t/w: blood, minor character death

d r a c o

He knew what would happen before it did.

The moment Belly had sensed the necklace, she had attempted to wrench it from her neck. She had resisted the Apparition entirely, diverted her attention to pulling at the necklace and trying to break its chain - and he had caught her wrist in his hand and Apparated -

Just before they left the Manor, Draco caught a glimpse of his father's furious expression. It travelled with him, circling around him, and he tried to concentrate entirely on keeping Belly close -

Everything felt wrong. The whirling spaces of Apparition seemed claustrophobic and confined; he felt that she was slipping from his grasp, not fully contained within his arms.

Beneath his hold on her wrist, he felt hot, thick liquid begin to emerge.

They landed outside her house. She tumbled from his arms, and he fell forward onto his hands and knees; the force of the Apparition hurling them both across the tarmac. He had barely opened his eyes, had barely taken a breath when she screamed again.

The scream was different, this time. Anguished.

He scrambled to find her.

Belly was already struggling to her feet, one bloody hand cradled in the other. And Draco knew what she was going to do. Knew, after what had just happened, where she was trying to go -

He lunged after her. "Don't Apparate -"

She stumbled backwards, away from him. "You -" she choked out her words, gasping from the pain - "the necklace - I told you not to -"

Draco stepped forward, and she took another step back. "Belly," he said, "you're bleeding -"

"I need to see my mum."

Trying to ignore his pounding heart, Draco focused on her hand. In the dim light, he could not make out any distinct wounds; could only see that dark blood drenched her sleeve and dripped from the tips of her fingers. "We'll go to her," he said, "but let me fix your hand first, please."

The colour was slowly draining from Belly's face. But she shook her head.

"Belly, you've been splinched -"

"I don't care," she said. "It doesn't matter - the necklace, you -"

She broke off, and pulled hard at the necklace with the hand of her good arm. The silver chain snapped.

She cast it aside, and it landed noiselessly somewhere on the tarmac, in the dark. Draco's gaze followed it there; he searched momentarily for the glinting silver, but could not see it.

The trees that surrounded Belly's house trembled in the icy wind, casting shaky shadows across her face. Draco watched, stricken, as comprehension set into her expression, and tears began to brim in her eyes. "She was so ill, the last time I saw her," she said, her voice strained. "I don't know if she could handle the necklace protecting me again."

Belly swayed dizzily on her feet. She blinked a few times consecutively, and when Draco stepped forward, placing one hand on her shoulder to steady her, she didn't shrug him off.  "I need to get to the hospital," she said. "They'll fix my hand there, after I've seen her."

Draco clenched his jaw. He motioned towards her wounded hand, dripping with blood. Belly pulled at the sleeve, revealing another gash along the top of her forearm, and his stomach twisted. He steered her towards the door. "You will," he said, his voice hoarse. "You'll see her soon."

He guided her through the house, and directed her towards the bathroom. By the time he had lifted her onto the bathroom counter, her tears were falling freely. "The necklace was hot," she said, clutching her bloodied hand in her lap. "That means its enchantment worked, that your dad's spell hit me and now my mum - my mum -"

Draco rifled through endless piles of potions in the bathroom cupboards. "Dittany," he muttered. "Surely your Healer mother has fucking dittany here somewhere."

"I need to go to her."

"I'm aware," replied Draco, through gritted teeth. He pushed aside more vials, and finally located the dark, murky brown dittany. He turned, opening its lid, and gestured for Belly to give him her arm.

She didn't move. "I told you I didn't want anything to do with the necklace," she said, through tears, "but you put it around my neck anyway - without my permission -"

"My apologies," snapped Draco, seething with impatience, "did you want me to ask your bloody permission before I did it?"

"I wanted you to respect what I asked for -"

"Belly," said Draco, eyes dropping to her hand in her lap - the blood still flowing - "I don't know what hexes my father was shooting at you. It mightn't even have been Obliviate, it might have been worse -"

"But I told you," said Belly. She shut her eyes, taking shaky breaths. Tears spilled from her closed lids and out over her cheeks. "You knew why I didn't wear the necklace. You knew that I wanted to take care of myself, and now you've done the exact same thing that my mother did -"

"I didn't have a choice -"

"Yes, you did." Draco took her arm in his hand, and she opened her eyes, glaring at him through her tears. "You both insist on protecting me, even though I ask you not to. But maybe I'm not supposed to be protected. Maybe if I fought for myself, without having you two interfere all the time, things wouldn't keep going wrong like this."

"Belly, if neither of us ever interfered, you'd be dead right now -"

"But maybe that's how it's supposed to be!" Her voice shook, and her face crumpled with emotion. "Everytime one of you tries to protect me something awful happens, and it doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel like the way life is supposed to go -"

She broke off with a whimper as Draco dropped beads of dittany onto her splinch wounds. Her good hand latched onto his shoulder; fingernails digging through his jumper as steam rose in curls where the dittany met her blood. Slowly and seamlessly, the edges of her wounds began to knit together. Belly gripped his shoulder tighter, and let out a low hiss between her teeth. Gradually, the gashes sealed.

Draco soaked a towel under the tap, and held Belly's hand in place as he wiped away the remaining blood. He kept his eyes on hers, watching her expression for indications of pain, for fear of hurting her further. When the blood was mostly cleared away, her wounds were more discernible. They followed the bones of her fingers, coursed over her wrist to her forearm. But she was no longer bleeding. Most importantly.

He didn't reply to what she had said. He didn't know how to respond, only knew that he had been well-aware of the cost of the enchanted necklace, and had chosen to protect her with it anyway.

He would do it again if he needed to, a hundred times over. Even if that meant she might never forgive him for the consequences.

Tears clung to Belly's lashes and glistened on her cheeks as she looked down at her hand, avoiding his eyes. "Thank you," she said quietly. "Can we go now, please?"

-

i s o b e l

They Apparated into the lobby of St. Mungo's together, with Draco's hand covering her freshly healed scars. Isobel felt her chest rise and fall with nervous, shallow breaths. She had half-expected herself to take off the moment she set foot here; to run to her mother's ward with barely a glance to see if Draco accompanied her or not.

Now, her feet felt firmly planted on the ground. She stared at the door of the stairway, paralysed by her own nerves.

Draco's fingers threaded through hers.

He didn't tell her not to be afraid, or that everything would be okay, or anything as such. Because things would not be okay; they already were not okay, now. And Isobel knew that the world was about to crumble from beneath her feet. She just needed to find the strength to let it do so.

As she climbed the stairs and walked through the corridors to her mother's ward, the only thing that anchored her to reality was his hand in hers.

Just as they turned the final corner, a stream of Healers exited the door that led to her mother's ward. Isobel quickened her pace. She spotted the Healer she knew, the woman with the kind face who had tended to her mother, days before. And the woman crossed the corridor towards her, and time began to pass in a blur -

"We've been trying to contact you," said the Healer. Her face was close to Isobel's, but her voice seemed far away. "She doesn't have long. I'm so sorry."

Isobel walked into her mother's ward. Somewhere between there and the corridor, Draco's hand fell from hers, and his white-blond hair disappeared from the periphery of her vision.

Maggie lay asleep in her hospital bed. A cluster of Healers stood in the room, waiting and watching, and Isobel edged numbly past them, staring at her pale-faced mother. She seemed so fragile and weak that she was almost unrecognisable as the woman that Isobel had known for her entire life.

Isobel blinked, looking around her, and realized that the Healers had left. She drew a chair and sat beside her mother. She placed a hand on Maggie's hollow cheek and wished, desperately, that she had overcome her anger and visited her mother when she had had the chance. So that they might have had a little more time.

Hours later, when Maggie's eyes fluttered open in the dead of night, Isobel's heart gave a feeble leap.

"Mum," she whispered. "Lucius attacked me. Draco put the necklace on me."

Maggie's eyes shifted across Isobel's face. "You'll be okay," said Maggie. Her voice was croaky, as if it hurt to speak. "You'll be okay without me."

Isobel pressed her lips together in an attempt to keep herself from crying, but tears escaped, still. She took her mother's hand in her own and held it tightly. "Don't leave."

Maggie's fingers closed slowly around her daughter's. "Do you love him?"

Isobel hesitated. Then she nodded, tearfully. "I think so."

Maggie's eyes fluttered shut. "Good," she whispered.

Throughout the entire night, Isobel did not sleep. She remained seated, with her hands clasped around her mother's thin fingers, and her tear-soaked eyes fixed on Maggie's sleeping face.

Sometime between night and dawn, as the sun crept over the horizon in London, Isobel realized that there was no longer a pulse in the hand that she held. She watched with silent, streaming tears as the Healers took her mother away, and left her alone in the room.

Draco finally vacated his position on the linoleum floor of the corridor outside. He took Isobel in his arms, and held her as she wept.