Dramione Fanfiction

Eclipse of Serpents and Lions 

Chapter 2: The Sectumsempra Secret

Setting: Hogwarts, February. Cold seeps through the castle stones like regret.

Hermione Granger couldn’t escape the smell of blood.

It haunted her between stacks of library books, lurked behind the sharp scent of Floo powder in the common room, and now—*Merlin, now*—it was thick and metallic in the damp air of the second-floor girls' bathroom. Moaning Myrtle wailed overhead, her sobs echoing off cracked porcelain tiles.

*“Worthless! Unlovable! Forever alone!”*

Hermione barely heard her. Her breath hitched as she stared at the crimson streaks smeared across the floor, leading to the farthest stall. Her prefect rounds could wait. Logic warred with dread. *It’s Peeves. Or a wounded animal. Or…*

She pushed the stall door open. The scent of copper slammed into her.

Draco Malfoy slumped against the wall, his face chalk-white, lips tinged blue. His Slytherin robes were slashed open, the white shirt beneath soaked scarlet. Deep, vicious cuts crisscrossed his chest and arms, weeping blood onto the grimy floor. His wand lay discarded near his knee, his fingers trembling too violently to grasp it. His eyes, wide and glassy with shock, met hers.

For a heartbeat, time froze. The arrogant sneer, the polished malice—gone. This was raw, shattered agony. This was a boy drowning.

"G…Granger?" His voice was a rasp, weak and disbelieving. He tried to shift, to hide the ruin of his torso, but a choked gasp escaped him. Fresh blood bloomed across the fabric.

Hermione’s brain snapped into terrifying focus. **Diagnostic Charm.** Her wand moved without thought. "*Vulnera Sanentur!*" Golden light washed over him, revealing the damage in spectral layers. Deep muscle lacerations. Nicked arteries. Dark, cursed magic clinging to the wounds like poison. *Sectumsempra.* The words screamed in her mind. A curse designed to maim, to bleed an enemy dry.

Panic clawed up her throat. *Run. Get Pomfrey. Get Snape.* But the blood… there was so much blood. He wouldn’t last five minutes.

"Who did this?" Her voice was sharper than intended, laced with a fury she couldn't name. Seeing him broken, vulnerable… it ignited something fierce and protective deep in her chest. An instinct older than rivalry.

Draco’s laugh was a wet, broken sound. "Doesn’t… matter." He winced, squeezing his eyes shut. "Just… leave. Enjoy the… show."

"Don't be an idiot!" Hermione hissed, dropping to her knees beside him. The cold tile bit through her robes. Ignoring his flinch, she ripped a strip from the hem of her own uniform, pressing it hard against the deepest gash on his collarbone. His blood soaked through instantly, warm and sticky against her skin. "You need help. Now."

He tried to shove her hand away, but his strength was gone. "No… Healers. Can’t… explain." Terror flashed in his grey eyes, cutting through the pain. "He’ll know… he’ll *know* I failed…"

*Voldemort.* The unspoken name hung between them, colder than the bathroom air. The Vanishing Cabinet. His impossible task. This… this was the price of failure? Or something else?

Her mind raced. Sectumsempra. Severus Snape invented the counter-curse. Snape was his Head of House, his protector… but Snape was also bound to the Dark Lord. Could she trust him? Draco’s desperate plea echoed – *He’ll know.* If Snape intervened, Voldemort might see it as weakness. Might punish Draco… or worse, his mother.

The blood kept flowing. Draco’s breathing grew shallower, his eyelids fluttering. Time was sand slipping through her fingers.

*Think, Granger! Think!* Ancient magic. Forbidden texts. The Restricted Section held answers, but it was too far. Her gaze snagged on the shimmering Diagnostic Charm still hovering over his chest. The dark curse-magic writhed like living smoke, resisting healing. *It needs purging. Not just stitching.*

A memory surfaced, sharp and dangerous. *Magicus Sanguinis Ligare.* A Blood-Binding Purge. Found in *Secrets of the Darkest Arts*, a book she’d confiscated from a panicked first-year last month. Highly unstable. Required direct magical transfer. **Forbidden by Hogwarts Statute VII.**

Hermione’s hands shook. Breaking rules was Ron’s territory, not hers. But the scent of Draco’s blood filled her nostrils. The terrified boy beneath the pure-blood mask stared back, silently pleading. *He saved your life in the Room of Requirement. Even if he hates you.*

"Hold still," she commanded, her voice tight with resolve. "This… might hurt."

Draco’s eyes widened. "What are you—?"

She didn’t answer. Closing her eyes, she placed one hand firmly over the worst wound on his chest, ignoring his sharp intake of breath. Her other hand gripped her wand, pointing it at their joined point of contact. She focused, pouring her magic into the incantation, twisting the ancient words with her own intent – *not* to bind, but to *cleanse*.

"*Sanguinem obscurum purgo, vinculum malum rumpo! Per meam vitam, per meam lucem, sana!*" (I purge the dark blood, break the cursed bond! By my life, by my light, heal!)

Power surged through her – raw, terrifying, and brilliant. Her veins lit up like golden fire beneath her skin. Draco arched off the floor with a strangled cry, not of pain, but of shocking, invasive *heat*. Her magic flooded into him, a blazing river scouring the dark curse from his wounds. The smoky tendrils hissed and dissolved. The bleeding slowed. Torn flesh began to knit together, not perfectly, but enough. Enough to save him.

The glow faded. Hermione slumped back, gasping, her head spinning. Magic depletion felt like falling off a broomstick. Her hand, still pressed to his chest, burned where their skin touched. She felt the frantic drumming of his heart beneath her palm.

Draco lay still, breathing raggedly, staring at the cracked ceiling. Sweat beaded on his brow, mingling with the drying blood. The terrible pallor was gone, replaced by a flush of exertion… and utter bewilderment. He looked down at her hand on his chest, then up at her face, his grey eyes wide, stripped bare of all pretense.

"You…" he rasped, voice raw. "You used… *Dark* magic?" Not accusation. Awe. Horror. Disbelief.

"Not Dark," Hermione corrected weakly, pulling her hand away as if scalded. The sudden loss of contact felt jarring. "Just… forbidden. And necessary." She wiped her blood-stained hand on her ruined robes, avoiding his gaze. The reality of what she’d done crashed over her. She’d channeled unstable, ancient magic into Draco Malfoy. She could have killed him. Or herself. "You were dying."

Silence stretched, thick and charged. Myrtle had stopped crying, peering at them through the stall door with morbid curiosity. The only sounds were their ragged breathing and the drip of a leaky faucet.

"Why?" The word was a whisper, rough with emotion she couldn’t decipher. He pushed himself up gingerly onto one elbow, wincing but alive. His gaze pinned her, intense and searching. "Why save me? After everything… After the Cabinet… After the things I’ve said?" He gestured weakly at the bloodstained floor, at *her* bloodstained hands. "I’m your enemy."

Hermione hugged her knees to her chest, the cold tile seeping through again. Why *had* she? Because she was a prefect? Because she couldn't watch anyone die? Because of the haunted look in his eyes when he’d spoken of his family? Because of the shocking, unexpected jolt when he’d pulled her from the Killing Curse?

"Because," she said finally, meeting his stormy gaze head-on, "you’re also a human being bleeding out on a bathroom floor, Draco Malfoy. And I’m not a monster." She paused, the next words harder to force out. "And… you saved *me* first."

He flinched, looking away. The vulnerability was back, quickly masked by a flicker of his old defensiveness. "That was… self-preservation. They’d have killed me too for knowing you were there."

Maybe," Hermione conceded, pushing herself to her feet. Her legs felt shaky. "Or maybe there’s a part of you that isn't entirely rotten." She held out her hand. Not to help him up – he’d hate that – but offering his discarded wand. "Can you stand?"

He stared at her outstretched hand, then at his wand, as if they were foreign objects. Slowly, painfully, he reached out and took the wand, his fingers brushing hers. A tiny, electric spark seemed to jump between them. He quickly pulled back, gripping his wand like a lifeline. Using the wall for support, he hauled himself upright, swaying slightly. He looked down at his ruined shirt, the half-healed wounds still angry red lines beneath the dried blood.

"This never happened," he stated, his voice regaining a sliver of its usual steel, though it lacked conviction. "You were never here. You saw nothing."

Hermione crossed her arms, channeling her best McGonagall glare. "Who cursed you, Malfoy?"

His jaw tightened. "It doesn’t matter."

"It matters if they’re walking around Hogwarts casting Dark curses!" she snapped. A terrible suspicion bloomed. "Was it… was it *Harry*?"

Draco’s silence was confirmation enough. A cold fury washed over Hermione. *Harry. Her Harry. Using a curse from that damned book.* The book she’d warned him about. The book that had nearly killed Draco.

"Oh, Harry," she whispered, the disappointment sharp and bitter.

Draco watched her reaction, a strange, bitter twist to his lips. "Saint Potter. Not so saintly after all, is he?" There was no triumph in his voice, only weary bitterness. "He didn’t know what it did. Coward ran off before he saw the… mess."

The image was sickening. Harry, terrified, fleeing the scene. Draco, left alone to bleed out in a filthy bathroom. Both victims of a war they were too young to fight.

"You still need the proper counter-curse," Hermione said quietly, her anger at Harry warring with the residual horror of the scene. "Snape can administer it discreetly. Tell him… tell him you fell on broken glass in the Room of Requirement. He’ll believe it." Or he’ll pretend to.

Draco nodded stiffly, avoiding her eyes. He started to shuffle towards the door, every step clearly painful. He paused, hand on the cracked porcelain sink for support. He didn’t look back.

"Granger," he said, his voice low, rough with something that wasn't hatred. "That spell… the forbidden one…" He hesitated, struggling with the words. "It felt… like sunlight. Trapped under ice." He finally turned his head, just enough to meet her gaze over his shoulder. His eyes held a tumult of emotions – shock, grudging respect, lingering pain, and a dawning, terrifying confusion. "I didn’t think you had it in you."

Before she could respond – to argue, to question, to demand what he meant by 'sunlight trapped under ice' – he pushed open the bathroom door and was gone, leaving behind only the scent of blood, magic, and the echoing silence of a thousand shattered expectations.

Hermione sank back against the cold tile wall, sliding down until she sat on the bloodstained floor. She looked at her hands – one smeared with Draco Malfoy’s blood, the other still tingling faintly from the forbidden magic she’d channeled, from the brief, electric contact when he’d taken his wand.

She had broken rules. She had wielded dangerous magic. She had saved Draco Malfoy’s life. And the look in his eyes… it hadn’t been gratitude. It had been revelation. A terrifying, world-shattering glimpse behind the Malfoy mask, and a reflection of something unexpected and dangerous in herself.

Myrtle drifted down, hovering near her head. "Ooooh," she sighed dramatically. "He looked at you like you hung the moon, Hermione Granger. Even covered in blood. How… *romantic*."

Hermione closed her eyes, letting her head thunk back against the wall. Romantic? No. This was chaos. This was war. This was a line irrevocably crossed.

The scent of blood and ancient magic clung to her. And deep down, beneath the shock and the fear and the lingering anger at Harry, a tiny, traitorous spark ignited. A spark that felt terrifyingly like the beginning of something she couldn't control. Draco Malfoy wasn't just her enemy anymore. He was a secret. He was a debt. He was a boy who bled and trembled and looked at her like she was sunlight breaking through his perpetual winter.

And Hermione Granger had absolutely no idea what to do about it.