Chapter Text
Sitting in her office after another long day of endless patients—Samhain would do that, bleeding holiday that had people acting like fools—Hermione rubbed her temples with the pads of her fingertips and tried to ignore the pang of hunger she’d been avoiding the last few hours.
Technically her shift had ended two hours ago and lunch was six hours ago, but neither made much of a difference when she was the Head Healer-in-Charge of St. Mungo’s emergency medical department on one of the major wizarding holidays of the year.
This wasn’t an anomaly though, nor was it singular to the wizarding world when Halloween in the Muggle world was notoriously just as bad. It didn’t help that last night was a full moon and some unregistered werewolves were on a rampage somewhere in Norfolk. Hermione had to call in a specialist, something that was a new addition since she’d started here. Seven years after the war and she had yet to take a breath.
Throwing herself into eighth year, a year of healing studies in both the magical and Muggle worlds—courtesy of a time-turner she’d talked her way into again with McGonagall to make up for her time hunting for Horcruxes, and had since relinquished—she’d spent five years working her way up the ladder here, one broken bone and Bombarda’ed body at a time.
“Healer Granger, we have a compound fracture, concussion, and multiple broken ribs from a broom incident.” Her assistant, Claire, who was following in her healer older sister Hannah Abbot’s footsteps, peeked her head into Hermione’s office, remorse undercutting the words but that didn’t change them.
They were understaffed on one of the busiest nights of the year and unless she somehow found a way to duplicate herself and a few others, there just weren’t enough experienced healers to deal with the more dangerous injuries where infection or brain injury would be a concern. Slipping her hand into her drawer and glugging a quick Pepper-Up potion, Hermione ignored the way her body reacted to it on an empty stomach and worked her curly hair into a bun on top of her head.
“Let’s go.” Hermione took the patient notes from Claire, fastened to a clipboard, and glanced at the basic diagnostic scan that had been performed, confirming what her assistant had said.
Following behind Claire, Hermione’s head was on a swivel taking stock of the patients lining the hallway because they were out of beds in dedicated rooms. All around her was the sound of pained groans, soft chatter, and the smell of antiseptic—something she’d insisted on her healers using in the emergency department even though they didn’t initially believe it did the trick. Hermione had managed to add it into potions and poultices, and creams, and her patients healed at a far quicker rate than they did without it.
Of course, she had to break it down to its barest form, borrowing the ingredients from early versions of medicines in the Muggle world that the witches and wizards of St Mungo’s could understand. It only made sense to fortify a simple healing ointment for contusions by adding arnica oil to make the bruises fade quicker. Imbuing a Pepper-Up with eucalyptus and mint to fight off the effects of a cold worked wonders since it helped to open up the nasal passages and make breathing easier.
Once she made it to one of the makeshift rooms on the main healing floor, separated out by curtains, Claire stepped into one ahead of her and Hermione held the notes up. Occlusion in place, a bland smile slapped onto her face, Hermione was determined to push through even if it meant looking at each patient in terms of their ailments and not who they were as people.
That’s kind of fucked up . Her mind reminded her but Hermione shoved the thought aside. She’d lost too many patients, and during the war, she’d lost too many friends. Making sure faces stayed a blur while she was treating them was the only way Hermione could make it through most days. At least until there was some kind of outcome, good or bad. Once she knew she’d done all she could, she let the Occlusion drop for the smallest bit to take in their sincere thanks or their heavy grief.
So the bland smile stayed and Hermione forced herself into healer mode. And promptly wished she’d never left her office at all.
His smell hit her first. Grass, the smell always making her think of Quidditch pitches, undercut by the stench of alcohol. She slipped and once she did it was impossible to raise the wall all the way again.
“ Ronald ,” it was said in a long-suffering sigh, mixed with disappointment and the barest hint of rage.
Hermione would blame it on hunger later but anger flared at the sight of her ex. His broken arm sat slung across his chest, a colorful bruise taking up half of his face, and one of his eyes was swollen along with it.
“Heyyy,” he smiled and she knew he was off his face before he even proceeded to drag the word out into multiple syllables.
“Claire, you didn’t tell me this was a drunken broom incident.” Not that it mattered. Ron Weasley was no longer her concern.
Still, her assistant said little more than nothing, sputtering as if to try to find the words and coming up short. Notating the patient's alcohol level was of negligible importance when sobering potions existed but it could still affect pain tolerance and coherence of the patient regardless. Hermione cast a more complicated diagnostic charm, looking at the internal structure of the ulna that broke through the flesh of his arm. There was very little debris or bone shards, just an unlucky fracture that went too far. It should be easy to set and after some Skele-Gro and other healing charms, he would be fine once she got it in place.
“Ah come off it, Hermione. It was just a bit of fun.” Ron tried to dismiss the concern but the moment he jostled his arm he hissed out a pained breath.
“I wish you’d keep your stupidity at the Burrow where it belongs instead of cluttering up my emergency department. I have better things to do with my night than clean up after you.” The “again” went unsaid and her ex huffed before murmuring something under his breath.
“What was that, Ronald? Do you have something to say?” Hermione almost wished he would. Just so she could go off on him. If he uttered the right words she could cast a silencing charm and let her frustration fly.
He mumbled again, something that sounded like “always such a—” and Hermione took the opportunity to clean and set the bones before he even noticed. She went ahead and did a numbing charm before she did, but the shock of the action partway through his sentence still had him startling.
“Ow!” He looked at her affronted.
“It was numbed and it was imperative to set the bone so you didn’t lose blood flow to the arm.”
“You didn’t have to do it so aggressively,” he said, pouting and Hermione felt her headache throbbing behind her eyes.
Breakfast was so long ago, Pepper-Up and stress keeping her upright after multiple nights on call. There was no patience left for the man who broke her heart.
“There’s plenty you didn’t have to do and you went ahead and did it anyway. At least I’m leaving you better off than I found you.” Hermione gave Ron one last withering look before thrusting the clipboard out toward Claire for the girl to take.
“The other injuries should be simple enough for one of the floor healers to take care of the patient. Keep him overnight for observation on account of the concussion and to make sure there are no issues with the break.”
“That’s it? You’re leaving?” Ron asked.
“Be sure to call his emergency contact, Lavender Weasley, if you have any questions or concerns since the patient is inebriated and as such may not be counted upon to remember treatment plans or other imperative information.”
At the mention of his wife, Ron wiped his uninjured hand over his face in agitation and groaned. “Please don’t call Lav. She’s going to be livid.”
Hermione shot him her best “not my problem” look and let the curtain flutter shut, providing Ron with privacy and Hermione with a much-needed bit of separation.
“Healer Granger, maybe you should—” Claire started to suggest something, likely that Hermione should take a break or a step back or, Merlin forbid, go home, when a piercing cry cut through the din of the emergency ward.
Heartbreaking wailing, unending as if the injured party had limitless breath. There was no break between the piercing cries. But then the squall cut off and Hermione heard another sound, no less heartbreaking.
“Help! Please ! My son,” it was choked and hoarse as if the man whose voice it belonged to was holding back tears of his own.
Claire didn’t need to be told. Before he even got the “ please ” out, Hermione and her assistant were rushing toward the doors, past the mediwitch who dealt with patient intake. The waiting room stared at the man and his now quiet infant. Silence had never sounded so wrong. Hermione slammed her walls up, pushing through exhaustion and hunger to focus on her task.
Light hair was her first impression. A large bloodied hand cupped the back of a white-blonde baby’s head that looked impossibly small in comparison. Those vast hands held the baby out to Hermione and her heart nearly stopped in her chest as she bundled the little body against her chest.
No older than six months at most, the baby had an alarming blue tinge to his already pale skin and blood dripping down its chin, and all over its clothes. The fact that he’d gone from screaming to silent did not bode well. Turning on her heel, Claire followed her and she presumed the father followed along. Hermione shoved all her feelings down to focus on the task at hand.
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Look after the baby. I can break down later.
“I need to know exactly what happened,” Hermione said, bursting into the only private room left on this floor. There was no way she could do this on the open ward, no amount of silencing charms in the world could make a difference.
With a flick of her wand, Hermione sent the items on her desk into her bag with the extension charm on it and transfigured the desk into a makeshift hospital bed big enough for a baby.
“I don’t know. I don’t know ,” his father said, choking on a sob. “One minute he was fine and the next he was screaming in pain. Not his 'I’m hungry' or 'I’m tired' cry. I’ve never heard this before. I wouldn’t have thought too much of it but my… his mother died, her body weakened by a blood curse and I have no idea if he’s got it or…” The words were stilted and panicked. “He started vomiting blood and then just kept screaming in between bouts of nausea. I apparated. Maybe I shouldn’t have…”
Hermione was distantly aware of Claire trying to tell the father that the apparition didn’t do this. If she’d been closer to the surface of her own mind she might have noticed the strained tone of Claire’s voice—annoyance in the face of someone else’s panic. Hermione cast a diagnostic charm on the baby. He wasn’t breathing, heartbeat struggling, but nothing immediate was showing up and there was no way she was giving up yet. Clearing his airway and sweeping his mouth with her finger she opted for the Muggle form of what she could think to do. Maybe later she’d have time to unpack why she opted to do it this way instead of a Renervate. She patted his back first, his face pointed toward the floor, in the hopes that if he choked on anything it would come up.
When that had no effect she placed him carefully on the bed and pressed compressions into a tiny chest before giving him a breath.
“What kind of blood curse?” she asked, working feverishly to try and get the pulse back to a normal sinus rhythm and get him breathing again.
“Generational. It’s only ever affected the female line of the family and skips seven generations each time. I have no idea if he would’ve been affected unless his mother hadn’t been so sick when she had him.”
Despite the sane part of her mind—the impartial part of her mind—saying it was a terrible idea, Hermione did something she hadn’t done in years.
“What’s your son’s name?”
“Scorpius.” The man said it with such reverence it bordered on religious, as if this child was his personal saviour.
“You’ve got to help me out here, Scorpius. Your daddy is very worried about you and it’s not time to go. Stay with me.” Hermione cast a healing spell intended for internal bleeding, even though the scan hadn’t shown any, pleading with the universe to spare the child.
As if he heard the desperation leaking through her Occlusion, or perhaps just the broken cries of his father, Scorpius took a shaky breath. Hermione held her own in her lungs until Scorpius took another. “Oh, thank Merlin!”
“Get what you need to track his vitals, Claire. I’ll start running some tests but I want to be sure we know what’s happening as soon as it occurs. The more we know the more effective we can be.”
Hermione cast a cleansing charm on the little boy, scourgifying the blood from his soft green onesie before she turned him onto his side. Hand outstretched, she summoned a Blood-Replenishing potion and heard a gasp from the other side of the room.
“Here you go, Scorpius. I need you to drink this and it will make you feel stronger.” She didn’t know why she was talking to the baby, it wasn’t as if he could understand her at his age, but it kept her from absolutely losing it.
Her magic waned under the strain of her emotions and the exhaustion of today. On top of seeing Ron, staying Occluded during this was proving almost impossible. Without it, she couldn’t stay impartial. Without it, she wasn’t sure she would keep it all together long enough to figure out what was wrong with the boy.
Terror she hadn’t felt in a long time skittered along her spine.
Keep it together. Keep it together.
Claire returned with the charmed bracelet, shrinking it down to size and attaching the magical equivalent of an ECG and vital signs monitor to the baby’s arm. Almost immediately it glowed gold.
“What is that? What are you doing?” The father suddenly interjected when Claire got back inside and Hermione relied on Claire to relay the information because she had more pressing matters at hand.
Scooping the baby up and into her arms, she held the uncorked potion to his lips and gently poured the liquid into his mouth.
“It’s a Blood-Replenishing potion,” Claire said, dismissive, but Hermione could hear rustling behind her.
“What did you put on him!?”
“It’s a way to check his heart rate and breathing. It will sound an alarm if he’s in any distress again.” Claire bit out the explanation and even though Hermione was at the end of her rope there really wasn’t any need for the girl to be so snippy with the family member of a patient.
The baby thankfully drank every drop, even though Hermione knew from experience it tasted vile, only scrunching up his face slightly while he swallowed but he soon settled back into what was an uneasy sleep.
“You mentioned a blood curse, is there anything else that you can think of that might have caused this?”
“I don’t bloody know! All I can say is one minute I was holding my son on my chest after feeding him, reading, and the next his blood was all over the both of us while he screamed bloody murder.”
Hermione brushed the back of her finger down his chubby cheek, so soft but far too pale. She hoped that the potion might bring some color back into his cheeks. At this point, she was just relieved the blue tinge was fading. Something in his statement drew her attention.
“You said he’d just fed? Was it any different from what you usually give him? Were you the one who prepared it?” Surely not. Staring down at the baby Hermione didn’t even want to entertain the thought but…
“No, just milk. But I wasn’t the one who prepared it.”
Wrapping the baby up in her arms, Hermione held him against her shoulder as he started to fuss, too tired to scream but clearly in pain or discomfort. Summoning a book from her shelf, she caught it with one hand and flicked to the relevant page.
“Sir, if possible, I’m going to need you to go back and retrieve the bottle or whatever you used to feed your son. I think we might be able to get some answers if there’s any remnant left in it.”
Bouncing the baby slightly as she read over the research, her stomach sank with each word. “Claire, I’m going to need you to get Neville for me. Tell Hannah it’s an emergency.” Hermione instructed her assistant to go and fetch her brother-in-law.
In the brief moment she allowed herself to look in their general direction and make sure they obeyed, Claire rushed out into the hallway.
“Sir, I really need you to get that bottle. I have to run tests on it and your son to be sure.”
“Is it—is it the blood curse?” He asked, sounding strangely young as he did, and scared.
Don’t look at him. Don’t think about his pain. My only responsibility is to see to it that this baby lives. If I look him in the eye I’ll see his fear and it’ll infect me and I won’t be able to keep everything shoved down long enough to do my job.
“I cannot say for sure but if I’m right in my assumption then no. No, it’s something else. Please, I know you don’t want to leave him but I promise I will do everything I can to keep him safe until you get back.”
Shouldn’t have said it like that. Hopefully, he won’t notice me saying safe instead of well.
“There’s a Floo through the door beside the bookshelf. It’s private. Please hurry.”
The room beyond her office was a secret, one she just revealed when she told him about the door but she didn’t have time to worry about his reaction. He finally seemed to listen to her, three big strides taking him across the office and into her private room. The whoosh of Floo flames sounded and Hermione did everything she could to get her breathing under control.
She should put the baby down. The book was open and waiting for Neville. The potion had been administered. There was no reason she should still be holding him clutched to her chest, his tiny breaths wisping against her neck. The alarm would sound if he stopped breathing again. Hermione needed to set him down so she could start trying to think of a potion to counteract the effects. Time was precious to the point that waiting on Neville could prove too long. Still, there was a chance that she was wrong.
Not that I ever am .
But Hermione wasn’t willing to risk a baby’s life on her ego.
The Floo sounded a moment later, those footsteps sounding again, and the click of her office door shutting. Hermione wiped her hand in the direction of the door, casting a Notice-Me-Not charm.
“Wandless? All of it wandless?” The father’s voice breathed.
“Did you find it?”
“Yes, the Elves hadn’t removed it to be cleaned, thank goodness.” Holding it out to her, Hermione’s hand wrapped around the bottle and she placed it down next to the book.
Claire rushed into the office with Neville close behind.
“ Longbottom ?” The father asked and she was sure her friend was about to respond but—
“We don’t have bloody time for this!” Hermione snapped. “Neville, I need you to look at what’s left in this bottle and then look at the book and tell me if I’m right.”
“Of course, ‘Mione.” Her friend’s gaze was kind, if a little questioning when he saw her holding onto the baby for dear life but he did as she said.
Extracting the liquid, Neville searched for the components that made up the milk and when he sucked in a breath between his teeth, his worried eyes flickering to her and the baby she knew she was right.
“What is it!? Can someone give me a fucking answer about my son before I lose my mind?”
“It’s not confirmed yet, and more testing will have to be done, but it seems as though your son may have ingested poison.” Hermione was careful with how she phrased it, trying to keep any blame out of her sentence should the father take offence.
“ Poison ?” He barely breathed the word and moved to take a step closer to his son, his hand outstretched.
Scorpius wriggled in her arms, just slightly, before his tear-stained eyes pressed against Hermione’s neck and her Occlusion failed her. Looking up and actually seeing the man in front of her—allowing herself to see him—Hermione couldn’t believe she had let herself miss it. Covered in his son’s blood, and at an absolute loss, the pain was unmistakable.
Perhaps it was best she hadn’t noticed at first. It helped her stay impartial. But now, staring into a pair of grey eyes the color of storm clouds, brimming with tears, Hermione couldn’t help her shock and fear. Their blonde hair matched and she knew without a doubt that if Scorpius was awake he’d have his father’s eyes.
“Mal—” she started and was interrupted by two Aurors bursting into her office, one of whom was her friend.
“ Malfoy ,” Harry seethed as he pressed his wand into Malfoy’s neck from behind.
“What’s going on, Harry?” Hermione asked.
“We were summoned here specifically. Child endangerment. I’m here to make the arrest.” Harry bound Malfoy’s hands together magically and through it all he just stared at Hermione, his face a mess of tears and confusion.
“Harry, there has to be some kind of misunderstanding. I didn’t ask you here and Malfoy is the one who brought him in for treatment.”
“ I summoned him,” Claire said beside Neville, thrusting her chin up as she took a deep breath and stood straighter. “You just said it yourself, it was poison. He poisoned a baby, disgusting Death Eater!”
“ Claire !” Hermione admonished but the arrest was happening, Harry wrapping his hand around Malfoy’s arm, and his colleague did the same on the other side. “Harry, please. Wait a second. I’m partway through treating my patient and that is his parent you’re trying to take away.”
“You know the rules, Hermione. If a healer lodges a formal complaint of child endangerment we have to follow through, and given what was just revealed to be the cause of the emergency, we have no choice.” Harry didn’t sound remorseful at all.
He tugged Malfoy backward and Hermione saw the flash of panic in Draco Malfoy’s eyes.
“Granger,” he said, his voice strained. “Protect him.”
No fighting, no wand in his hand. Draco Malfoy stood his ground, digging his heels into the floor just long enough for him to beg.
“ Please . Granger. Please. It has to be you.”
Hermione had never heard Draco Malfoy say please for anything in her whole life. And with no Occlusion to help keep her heart out of it and his son’s warm breath against her neck, his little hands clutching her robes there was only one thing she could do.
“I promise.” Hermione nodded and Malfoy slumped a little before she saw his own mask slip into place, storm clouds dulling into slate as he escaped into himself. She knew he was Occluding. She’d done it often enough to recognize it.
The commotion in the hallway let her know that Harry and the other Auror dragged him all the way through the ward instead of just using the Floo down the hall.
Claire stepped toward Hermione and the baby and without even thinking about it, Hermione took a step back. Confusion fluttered across her assistant’s face but Hermione could see the simmering contempt under the surface as she stared at the child in Hermione’s arms.
“Claire. Leave. Now.” Hermione struggled to get the words out.
Claire’s face twisted into something disgusted as she started to protest.
“You knew what you were doing wasn’t right. If it were you would have run it by me first.”
“You didn’t see him. He looked feral and he was covered in blood. I feared for us all. I—” Claire argued and Hermione stilled her with a hand.
“Leave. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get out of my office and see to someone who needs a healer. Perhaps Ron, since we left him in the lurch. Just get out of this room and don’t come back until I say so.” Fatigue, and hunger, and fear had the words spilling out of her far more harshly than she’d ever spoken to the girl.
“Hermione,” Claire pleaded and Hermione thought she was going to see red. They’d never been on a first-name basis. Ever. The number of people she was close to now, who genuinely had that right, could all be counted on her fingers.
“Claire, maybe it’s best you step away for a bit.” Neville said it far gentler than Hermione could and the girl huffed before she stormed out, slamming the door behind her and startling Scorpius.
“Thank you, Neville. I don’t know what the hell just happened but I need your help. What exactly was used so we can brew some kind of antidote or protection? From what I can tell, whatever it was affected the baby’s stomach and lungs, and since he went without oxygen for a bit the side effects of that could have hurt his brain. The poison was intended to be indetectable, at least within diagnostic scans.”
“It was a combination of things but I think the harshest of the cocktail and the thing that likely caused him to vomit and stop breathing was Hellebores. Used when brewing calming draughts, it would be relatively easy to procure and misuse. He might have vomited up most of the poison but if any of it lingers…”
Despite every instinct fighting within her to keep him against her chest, Hermione laid Scorpius down on the transfigured bed and slowly, meticulously, scanned every inch of him. Damage to his eosophagus, inflammation in his stomach, and bradycardia that alarmed her the longer it continued.
“Is there an antidote?”
“I—” Neville stammered.
“Gods damn it, Neville. Speak up. Is there an antidote? Anything else you saw?”
“There was the tinge of Dark Magic to it, nothing I could extract or pinpoint but as soon as I held that sample I felt my magic recoil. I don’t know how his body would react to an antidote on the off chance that someone laced it with magic to potentially make it worse if treated.”
“Dark Magic responding to magic…” Hermione muttered to herself. If she couldn’t use magic to treat him then— “Atropine. He needs atropine to fix the bradycardia. I can find other fixes for whatever comes up but none of that will matter if his heart stops again. Gods, I can’t believe I don’t have any on hand, blasted magical healing…”
“Mione? What are you mumbling about?”
“I’m going to try and heal him the Muggle way first. It’ll take longer but it’ll be safer. I need you to get me atropa belladonna.”
Combing through her mind on how best to extract it, Hermione felt fairly confident in her ability to do so.
“You want me to get you deadly nightshade ?” Neville sounded aghast.
As much as she hated to turn her back on the little boy, Neville clearly needed a bit of a push.
“You need to trust that I know what I’m doing. You more than anyone would know that plants can be used for many different things. In Muggle medicine when the correct extract is taken from the dried leaves and purified it can be used to increase heart rate and get it beating correctly again. Please.”
Biting his bottom lip as he considered her words, Neville ran out into the hall and Floo’d, back within a few minutes with his chest heaving and a slight sheen of sweat on his brow. “I grabbed what I could but it’s not dried. Sorry.”
Hermione cast a drying charm on the leaves, praying if she put enough energy into it it would do the trick. After a minute or so it did.
“Watch Scorpius for any signs of distress.”
“Are you sure you don’t want Claire back here for that?” Neville asked, uncertain, “I could go and grab her for you.”
Hermione shot him a glare that had him cowering back. “You heard what I said to her and I need your help. All I’m asking is that you look at him while I do this. At the first sign of issues, you tell me and I’ll be right back.”
Singlehanded in her purpose, Hermione extracted what she needed and transfigured one of her pens into a syringe, taking a deep breath before she turned back to the baby. His bracelet was glowing and pulsing, the alarm seconds away.
He looked so peaceful. Chubby cheeks and his mouth slightly parted, he looked downright cherubic and it killed her to know that he was slipping away—that someone had done this to him on purpose. No matter how much that thought plagued her, or how much it hurt to see his little face scrunch up when she administered the dose, Hermione couldn’t forget the panic on Draco Malfoy's face and his desperation.
She knew, despite what the others thought, that he was not the one to do this, and if Scorpius made it through the night, Hermione would be the one to protect him while she proved that. She, of all people, understood the importance of good parents and how their loss from your life could be devastating.
Holding her breath, watching the bracelet go from blinking to solid after she administered the dose, Hermione checked his vital signs again and was so relieved to note his heart rate going up.
“It worked,” she breathed and shared a relieved smile with Neville. “Thank you for your help. I’m sorry it got so complicated but I couldn’t have done this without you.”
“Happy to, ‘Mione. You know that. I’ll uh—I’ll just be heading back to Hannah and Hogwarts. Unless you need anything else?”
“I think it’ll be okay from here on out, but I appreciate it all the same. Goodbye, Neville.”
Her friend gave a careful smile before shutting the door behind him. Hermione locked it and finally let all her walls down. Sitting on her chair beside the makeshift bed, staring at Scorpius Malfoy—his little mouth parted, cheek squished against the bed, and the softest of breaths all she could hear in the room—Hermione wept.