should have been angry, tense. Even terrified might have been an acceptable emotion after what had happened last time, when she had invaded his mind and he felt too vulnerable, too open, too little his own. But all he could feel was cold.