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"The darker the magic, the greater the glory – and the more exorbitant the price, Draco."
As he stared at the silver dagger in his hand, frozen by an eleventh-hour sudden lack of courage, Draco recalled his father's last words to him in this life with a sense of foreboding that went bone deep.
" Perceptum dictata, filius meus."
Learn the lesson, my son.
Strapped into the executioner’s chair, awaiting the entrance of the Dementor with calm dignity, Lucius had looked right at him and given him that final warning – and it had been an admonition, not an explanation for an unconventional life and a horrific death, as the observing journalists had incorrectly reported. His father had balanced his entire life on the razor’s edge, and in the end, the man had been resigned to an ill-fate on that self-same sharp edge. He’d wanted his son to learn from his mistakes.
But what Draco was about to do, it was the only way to bring back his beloved wife. He’d spent years looking for alternatives to this spell, but without a Horcrux… No, there were no other options but to bind her soul to the golem he'd made, and his window to pull off this miracle would be up as of twenty-three past seven tomorrow morning – the tenth anniversary date and time of Hermione's death.
Finishing tonight’s ritual would change him, though, and most likely doom him, too. He would be going as Dark as a person could go in the arcane, practising ancient Egyptian rites that were shunned by modern wizarding society. It meant giving his will over to true evil–
–An experience with which he was well-familiar, having taken Voldemort’s Mark on bended knee at barely sixteen-years-old. Thanks to Potter, he’d been lucky enough to escape the brunt of the Wizengamot’s wrath back then, however, floating to freedom on his underage status. Now, he was a man of forty-two, and there would be no mere slap on the wrist if this transgression were to be found out. If he did this thing, he risked being labelled the worst of all Dark wizards–a Necromancer–which carried the penalty of being hunted down by the Ministry and arrested for crimes against wizarding society. Not even someone as politically powerful as Potter would be able to save him a second time, especially against such a charge.
Could he risk not the possibility of exile or life imprisonment, or worse – a Dementor's Kiss? Could he cross lines that were truly unforgivable? Should he?
He looked down at the gold band that still encircled his left ring finger. He’d never taken it off, not even when working in his lab on concoctions that didn’t take well to the presence of metal. Letting go of it, of herand the brief, but beautiful life they’d shared as husband and wife had never been an option in his mind.
This plan… it was being done out of love. Surely, that must count for something, right? Surely, there would be sympathy and leniency and– No, there would be none of those things. Post-war Britain had had enough of Dark magic. If he did complete this ritual, there would be absolutely no going back.
He glanced down into the black kettle levitating over the fire before him. Within it already were the elements he needed to complete the ancient necromantia spell: the bones of Hermione's left ring finger taken from her crypt for the skeleton, the heart of a dead youn girl that he'd stolen from St. Mungo's for the flesh, a lock of her hair that he'd cut and kept post-mortem to recreate the curls he had adored, and her wedding band melted into a small pool of gold to fuel the fire and strength in her veins. He even had her old Vinewood wand, found in the Drawing Room where it had lain in silence and undetected until just last year, when Pansy had ordered in her house-elves to clean the Manor of the filth and ruin Draco had let it become since Hermione's passing.
All that remained was to add his blood to seal the magical contract and speak the words of the spell, and it would be done.
Several feet in front of him was the ivory sculpture of his beloved wife that he'd painstakingly crafted over the last ten years – a monument to her, emotional therapy for him. He'd carved her from memory, recreating her on the day of their wedding fifteen years prior, even adding into her cold, still hand an ivory bouquet of roses that was an exact match to the one she’d walked down the aisle carrying. With magic, he’d added a pale, pink blush to the etched petals, as well as to her lips and cheeks.
She’d been so beautiful… his whole world…
Draco shut his eyes against the nostalgia, focussing on the task ahead.
Could he do this? What if he failed? What if he succeeded?
“You always knew the right thing to do,” he whispered, speaking to his wife's spirit, wherever it resided. "Should I attempt this? Are you happier where you are? Should I forget this whole thing and just join you on your side?"
The last really wasn't an option. After Hermione's father's suicide, in the wake of her mother's passing, his wife had made him swear never to take his own life. She believed in the Christian Heaven, and thought that those who took their own lives could never get there. He'd sworn to her on his magic over the conjoined grave of her parents that he would never purposefully attempt to end his own existence. It was a promise he'd kept all these years, and one he would endure for the rest of his days walking the earth.
"Tell me what to do, Hermione," he begged, clasping his trembling hands together around her wand. "What would you do?"
Cast, cast, cast, the wind seemed to whisper through the trees, providing him the courage he needed to speak the words of the Dark spell.
Slicing through his palm, Draco added his blood to the carefully crafted Summoning potion, binding this sin to his soul for eternity. He spoke the ancient ritual, carefully enunciating each word, and his wand motions were precise and cleanly executed, precisely as he'd practised.
The earth suddenly rumbled under his feet, causing him to sway and nearly lose his balance, and droves of birds abandoned the trees in the nearby forest for the dark skies above, their departure accompanied by a chorus of startled squawking.
The quaking lasted a little less than five seconds, and the rolling after-shocks under his knees quickly petered out, but the silence reigned in the stillness that followed. For long minutes, Draco could hear nothing but his heart pounding in his ears.
Had it worked?
He glanced down at the cauldron. It was bubbling over, golden mist spewing forth from its centre to spill down its sides. The scroll at his feet began to burn, the letters so painstakingly written across the parchment glowing a brilliant amber and scarlet before being consumed by flames.
It was working, wasn't it?
"Draco."
His heart gave a painful, hopeful leap in his chest.
Draco turned to his statue, watching the golem come to life before his very eyes, becoming a true homunculus. The sculpted dress transformed into a gauzy, flowing gown made of white silk, the long, ivory bead necklace draped around her neck took on the moonglow sheen of pearl, and the carved tendrils of creamy hair darkened, separated into living strands, and softened. Her honeyed skin breathed with life, and her dark eyes filled with pinpricks of starlight. From her pink lips, she gave a tired sigh.
He spoke her name in an awed, bewildered whisper, a wild optimism galloping through his chest. “Hermione?”
“Yes, I'm here.”
His cheeks stung as his falling tears froze in place, burning his skin from a blast of icy cold as the Void expelled his wife back into the world of the living. The chill radiated outward from her in a like a Dementor's aura, killing the grass and shrivelling her lovely rose bouquet. It lasted only a few moments, though, as the gateway between the spirit realm and this realm firmly closed behind her and the warmer air around them reclaimed the space.
For a moment, all he could do was stare at her, amazed by her presence. He'd thought her lost forever. "Hermione," he sobbed, barely able to breathe past his emotions. She was really here, talking to him once more!
"Dra–" Her features suddenly twisted up with pain, and with a deep moan, she doubled-over at the waist. Dropping her bouquet, she wrapped her arms around her mid-section. "Ahh, it hurts," she murmured in a trembling voice. "Send me back! Send me back now!"
"It worked!" he shouted, caught up in his own joy over his successful incantation. "I can't believe it really–"
"Draco, it really hurts!" Hermione shouted with urgency. Dropping to her knees, her spine humped as if she were preparing to expel something violently from her belly, and one hand reached for her throat in a panicked action, as if trying to keep from choking.
Crawling to her side, he carefully touched her, noting the supple movement of the magically-created muscles under his hands and unexpectedly aroused by the silkiness of her white skin across his fingertips. She was perfect, just as she'd been in life the first time. A little cold to the touch, but she would surely warm up soon enough. "Breathe through the pain, my love," he coached, supporting her into sitting back on her haunches. He rubbed gentle circles over her back to soothe her. "Just be calm. You've had a terrible accident, but you're okay now. I'm here."
He'd rehearsed this part in advance as well: he would play the role of her rescuer from a nasty case of Splinching. He'd say she'd Apparated in wounded and immediately fainted from blood loss, hitting her head on a rock as she'd gone unconscious. Amnesia would be a convenient excuse for the gap in her memory. Hermione would never suspect the truth.
"My belly aches," she whined, giving a great shudder as she deeply inhaled through her nose. "I'm hungry, Draco. So hungry..."
Of course, she couldn't be allowed to leave the grounds, or to be present whenever there were guests. Everyone believed her dead. If they were to see her, there would be questions, and possibly even an inquiry–
"Hungry," she hissed again, and this time, there was an unnatural growl to her voice.
Draco pulled himself out of his thoughts and back into the present just in time to see her pretty, brown eyes begin to glow a faint red. Her skin, if possible, was even paler than the ivory it had once been. In fact, it looked decidedly greyer. Her pink lips had taken on a purplish hue.
"Feed me!"
Something was wrong. Nothing in his research had indicated that she should feel such a thing as hunger or thirst upon her awakening. In fact, the scroll had said she'd need to sleep in a dark place under the clay of the earth, avoiding all light–
Her fingers were suddenly wrapped around his wrist, her movement so fast he hadn't time to even register it. Her grip was strong, and when he attempted to pull away, he noted it was also not easily broken.
"Hermione?"
She smiled at him, and her teeth flashed white against the ashen colour of her lips. A set of long, sharp fangs descended from her upper gums.
A shot of pure, unadulterated fear coursed through Draco's veins as he realised he'd made a mistake of epic proportions: the ancient Egyptian spell hadn't been an instruction manual for creating a homunculus, as he'd assumed, but for creating a vampire!
"Feed me!"
Before he could stop her, Hermione was on him, knocking him back into the grass. Her mouth was at his throat a beat later, and there was a sharp pain as his flesh was pierced. The grotesque sounds of slurping and her small, lithe body dry humping his accompanied his wife draining his life force away.
He fought, of course, the instinct to live still buried somewhere deep inside the soft shell he inhabited. However, Draco's will was weaker in that regard than in others. Ten years was a long time to grieve, and all that time and effort had taken its toll upon him. After a few minutes of struggling, he simply gave up the fight, letting his limbs go loose and allowing his fate to be met.
It didn't take long for him to begin feeling light-headed, and for a fuzzy kind of dark humour to twist his thoughts around and around in his brain. Ironically, he'd wanted to die for years, but because of his promise to his wife, he'd been unable to cause his own death. Now, unwittingly, he'd done just that – and it was his wife delivering him into that blessed, dark salvation at long last.
"The Darker the magic, the greater the glory – and the more exorbitant the price, Draco."
It was a strange last thought, but Draco realised that such a thing could be said about love as well.
" Perceptum dictata."
~FIN~