Ascent

Author's Notes: Things are winding down now, and the end is nigh. I hope to have this finished by the end of March. Thanks to my ever patient beta, Bean.

Chapter 21

Blasts hit on every side, a barrage of explosions against the rapidly dissolving defenses. The opposition knew what to expect from her. The time between this battle and the last gave them ample opportunity to figure out how to counteract the benefit Voldemort gained from her more unique defensive spells and barriers. The curses flooded their vision with fire and heated under the charmed dome around them. The hair at her temples that was not plastered to her cheeks with sweat frizzed in a corona around her face. She fought the urge to duck and managed to convince herself that the fire was not getting through. As soon as the hair on her arms started sizzling, she sent a blast of cool air out and around them.

Voldemort seemed unfazed by the heat - the Warming Charm she had cast before the battle had worn off quite a bit of time ago, and he must have welcomed it. He took the Cooling Charm she used to counter the heat and strengthened it, exploding it out from them at the Aurors and veteran Order members that surrounded them. Dumbledore and Harry stayed behind this time, waiting for their more seasoned soldiers to clear the way for them more effectively. During the last battle they had brought their most valuable pieces in too quickly and almost sacrificed them too soon. They did not make that mistake again, and this time they managed to plow a path all the way back to the Death Eaters.

Voldemort sent the Death Eaters away to rally and circle around the soldiers attacking him, communicating silently through a touch to Hermione's Dark Mark. He had requested her to strip half the sleeve off for easier access that morning. She supposed the fact that it displayed the Dark Mark for the other side to see also served its own purpose, but at this time, Voldemort wasn't concerned about grandstanding.

Right now, his teeth were clenched and bared as he flung curse after curse from his arsenal, spitting them out as fast as he could point his wand until it seemed as though a litany of hisses slithered off his tongue. He did not seem angry, but intensely focused. There was none of the nonchalance of the last battle, when he had been more confident in the integrity of the defenses.

"Hermione," he murmured as many of the Aurors staggered back, some fallen and some healing themselves and a few still casting against the defense spells even as Hermione tried to fortify hers. "Have you ever maintained defense spells through Apparition?"

She shook her head, unable to speak during her own casting.

"You need to focus as hard on the spells as you would an Apparition location," he said. He clenched his fist around his wand. "Do not let anything distract you from it, disorienting though it may be. Brace yourself."

He hooked his free arm through hers and spun them around so that they were gone in a swirl, the defense barrier collapsing with a pop. She was immediately disoriented both by their circular motion - like a broken carousel - and the squeezing, dark nowhere of Apparition. In a flash, they were flying above the melee of witches and wizards. She tightened her grip on Voldemort's arm and tested whether the defense spells made it through. The foundation was mostly sound, and she repaired any frays as she found them. She never liked flying, so she devoted her attention exclusively to maintaining the defense spells and holding on through the trail of odorless smoke they left in their wake. Voldemort shouted his spells down upon the Aurors that had been attacking him before. His wide eyes glittered from the forked lighting that erupted from the end of his wand.

Hermione could hear herself breathing in shallow gasps as they swept around once again into the darkness. They reappeared in cold fog, and Voldemort sent out the lightning again, this time indiscriminately through the opaque cloud. Now that Voldemort had taken to the air, the members of Dumbledore's Army and Voldemort's followers who could fly joined them. Hermione's stomach sank down to her knees - it meant that Apparition would be more dangerous, because he would not know where an area would be vacant.

The fog dissipated mere seconds after Voldemort's cast his lightning out, and Hermione saw people falling from the air, a few of them in black cloaks as well. She thought she saw Severus and hoped that it was another man with longer black hair who hit the ground face down. The grass was stained again - perhaps the killing fields had developed a taste for their battles now, despite the scorch marks scarring the earth.

"Hold on," Voldemort hissed in her ear, and that was the only warning she had before they were lost in a whirlwind of smoke and Apparition. Her ears popped every time they disappeared and reappeared, and the contents of her stomach roiled, but there was no time for her to do anything but maintain the spells and deflect away anything that might threaten it. Each second they reappeared, Voldemort cast a Killing Curse and Disapparated with her again.

There was no rhyme or reason to where he would reappear, so there was no way for the other side to know who to protect. Voldemort ignored the back of Dumbledore's ranks where Harry and Dumbledore must still be waiting. If Voldemort's aim was to confuse his enemy, it was working. Many of those who could not fly had summoned their brooms, and now the air above looked like a vicious Quidditch match of black robes against accents of gold and crimson. While his second lightning spell shocked the fliers indiscriminately, his Killing Curses were deadly accurate in spite of the split seconds he had to cast them.

It was a surprise when their feet hit the ground, and Hermione stumbled, with only Voldemort keeping her from falling all the way down. As he helped pull her up, she saw a streak of red heading straight toward them. Indistinguishable as it was to the untrained eye, she would recognize it anywhere. She may not have known a lot about Quidditch, but she recognized a Seeker's dive like she had been cheering for Gryffindor only yesterday. Harry had lost none of his skill in the long time between graduation and these battles.

Instinctively reacting, Hermione stabbed her wand at the sky and cast a simple wall spell, a bulky and short-lived charm that didn't shield against other spells and was usually considered unwieldy for battle. For the average person walking or running into it was akin to sprinting through Platform 9 and ¾ when it closed. One might be left dazed or bruised - worst-case scenarios involved a broken nose or a concussion. But even Hermione winced, heart skipping a beat, when Harry's Firebolt splintered nearly to toothpicks from the impact as Harry slammed into it. She could swear she heard bones break, each snap louder than the last.

Before Voldemort could take advantage of her impromptu defensive casting, Hermione swept her wand up in an arc so that Harry flew backward. It was within the letter of the Medicus law to get him far away from Voldemort, but Hermione knew she tred a thin line by saving him. There was a possibility - low, since it would not fit the prophecy, but a possibility nonetheless - that the impact had killed him or irreparably damaged his brain. But if not, she was certainly not going to be the author of Harry's destruction by making it easy for Voldemort to kill him while Harry was unconscious, his body broken.

She prayed he was okay, that someone caught him before he hit the ground. Near where he fell, she saw the blur of Apparation and hoped that someone had taken him away. She had no illusions - if he lived, he would be furious, but he would not blame her. She remembered his words in the last battle. He told her he would not try to kill her, which would save him from Medicus inference, but he was willing to attack her accidentally. Hermione only hoped Harry understood she extended him the same courtesy.

Voldemort steadied her, then grabbed her by the nape of the neck hard, his jaw twitching from restrained rage. Despite his fury - and with the sounds of battle around them and the defense shields flashing with each spell that hit them - her roiling stomach stilled and heated. Her lips parted in a startled, silent gasp.

Since she and Voldemort agreed to tend to his instinctual needs more often instead of waiting until they became unbearable, they had eliminated his distractions every evening up to the battle, and once again before the battle in case it interfered with his focus. Yet still, as he held her, she felt what he felt from that contact, the rage mingling with the rise of his unwanted desire, exactly the distraction he hoped to avoid. His mouth opened slightly as he tried to catch his breath, and she felt it cold on her cheek. She did not know how a battlefield could suddenly go quiet, but it did, for a few seconds.

He did not push her away or reel back, nothing to show he was ashamed - to do so would call more attention to the invisible intensity between them, and that would cause him far more harm. Voldemort simply released her neck, unable to conceal the shiver that made his heavy robes tremble. They decided to mutually ignore the moment - her defenses would not last long enough if she continued to ignore them - and they turned to fight back to back.

An Auror with a missing eye but no magical replacement slammed the defense shield with spells that impacted like cannon blasts. Hermione ducked and cast a Reflector Charm, which absorbed the spell and split it in two, one still heading for them - the shield could handle it - and the other returning to its caster. Hermione winced and looked away. There were new bits missing from him now. Another Auror fisted his robes and Disapparated with him, but left his pieces behind.

Voldemort linked his arm with hers again, which was the only warning she had to keep the defenses up while they Apparated. But after they reappeared, something large slammed into them from the side. Hermione felt as though they had been tackled by Hagrid. They tumbled out of the sky between the broomsticks and the lightning. Her defenses were still up, and Hermione frantically did a quick assessment.

As she and Voldemort rolled round and round in the air, Hermione caught a glimpse of a steely-eyed Dumbledore. He had not bothered with trying to get a spell through. Instead, he had put up defense spells as comprehensive as hers and struck her shields with his. Their shields were now interlocked like thick bubbles in the sky. The shock had startled Voldemort enough that his self-levitation failed, and he struggled to regain his sense of which way was up so that he could right them.

And still Dumbledore pushed down on them as Hermione tried to push back and slow their descent. The spells stringed themselves together like a web, latching their two shields together. Voldemort started to slow them down and roll them upright, but then Hermione had to divert her defensive attention to making sure they didn't break their bones when they hit the ground in less than two seconds.

She swished her wand quickly at the ground and cast "Culcitatum" just in time. She didn't have enough time to keep them afloat or engage any myriad possible charm to keep them from hitting the ground. The first thing that came to her head was a Pillow Charm, which was still effective, if a little undignified. They tumbled over the ground that now emulated fluffy, goose-down pillows.

Hermione gritted her teeth. The ground felt like pillows, but she and Voldemort felt like a mass of elbows and knees, poking at the other. Voldemort grunted as her knee hit his stomach, and he doubled over.

They finally came to a stop around the younger Death Eaters battling their peers. It was interesting to Hermione how, after about twenty or thirty minutes of a battle, the opposition always seemed to find the opponents who were as much personal as political. These Order members were all familiar, faces Hermione recognized from her almost seven years at Hogwarts, while the original Death Eaters and Black Dogs fought with seasoned Aurors and Order members. There was some overlap, of course, and there were other factions fighting for each side, but Hermione still noticed an almost unconscious need for each side to take offense with the ones they knew.

A spell Neville cast covered her defense shield with blue light before she could scurry to her feet, but Voldemort grabbed her wrist and she took his to pull him to his feet. He whirled around, an action more impressive - if less beautiful - in his heavier robes than his lighter ones. After sending a curse in Neville's direction, Voldemort cast the Body-Bind Curse behind him so that he could see Dumbledore before he killed him.

But Dumbledore's shields were as unshakeable as hers, although the fall had shaken him as much as Voldemort and Hermione. The Body-Bind Curse bounced harmlessly off. His glasses were askew, and he took a little longer than Voldemort to get back to his feet.

Just as the younger Order members noticed Voldemort and Hermione, the younger Death Eaters also noticed Dumbledore. They interspersed curses at their old peers with flashes of even more dangerous light at their opponents' generals. Most of the spells didn't even make a dent in the respective shields, and so Voldemort left Hermione to maintain the defenses while he turned his focus exclusively to Dumbledore, who had no such luxury. They trained their wands on each other, flinging nonverbal spells at each other as fast as they could think and counter. These spells were more advanced, more powerful than most of the fairly garden-variety hexes and curses that the younger Order members flung at them.

There were screams as snakes formed from the dry grass and writhed over each other, nipping at the heels of the nearest unfortunate souls. They lashed at Dumbledore's shields, but as spells themselves, they could not penetrate it. They were not intended for Dumbledore, though, not directly; they were simply another distraction, to appeal to his compassion. Most of Voldemort's followers conjured their brooms or Apparated away from the mass of serpents.

That was another advantage in Voldemort's favor in the middle of a large-scale battle, Hermione thought. He had nothing to regret, no followers for which he would mourn, no heart to pierce. However cold a general Dumbledore tried to be, he would try to ensure as many survived as possible. He always got too attached.

Hermione did not think Dumbledore's capacity to love was a weakness any more than Harry's was - on the contrary, she believed they were great strengths, aspects of the two of them that made them more whole than Lord Voldemort. It meant they had more to fight for, more reward when they won, but it also meant that they had more to lose. Voldemort only needed to preserve his life and power to be satisfied. It was just her luck that she was inextricably linked to those things now.

Dumbledore retaliated, summoning an earthquake, which got to them from under their shields. Witches and wizards around them collapsed as the quake radiated outward, and Hermione tripped and tumbled against Voldemort before hitting the ground. Her wand tumbled out of her hand, cutting off the magic through its conduit.

The defense shield around them winked out of existence.

Hermione reached for her wand and grabbed it, casting the defenses again. The residue of the spell still lingered in the air around them, quickly reforming, but those few seconds were enough.

A simple Jelly-Legs hit Voldemort from behind. His legs buckled when they refused to hold his weight. Then Dumbledore sent a brilliant white spell at him, hitting him in the chest and sending his robes and skin up in cold flames.

Then the defenses were back, and Hermione doused the white flames with a less lethal hybrid of an Air-Sucker Hex and a Smothering Curse. For a few terrifying moments, Voldemort tried to inhale and exhale, but he could do neither, not with all the air sucked from his lungs and no air around him. But the spells deprived the cold fire of oxygen and disappeared, leaving Voldemort's skin patched with frostbite and his robes worse for wear, but those were things that could be fixed.

Voldemort looked back, livid but not at her. His eyes narrowed at some point near her right ear.

"You're bleeding," he said.

Hermione brought her free hand up to her forehead. She hadn't felt a thing, in the adrenaline of the whole attack, but now the stinging started. She experienced momentary dizziness, but the cut didn't feel deep.

"It's nothing," Hermione said. "Can you stand?"

"Can you?" he asked, heedless of the din and flashes of the battle around them. He trusted her defenses as long as her wand stayed in her hand.

She levitated both of them to their feet. With the Jelly-Legs Jinx worn off, Voldemort spun back around and called down the lightning on Albus Dumbledore. Deafening thunder rolled and echoed over the hills, and Hermione had to look away from the blinding light.

Voldemort hooked his arm in hers again, his silent signal. She was still a little hazy, but she could still maintain the defenses as they Disapparated. They reappeared behind Dumbledore. Voldemort did not bother with an earthquake - he simply cracked open the ground. Dirt and grass tumbled down into the gap like a sinkhole. Dumbledore's defenses flickered as he lost his footing and began to slip down into the darkness. Voldemort raised his wand and called two Dementors from their position waiting in the thunderclouds.

The coldness of the Dementors wrapped around her, and it seemed as though her senses were heightened instead of dulled. In the distance, she saw flashes of red hair. She saw long hair spread over grass.

She saw the werewolf that Voldemort had spoken to before, followed by his Medicus, running among other werewolves. They were not transformed, of course, but she was still able to tell, because they clashed with another set of werewolves even more ragged and worn than Voldemort's. She watched as dark cloaks mingled with darker cloaks. Some of them - the ones who retained part of their wolf nature as men and women - discarded the use of their wands in favor of their own teeth. One of them ripped the throat out of a man with sandy hair and threadbare robes. Hermione could not see his face; his back was turned, and he fell forward. His face hit the ground, and she could not help but think she just watched one of her only friends die at the mercy of his own curse.

Dumbledore was too busy trying not to sink into the earth to cast Expecto Patronum. As despair twisted his face to show his full age, his pale eyes cast their gaze to the skies beyond the Dementors. His wand, though, pointed down. A blast shook the crack wider, but Dumbledore shot into the sky. It was a simple explosion, all he could manage without foundation under his feet, and the shock wave pushed him out, spinning head over heels. Although his defenses faltered, he could then cast Expecto Patronum. The Dementors retreated, moving their feast back to the battle in the skies.

"Avada--" Voldemort began, raising himself above Dumbledore's crumpled form, but the curse was cut short as winds whipped around them. Because Dumbledore's spell merely manipulated the wind rather than create it, the spell passed through Hermione's defenses. The shields didn't even slow it down. She and Voldemort were buffeted and tossed back and forth and around and around, struck by debris as the twister pulled them up and tossed them into the melee. But Voldemort wasn't falling out of control this time, and he used the momentum to pass in a dark blur between his followers and his opponents, casting the Killing Curse again in bursts of green light. Dumbledore was a mere blue and red glow behind them, and Hermione knew that he would carry the deaths after every green light on his shoulders.

The lightheadedness from being blown about and hitting the ground and flying around became deeper, like someone stuffing cotton behind her eyes. Arms numb, it was no surprise when they began to slip from Voldemort's. He slowed in the air, hovered, and tightened his grip.

"Enervate." Voldemort's spell managed to make her open her eyes, but she felt herself fogging over again.

"Voldemort..." she murmured.

He made his decision swiftly, curling his deceptively strong arm around her waist and hoisting her against him. He touched the backs of his fingers against her Dark Mark, communicating through her that he needed to leave for his Medicus's safety. Apparation took longer this time to get from the battlefield to her bedroom. Her legs were losing feeling now, so he had to drag her to a chair before going to her cabinets in the part of her room that was her laboratory.

He knew exactly where she kept her Strengthening Solution, and if that did not work, there were a few vials of Brain Ache she had brewed that would address a concussion or similar issues.

Voldemort tilted Hermione's head back. She stared blearily at him, but at least she was still awake. The side of her face revealed more blood dried in the tangle of her hair. Voldemort held her chin and brought the vial to her lips. She rested her head against the chair as she swallowed.

The Strengthening Solution blossomed warmth in her stomach, and with it, she felt immediately energized in a way Enervate had not managed. She grabbed the vial and drank the rest of it on her own.

"You should take a swallow of this as well." Voldemort handed her the Brain Ache bottle. She was already ahead of him, reaching for a teaspoon. After she had swallowed her dose, she gripped the edge of the table, still dizzy. There was no sound in the room other than the scurrying of mice and lizards at their abrupt entrance.

"Do we need to go back?" Hermione asked.

"Give me your arm," Voldemort said. She sighed and walked around the table, extending it for him. He touched the Dark Mark until it felt almost too hot, as if the lines of black ink were actually places where his magic singed her skin. She heard his silent inquiry to his followers who were still fighting, and their reply back.

"No," he answered, releasing her. "Dumbledore has also left the battlefield, and the remainder of the battle is nothing but posturing."

"We won," Hermione murmured. Even though Voldemort had left first, it was because of her. He did not retreat to lick his own wounds but to take care of his Medicus, as he was contractually obligated to do.

Dumbledore, on the other hand, escaped the battlefield weakened, and with Harry Potter taken away and many key elements of the Order and the Aurors taken out, Voldemort's efforts in his third battle led to another victory. However, that victory was not as total as his first. There was no word on Harry dying, no doom in the eyes of the opposition, and so Hermione felt she could rightfully assume that Harry was still alive. And Voldemort had also suffered major losses that he hadn't before, even in the last two battles: the werewolf alpha with the Medicus and several Death Eaters that included Rabastan and Lisa. In addition, Bellatrix was badly injured.

"So there's time to fix this," Hermione said quietly, tugging on the ruins of his robes. The frostbitten patches of his skin made it appear as if he were a gravestone statue in the process of crumbling. While in the midst of the battle, Voldemort could not let himself concentrate on any pain. Now that he was alone with Hermione, he could feel the nerves dying and screaming all over him, and Hermione could feel it through him.

Pain was nothing new for him; he had exceptional talent for tolerating any sort of pain, after all his years torturing himself into what he thought was a superior being. He stared at the lines and patches of cold burn on his arms under the burnt sleeves, the raw flesh of his hands. The cold fire had not reached his palms, so it had not impeded his ability to hold his wand.

"It is nothing," Voldemort said. "A simple surface healing potion will heal it."

Hermione shook her head. "You don't need that kind of magic right now. And you shouldn't do any magic for the next week if possible."

"Hermione..." Voldemort began.

"I know," she interrupted with a little smile. "But I still have to say it."

She scratched at some of the blood near the place she hit her head. That was all it was now, just a healing wound. She would have some of the general healing potion later. A bump on the head wasn't bad enough to merit her attention now that a concussion was out of the picture. The mild stinging she felt over her body that mirrored Voldemort's burns told her that was her first priority.

"I remember reading about this spell; I can't remember the countercurse, but I know where to find it. I'll have to cast it," she said. "Come on."

Hermione headed into her bathroom and sensed more than heard Voldemort follow behind her.

"Don't think I forgot how you saved Harry Potter from me," Voldemort murmured. He was a few steps behind her, but he sounded as if he were at her ear, his accusation probing deep into her mind.

"I stopped him from attacking you," Hermione explained. "And in doing so, I endangered his life, so I had to save him. It is not my duty, Voldemort, to kill your enemies or neutralize them, only to keep them away."

"That is a weak excuse to hide your sentimentality," Voldemort said.

"It was a decision to avoid Medicus retaliation based on my mistake," Hermione replied. "There were less destructive ways I could have protected you from Harry without..." Hermione swallowed as the sound echoed in her head: bones breaking like dry twigs under a boot.

There were less destructive ways she could have protected Voldemort from Harry, but she had to think on her feet during battle, and she couldn't think too hard about the fact that almost killing Harry was automatic to her.

As she approached the mantel in Voldemort's quarters, she braced herself against the call of the spells in the books within. She had to do that every single time. She couldn't run from it anymore, had to even accept the way the Dark Arts surrounded her again. Her final obstacle was not embracing the Dark Arts the way she embraced her place as Voldemort's Medicus. The magical wall she had used to stop Harry was hardly Dark Magic, but she had known what it would do when she cast it, and with all the other signs that she was not the Hermione she'd thought she was going to be in her youth....

But then again, after she had been kidnapped from her life before, had she imagined that she would end up here in his rooms with Voldemort following behind her?

She threw the powder into the fire, took a deep breath as though she could stop the library's Dark Magic from getting inside her that way, and ducked in.

Voldemort knew the spell that Dumbledore had used against him, and all he had needed to do to remember the countercurse was find the book in his mind, and there the spell against the Phoenix Ice was, as fresh and clear as if he read it yesterday. (He could never accuse Dumbledore of failing to keep with a theme, but then Voldemort was partial to serpentine magic, so he could hardly throw stones.)

He could have told her, or he could have done the spell himself. But his Medicus wanted him to refrain from magic, and she looked so determined, steeled for his font of Dark knowledge as ever she was. It would be a shame to interrupt her. She seemed more comfortable amongst his books than defending him on the battlefield, though. Practically at home, and Voldemort believed even she knew that. She had to breathe eventually.

Voldemort crossed his arms over his chest, pulling the singed shreds of his robes over the exposed, burned skin. He watched her through the shelves, disheveled, single-minded, focused, and all because of him, for him. It pleased him to watch her, and it pleased him to feel how much she belonged here.

He did not join her in the back of his library, but he knew exactly where she was going, and so his gaze followed her movements while he stayed near the table where she worked. A stack of books on Transfiguration rested precariously over the edge, only because there was not enough room for them among the first-person accounts of magical experimentation and consequences, texts on alchemy and other quests for immortality, and books on defensive magic that she must have removed from their shelves when she decided to fight his battles at his side.

She came back with a different kind of book altogether, bound in black leather and hinged in tarnished silver. Hermione flipped through the pages, muttering to herself as she did so. Voldemort parted his lips and tasted her barely restrained eagerness and the heat rush of adrenaline. She tried so hard to hold herself back; he wished she understood the futility of denying how well she fit into the world she once privately swore to subvert. His world - with the sole exception of her blood, but that could be fixed, as Voldemort knew better than anyone - fit her like a glove. Hermione could not run from it too much longer.

Voldemort had many things in his life that made him proud; many of them had come tumbling down around him in the last two years. Hermione, on the other hand, he could put her on a pedestal as one of his best accomplishments. Some might think that Hermione was his biggest mistake. Narrow-minded fools, if they could not see her as he did.

It galled him, however, that he had to be weak enough for her to be his success. He looked down at her as she searched the book. As her eyes passed over the spells, the familiarity was unmistakable. She knew these spells and curses, and it drained all color from her face. But when she looked up at him, her eyes were clear and bright as stolen marbles.

"You'll need new robes," Hermione said, setting the book on the one empty place on the table, the place where she took her notes.

She lifted her wand and brought it to the top fastenings, ripping his robes from top to bottom and leaving his skin unscathed. Her wand hesitated only a little when she reached his waist. His trousers were burnt as well, revealing pieces of his patched flesh. She had never seen him naked in the light. She schooled her mind to stay professional, but it was a front even to herself.

Voldemort held himself still for her. He had already exposed everything - she had seen his worst vulnerabilities. His nudity did not even reach the same level to him as his weaknesses. A visage and form that inspired terror and disgust, it meant little to him except as a vessel. A vessel that now meant the world to him, for all that it had betrayed him.

The way it betrayed him now. It was strange how easily a man could grow accustomed to such a change, no matter how terrible. Still, that betrayal more than the exposure was what caused him shame.

Hermione bit her lip and closed her eyes for a few moments, then took a breath and set her wand in preparation for the countercurse.

"What I'd like to know is why Dumbledore knows this spell in the first place, if that's the book he found it in," Hermione murmured, with a touch of the old resentment.

"And you, to know the book of which you speak," Voldemort said. A smirk ghosted over his stony expression.

"You know why I read this book," Hermione said. "I can cure the burns, can't I?"

"Antidotes and poisons, is that it?" Voldemort said, tasting their old argument with amusement. "Surely that rings more hollow for you now."

Hermione gave him no answer, simply pressed the tip of her wand against the center of his chest. The whisper of her spell reached out in tendrils from his chest, filling him with warmth that was hard for him to find these winter days, no matter how many layers he wore. His white skin flushed a young, healthy pink for the seconds that it took the healing to take place. The painful patches smoothed out as new skin grew in its place. She touched one of the places where he began healing in order to feel the magic work under her fingers. His breathing became stertorous.

This time, instead of silence arising from the chaos of the battle, it was as though the almost silent hum of the books and the magic within them increased in volume so that Hermione could hear it. Whatever magic resided between these walls liked what was happening amongst it.

"I thought this was supposed to become less urgent," Voldemort said. He could not hide from Hermione, so he did not try. He had no dignity with her, and so he could not salvage it. He could only cling to the sure knowledge that she was as uncomfortable as he was. More, because this room made her moral conflicts resurface and reminded her of what he had done to her.

"You still have a couple days left in the month, and then it might need some time to taper off," Hermione replied a little breathlessly.

He swept his wand under her chin. He was not violent; he did not press.

"You shouldn't do any..." Hermione began.

"Just one more," Voldemort murmured.

He did not cut through the fabric like she had. He simply made the robes disappear. She would find them intact on her bed later. If he had to be weak in front of her, then he would put himself on a more even footing. That was what he told himself, and even he knew the lie, accustomed as he was to the art of artifice. His teeth clenched, but he gently took her wand and placed it with his on top of the black and silver spell book.

"How many times do I have to tell you not to use magic unless you have to?" Hermione asked softly. She stared determinedly at his face instead of the rest of him, in part to try to maintain her own dignity and spare his a little as well. But she could not stop herself from swaying toward him, just slightly, just enough.

Every time. Every time his body wanted her, she wanted him back, and it was somehow both his simultaneous victory and defeat.

He presented her with his empty hands. "I have discarded my wand. What mischief could I possibly get into now?"

"Oh, where do I begin?" Hermione said. She licked her lips and smiled.

Voldemort wrapped his hands over her shoulders and pushed her back with him, until her back hit the shelves. They were strong and solid, and it would take more than her and his weight against them to topple them over. Besides, the books on those shelves were quite happy with the witch and wizard so close to them. Hermione felt the magic seeping out of the leather binding in a hum over her Dark Mark and over the Medicus ink over her back, circling around her wrists like his fingers. But they could not hold her there, nor did they want to. They just wanted to encourage her.

Hermione's heart began to race, and she arched against him, clutching the shelf pressing against the back of her thighs. She was disheveled, dirty, and still needed to wash the blood from her hair, but Voldemort did not seem to see any of that. The sharp crimson of his eyes grew warmer, somehow darker, almost burgundy. Over the past week, it had been him in the night, in the darkness, in his bed, as though it were easier for Voldemort to pretend she was not there.

But as much as she wished she hadn't needed to help him in this way to begin with, she had never pretended he was anyone else but himself. Who else was she supposed to pretend was in bed with her? The Death Eaters who had tortured her in their own unique ways? And who was Voldemort supposed to pretend was in bed with him, when he detested any sort of sexual weakness?

So she had come to his bed, and he had lost himself inside of her until he could no longer continue, until he exhausted himself, every time. With the end of the month approaching, Hermione had thought that if Voldemort had more access, more chances to slake his need, he would not need it as often or as much.

That had not been the case. Hermione theorized it could have been because he held it back the rest of the month, but there was really no way to know until the mating behavior ended and then returned next year.

If the behavior ended. Hermione could not ignore the possibility that this could also be the culmination of years of magical self-denial that was breaking down in the same way as his tangle of transfiguration spells. It was less likely, but it was certainly possible. She would need to do another assessment. Not now.

Voldemort pressed his cool hand to her forehead and leaned her head back against the book spines. "Shall we begin with the way you saved Harry from me by nearly killing him?"

"I needed to stop him from getting to you," Hermione replied. Voldemort bent down to lick a path up her neck. "I had to improvise. It was the first thing I thought of."

"Interesting that the first thing you thought of, with your unique grasp on intuitive magic, was something that you unconsciously knew would end in great pain," Voldemort murmured in her ear. He knew how deeply his voice could reach her there.

Hermione closed her hand over his throat, thumb and forefinger pressing down under his jaw, and she pulled his head down to press her lips against his.

Since the first night, Voldemort had done little to dissuade her from fulfilling the whole of her Medicus duties. He accepted her presence in his bed, took out his anger in ways that gave her pleasure and in ways that satisfied him without crossing the lines of his contract with her. He never even wanted to cross that line.

But since she no longer had to coax him into giving into his body's needs, she had not kissed him again - he had kissed her, yes, and she kissed back, but she had let him direct their actions to his needs alone, because she only wanted to fill those needs.

This time, she kissed him, one hand gripping the shelf until her knuckles whitened, his quicker pulse at her fingertips. He was above her, against her, surrounding her, and yet he was the one who groaned. He breathed her in, tasting her over his tongue before she tasted him. He could try to assert his control over her all he liked, but these were the only times he ever could enjoy the control she had over him. For these brief moments, Voldemort was enthralled with her, at her mercy. And now she wanted to kiss him for it.

While she felt heat low in her abdomen, she could not blame her own desire on his anymore. His desire had not abated, but her sharing of it had.

Perhaps he felt the change, and that was why he seemed to slowly freeze, until her lips just brushed against his mouth. He shuddered as she flicked his thin lower lip with the tip of her tongue.

"And your first impulse, Hermione, seems to be fatal," Voldemort said.

"He didn't die," she replied.

"Because you threw his broken body back and let him fall," Voldemort whispered.

"To save you."

"To save him," Voldemort countered, but he did not sound angry. On the contrary, he stroked her forehead and hair, and he pressed his lower body against hers, slow undulations that she met with her own. The urgency may still be there, but it was not so urgent that he had to take her immediately, take her just to finish. He rather liked what he saw in her, felt in her, now that he could take things slowly.

"I can do both," Hermione said.

"And what if they hadn't caught him?" Voldemort asked. His hand slid between her legs, curling his fingers to make her gasp. "What if you were the one who killed the Boy Who Lived and not me?"

"You know very well that wasn't going to happen," Hermione said. She used wandless magic to raise herself up until they were eye-to-eye. The hand she used to hold him by the throat smoothed over the base of his skull. "I couldn't care less if Dumbledore had fallen into that pit, but it's going to be you and Harry in the end."

"As pleasing as it is to hear you wish death on the old fool, he represents the forces you wish to defeat me. Without their general, they would be much more easily destroyed," Voldemort said.

"Why does he even bother to attack you at all?" Hermione asked angrily. "If he knows that the fight will come down to whether you kill Harry or Harry kills you, why does anyone waste their time?"

"To keep me from killing anyone else," Voldemort answered, smiling against her cheek. He could play her better when she was angry, because it brought a flush to all the places she was sensitive. She wrapped herself around him and made him swallow back his urge to just thrust up and finish with nothing but their physical bodies, quiet and empty and furious. Then he would have to look in her eyes after she had conquered him, after his body had failed him once again. He could not close his eyes and turn around into sleep like he had before.

In this small house of knowledge, amongst these books that so eagerly pushed them together as they did, he wanted to look into her eyes and drink her reactions when he brought her down. Whether she showed him her shame or whether she stared at him with her own satisfaction or exultation at what she had wrought from him ... that would please him. Perhaps that was the secret to why he wasn't pulling her back through the fire and into his dark bedroom. He could drown less in his own humiliation and revel instead in what Hermione had become. Because of him. For him. Even if it was not what he had originally intended. Voldemort had made mistakes - he could not deny them any longer - but Hermione was his best mistake, and she still did not know all that he had done to her.

"Would you kill Dumbledore if it meant saving me?" Voldemort asked, his lips light against hers. His hands slid over her arms and to her wrists, pushing them against the bindings. He felt the magic return to wrap around her wrists, then curling around his, in a thin, invisible embrace.

Hermione bit her lip. His thigh took the place of his hand. She could not stop herself from riding it and welcoming his reciprocation, not with the low hum all through her, from the wound on the crown of her head out to her fingertips. She shivered and leaned in to kiss him more fully. He kept himself back, hungry for her answer that he already knew.

"Yes," she said softly.

"Violently?"

"If necessary," she said.

"Gladly?" Voldemort asked, tightening his grip on her wrists. Dumbledore was Voldemort's opponent, and that war between them was sometimes personal, a vendetta from his childhood that had matured with age. But Dumbledore was also the silent partner to the torture that Voldemort and his followers inflicted on her. If Voldemort had to be betrayed by himself, he wanted to her to admit that she felt at least equally betrayed. It would bring her even closer; it would remind her why she belonged to him.

Hermione shuddered. She knew the answer Voldemort wanted. She knew her answer was the one he wanted. But saying it would be its own kind of spell, especially in a place like this. Hermione didn't want it to be true. However, it was a bit late to start balking now, after everything she had sacrificed and all the ways Voldemort exposed every tender nerve. He was doing that in a less symbolic way right at that moment, biting gently up the curve of her jaw and pulling at her wrists every time she tried to meet his mouth or move over him.

"Tell me, and I'll give you what you want," Voldemort said.

"What you want," she retorted.

"Hermione, I don't have to be a Legilimens to know what you want right now," he said.

"And you need it."

Voldemort let the magic hold her wrists. It would not stop her if she wanted to move them, but even though he released her, she stayed as he positioned her. Her eyes were still bright, not glazed in pleasure, although he knew she felt it. Which meant that she chose to keep her hands bound. His kisses moved down her neck to her collarbone, then lower, teasing her. He was aware that any power he had over her was power that she allowed him, but it exhilarated him nonetheless.

"If it meant my protection, you would gladly kill Dumbledore, wouldn't you, Hermione?" Voldemort's hand closed around her throat, mirroring what she had done to him, before moving up to her chin. His thumb pressed against her lip, and he hissed when she licked him. "It would serve that meddling, defiling, cold-hearted bastard right if he died at your hand. He abandoned you, rejected you, believed that you were worthless to him, and then he gave you to me. If you had to kill him, can you honestly tell me the vengeance would not be sweet for you?"

The room swelled with the flutter of heavy pages and the whisper of hidden history. The magic waited, and Voldemort patiently coaxed shudders from her, his own desire lost in the process of breaking past those last few defenses, because it satisfied a different sort of need.

Hermione snapped her arms away from the books - which did nothing to remove their true hold from her - and wrapped them around Voldemort's neck. She wandlessly pushed them both across the floor, Voldemort's feet sliding over the stone until they reached the table, where she floated all the books off the table. She spun them around, slid her legs down over his hips, and leaned against the table. Then, without looking away from him - and he couldn't look away from her now - she took him and guided him in. His spine was a beautiful, shadowed curve as he bent over her and braced himself, gasping and clenching his fists to try to retain control.

"I won't kill him for you," Hermione replied, quieter than a whisper. "But if I have to kill him, yes, I would think it was a fitting end. Yes."

"Yesssss," Voldemort hissed, the word slipping into Parseltongue. She had no idea what he was saying, but that did not matter so much anymore. Nor did it matter after he put his mouth to better use, making her swear against the back of her hand.

When they finished, all angled limbs and heat that soon cooled from the sweat on their skin, Hermione did not let him pull away. She sat upright, and he hunched over her. Hermione stroked a line up his back to the delicate swell of his skull. There were things she wanted to say about who she was willing to kill for him, but now was not the time, not when he already thought he had achieved a small victory in his private humiliation.

Instead she left him with two sobering thoughts before she let him go.

"That did not seem like something you needed at all," Hermione said, her arms around him. "At least not in the same way as before. Get some new robes, but don't dress all the way. I need to evaluate the status of your magical body after the exertion of the battle, and I want to investigate some of the transfigurations and maybe modify or remove them if I can."

"What if it just makes the magical fraying worse?" Voldemort said.

It was a fair question, straightforward. He hid his fear well.

"At this point, Lord Voldemort, it is happening whether I do something or not. It's just that doing something has a better chance of saving you than if I just let it follow its natural course," Hermione said. She touched his cheek gently, although she had the grace not to show any tenderness in her expression. "You should see to your followers first. We can save the evaluation for tonight."

Now Hermione let him step back from her. He picked up his wand from the black and silver book on the floor and returned hers. She Summoned her cloak from her wardrobe - the cloak that he had given her to replace the one she burned. She did not need full robes if she was just going to soak in her bath. Hermione raised an eyebrow at him as he began to Summon robes for himself, and he clenched his teeth before ducking into his quarters to change without magic.

She put all the books back on the table, pulled on her cloak, and made to follow Voldemort out, then paused in the fire when she heard Wormtail.

"We r-received hard hits to the D-Death Eater forces, my lord," Wormtail explained. "I d-d-don't know how, but they seemed to know our p-plans. Do you think...?"

"It's perfectly clear, isn't it?" Voldemort snapped. "I can't blame Severus this time."

"The younger Death Eaters, my lord," Wormtail said. "They didn't s-s-s-seem to be as hurt as your first followers. What does that mean?"

"It depends on how clever the spy is," Voldemort muttered. "Tell my followers to meet in the Great Hall, to rest and eat and bolster their strength. There is still work to be done, more victories to plan, better victories. Go."

"B-but the spy..." Wormtail began.

"Go."

Wormtail did not need to be told a third time. The second order had been laced with barely restrained fury. Hermione came out of the fire at the sound of the closed door. Voldemort stood fully dressed near his hearth. He peered at her from narrowed eyes until she built the fire higher for him. He gripped his wand, the tip pointing at the floor as he crossed his arms over his chest.

"I had to use magic to clothe myself in time," Voldemort said.

"I understand," Hermione replied.

"How much of that did you hear?" he asked.

"Do you mean the part about one of your Death Eaters feeding the Order information about strategy?" Hermione asked.

"I know the Black Dogs and the Cat's Paws that are not completely faithful to me, but a traitor among their number could not do the damage of a traitor among the Death Eaters. And one I do not know," Voldemort said, pacing. "How could I not know? How could they slip past me so easily, when I should have known what to look for, when I should have seen it in their thoughts? Was it because I was too distracted?!"

Voldemort slid a poker from its place and threw it against the wall in lieu of a curse. It planted itself into the plaster.

"Maybe you just haven't been looking closely enough, complacent with their loyalty," Hermione said. "It was one thing when they were resentful of me and wary of your illness. That isn't outright betrayal. That's just doubt. Betrayal goes deeper, and you might not have been looking for it."

Voldemort calmed down a little, but he did not stop pacing. "A mistake I will soon rectify. This one is either a very stupid spy or a very smart one. He could have spared the younger Death Eaters because he has a connection with them and wanted them less injured in return for his information, or he could be one of the younger members himself and sought to keep himself as unharmed as possible by his compatriots. Either way, I have my suspicions. But they must not know that I have them," he said, relaxing himself further. He gradually stopped pacing.

"Whoever the traitor is will wish for death by the time I am through with him," Voldemort murmured.

"Or you could have Bellatrix and Rodolphus ensure that they wish for death," Hermione suggested. She held up her hands in a conciliatory gesture. "I have to say it. It would preserve your magic and your most faithful servants could do what they love to do. I'm sure Bellatrix would have a few choice curses for the one who led to her injuries from the last battle."

Voldemort glared at her, but her advice was sound, and it would not call attention to his abstinence from magic. He nodded, then turned to take his leave to go to his followers. Hermione wrapped the cloak more tightly around her and left his room for her bath.

There was another traitor among Lord Voldemort's closest disciples. Hermione was torn between a glimmer of hope and a greater, sinking dread.