Chapter Text
Lucius Malfoy was dying.
“You’re not dying, Father,” Draco’s exasperation cut through the din of his maudlin, melodramatic thoughts.
“I can, and I am,” Lucius sniffed contrarily, shifting in the thinly padded, uncomfortable hospital bed. Were it not infinitely better than the raggedy, lumpy mess of a mattress he had been subjected to for so long, he very well might have voiced his present discontent.
With death so clearly in his imminent future, he rather didn’t see the point.
Draco sighed, swiping a hand down his face. “This is all about Mother, isn’t it? Please stop being so dramatic about the divorce. You both happily agreed to it not two months ago.”
They had. He had always cared for Narcissa, but their marriage had irreparably fallen into ruin after the war and his subsequent incarceration.
Divorce had once been unfathomable for their station, but he and Narcissa had fulfilled their obligation of an heir, and their own parents, who had arranged their marriage contract, were long since dead. Society had changed in the intervening years, and their standing in the wizarding upper crust had already been beyond blackened by their association with the Dark Lord. Who was there left to disappoint? Lucius was well aware that she deserved to follow her own heart’s desires rather than remaining beholden to him for the remainder of their days.
At the time, he thought, perhaps, he could move on as well. It would no doubt take some time to regain his social standing after his release, but he was still rich and reasonably handsome, garish, Azkaban issued, neck tattoo aside. He had thought he could do the gallant, selfless act of allowing Narcissa to leave.
It had been nearly nine years since he’d even seen her; and she hadn’t written him in just as long. Divorce had been a mere formality already years in the making.
But his agreement had come before Lucius discovered the deleterious effects the formal dissolution of his marriage would have on his own health.
Regardless, it was too late now. The papers were signed, and the last time he had seen Cissy in the private meeting room at the prison, their marriage bond had been summarily dissolved.
His present infirmity commenced within the day.
“Mark my words, I’ll be dead within the month.”
Despite Draco’s assertions to the contrary, Lucius was dying. That was surely what the cruciatus-like fire that came in incapacitating waves meant. The unrelenting thirst. His lapses in strength and the aching need for something he couldn’t quantify, and no doubt would be unable to discover before his assured death.
More and more frequently, it was as though he were slowly and simply drowning on air.
The only bright side to dying was that he now had a window with a view of something other than the stormy North Sea, and the air he drowned on was fresh rather than fetid. The room in which he’d been placed was starkly white and brightly lit, but it was still miles better than the musty, dingy Azkaban cell to which he had been confined for the better part of the last ten years.
“And if I weren’t dying, why release me early?” Lucius argued, “Compassionate release, they called it.”
Lucius would have preferred to die at home in his manor surrounded by friends and family—well, not Narcissa, obviously. It was her fault he was dying to begin with, and at this juncture, he didn’t think she would be particularly inclined to sit with him on his deathbed. Many of his friends were also long since dead or incarcerated, though most in the latter category were of the fairweather variety to begin with. Perhaps a few far flung cousins might attend. So only Draco, really, would have been with him at home, but at least he might have been more comfortable.
Instead, he had been dragged here. St. Mungo’s hospital was an utterly uninspired place in which to die.
“You’re just a bit ill. They released you five years early for good behavior and the reformation program, not because you’re dying,” Draco countered, “Your illness was a coincidence, and since you’ve been here, they’ve yet to find anything actually wrong with you.”
Foolish boy.
Though, as Lucius peered at him, he found that his son wasn’t precisely a boy any longer. Apparently, Draco even had a son of his own. He’d known of course—had been told at some point or another— but in the absence of physical evidence, the knowledge that he was now a grandfather had been, and presently remained, an abstract truth. Lucius idly wondered if he would be allowed to meet the toddler before his inevitable, untimely demise.
Because as he saw it, and despite his son’s assurances to the contrary, his imminent death was inevitable. The same thing had happened to his father, Abraxas, when Mother died. His previously robust health deteriorated suddenly after Mother’s funeral, and from there, the wizard withered slowly, inexorably, for months until he met his end. It was Dragon Pox, the healers had claimed, but Lucius had never seen evidence of that malady in the perfunctory visits Abraxas had allowed. Besides, as a disease of the elderly of a race the routinely lived over one-hundred forty years, his father had hardly qualified. The simple fact of the matter was this: due to some curse or another in the distant past, those of the Malfoy line were doomed to languish and die in the absence marriage bond.
Well, perhaps, except for his Great Aunt, Hecate Malfoy. Though he had always found her association with her lady-in-waiting highly questionable. The Malfoy’s earldom of Wiltshire was far enough removed from the muggle line of royal succession that Lucius was dubious of her garnering a lady-in-waiting to begin with. What were house elves for, after all? Then again, Hecate and her lady had also died on the same day, which only served to further validate his theory.
He was simply the first Malfoy in memory to perish due to a an admittedly rightful, but still altogether galling, divorce, rather than due the death of their spouse.
He could admit that the ‘no divorce’ clause in his family’s standard marriage contracts abruptly made much more sense, aside from the fact that dissolution of marriage simply was not borne in many pureblood circles.
Lucius had the sudden inane thought that if Narcissa had simply divorced him at the beginning of his prison term, he could have been spared the last near-decade of indignity. Inconsiderate of her to wait so long, really.
But he could rue his lot later; for now he simply needed to convince his son to bring along their solicitor on his next visit. Lucius preferred to get the necessary preparations out of the way while he was still mostly mentally present and able to do so.
A sharp rap on the door drew both his and Draco’s attention. The world sharpened, becoming more vibrant and alive than it had been since before the war, the fire plaguing his nerves receded, and for the first time in weeks, he could breathe properly as his salvation walked though the door. The world spun away into a white blur of sudden, blinding pain and dizzying instinct.
Hermione looked forward to the end of her shift with something akin to desperation. In a mere three hours and she would have two entire days away to catch up on sleep, unwind, and recharge.
She had been working for the past twenty-three days straight due to a particularly virulent spattergroit outbreak that required all qualified healers on deck. Working in the magical diseases ward at St. Mungo's was as rewarding as it was exhausting, and today had been particularly taxing as the fatigue of her constant work schedule finally caught up with her.
She needed this short break more than she cared to admit.
Now that the spattergroit issue was mostly solved, it was at least a relief to go back to her primary duties. They had released the last patient the night before; the malady contained and treated before that particular strain could become endemic in the wizarding population of Britain at large.
In her unique role as researcher, healer, and the only member of staff to hold a combined muggle M.D./Ph.D., she typically handled the difficult, unique cases that had few, if any, precedents or protocols. The specific narrow subset of patients meant that barring public health emergencies, she typically was left to her research, the occasional consultation, and the rotating schedule of emergency clinic duty.
The file that landed on her desk earlier today had been a surprise, and not necessarily a welcomed one.
Lucius Malfoy, aged fifty-four, newly released from Azkaban and complaining of mysterious malaise, sudden nerve pain, and shortness of breath starting two months prior.
Hermione flipped through the prison healer’s notes, but found nothing helpful regarding either the onset or the mitigation of symptoms. In fact it seemed they hadn’t attempted any mitigation strategies at all. They had simply released him early and had him immediately transferred here several days ago.
Based on the records she’d received and his most recent charts, the patient had remained stable since the move. No marked improvement, but his condition had not shown signs of worsening at present.
While she personally had no love lost for the Malfoy patriarch, it stood to reason that if he, with all his galleons and influence, was receiving substandard medical care that could reasonably be construed as tortuous, then such was likely the case for the rest of the prisoners of Azkaban as well. The Minister would be receiving a strongly worded letter, of course, though she doubted it would do any good.
The thought nettled, even though saving the world was no longer her purview. For the most part she was content to perform her own brand of magic here at St. Mungo’s.
Back to the matter at hand, Hermione really needed to do a hands on assessment before she could even begin to make any headway on a diagnosis and treatment plan. His case would give her a bit of brain stimulating homework so that she didn’t grow bored during her brief respite away from work.
While she would have appreciated the case landing on her desk earlier in the day, perhaps it was best that Malfoy was to be her last assignment before her weekend. She had an inkling of intuition that he would be both a troublesome case and a recalcitrant patient.
Steeling herself, she headed for Malfoy’s private room on ward four.
Hermione only caught the barest glimpse of Lucius and Draco after knocking and opening her patient’s door.
A vicious screech rent the air and she was abruptly ensconced in a field of white and heat as something grabbed hold of her and wouldn’t let go.
Then came the searing pain at the base of her neck before she could even think to break free or fight back. A bizarre spark of lust began to coil low in her belly as the sharp sting in her neck coalesced into an almost physical force.
The knowledge that she was completely and utterly fucked was the last coherent thought Hermione managed before she passed out cold.