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The knife gleams silver on the table between them, Damoclean, sharp enough to sting the eyes.
Hermione's hands flex against the polished wood. Her nails are bitten, the dark polish chipped, traces of scabbed red skin marking where her teeth had nipped and gnawed in frustration.
The silence hangs heavy, a tangible weight, one neither of them has the strength to lift.
Draco leans forward, the shackles rattle with the movement, and he presses his fingertip to the knife's pointed edge.
A red bead of blood, a sharp slice of pain, and the silence broken by Hermione's hissed breath.
"You know the law, Draco," she says, her palms flattening against the wood. "You knew what would happen."
He smears the blood on the table, a streak of red marring the gleaming wood. "Yes," he says, because he can't make her carry the conversation alone. "I did."
Her fingers flex. Nails scrape against the table. He can see the crescent moon press of them into the wood, the indents of her presence that will linger long after they leave.
"Then why?" She asks, her voice breaking with despair, as though the axis of the world shifts on that syllable, that unanswerable question.
"I did what I had to," Draco says, and the chains rattle again as he settles his hands against his thighs. "That's all."
They'd dosed him with Veritaserum an hour before she'd arrived, but the truth could never drip like poison from his lips if he kept them shut. He glances, a flicker, a tonguing of crumbs, towards her face.
She's looking past him, towards his wings, outstretched and unrestrained, the empty gaps where feathers had fallen, shredded, torn. The blood dried black, the mud and dirt smeared brown, the tangled mess he'd made.
"Do you have any last words?" She says, as the blur of her face turns towards his. "Before I start?"
Her hands clench around each other, the pink stain of pressure spreading over her pale skin. Holding onto herself the only way she can.
He has thousands of them. Words he should have said and didn't, words he never gave enough gravity to, words that were whispered instead of shouted, words held back by worn-thin restraint. Words he choked down and swallowed, left to grow bitter in his throat, the corrupted roots sinking into his chest and twining around his heart.
"I'd do it again," he says, and she flinches at the truth. "That's all."
Her fingers creep towards the knife and then stop, hesitant, over the handle. The silence stretches out between them once more, the susurration of his wings sweeping the floor, the cough of the Auror at the closed door, the clearing throat of the Mediwizard waiting in the corner.
"Nothing else?" She says, her voice soft as her fingertips press against the leather. Another opportunity, one more chance he doesn't deserve, an offering to come clean.
But he's bloodied and muddied and soiled. Draco takes a breath through his nose, tastes her sour determination, and shakes his head.
"Then," Hermione says, and her fingers curl around the knife's handle, "let's start."
The rattle of his shackles echoes in the chamber as Draco lies down on the table, his wings draping out to either side. Hermione bites her lip as she stares down at them, the ruin of his once-pristine wings that shone as silver as his hair. Even filthy, drenched in blood and mud, half the feathers missing, they're beautiful, in that sublime, inhuman sort of way. An angel, fallen from grace, who landed, bruised and broken in the mud of humanity's mistakes.
Her fingers tremble so hard the knife clatters to the floor, and flushing, Hermione bends to pick it up, her fingers grazing against the cold metal.
Of all the people in the world, he chose her. She swallows, lingers for a moment, half-crouched on the floor, trying to regain her composure, some semblance of normality to cling to, a lifeline, but her breath catches in an aching lump in her throat.
It's such a waste. She straightens, her resolved strengthened by the damage done, and steps up to the table.
For a moment, Draco draws his wings closer to his back. A flinching retreat before he spreads the left one out and shifts against the table. Making her role in this easier with the flex of his muscles and sweep of his wings.
"It will hurt," she says, softly, as her fingers clutch around the bone of his wing.
A heartbeat. The Mediwizard shuffling his feet.
"Yes," Draco says, turning his head to rest his cheek against the wood. "That's rather the point."
The knife will do most of the work for her, she knows, because she was told by the Mediwizard during the briefing. It's the symbolism of it, he'd said, reminding her for a moment of Severus Snape, the way he'd sneered towards the diagrams on the table, as though it was Draco laid bare before them. As though he was an insect to be crushed under the heel of his boot.
Hermione had excused herself and hid in the nearest bathroom stall, her hands scrabbling at the lock, her vision hazed with tears, her chest constricting around her heart, her lungs, her blood rushing to her ears with a roar.
The penalty for uncontrollable Veela rampages is the cutting of their wings. The punishment shall be meted out by their mate, or by the person of the Veela's choosing if no mate is available to them.
She'd stared at the photographs, glossy, Muggle, of the victims until her eyes burned. The ribbons of flesh left behind where there had once been a person. The streak of blood that had once been a daughter. The locks of red hair belonging to a son.
He'd killed five people before they'd subdued him. He deserved every second of the pain she was about to inflict.
But Hermione hesitates, the knife to his skin, her fingers to his bone, her breath in her throat.
A Veela will rampage when they perceive their mate to be in danger.
The Mediwizard, pausing outside the door. "He's been given Veritaserum. If you have any burning questions that need to be sated."
Hermione had nodded, clutching at her elbows, her stomach turning at the sickening task ahead.
A wingless Veela will wither and die, their life diminished to a pale shadow. Not even their mate can sustain them.
"Draco," she says, and his wing twitches in her hand. "Who's your mate?"
Silence. Hermione's hands are clammy, and she can't wipe the sweat away when they're both full. She clenches the knife harder, her fingers digging into the leather, the point hovering an inch above Draco's pale skin.
"I can't tell you," he says, finally, the words stretched thin with tension.
The night, that awful, bloody night where everything had gone wrong, the night she picks over every sleepless morning, drifts like dandelion seeds through her mind.
Harry, the light catching on his glasses as he turned and yelled.
A Death Eater swerving towards her, wand pointed like a skeletal finger.
A blur of silver, streaking, screeching, the noise so high-pitched and horrible that she'd clutched at her ears in reflex. Crouched down to the ground, her wand pinched between her fingers, the sound reverberating through her bones, strumming through her blood, pounding her heart against her ribs.
She'd heard shouting. The crunch of bone. And then silence.
Two dead Death Eaters. Three dead Aurors. A whirlwind of carnage and splattered blood.
And Hermione, safe in the eye of the storm, shouting as they'd dragged him down into the mud.
Her fingers, dipping from his wing, brushing against his skin.
Draco shivers, tenses beneath her. His right wing arches, stretches, snaps back into itself.
"Thank you," Hermione says, as she adjusts her grip on the knife. Grabs at his wing. "You saved my life."
And he should know that she knows, that his silence and evasions are answers in themselves, that the words he doesn't say tells her more than the ones he does.
"You're welcome," Draco murmurs, closing his eyes. "Now stop dawdling."
Her hands are gentle and the knife is sharp. He feels like butter, tender meat, torn apart with a single touch. He can feel the weight of his wing slip from his shoulder, and he flexes, reflex, but it slides away, lands with a thump, sickening, wet, crunching, on the stone floor.
There's blood trickling hot down his skin. The pain is distant, foggy, muted. A potion, a clemency, to keep the pain abated.
The physical pain, at least.
They want to kill him slow.
Hermione's breath sticking in her throat. Her fingers slipping in the blood, stroking across his back. "Are you okay?" She whispers, even as her fingers curl around his right wing.
Draco turns his head and slits open an eye. She's pale, bloody-cheeked, a smear where she'd brushed her hair back. White and red and brown.
He closes his eye again. "Don't leave me lopsided."
He hears her inhale. Feels the tension in her fingers as she grips at his wings.
The bite of the knife, tearing him asunder.
He presses his cheek against the wood and lets himself drift away on the ocean of pain.
It carries him to memories better left drowned. The glimpse of her smile, caught unawares, the way it faltered when she saw him. The light in her eyes when she'd burst into his office, their office, parchment clutched in her hands like a victory flag. A location, a plan, the last stronghold of the Death Eater resistance.
The burn in his arm at his betrayal. Killing his own kind, the tattooed snake curling around his bone and biting. A shout, Potter's yell, a wand raised towards her.
A blur of blood. The tang of it on his tongue, the drip of it from his claws.
Hermione, staring at him, eyes wide, afraid.
His wing slides from his back. Draco's muscles twitch, uncomfortable, out of place. A jigsaw taken apart and put together with the vital pieces missing. He wants to flex his wings, but there's nothing but air beside him.
The soft swish of a robe. A murmured conversation. The edges blurring.
A hand on his back, hers, delicate, soft.
The prod of a wand, sharp-tipped, rough.
He looks smaller without his wings. Hermione curls up on the chair and watches the rise and fall of his back, bandaged, the blood seeping through, a pink stain that spreads with every laboured breath.
His trial will be in a week. A grace period for the healing process, the adjustment period.
Adjustment. Her fingers twitch and she balls her hands into fists.
Once a Veela's wings have been cut from their back, there is no way for them to regrow. Removal is a death sentence, stretched to years, inevitable.
They won't confine him to a cell, lock him behind bars. They've confined him already, to the ground, to a slow death, to his withering future. It will be a formality, a farce, a parade for those that look at him and see the mark on his arm before the rest of the man.
"Good," they'll whisper in the stands. "He deserves it," they'll shout, "after all he's done," they'll print in the Prophet.
Hermione draws her knees to her chin and watches the pink stain spread across his back, a mirroring of the sunrise peeking through the window, darkening to red, the blood that won't wash off her hands.
The incongruous sun, that ought not to rise when she feels so blackened inside, like she's swallowed a piece of dark night that will permeate her soul until it rots and withers the same as his.
He shifts, stirs, turns his head away from the golden light and to the fading shadow of night. Opens his eyes and looks at her, slowly, his brows furrowing at the puzzle of her presence.
"The Veritaserum's worn off," he says, his voice thick with sleep. "If that's what you're after."
"No. I know." Hermione's legs unfold as she leans forward, elbows to her knees, head braced by her hands. "I wanted to stay."
A shadow, flickering across his face, his expression clouding and clearing. "There's nothing you can do, Hermione," he says, turning his face into the pillow, blocking her from his sight. "Just leave," muffled, half-hearted, easy to ignore.
"No," she repeats, watching the ripple of tension skimming through his muscles. "If you throw me out, I'll file the paperwork."
He turns his head, bleary, cobwebbed with tousled hair, and glares at her. "What paperwork?" He bites, but his fangs have been blunted and she isn't afraid of the blood he'll draw.
"Well," Hermione says, leaning back and ticking off on her fingers, "there's the Mate Registration, for starters, then the application for a marriage licence, since you're probably a traditionalist about these things, then the Veela Breeding Permission form, though that might be getting ahead of myself slightly—"
"Stop," Draco interrupts, a hand flying out towards her, colliding with her knee and flinching away. "You're—just stop."
Hermione shifts forward. His thumb brushes against her knee, caught like a fly on sticky paper, unable, unwilling, to let go. "Then don't throw me out," she says, her fingers reaching towards his, slowly, creeping, a flower turning towards the sun.
"We're not getting married," Draco says, flatly. "I'm dying."
Hermione rolls her eyes. "Everyone's dying, one day at a time. You're not special, Malfoy."
He stares at her, his silver eyes cracking like ice, and then he buries his face in the pillow and laughs, wincing with every peal, the blood trickling from underneath the bandages.
The scars on his back pull every time he leans over, bends down, picks a forgotten toy from the ground. A reminder, a snagging pressure, the constant itch of the inevitable.
Hermione smiles at him as she takes the stuffed rabbit from between his fingers. An equilibrium, the sunshine chasing away the shadows, the life-force that tethers what's left of him to the world.
"Say thank you, Dada," she sing-songs, jiggling Scorpius on her hip, tickling his stomach with the flopped ears of the gnawed bunny.
"Dada," Scorpius babbles, gummy hands reaching for the bunny. "Baba."
"That's right, darling," Draco says, running his fingers through Scorpius' golden-brown curls. "Your bunny."
"And now you can go to sleep," Hermione mutters, looking over his head to meet Draco's gaze, exhaustion shadowing her expression.
"Come on," Draco says, and Scorpius is lifted, distracted, gnawing drool onto the soft plush foot of his rabbit, away from Hermione and onto Draco. "Your mama needs her rest."
"Mama," Scorpius repeats, before punching the bunny—wet side first—into Draco's face. "Baba."
Hermione snorts with laughter as Draco stands there, dripping drool onto his collar, his son and his existence heavy, squirming, wriggling away from him.
Hermione wakes to an empty bed. For a moment she stretches, luxuriating in the warmth of the blankets, but Draco doesn't return with a lopsided smile and an update on Amaryllis. The minutes slip by, sleep-hazed, and Hermione jerks up, her legs tangling as she scrambles out of bed, a sudden gnawing pulling at her heart, tugging her to the door, to the hall, to the stairs.
He turns when she throws open the door and hears the glass shatter. It's windy, a blustering night, her nightgown sticking to her legs, her hair slicing across her cheeks.
Draco holds out a hand as he steps closer, brushes his thumb over hers as she clings to him. "I thought I'd come look at the stars," he murmurs, the words half-swallowed by the roar in her ears, "but it's so cloudy." He gestures, his other hand, towards the grey sky.
"You promised you'd tell me," Hermione says, the words catching in her throat like feathers, clustering, sharp, tasting of blood. "When it was time."
Draco tugs her closer, into an embrace, his pyjamas silk against her skin, the smell of him, sharp pine and musk in her nose, his hair tangling in hers. The soft pressure of a kiss to her hair, his hand on her back, warm in the frosty wind.
"Well," he says, softly, as though a gentle tone will ease the sting, "I think it's time."
"Amaryllis is only three months old," Hermione chokes out through the truth wedged in her throat. "She won't remember you."
"You will, though." Draco leans his cheek against her hair, breathes her in. Hermione's fingers twist at his shirt, desperation clawing from her stomach to her fingertips. "And you'll tell them stories about me."
She shakes her head, not hard enough to dislodge him, as though she can deny this inevitable reality if she tries hard enough. "I thought," she chokes out, the tears escaping down her cheeks, a flood she can't bite back, "we'd have more time."
Draco wipes her tears away with gentle fingers. "We had a lifetime, Hermione. Just not together."
"But," she protests with another shake of her head, but there's no argument to be made, no deal to strike with death, no facts or logic she can drive this moment away with. Just a cold wind cutting against her skin, radiating out from her stomach, the icy chill of the inevitable.
A thumb against her cheek, her face tipped back for a kiss. Draco's lips, soft and tender, the taste of salt on their tongues. His fingers, deft, delicate, sliding a ring onto her thumb, warm metal that pulses against her skin. A heavy weight that tilts her world's axis, a dragon-banded piece of metal where her husband ought to be instead.
"I meant what I said," Draco murmurs. "I'd do it again. My life for yours.”
“I’ll tell them you were brave,” Hermione cries, as Draco draws away, misty, blurry-edged. “And that I loved you too.”
He smiles at her, sweet, soft.
And then he fades away.
Gone.